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Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić’s foreign policy “balancing act” has entered a sputtering nosedive. What American officials once derisively called “sitting on two chairs”–maintaining relations with the West and East at the same time–was still holding relatively steady just a month ago, but is now falling apart. On Wednesday, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on Serbia (457 votes in favour, 103 against, and 72 abstentions, unamended), one that has rightfully been described as the “most assertive” that the EU’s legislative body has taken against the Vučić government. The resolution places much emphasis on the train station canopy collapse in Novi Sad a year ago, a tragedy that killed 16 people and has inspired nationwide protests that have yet to let up. Chinese participation in the canopy renovation as well as the government’s draconian response to the protests are also highlighted. Predictably, media freedom and “democratic backsliding” also get a mention.
However, that is mostly window dressing. “Geopolitical Europe” wouldn’t take such an assertive stance if this wasn’t mostly about geopolitics. At the hearing ahead of the resolution vote, speakers made it clear that they wanted Serbia to take an unambiguous foreign policy position: in short, you’re either with us, or you’re with Putin. As an EU candidate country, the EU stressed, Serbia needed to align its foreign policy with that of other EU member states. For its part, the Serbian government had long stressed that its independent foreign policy was the only way it got any respect. It was also a position that was informed by history: Belgrade was integral to the founding of the Non-aligned Movement, a Cold War group of states that charted a course independent of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Even before that, Serbia had developed an independent streak during the centuries it spent squeezed between the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires. Some version of non-alignment, they argued, made sense for Serbia.
Therefore, Vučić thought he could have it both ways. He thought that he could maintain excellent relations with the EU by sending Ukraine much-needed munitions through indirect channels. At the same time, he also expected to be able to maintain excellent relations with Russia, assuming they would be willing to ignore it: He had tried to convince Moscow that little Serbia was under enormous pressure from the West over Ukraine (which was certainly true), and that he was in no position to refuse to sell Kyiv the mortars and rockets. Meanwhile, Vučić expected Orthodox Brotherhood and Serbia’s energy dependence on Russia to keep Belgrade’s relations with Moscow on solid ground. But over the summer, it became evident that their erstwhile brotherly relations were strained. In late May, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency (SVR) accused Serbia of “betrayal” over its weapons shipments to Ukraine. Vučić pledged that he would “investigate” Moscow’s allegations, which he knew perfectly well were true. Then, less than a month later, the SVR published a statement on its website once again chastising Serbian companies for selling weapons to Ukraine through European intermediaries. “Their rockets and shells will kill Russian soldiers and residents of Russian settlements,” the statement from SVR read. Vučić denied such shipments were still occurring, claiming that Serbia had “halted everything.”
This month, Vučić’s relations with the outside world have continued to deteriorate. And now, this deterioration is no longer confined to mere rhetoric. Indeed, the first days of October were some of the worst of Vučić’s 13-year reign. On October 9th, US sanctions on Serbia’s majority-Russian-owned Petroleum Industry of Serbia (NIS) oil company came into effect. NIS had managed to obtain numerous sanctions waivers since January, when the state oil company was placed on the special designated nationals list. That same month, Vučić maintains, American officials told him that if he agreed to nationalize NIS, there would be no US sanctions. But Vučić says he rejected the Americans’ proposed solution, stressing on October 7 that Serbia “would not participate in the seizure of Russian property.”
Yet the Russians would leave Serbia in the lurch as well. Just a few days later, on October 11, Vučić told Serbian media that the Russians had only offered to extend Serbia’s existing gas contract until the end of the year, while Belgrade had been seeking a new three-year contract with Gazprom. The three-year contract had been negotiated for months, and Serbia had presumably expected it would be granted. Vučić described Russia’s frosty offer as “very disappointing news” and “a very, very bad signal”.
After back-to-back bad news from the US and Russia, the EU dealt yet another agonizing blow. On October 20, the Council of the European Union adopted a plan to phase out imports of Russian gas, including a ban on gas transits through EU territory to third countries beginning January 1st. Serbia receives its Russian gas from Bulgaria and Hungary–two EU member states–so the news reportedly provoked “panic” among officials in Belgrade. Then, two days later, the European Parliament adopted its harshest ever resolution on Vučić’s government.
Vučić also took an unusually nasty swipe at Erdogan earlier this month, accusing Turkey–another country with whom he once cultivated excellent relations–of harboring neo-Ottoman dreams. Therefore, Vučić now finds himself struggling to navigate strained relations with the US, Russia, EU and Turkey–four powers who are, to varying degrees, extremely important for Serbia. And he is doing that from a position of weakness, after a year of protests that have effectively paralyzed his country and drawn international attention to his flagging domestic legitimacy.
With winter approaching, an energy-strapped Serbia therefore finds itself under increasing isolation from erstwhile friends in both East and West. The only major power that Serbia doesn’t have publicly strained relations with now is China. But what looks like a swift downfall for Vučić’s once-formidable foreign policy has been in the making since February 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Up until that moment, Vučić’s “balancing act” had largely worked. Even his domestic enemies conceded that he played Serbia’s limited cards well on the world stage, and expertly managed competing powers and their interests. For years, Serbia’s good relations with Russia were grudgingly tolerated by the US and EU. But the war in Ukraine changed everything. Suddenly, the EU expected both member and aspirant states to harmonize their foreign policy with that of Brussels; this meant the imposition of sanctions on Russia and forceful verbal denunciations of Putin that would allow the EU to credibly assert that Europe was “speaking with one voice”. Of course, Serbia refused to impose sanctions on Russia, exposing its quasi-neutrality to new levels of scrutiny.
Vučić believed Trump would be his savior. Indeed, the Serbian president believed, like many did, that Trump would come to power and immediately end the war in Ukraine. This would mean that what had been an agonizing period for Vučić would be over; his ambivalent stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine, he believed, might even win him Trump’s respect. Of course, none of this has come to pass. Incredibly, for Vučić, there was no backup plan. And far from being welcomed into a chummy “strongman” club, Vučić has been repeatedly sidelined and rebuffed by Trump.
Many will wonder if this all means that Vučić is about to fall. He is certainly ailing, but whether this will be a swift end or a slow, agonizing bloodletting remains to be seen. My bet is on the latter: that he will soldier on as the walking wounded for months and probably even another year or two. Global conditions don’t favor regime change in Belgrade, the Balkans are simply not important enough right now for anyone to apply more serious pressure, and the Serbian opposition is still feeble. But I have always said that Vučić is a marionette held up by foreign strings; foreign policy was the one area in which he demonstrated competence. With that gone, I’m not sure there’s much left. As such, we can say with certainty that his condition is terminal.
But he still has some life left in him, and what is most concerning to me is how this all ends–whether in six months or two years. I worry that Vučić, in a panicked state about Serbia’s diminishing energy supplies and his own diminished power, might resort to increasingly dramatic acts of state-directed violence if he thinks it will shore up his position or buy him time. I worry that he will step up attempts to depict protesters and the opposition as violent. I worry that he will not go willingly, and that he will hurt people on his way down. Already, on Wednesday, there was a strange incident in front of the parliament, in which a former state security employee reportedly shot at a tent full of Vučić supporters, injuring one. Vučić was quick to call it a “terrorist attack”. It’s impossible to know exactly what really happened, but if I had to make one prediction with a certain degree of confidence, I would say that we will see more low level violence in Serbia in the months ahead.
Perfect timing: Vučić's two hours long interview for the state-owned RTS TV last night (Oct 23rd) is just additional material for a follow up post.