What's behind Serbia's rearmament?

Serbia has invested hugely in rearmament in recent years, making it the biggest military force in the Western Balkans. Neighboring countries are alarmed.

Is Serbia planning to destabilize neighbors Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina or even to launch a military attack?

Both Kosovo's President Vjosa Osmani and her Bosnian counterpart Denis Becirovic have recently warned about such a scenario.

In a television interview in September, Osmani said that there is hope for the Western Balkans to join the EU and NATO, "but the precondition for this is to treat Serbia for what it is: a satellite state of Russia that is deepening its military, economic and political cooperation with Russia."

Becirovic's warning about Serbia's territorial inclinations, which he issued at the United Nations General Assembly in New York at the end of September, was even more insistent.

"Here, at the podium of the UN General Assembly, I want to publicly warn the global audience that, once again, the leadership of [the] Republic of Serbia is threatening the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina," he said.

Belgrade's 'shopping spree for weapons'

 Belgrade has for years been investing massively in its armed forces, buying modern weaponry such as French fighter jets and Russian attack helicopters, which Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has praised as "flying tanks."

It has also purchased Chinese air defense systems, which were flown from Beijing to Belgrade shortly after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

There have also been reports that Serbia has acquired from Iran thousands of drones of the kind used by Russia to target Ukrainian cities on a daily basis.

The British business magazine The Economist wrote in 2021 that Belgrade's "shopping spree for weapons" was making its neighbors nervous.

Serbia stockpiles weapons

The renowned Stockholm International Peace Research Institute noted in 2022 that at €1.3 billion ($1.4 billion), Belgrade's defense budget was 10 times bigger than Kosovo's.

Serbia's military predominance in the region is illustrated by its 250-strong fleet of battle tanks, which is more than all other former Yugoslav republics put together (in comparison, Germany's armed forces have 295 tanks).

Croatia is second in the former Yugoslavia with 75, Bosnia third with 45 and North Macedonia fourth with 31. Neither Montenegro nor Kosovo have any tanks at all.

This is one reason why Kosovo's small, but growing armed forces were equipped with Turkish Bayraktar drones last year and 250 US Javelin anti-tank weapon systems this year.

Without these two weapons systems, which the Ukrainian army is successfully deploying in its fight against Russia, Ukraine in its current independent form would no longer exist.

The 'Serb World' project

This raises the question of why Belgrade has been stockpiling so many weapons in recent years without being under threat from its neighbors. Is President Vucic planning to attack Serbia's neighbors, as suggested by the president of Kosovo?

Declarations, threats, and the actions of Serbia's leadership would appear to back up this claim.

Serbia's leadership is pushing a project known as "Serb World" — a slightly watered-down version of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's "Greater Serbia" ideology — which has met with a positive response from Serbs in neighboring Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Milosevic died in 2006 in his cell at the detention center of the UN war crimes tribunal in the Hague. To reach his nationalistic objective for Serbia — namely to unite all Serb-inhabited regions of former Yugoslavia — Milosevic started four wars in the 1990s that killed 130,000 people.

Several high-ranking members of Serbia's government served under Milosevic, including President Aleksandar Vucic and Interior Minister Ivica Dacic, both of whom at one point led Milosevic's propaganda team.

All-Serb Assembly

In early June, President Vucic led an "All-Serb Assembly," which was attended by representatives of Serbian communities in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. The slogan of the assembly, which was held in Belgrade, was "Serbia and Republika Srpska — One people, one assembly."

It was a strategic assembly that formulated a declaration that could be described as the implementation plan for "Serb World."

The declaration describes Kosovo as an inalienable part of Serbia. It also speaks of the "united national interest of the Serbian people." 

A spokesperson for the German Foreign Office in Berlin issued an unusually strong condemnation, saying that the German government considered the declaration "very worrying and damaging for Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and all countries in the Western Balkans."

Becirovic commented on the June 8 assembly in Belgrade in his speech to the UN, saying that its declaration was "destructive" and that it was "not just a declarative act, but a dangerous greater-state program document that threatens the Dayton Peace Agreement and the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina."

Is war on the horizon?

None of the neighboring countries that would appear to be the focus of Belgrade's territorial interests has armed forces that are ready for war.

Without the protection of the two Western peace missions in the region — the NATO forces in Kosovo (KFOR) and the EU-led EUFOR/Althea force in Bosnia — they would be easy prey for any aggressive expansionism on Belgrade's part.

In recent years, several Serbian troop buildups on the Kosovo border and an attack by a Serbian paramilitary unit on Kosovo's security forces caused unrest and tension.  Serbian paramilitary attacks triggered the war in Croatia in 1991 and a year later in Bosnia.

The role of Republika Srpska

It is possible that Belgrade was testing the water. However, the response from both the US and NATO was swift and unequivocal, and Belgrade backed down.

Washington intervened again in August, this time in the form of William Burns, director of the CIA, who traveled to Bosnia-Herzegovina specifically to put a stop to the separatist activities of Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik.

Dodik has already taken several steps towards declaring the independence of Republika Srpska and armed thousands of members of paramilitary organizations.

Politicians in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo are preparing for the eventuality that Republika Srpska could push for secession. Should this lead to an armed conflict and if the Bosnian Serbs come under military pressure, it is entirely probable that Belgrade could send its tanks to Bosnia to support the Bosnian Serbs.

A new war in the Balkans cannot, therefore, be excluded.

How would a Trump administration respond?

It is completely unclear how the US would respond to such a situation under a Trump administration. One hotly tipped candidate for the post of Secretary of State under Trump is the former US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell.

Grenell and Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have major business interests in Serbia.

This article was originally published in German and adapted by Aingeal Flanagan.