Trapping Trump in the Balkans

Written for Kosovo Online by Srdjan Garcevic, founder of The Nutshell Times

Since Donald Trump won the US presidential election, the world has seen worrying escalations of political conflicts. Everyone seems to be scrambling to ensure an even better starting position before the inauguration in Washington, leading to even greater chaos in the Middle East, Ukraine, and now Kosovo and Metohija.

The alleged terrorist attack on the Ibar-Lepenac canal close to Zubin Potok, which Priština authorities were quick to blame on Serbia and Russia, was used as yet another pretext to strong-arm Serbia and Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija to bow to Kurti's increasingly aggressive Albanian nationalism, which is only supported by his over-reliance on Western support. Rather than investigate this curious incident, the Priština regime used it to escalate harassment of prominent Serbs, and they even detained Kosovo Online's founder, Dušan Milanović, who was only recently released. Given that the Priština regime provided scant proof of their accusations, the best way of intuiting who may be behind it is by asking who benefits from this escalation.

It is unclear why Serbia would seek escalation months before Trump's administration takes power, especially as the government of Belgrade hopes for a pragmatic "reset" with Washington on many regional and global issues. Given its woes in Ukraine and Syria, Russia probably has other issues to think about.

However, while the direct victims of this escalation by Kurti's regime and its supporters are Serbs and Serbia, their main goal is to trap the incoming Trump administration in yet another conflict and stop it in its intention to disentangle the US from the increasingly dangerous web of alliances, most of which are paid for by the US taxpayer and which rely on the US military to intervene when necessary.

The very existence of Kurti's regime is the prime example of this perverse global order, which Trump's administration will hopefully change.

American treasure and power are spent to fuel ethnonationalist ambitions in the Balkans of a man who is unable to produce a polity that creates anything of value economically, apart from export crime and terrorism, but who uses it to pretend to be a fierce anti-colonial fighter and even tries to play favorites in US politics, as evidenced by his support of Kamala Harris and attendance at the DNC. It is not clear why somebody in North Dakota would prefer to have North Macedonia undermined by Kurti's expansionism, why an Alabaman would like to get entangled in Albanian politics, nor why an IT founder in Palo Alto, who maybe even has outsourced some of their programming work to Serbia, wants to fund Priština to drive Serbs out of Kosovo and Metohija.

Every escalation we saw over the last month was a way to keep Americans involved in issues that cost them money and global credibility. Hopefully, they will be wise not to allow this dangerous behavior to continue.