Financial Times on Serbia: It is preparing for the arrival of Trump, a European country that plays with the USA, Russia, China and Europe
Serbia is establishing close ties with Donald Trump’s team even as it tries to follow a middle course in a multipolar world, writes the Financial Times at the top of an article dedicated to the Balkan state.
“The European country that plays with the USA, Russia, China and Europe”, writes the British newspaper in the title.
The FT writes about the construction of a complex of hotels and apartments in the center of Belgrade and that the investors are from all countries, including America, the old opponent of Belgrade, as the newspaper refers, which recalls that this country in the 90s led NATO’s military intervention to stop Serbian aggression.
The paper is referring to the planned investment by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former senior adviser who heads Affinity Partners, the Saudi-backed investment fund behind the deal, and Richard Grenell, a prominent former Trump administration aide. , who maintains close ties with the former president and who, as the FT writes, helped mediate him.
The deal is a case study in how a small non-aligned state can prepare for Trump’s possible return to the White House, analysts say. It also reflects an increased Western focus on Serbia, at a time when its distance from its historical friend, Russia, has become a priority, writes the FT.
Aleksandar Vučić, Serbia’s president since 2017, insists the deal is a purely business venture. “I’m very proud of that,” he told the Financial Times. “This will bring more investors and more people to Belgrade. Then we will have a Trump hotel, a Ritz-Carlton hotel… We will have everything very soon. Those people who negotiated on behalf of the Americans were very professional. Their demands were not easy”.
But the deal also seems distinctly political; the other side is ultimately the Serbian state. She decides that Vucic will have a close relationship with the White House in the event of the victory of his populist nationalist friend, Trump, in the November US elections.
Grenell, an outspoken Trump ally who has been considered as a possible secretary of state if the former president wins a second term, first floated the idea of such an investment in Belgrade when he was Trump’s envoy for the Balkans.
It was tied to a broader vision of encouraging American investment in Serbia to seek to bring it into the West’s sphere of influence and weaken its longstanding ties with Russia, according to people involved in the deal. Grenell likes to present it as a way to help US-Serbia relations move on from the past, in an echo of post-1945 US investment in Tokyo.
“I believe that we have taken important steps in withdrawing Serbia from the influence of Russia and China and getting closer to the USA,” he told FT. “I also recognize that more needs to be done and I am committed to doing just that.”
To head off criticism of the deal from the powerful right-wing Serbian nationalist lobby, which is strongly pro-Moscow, the investors have pledged to build a memorial to the victims of NATO bombing on the site, in consultation with Serbian architects.
At the same time, Kushner is planning to invest in a luxury tourism project in Albania to the satisfaction of its prime minister, Edi Rama. “We need super luxury like a desert needs water,” says Rama, adding that Kushner and Grenell made an overture to Albania before returning to invest in Serbia. The only difference, he adds, is that in Albania it was Kushner, not Grenell, who made the initial approach. “In Serbia, of course, Grenell was the presenter, but not here”, says Rama.
In Washington, the announcement of the deals raised questions about a potential conflict of interest if Trump is returned to office. Grenell and Kushner have denied this, arguing that they are acting as private citizens. Kushner has said that in the event of a second Trump term, he would have no role in the administration.
In Europe, the Belgrade deal is seen as a classic bet-hedging maneuver by the 54-year-old Vucic, who has dominated domestic and regional politics for a decade – for three years as Serbia’s prime minister and then seven as president – and likes to play America and the EU against Russia and China.
“He is a shrewd chess player,” says Milan Antonijević, a Serbian lawyer and human rights expert, who portrays Vucic as someone trying to take a middle course that best suits long-term interests. of Serbia in an increasingly multipolar world.
“And he knows that we don’t have that many players on the global chessboard.”
Vucic has a real chessboard in his library. In the interview, he presents the current era of global flux as a time rich in potential – though also perilous – for Serbia.
Even while working with Trump allies — and increasingly closely with the Biden administration — Vucic has nurtured a relationship with America’s great power rival, China, for investment. He has also maintained Serbia’s sentimental connection with Moscow, albeit largely through proxies and by keeping Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, at bay. Serbian nationalists, a powerful force in domestic politics, see Russia as a Slavic soul mate.
Serbs have a “calculated” love for China, says Sërgjan Bogosavljevic, and an “irrational” love for Russia. Therefore, Serbia is one of only two European countries – the other being Belarus – that does not support sanctions against Russia. As for Beijing, Serbia and Hungary were the only two European countries that Chinese President Xi Jinping visited in May after his state visit to France. China has invested heavily and often tops Serbian opinion polls as the most popular foreign power.
And yet at the same time, Vucic has fostered ties with French President Emmanuel Macron and is pushing to work with the EU to help develop Europe’s largest lithium mine in western Serbia, a multibillion-euro project. Vucic insists that his goal is to join the EU, Serbia’s main trading partner. She has been a candidate for 12 years but has made little progress in overcoming EU concerns about her commitment to the rule of law.
“Vucic has a complete policy,” says Ivan Vejvoda, a fellow at the Institute for the Humanities in Vienna. “One moment, you have Xi for a visit. Then…Days later, Zelenska [Ukraine’s first lady] and Dmytro Kuleba [Ukraine’s foreign minister] come. Then he goes to the Russian cultural center and gives a revisionist speech. And then, two days later, he’s with the EU, talking about the growth plan.”
Asked if he believes in the EU, Vucic sidesteps the question. “I’m not someone who’s going to defend or attack him,” he says. “When you see that people are very passionate about attacking the EU, I don’t go there because those people are not rational. But when I see the hysteria about the EU’s so-called values, I do the same.”
For Western powers, Russia’s full-scale occupation of Ukraine made meeting Vucic a priority, amid lingering concerns that Moscow might try to foment hostilities in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, which have restive Serb minorities.
Western diplomats and regional analysts believe he is leaning west. In his FT interview he presents his anti-sanctions stance as stemming from an aversion to sanctions after they were imposed against Serbia during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. He also confirms that he has discreetly helped Kyiv by selling ammunition to the parties third, which end up in the armed forces of Ukraine.
“Vucic is neither a Russian representative nor a little Putin, as he is sometimes portrayed,” says Vejvoda. “Do the majority of Serbs love Putin? Yes. Do they love Russia? Yes. But when asked where they want to travel, they all want to go to Western Europe.”
Vucic can best be described as a chameleon. He started out in politics as an extreme nationalist, and while he has moved to the center, he still regularly plays the nationalist card to win support from the right, most recently organizing a pan-Serb meeting in Belgrade. To his critics, he is little different from Viktor Orbán, the illiberal Hungarian prime minister, a Trump fan who opposes the EU and NATO’s stance on Ukraine.
The Biden administration has invested time and money to bring Vucic into the Western camp and has supported an ambitious solar energy project in Serbia. However, there is no doubt that Trump would be a more natural partner than Biden. “He believes that if Trump wins it will be good for him,” says a European diplomat. “Grenell has been very active in the region in the last four years, on the side of Belgrade.”
When asked how a second Trump term could affect Serbia, Vucic hedges his bets. “I am not as big a leader as many others in Europe who are taking his side,” he says. “My friend Viktor [Orbán], he is 100 percent on Trump’s side. My friends from Brussels, they are 100 percent on the side of Biden. I’m not. I am on the Serbian side waiting for the results”.
Vucic said that he had more communication with Trump than with Biden, but recalled: “If you ask the majority of Serbs, 90 percent will be on Trump’s side.”
The big question for the region now is how Trump’s re-election might affect the sharp and ongoing divisions between Serbia’s closest neighbors.
