Thewesternbalkans
On 5-th of November 2024, former President Donald Trump has won the presidential election and will take office in January 2025. His final policy choices remain to be seen, but he could push plans from a years-old platform that includes stricter rules for schools, more hardline immigration policies, scrapping climate regulations and creating entirely new “freedom cities.”
Trump’s “Agenda47” consists of proposals his campaign issued on its website during the primary election season, from December 2022 to December 2023, many of which may require congressional action but some of which could be enacted through executive orders.
In general, the “Agenda 47” is targeted to the internal priorities. When it comes to the Foreign Policy and Defense, we see in the document that the new elected President Donald Trump “wants European allies to pay back the U.S. for depleting its military stockpiles sending weapons to Ukraine; he has also taken a hardline stance on China, calling for new restrictions on Chinese-owned infrastructure in the U.S., and wants to build a missile defense shield”.
There are also some links with Climate Change: The U.S. would again leave the Paris Climate Accord, and the new elected President Trump has proposed getting rid of President Joe Biden’s policies restricting emissions and targeting 67% of new vehicles to be electric by 2032 and massively scaling up oil and gas production.
Trump’s Agenda47 is distinct from Project 25, a potential policy blueprint for the next conservative administration—namely Trump’s—developed by the Heritage Foundation along with other third-party groups. While Agenda47 was released directly by the Trump campaign, the ex-president has said he doesn’t have any involvement with Project 2025 and has attempted to distance himself from it.
Concerning the Western Balkans, there are two worst-case scenarios: the disintegration of the Bosnian state and armed escalation between Serbia and Kosovo.
According to some political scientists, that fragile status-quo would come under significant threat from a new Trump presidency in the US. Among other risks, his second administration may seek to reverse sanctions that have constrained separatist appetites among Bosnian Serbs and to revive dangerous proposals for a Serbia-Kosovo land swap.
The modern history of the Western Balkans has shown the danger of attempting to align borders with the predominant ethnicities in any given area. Serbia’s government was and is known to have designs on northern Kosovo. The territory swaps idea is fraught with peril. It is not consistent with a policy of regional integration into the European Union.
Analysts believe that, there is a possibility of the “revival” of the so-called Washington Agreement on the normalisation of economic relations between Belgrade and Pristina, signed in the autumn of 2020.
Former Special Envoy of Donald Trump for the Belgrade – Pristina Dialogue, Richard Grenell, would have an important role in the creation and implementation of Washington’s policy towards the Western Balkans.
The current administration has based its Western Balkans policy on the hope that Serbia would eventually turn its back on China and Russia and embrace a pro-Western course and a constructive regional posture. And it is true that this hardly looks to have succeeded. Belgrade has not lived up to outgoing president Joe Biden’s expectations. It has indirectly supplied weapons to Ukraine. But it has also refused to impose sanctions on Russia over Moscow’s full-scale invasion of the country and maintained close relations with China.
There was the moment in late 2021 when the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska, one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, laid out a formal plan for the collapse of the country’s overarching institutions. Under its president Milorad Dodik it even started to implement this.
The policy towards the Western Balkans has, as expected, not featured in the campaign, but the media and the commentators have attempted to predict the positions of both administrations.
The Macedonian-language edition of Voice of America reached out to both campaigns, asking them what their policy would be for North Macedonia and the Western Balkans.
Meanwhile, Christos Marafatsos, Vice Chairman of the National Diversity Coalition (NDC) for President Trump, said for Voice of America that the Trump’s foreign policy toward the Western Balkans will focus on trade partnerships and economic opportunities, as well as strategic economic agreements.
“A Trump-led White House will not simply push broad statements about democracy. It will bring real, accountable results by working directly with local leaders and people in the region”, Marafatsos said for the Voice of America.
(We know that on September this year, Donald Trump’s oldest son, Donald Jr., sat down to dinner with Serbian businesspeople in Belgrade to discuss investment opportunities.)
Commentators said that the second presidential term of Donald Trump would be interpreted as “good news” by the nationalist politicians in the Western Balkans, who would see him as a powerful ally in the implementation of their political agendas.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who visited the White House during Trump’s first term in office that ended in 2020, welcomed Trump’s win on X. “Congratulations to Donald Trump on his victory. Together we face the serious challenges ahead. Serbia is committed to cooperation with the USA on stability, prosperity and peace,” Vucic wrote.
The first to hail Trump’s win from Bosnia and Herzegovina was, unsurprisingly, the president of the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity, Milorad Dodik. Late last year Dodik said that a victory for Trump would mean a better geopolitical situation for Republika Srpska.
North Macedonia’s conservative prime minister, Hristijan Mickoski, sent his “heartfelt congratulations” to Trump on November 6. “This victory is a confirmation of the deep faith of the American people in the principles of freedom and democracy. We look forward to further deepening our strong partnership and cooperation,” Mickoski wrote on Facebook.
Mickoski and his cabinet are not among European leaders who fear a second Trump term could wreak havoc with transatlantic and international relations. His ruling VMRO-DPMNE party nurtures close ties with one of the biggest Trump endorsers on the continent, Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orban, and over the summer Mickoski series of meetings with close Trump associates made his preference even more obvious.
The president of Montenegro, Jakov Milatovic, congratulated Trump on his victory. “Montenegro and the USA are friends and steadfast partners, united by shared goals and values, focused on advancing democracy, security, stability, and freedom. As NATO allies, we look forward to working very closely with Your administration on strengthening our friendship and deepening cooperation,” Milatovic wrote on X.
From Kosovo, which has deep ties with the US since the 1998-99 war, President Vjosa Osmani also congratulated Trump on his White House comeback.
“The US remains Kosovo’s steadfast partner and indispensable ally. I look forward to working with the new administration to further deepen our unique bond and strategic alliance,” Osmani said on X.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama was also effusive in his congratulations: “I look forward to the great privilege of working with the 47th President to further enhance our partnership for peace, prosperity and further progress,” Rama wrote on X.
Trump’s interest in Balkan politics has been very limited, except for his meddling in the Serbia-Kosovo negotiations. Though traditionally suspicious of the United States, right-wing Serbian political elites welcomed Trump as an ally. Additionally, due to his administration’s focus on advancing freedom of religion, the Serbian Orthodox Church, a strong conservative political actor in Serbia and in Montenegro, has been generally positive toward Trump.
A Trump win might bring more U.S. focus on the Western Balkans. But, given his approach to foreign policy and lack of understanding of complex political contexts, this may not be a good thing. His focus on Serbia-Kosovo relations and undermining of the EU-facilitated dialogue was not fully welcomed by all actors outside of these countries.
A Trump win could also strengthen the role of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Trump administration has attracted the church’s attention, thanks to its 2020 executive order on international religious freedom. The church, which is traditionally pro-Russian, has a strong influence on the population as well as on half the governing coalition parties. The Trump administration’s championing of the rights of religious communities across the world could cause the influence of clergy to grow, which might lead to backtracking on LGBTQ and women’s reproductive rights.
Comments: Some think thanks propose that after the Trump victory on 5 November, the EU should prepare a package of new deterrence mechanisms that it can apply in the Western Balkans independently from the US and it should take more responsibility for stabilising the region.
When considering the foreign policy of a country like the US, very often experts put their own wishes as possible priority developments. The administrative and diplomatic (and why not the military) capacity of the USA allows the country to have priorities in any part of the world and, accordingly, these priorities to be “clothed” with appropriate actions. However, the experience with Donald Trump’s first term showed that dramatic changes in the US policy towards the Western Balkans should not be expected. Strengthening the economic element in these relations is a natural thing and completely coincides with the business background of the “new old president”.
Certainly, the appointment of new Secretary of state in the Trump administration will have some consequences for the Western Balkans, but it is unlikely to seriously change the general American policy towards this region. The Secretary of state will face far more geopolitically important issues such as the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the development of China and the pending issue in the “heavenly” relationship with Taiwan, the relationship with Russia not only in the context of the war in Ukraine, but also in purely economic terms, including the problems with sanctions against Moscow, etc. On the other hand, the EU shows that it is a serious player in its territory and the latest actions on the enlargement of the Union in the direction of the Western Balkans are a clear demonstration of determination.
The US President-elect Donald Trump has said he will pick Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who is a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee and the Intelligence Committee, as his secretary of state. Fifty-three-year-old Rubio is known as a “hawk” on China, an outspoken critic of Cuba’s communist government and a staunch supporter of Israel. In the past, he has advocated a more aggressive US foreign policy toward America’s geopolitical enemies, although his views have recently aligned more closely with Trump’s.
Many experts are betting on some kind of new alliance between Trump and Orbán, which can be important for the Western Balkans. I would bet on strengthening US relations with Great Britain, which remains Washington’s staunchest ally.
