CNN: The West’s ‘See No Evil’ Approach to Serbia’s Vucic Risks Destabilizing the Balkans

Aleksandar Vucic, Novi Sad, March 18 2023 (BETAPHOTO/DRAGAN GOJIC/DS)

A decision by Washington to sanction the director of the Serbian Security and Information Agency (BIA) means that Joseph Biden’s administration “is no longer captive to fear and illusion” about Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, but it is still unclear it this will translate into a change of policy toward Belgrade, CNN reported in a Aug. 14 article.

Several analysts said to CNN that Serbia had had only very little to do in order to be praised by U.S. and European officials, whereas in reality Vucic had left a trail of broken promises.

A foreign policy lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, serving in the Balkans for some ten years, including with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), said for CNN that the “see no evil” approach to Vucic’s regime might be starting to crack,” and that the question was “who in the Biden administration still believes that Vucic is the partner.”

In a response to the sanctions against Vulin, Vucic banned arms exports from Serbia for 30 days, arguing that “everything must be prepared in case of aggression against the Republic of Serbia.”

What he was basically saying was “we are going to go into conflict, we have to stop all of the weapon exports right now, because we need it for our national security.” He was literally threatening with a war. I have never seen him so explicit before,” said Majda Ruge, a Balkan expert of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

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