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The President, the Soccer Hooligans and an Underworld ‘House of Horrors’ [1]
['Robert F. Worth']
Date: 2023-05-03
Almost a decade ago, an American scholar and analyst named Daniel Serwer helped to arrange Vucic’s first public appearance in Washington, D.C. Serwer worked in the Balkans in the 1990s and he knew all about Vucic’s nationalist roots. But he was disappointed with the record of other Serbian political leaders. He told me Vucic made no promises about Kosovo, but said he would move closer to the European Union. Serwer found Vucic intelligent and serious. There was some hope, he told me, that Vucic could be a “Nixon in China” figure, capable of bringing his party’s conservative base to a fuller reconciliation with Serbia’s neighbors.
Serwer told me that his attitude toward Vucic has changed radically. “Vucic is now deadly serious about the ‘Serbian world,’” he said. Those words, invoked often by Serbian nationalists, convey the idea that Serbia is entitled to dominate the lands where ethnic Serbs live, including several neighboring countries. “He had the opportunity to move in a pro-E.U. direction, and he chose not to.” Serwer speculated that Vucic has concluded the reforms required to join the E.U. would weaken his hold on power or perhaps even land him in jail. That is what happened to the former prime minister of Croatia, Ivo Sanader, who presided over most of his country’s preparations for accession only to be arrested and imprisoned on corruption charges (he remains in prison today). Sanader’s fate has become a cautionary tale for Balkan would-be reformers.
The United States and the E.U. have continued to cater to Vucic, focusing their policies on economic growth and mostly ignoring his illiberalism. The Trump administration seemed especially favorable to Vucic, openly siding with him in a regional tariff dispute and forcing the collapse of a popular government in Kosovo. Trump sent an abrasive special envoy to the region, Richard Grenell, who seemed bent on brokering a Serbia-Kosovo “deal of the century” to enhance Trump’s prospects in the 2020 presidential election. (It did not happen.)
Serwer and a number of other Balkan experts say that the United States and the European Union are missing an opportunity to push Vucic in a more democratic direction. “We have more leverage in the western Balkans than anywhere on earth,” I was told by Kurt Bassuener, a scholar who has written extensively on the Balkans. “And yet we’re building our policy on Vucic and people like him.” If Vucic knew he risked losing much of his Western financial and diplomatic support, Bassuener said, his calculus might change about all kinds of things, including his habit of coddling criminals and hooligans. The notion that Serbia can “balance” the West against Russia is largely a mirage, Bassuener said. Russia may be Serbia’s traditional ally, but Putin, who is struggling to rebuild his own shattered army, has little of substance to offer ordinary Serbs.
One afternoon in Belgrade, I spent an hour talking to Boris Tadic, who served as Serbia’s president from 2004 until 2012, when he lost to Vucic’s party. He told me that organized crime has become so powerful in Serbia that it is difficult to know who is calling the shots. During his own time in office, he said, he was amazed to discover that the criminal gangs “had better equipment and technology than our police.” The cocaine cartels had become so lucrative that they could corrupt anyone. Tadic said he had fought the mafia with some success. Vucic, he said, had “helped put criminals in power” with the belief that he could control them. It was a dangerous gamble.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/magazine/aleksandar-vucic-veljko-belivuk-serbia.html
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