The United States Is Creating a Kosovo Crisis

If anyone can understand the ugly, unnecessary standoff between the United States and Kosovo, it is Volodymyr Zelensky. Ask the Ukrainian president to grant ethnic Russians autonomy, and Zelensky will immediately ask three questions: Will the Russian speakers accept that they live in Ukraine, not Russia? Will Russia recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity? And will the grant of autonomy finally allow us to join NATO?

The inability of the United States and European Union to answer these same questions, as applied to Kosovo and Serbia, is at the root of the self-destructive Western power struggle with Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti. Instead of looking at autonomy strategically—as Zelensky would, and as Russian President Vladimir Putin does—Biden administration officials are as dogmatic as the Kosovo prime minister who has attracted Western ire.

Washington has zeroed in on Pristina’s long-standing obligation, recently accepted by Kurti, to establish an association of Serb-majority municipalities. Frustrated with the Kosovo prime minister for failing to table his terms to establish the association, and furious with his recent, reckless special police operation in the Serb-dominated north of Kosovo, the Biden administration has already punished Kosovo and is poised to inflict more pain.

Shrugging off the pressure, Kurti has so far rejected U.S. and EU demands to withdraw special police from the north, remove recently installed mayors from municipal buildings, and move toward new elections. Kurti insists that the Serbs who attacked NATO and Kosovo police on May 29 first be brought to justice, as part of the Prime Minister’s five-point plan to defuse tensions. To avert another Serbian boycott of elections, Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani—who largely backs Kurti’s line—has proposed that at least 20 percent of voters sign a petition for a new poll.

With his defiance, Kurti has angered the United States, Kosovo’s most important ally, alienated the Kosovo Serb population, and boosted Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, just as the autocrat faces unprecedented domestic protests. Washington’s desire to slap additional sanctions on Kosovo is understandable.

It is also a serious mistake. Washington and Brussels richly share blame for the crisis, including the premeditated violence meted out by Serbs against NATO peacekeepers. The absurdity of sanctioning a democratic ally in Pristina while hailing a manipulative, pro-Russian autocrat as a “better and better [U.S.] partner,” as U.S. Ambassador to Serbia Christopher Hill said in an interview with the Serbian Voice of America service, should give Secretary of State Antony Blinken pause.

Instead of allowing frustration to guide policy toward Kosovo, or allowing illusion to guide policy toward Serbia, Blinken needs to urgently reexamine his administration’s approach. Persuaded by his subordinates, Blinken has apparently signed off on an understanding with Vucic. Serbia’s support for Ukraine translates into U.S. leniency toward Vucic, who has revived the “Greater Serbian” nationalism that brought Belgrade into conflict with its neighbors and NATO in the 1990s. As Hill explained regarding aid to Ukraine, “when people are on board, relations get better.”  This phrase captures the Biden Administration’s posture towards Serbia.

What should trouble Blinken is that Moscow hardly seems perturbed by any of the Biden administration’s achievements with the Vucic regime. The Serbian-Russian relationship continues in the face of Belgrade’s symbolic—and self-serving, Kosovo-related—votes against Russia in the U.N. General Assembly. As modern Western weaponry turns the tide of war against Russia, the Kremlin has brushed off reports—confirmed by Vucic—that Soviet-era Serbian munitions have found their way to Ukraine. Pro-Russian narratives, hosted by Belgrade in defiance of the EU, find their way across the Balkans.

As Serbia diversifies its gas supply, Belgrade has doubled down on Russian oil. The notion that Vucic will deliver Serbia’s lithium deposits to the West seems fantastical now that Serbian citizens—many of whom fiercely oppose lithium mining—are mobilized against their domineering president. Vucic’s pro-Russian alter ego, intelligence chief Aleksandar Vulin, just attended a major security conference in Moscow, “signaling to Western power centers that Serbia has a [Russian] alternative.” Serbia remains the sole European country—other than Kremlin ally Belarus—not to sanction Russia.

The point is that Putin believes that he, not the West, is winning in the Balkans, at very low cost. From the Kremlin’s perspective, disorder in a region where the United States, EU, and NATO hold the strategic advantage is proof that the Biden administration does not know how to wield power. If Vucic—without nuclear weapons or massive oil and gas reserves—can confound the West, then so can Putin. Moscow understands that Kosovo—not energy or Orthodox Slavic fraternity—is the enabler for the Serbian-Russian relationship and for regional destabilization promoted from Belgrade.

With near-religious conviction, U.S. officials espouse Serbian autonomy as the holy grail for closing the Kosovo question. In reality, granting the association for Kosovo Serbs—without advancing recognition of Kosovo by Serbs and by the full NATO alliance—is a fraught proposition. It’s no coincidence that Russia also champions the Serbian autonomy scheme, in the same evangelizing language as U.S. and EU officials. “The establishment of the Community of Serb Municipalities would guarantee the rights, security and confidence in the future (for Serbs in Kosovo),” proclaimed longtime Russian Ambassador to Serbia Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko to the TASS news agency late last month.

The Kremlin grasps what Washington and Brussels do not: The proposed association is a vehicle to project Serbian ambition, not to protect Kosovo Serbs. Vucic does not want any version of the association compatible with Kosovo’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and functionality. Despite written assurances from senior U.S. officials, Washington has not demonstrated that it can convince Belgrade to buy into a stabilizing form of autonomy—even along the vague lines proposed by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.

To the contrary, officials press Kosovo to negotiate off of the Serbian proposal for autonomy, even as they concede that it is wildly unacceptable. Validating a destructive opening position is a classic negotiating pitfall. In this case, Western mediators forget that Vucic has subverted the Kosovo-Serbia agreement made on March 18, the day the EU and U.S. declared it to be “legally binding,” although the Serbian president refused to sign it.

Nor does the United States, EU, or even NATO seem to grasp the risk of repeatedly validating physically destructive Serbian tactics in the north of Kosovo. While a U.S. KFOR officer on the ground seethed over the May 29 attacks by Serbians, officials vilified Kurti, allowing Vucic to escape scot-free. This is inexcusable given the use of carefully designed explosive devices requiring preparation, which could not have gone unnoticed by Belgrade.

Hill routinely blames Kosovo—a country to which he is not accredited—while ignoring Belgrade’s inflammatory moves. In December, Vucic called Kurti “terrorist scum.” In April, Vucic promoted the Kosovo Serb boycott of elections in the north, labeling the Kosovo government “occupiers.” With extortionate demands, the Serbian president continues to block Kosovo Serbs from choosing their leaders.

Last winter, U.S. and NATO officials lent credence to Belgrade’s brazen demand to send its troops into Kosovo, and rationalized the menacing barricades often deployed in the north of the country. In the current version of Stockholm syndrome, Western officials, including a U.S. Army National Guard general, now lionize Vucic as the key to stability, days after the Serbian leader put his forces on high alert and failed to prevent the attacks on NATO, prompting an increase in KFOR troops.

There is no doubt that Kurti, having ignored clear, coordinated U.S. and NATO appeals, is an accessory to the violence. Unfortunately, so are U.S. and EU negotiators, led by EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell. In March, the EU and United States allowed Vucic to leave Ohrid, North Macedonia—site of the pivotal negotiation between Belgrade and Pristina—without a commitment for Serbs to return to Kosovo institutions and participate in mayoral elections.

This baffling oversight crippled the autonomy negotiations, in which duly elected Serb representatives would play a critical role. Successful elections would have legitimized the representatives in the eyes of all parties, including those in Pristina, and marked a turn away from the bitter, manufactured Serbian walkout over license plates late last year. Kurti’s unexpected acceptance of the association afforded negotiators the chance to press Vucic for this vital show of good faith. Instead, the United States and EU watched as Belgrade engineered a boycott of the April 23 elections in the north—organized by Kosovo to U.S. praise—setting the stage for crisis.

Thinly veiled U.S. threats to bring down the Kurti government over the association—a hardball tactic also employed in 2020 by the Trump administration—obscure the Biden administration’s failure to create or even comprehend the conditions to achieve autonomy. As the administration may eventually discover in Ukraine, autonomy is a final status issue, representing the last leverage of a country confronted by a hostile, irredentist neighbor such as Russia or Serbia.

Unfortunately, the Brussels–Ohrid agreement that the United States and EU largely imposed on Serbia and Kosovo is only interim in nature. This means that the Western approach rests on a contradiction: Kosovo must make a final status concession on autonomy, but the West can only promise—at best—incremental progress in relations with Serbia, and with Kosovo’s bid for full international personality.

Even if Pristina fulfills all its obligations, including establishing the association, Kosovo has no guarantee on its core strategic requirements. Kosovo Serbs can retain their allegiance to Belgrade and defy Pristina. Serbia can still reject de jure recognition of Kosovo. And, most of all, Kosovo can remain outside of NATO—the singular guarantee of Pristina’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Kosovo’s path to the alliance remains blocked by four NATO members: Greece, Romania, Slovakia, and Spain. U.S. State Department officials, including Blinken, maintain that implementation of the Ohrid agreement will enable Washington to appeal to the four holdouts.

In fact, the three hard-liners—Bucharest, Bratislava, and Madrid—cling to their positions for reasons having nothing to do with Kosovo’s behavior. There is little evidence that Washington has invested much in getting these actors—who hold the key to progress across the region—to change their minds, even provisionally. Spain and Slovakia, for example, could easily return their troops to the KFOR mission, which is status neutral. Madrid could emulate Bratislava and open a liaison office in Pristina—a step that would go far to assuring Kosovo that Serbian autonomy could lead to NATO membership.

Instead, Spain, along with Romania, voted in April against Kosovo’s membership in the Council of Europe. So did Serbia, in blatant violation of its obligations in the EU-brokered agreement. Belgrade’s flagrant, characteristic obstruction has attracted none of the fulmination directed to Pristina for dragging its feet on the association.

In sum, it will take more than feel-good sanctions for the United States to emerge from the crisis that Washington and Brussels helped create. Pretending that the United States has a partner in Belgrade and a nemesis in Pristina will neither alleviate the present standoff in the north nor lead to stability.

Despite his frenetic global agenda, Blinken needs to personally assert control over U.S. Balkans policy. For starters, the Biden administration must discipline its ambassadors in the region, curtailing the excursions of Hill into the politics of a country, Kosovo, that no longer belongs to Serbia. Divisions between the U.S. embassies of Belgrade and Pristina have drawn the attention of major EU partners and undermine Blinken’s authority.

Fundamentally, Blinken needs to decide if regional disorder and the damage to U.S. credibility are worth the headlong embrace of a Serbian autocrat rejected by wide swathes of his own population. After all, Washington has an alternative model. In neighboring Hungary, U.S. Ambassador David Pressman has proven that a firm, values-centered approach can achieve far more impact—on a far more formidable autocrat—than anything achieved in Serbia.

Instead of hastily drafted reprimands, Blinken should give a thoroughly considered speech on U.S. policy on Serbia, Kosovo, and the entire region. Blinken must re-center democratic values as the core of U.S. policy and partnership with the EU. He should direct his envoys and ambassadors convey this message to Balkans leaders, including Vucic.

Blinken should follow this speech by a visit—not to the region, but to Athens, Bratislava, Bucharest, and Madrid—the four capitals that hold the key to Kosovo’s advancement, and therefore Western strategy, in the region.

Blinken should close his tour in Brussels, with Borrell and the EU’s special representative to the region, Miroslav Lajcak. Blinken should remind these diplomats that the agreement between Serbia and Kosovo bears the EU’s name. Brussels can no longer hide behind the line that it is merely a facilitator. Instead of more “constructive ambiguity,” the United States and EU need to focus on clarity. The urgent priority is an ironclad sequence of steps that Kosovo and Serbia need to take in order to implement the agreement, well before the end of the year.

In this way, Blinken will turn the United States and EU away from confusion and crisis, sending a signal to Moscow of principled determination to consolidate the Balkans into the West, alongside Ukraine.