With Russia’s Backing, Serbia Eyes The “Right Time” For A New War With Kosovo

–Analysis–

“We will wait for the right time and seize our opportunity…” That was the ominous warning last weekend of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic at the prospect that the West puts its weight firmly behind Kosovo as the longstanding Balkan conflict continues to heat up.

It’s worth noting that Vucic had already spoken admiringly in December of the current and previous presidents of Azerbaijan, who had waited a total of 27 years for the “right time” and geopolitical circumstances to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh. Already, last September, Vucic deployed Serbian troops on the border with Kosovo after Serbian paramilitaries attacked Kosovar police officers and entrenched themselves in a monastery.

Against this backdrop, it is difficult to see anything in his latest words other than a threat.

A new Balkan war is not imminent, but the conflict between Serbia and Kosovo has been coming to a head for months. It is about Kosovo’s status as an independent nation, which Serbia does not recognize. The EU and the U.S. have been trying to find a solution for years, but the situation is deadlocked.

Does the West have to prepare for a worst-case scenario in the medium term — or are the Serbian president’s words just rhetoric?

Vucic’s interests

A U.S. intelligence report warns of an “increased risk” of inter-ethnic violence in the current year — and cites the Serbia-Kosovo conflict as a prime example. “The motivation for Vucic to keep this crisis simmering is great,” says Florian Bieber, Head of the Center for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz.

Russia also has an interest in all of this: as the inner courtyard of Europe, a conflict in the Western Balkans would be devastating for the West.

Vucic basically has three options: a solution, escalation or maintaining the status quo with targeted provocations.

The first option would be for Serbia to recognize Kosovo or at least to normalize relations. But a solution would deprive Vucic of an important issue which he uses in both domestic and foreign policy. Not only is the conflict useful to appeal to nationalist feelings across Serbian society, but it also helps him position himself as a crisis manager in the international context.

The second option — escalation — could play out as an offensive by the Serbian army against Kosovo or the provocation of major riots in the north of Kosovo. This possibility is largely theoretical, because in practice, soldiers from the NATO-led protection force KFOR would immediately intervene and the U.S. would be called into action. In addition, Serbia would forfeit its EU prospects. None of this is in the interests of the government.

Both arsonist and firefighter 

That leaves option three: maintaining the status quo with targeted provocations. According to Bieber, Vucic is “stoking tensions so that a subsequent de-escalation back to the status quo is considered a success.” In other words: Vucic is both an arsonist and a firefighter.

But there is a great danger that a miscalculation could lead to a conflagration.

Vucic is also likely to be hoping for different geopolitical conditions. For example, a victory for Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election. A radical weakening of NATO could also have a new impact on Vucic’s calculations.

As president, Trump had been in favor of an exchange of territory between Serbia and Kosovo. This envisaged that northern Kosovo, with its local Serb majority, would go to Serbia, while the Presevo region in southern Serbia, where there is a local Albanian majority, would be incorporated into Kosovo. Yet experts had warned that any border shift could be the prelude to a new regional conflict.

Playing down nationalism

A few years ago, Vucic was still considered a pro-European. But his political career began in Serbian ultra-nationalism. He was Minister of Information under the war criminal Slobodan Milosevic, and drastically restricted the work of the media during the Kosovo war.

At his core, he has a nationalistic and anti-Western world view.

The year 2008, when Vucic was 38 years old, marked a turning point. He suddenly acknowledged Serbian war crimes and said that he had changed.

“He realized that you can’t win elections with an anti-Western line,” says Bieber about Vucic’s supposed change of heart. “He is a pronounced man of power.”

But Bieber would not describe the Serbian president as ideology-free. “At his core, he has a nationalistic and anti-Western world view. Depending on his strategy, he sometimes plays this down,” he says.

Moscow’s support

Russia is Serbia’s most important ally in the Kosovo issue. It will help Serbia to assert its “legitimate” national interests, the Russian Foreign Ministry has asserted in the past. Belgrade has not joined the Western sanctions against Russia and cooperates with Moscow on security, armaments and economic issues. At the same time, the country is said to have supplied weapons to Ukraine, as leaked U.S. intelligence documents show.

Daniel Sunter from the Balkan Security Network, a Belgrade-based platform focusing on defense and security, describes Serbia’s foreign policy as a strategy with four pillars: the EU, the U.S., Russia and China. Serbia relies on the latter exclusively because of the Kosovo conflict — a safeguard for Serbia’s position.

Sunter attributes Vucic’s inflammatory rhetoric to the deadlocked negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina. This has drastic consequences for the Western Balkans. “A practicable and long-term solution must be found. The region must be integrated into the EU as quickly as possible,” he says. “Who knows what else could happen here in the future.”