What matters in international politics is not what a leader wants to do but what that leader must do to uphold their country’s core national interests. Understanding this is key to understanding the impact of Joe Biden’s victory in the US presidential election on American policy towards the Balkans.
There can be little doubt that the incoming Biden Administration would like to cancel the last four years of American policy, characterised by a rapprochement with Serbia and a bullying of the Kosovo Albanians, a flexible attitude to borders and an apparent disregard for the reputations of US diplomats who crafted the current settlement in the region. Biden’s recent assertion that Serbia must recognise Kosovo within its existing borders, his courting of Albanian and Bosnian voters in the US and his recent recalling of the 1995 Bosnian Serb massacre in Srebrenica – as well as his liking for multilateral government and desire to restore values to American foreign policy – all point to a revival of the pre-Donald Trump approach.
As the region continues to stagnate, some nostalgists are already anticipating a more muscular American policy, involving a pushback against the Serbs and their dreams of a new territorial settlement, a drive to strengthen democracy and the rule of law and a renewed attempt at Euro-Atlantic integration. However, such thinking ignores the new strategic reality in the region. For various reasons, the process of European integration has broken down: the United Kingdom, formerly the EU’s main proponent of enlargement, has left the EU; France and other western European countries, which now call the shots, are reluctant to enlarge the EU into the Balkans; and the region itself has struggled to meet the EU’s onerous conditions for entry while simultaneously trying to resolve primary questions about statehood, identity and territory.
