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The coming year will be a perilous test for the Western Balkans, as
the embers of war are again being fanned by Belgrade and Moscow.
Western governments confront a stark choice – whether to allow
ambitious Serbian politicians and their Kremlin patrons to push the
region into another armed conflict or deprive them of the tools for
triggering bloodshed.
The sparks of war are most evident in Kosova, Montenegro, and
Bosnia-Herzegovina – the three targets of Serbia’s mini-empire
building. The methods of destabilization may differ in each case,
but the objective is clear – to establish Belgrade’s regional
hegemony and expand Serbia’s borders. This step-by-step approach has
been accelerated in recent months because of Moscow’s decision to
promote war in the Balkans in order to create problems for NATO
while Russia continues to lose ground in Ukraine.
Moscow does not need to engage its military in the Western Balkans,
because Serbia has its own aspirations and willingly serves as a
proxy. Presidents Vučić and Putin have a symbiotic relationship
whereby Putin helps Vučić in pushing for an enlarged Serbia while
Vučić assists Putin in penetrating the region and generating
problems for Western institutions. Instability in the Balkans
enables Moscow to claim that the EU and NATO cannot resolve or
prevent conflicts.
For the Kremlin, undermining the Balkans is a low-cost operation.
Moscow provides Belgrade and Banja Luka with diplomatic and
financial support together with arms, propaganda, disinformation,
provocateurs, and armed gangs. Russia’s methods of subverting and
subordinating neighbors also serve as valuable examples for Serbia
to pursue three main strategies – division, escalation, and
domination. And all three will provoke reactions by Serbia’s
adversaries that can spiral out of control into outright violence.
First, the strategy of division is evident in attempts to mobilize
the Serbian minority in Kosova, stoke fear, engender ethnic
animosities, and prove that states in the Balkans cannot be
multi-ethnic. The erection of roadblocks, attacks on journalists,
the forced conscription of peaceful local Serbs, the dispatch of
provocateurs, and the destruction of property are all part of the
methodology. Divisive processes have been evident in Montenegro
through the Serbian Orthodox Church, special forces, and nationalist
radicals challenging Podgorica’s independence. In
Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Serb entity serves as the main vehicle of
division and Croatian nationalists have also been enlisted by
Belgrade with the promise of territorial gains.
Second, Vučić and Milorad Dodik, commander of Bosnia’s Serb entity,
both engage in a strategy of escalation to gain leverage with
Western officials. By threatening armed intervention or political
secession they seek concessions from the EU and US and subsequently
engineer further rounds of instability. Such escalations divert
attention from the core problems – Belgrade’s non-recognition of
Kosova’s statehood and Banja Luka’s challenge to Bosnia’s integrity.
It also serves to portray Prishtina and Sarajevo as the culprits and
promotes Western appeasement to avoid deeper conflicts. As a result,
the EU spends most of its time trying to defuse conflicts
manufactured by Serb leaders instead of dealing with the fundamental
causes.
The third Serbian strategy of creeping domination is designed to
corral neighboring states under Belgrade’s umbrella, whether as
economic subordinates through the Open Balkans project, as political
dependents through diminishing sovereignty, or through outright
territorial absorption. The partition of Kosova and Bosnia is
periodically touted to test international resolve and to enmesh
Croatia and Albania as co-conspirators in border changes and
territorial gains that will primarily benefit Belgrade.
To defeat Belgrade’s three-pronged regional strategy Western leaders
need to deploy three effective weapons: diplomatic, military, and
economic. On the diplomatic front, Kosova, Bosnia, and Montenegro
must not be pushed into conceding ground to ethno-nationalism. A
primary example is the pressure on Prishtina to enshrine territorial
division by allowing for the creation of a Serbian entity, styled as
a “municipal association,” which will mimic the state destroying
policy of the Republika Srpska in Bosnia. The formation of any
ethnically based divisions is also an invitation for deeper
anti-Western subversion by Russia.
In Montenegro, Washington should not support political players who
claim they are anti-corruption and pro-European while being used by
corrupt anti-Montenegrin and pro-Russian forces to destabilize the
state. It must also challenge any electoral manipulation in Bosnia
that strengthen the stranglehold of ethno-nationalist parties. Such
illusory solutions will deepen political and national divisions and
ignite violence as the Bosniak population feels increasingly
besieged.
In the military arena, the most effective way to prevent Kosova’s
destabilization is a display of power by NATO and the Kosova
Security Force that enables Prishtina to enforce law and order
throughout the country. As we know from the 1990s, Serbia only
respects strength not weakness. A NATO lesson in dismantling
roadblocks and enabling freedom of movement in Kosova will also be
learned by Belgrade’s operatives in Montenegro and Bosnia. In
addition, both Kosova and Bosnia need a pathway to NATO membership
and Croatia’s NATO allies must lean on Zagreb to support security
through NATO enlargement.
In the economic and institutional domains, the EU needs to assert
that it will sever all revenue streams and accession prospects for
Belgrade if Vučić continues to pursue division, escalation, and
regional dominance. Conversely, Kosova needs a clearer pathway to EU
accession alongside recognition by the five EU holdouts. Serbia’s
institutional and economic isolation from Europe will be reinforced
by the accelerating decline of Russia, which faces economic
catastrophe and state fracture and will have shrinking possibilities
to assist Serbia.
A primary focus of Western policy in the Balkans must be Russia
itself. It is insufficient to complain about “malign influence.”
Russia’s destructive presence must be actively combated in all
arenas – politics, energy, economy, and media. A good starting point
would be for NATO to demand that the Russian intelligence outpost in
Niš, cloaked as a “humanitarian center,” be closed or Belgrade will
face the termination of any beneficial military contacts. By
enabling Russia’s penetration of the region, Vučić is collaborating
in the war against Ukraine by gifting Moscow a Balkan card in its
struggle with the West.
Janusz Bugajski is a Senior Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation in
Washington DC. His new book is entitled Failed State: A Guide to
Russia’s Rupture |
