In the Blind Spot: A Balkan black box

DARIO’S COMMENT: There’s undoubtedly more to this than meets the eye, but the specifics of the intrigue currently escape me.

For one, Serbia is neighbour to two large, expansionist empires – the European Union and Russia. Furthermore, President Vucic has decried “Western meddling” as responsible for the protests. And Donald Trump Jr. just did a low-key visit with Vucic in Belgrade.

Though we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves.

Not just because I’m no expert on the Balkans. But because Serbia’s remarkably strong national identity means we should first look for domestic causes of unrest rather than external ones.

Adopting this perspective also begins to unravel the biggest mystery of the Serbian protests: The EU’s silence on the matter.

Despite this argument’s strength, the suspiciously coincidental goings-on in neighbouring Bosnia Herzegovina point to a deeper, more geopolitically intertwined story.

Domestic discontent amidst European silence: Serbia is exhausted with its officialdom: over 60 percent believe their police, judges and prosecutors are corrupt. That’s why Serbian officials’ guarantees that the Novi Sad railway incident was an unforeseen technical failure and not the result of corruption, fell on deaf ears.

This may also be why over two-thirds of the population support the protests, the largest since the mass protests that overthrew notorious Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

And online posts by young Serbs emphasise that this movement is non-political and not pro-West. Rather, it is pro-Serbian and anti-corruption.

Alas, no movement is ever non-political.

And geopolitical interests often intertwine with righteous indignation.

A Serbian nationalism balancing act: Serbia doesn’t fit into simple pro-Russia or pro-West categories. During her May 2024 visit, Izzy noted that even pro-Western elites critical of Serbia’s government rejected the claim that it is pro-Russian. Serbs are neither pro-Russian nor pro-European.

Unlike Ukraine, where identity battles between its pro-Russian east and anti-Russian west have forged a pro-European national identity, Serbian nationalism is distinctly pro-Serbian.

The European Council on Foreign Relations described Vucic’s foreign policy as “a la carte”, hedging Serbia between the West and Russia, with a side of China, while both blocs press Belgrade to pick a side.

Thus, a change in Serbia’s government may not alter its geopolitical policy.

Two possible explanations for the intensity of the protests: One, it’s a genuine, non-partisan movement seeking political renewal, not geopolitical realignment.

Videos posted by the protesters on X show no EU flags, only indignant locals waving Serbian flags.

This could explain the movement’s biggest mystery: The EU’s reluctance to engage.

EU officials only commented on the situation starting in mid-February — nearly three months after the protests began. This silence is striking, especially compared to the uproar over Georgia’s so-called “Russian agents” bill.

Europe’s silence suggests that European leaders know that Vucic’s potential replacement wouldn’t differ geopolitically.

But there may still be more to it. The movement might be genuine, but it could also be covertly supported.

Institutions learn from mistakes. The EU’s heavy-handed support for Georgia’s opposition didn’t work: Georgia Dream won, despite — or because of — the EU’s pressure.

The EU may have realised its politicking often backfires: you don’t win much sympathy when your unelected, chauffeur-driven, oyster-guzzling spokespeople preach about democracy and equality, especially in fearsomely nationalistic Serbia.

Vucic would agree. The Serbian President proclaims the protests are financed by the sinister web of formerly USAID-funded NGOs.

(We note these dodgy non-non-governmental para-intelligence networks have remained in operation despite DOGE’s cuts by replacing their funding sources with those from other pan-Atlanticist countries like Norway.)

Vucic has ordered police raids on NGOs he blames for the protests, although the New York Times found that most USAID funds in Serbia had gone to the government and not NGOs.

It’s understandable that an embattled leader would claim foreign interference to galvanise his supporters. We should certainly not trust Vucic’s declarations.

But while he may be an increasingly unpopular opportunist, that doesn’t make him wrong. Only time will tell.

The (mini) Don: Donald Trump Jr.’s visit to Serbia is also shrouded in mystery. It appears to be public support for Vucic, coinciding with reports of an American realignment with Russian interests in Europe.

But it’s unclear whether Trump Jr.’s visit was driven more by the Trump family’s business interests in Belgrade or covert geopolitical negotiations.

Parallel Serbian struggles in the Republica Srpska: The situation grows more complex with the unholy mess in Bosnia-Herzegovina, its worst crisis since the civil war ended. This has sparked doubts about the country’s future stability.

The latest development: Bosnian state prosecutors have issued an arrest warrant for Milorad Dodic, President of the Republica Srpska, a semi-independent Serb state within the Bosnian federation, a position he has held sporadically since 1998.

This is the last part of a long-ranging legal battle between Bosnia and Dodic. In February, Bosnian prosecutors charged Dodic for actions that undermined the country’s constitutional integrity.

That’s because Dodic and his party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), maintain that most of the Bosnian state is constitutionally invalid and have passed laws at the state level to that effect — attempting to supersede centralised Bosnian authority.

But Dodic and the SNSD have a point: A time-travelling Roman senator would notice that the Dayton Agreement, which was signed by all parties (Croat, Bosnian, and Serbian) and ended the Bosnian war in 1995, did not guarantee the sovereignty of the Bosnian state – quite the opposite.

It effectively ceded the country to an unelected ‘Office of the High Representative’ (“OHR”), currently a former member of the German Bundestag – Hans Christian Friedrich Schmidt.

All eastern European roads lead to Bonn: You heard that right. An unelected German politician rules Bosnia. But there’s more.

As if to emphasise German ascendance over Dayton, the statutory powers of the OHR were not established in Bosnia but in Bonn. This gave them their name — the “Bonn powers‘, which allowed the OHR to adopt binding decisions in contravention of local parties’ desires and remove elected officials from office.

We don’t have the time to explain why this is but a small part of the shady German ascendance over the Balkans since the fall of Yugoslavia. But, in short, German actions were arguably key in sparking off the Yugoslav war.

Germany was the first country to officially recognise Croatia and Slovenia — a good month before the rest of the European Community in ’91. We also reasonably speculate that German intelligence was responsible for the covert arming of Croatian paramilitaries with weapons of the former East German Army after its independence.

This perspective of German actions is unfairly derided as a ‘pro-Serb’ viewpoint online. Nothing could be further from the truth. Germany is a Central and Eastern European power that did not view a Yugoslav Balkan behemoth on its doorstep kindly.

And during the Second World War, Nazi Germany did more or less what we summarised above: Invade Yugoslavia and arm a bunch of murderous Croats (the Ustase).

Unlike Vucic, Dodic is (mostly) alone: But Bosnia’s dubious status as a sovereign state hasn’t won Dudic any plaudits outside of Russia.

Both the European Union and the United States, increasingly at odds, have nevertheless united in their condemnation of Dudic, claiming his actions risk re-igniting the deadly civil conflict.

In preparation for any potential violent outcome, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte landed in Sarajevo alongside 1,500 additional European ‘peacekeepers’ under the EUFOR military force on March 12.

Another civil war? Not so fast: Does this mean Bosnia is headed for a renewed civil war against a united pan-Serbian front? Well, reality is rarely what the headlines suggest.

Above all, I don’t see a pan-Serbian alliance (which sparked the first Yugoslav crisis) emerging, primarily because Vucic and Dodic’s interests aren’t truly united.

For one, Dodic is a pragmatist — not an ultranationalist. His rhetoric about Serbian ascendance and his desire to superimpose his authority over Bosnia’s authority is ultimately a ploy to maintain his popularity.

He used to be a pro-Bosnian politician in the late 20th century and was a supporter of the Dayton agreement. Dodic even claimed it was better to be a state in Bosnia than a province in Serbia.

Dodic only changed his views once he noticed, after 2006, that the electorate was thirsty for more nationalist views.

Vucic, on the other hand, has to make a show of supporting his Serbian “brother from another mother” in Bosnia.

But since both men play in the same Serbian nationalist arena, they are not truly allies but rivals instead.

This explains why Serbian media reported that Vucic privately expressed a willingness to replace Dodic to American officials in 2022.

The broader risk of conflict seems unlikely. Nationalist sentiment is more civilised, and there aren’t paramilitaries armed to the teeth meandering the countryside.

And while punditland frets about the territorial integrity of Bosnia Herzegovina, one could argue Bosnia — being a de-facto EU protectorate — never had any sovereignty or territorial integrity to speak of.

An inconclusive conclusion: There’s far more to this story than meets the eye. Alas, I have not gotten anywhere near the bottom. As noted, they don’t call complex affairs “balkanised” for nothing, it turns out.

What I’m struggling with is why the Atlantic split between the U.S. and the E.U. is somewhat visible in Serbia, where Don Trump Jr. has supported Vucic, a U-turn for typical Western policy with Serbia, whereas Marco Rubio claimed Dodic’s actions were “dangerous and destabilising”, uniting with comments from European and NATO leaders.

The Financial Times’ Tony Barber claims this may simply be that Rubio and the U.S. State Department aren’t truly in control of American foreign affairs anymore. It could be.

Above all, we should seriously question the timing. That these once-in-a-generation protests are happening in Serbia just as a constitutional crisis erupts in Bosnia is probably no coincidence. Something is certainly afoot. 

We’ll keep an eye out — because time will surely tell.

DARIO’S COMMENT: It’s ironic that the pro-apparatchiks decry electoral manipulation on social media by the Russians, considering the wave of disinformation that flooded social media websites like TikTok and Instagram following the initial news of Georgescu’s barring.

This news reported that Georgescu’s barring was an intentional campaign plot by the Romanian radical. The disinformation claimed Georgescu had intentionally misfiled his official application to run for President to gain more media attention. As we can see today, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Don’t get me wrong. If push ever came to shove, I’d rather be ruled over by a Brussels-based apparatchik than a Moscow-based strongman. But what I can’t deal with is the hypocrisy of pan-Atlanticist media who decry foul play by Russians while pretending to be above the fray.

There’s nothing wrong with countries playing the dirty game of state politics. That’s just reality. But two-faced deception does more than spoil the game: It ruins the fabric of our societies and imperils any remaining faith in our European institutions.