OPINION:
Nearly 30 years ago, America, along with NATO allies, bombed the you-know-what out of Serbia during a Kosovo War that saw then-President Bill Clinton first stretch, then violate, the terms of the War Powers Act limiting the executive branch from militarily striking a foreign nation absent congressional approval to 60 days. Clinton kept it up for 78 days, over the objections of foreign policy analysts and congressional members who called it an illegal war that led to what the White House said was an accidental bombing of China’s Embassy. Oops.
Fast-forward to today and under President Trump, U.S.-Serbia relations are more about diplomacy and cooperation and economic development.
Not that MSNBC is noting the goodwill.
It’s like the Abraham Accords all over again. That is to say: If Trump were Barack Obama, the left-leaning members of most in the media wouldn’t just be applauding — still! — over the brilliance of the Democrat leadership to broker partnerships in 2020 between Israel and mostly Muslim nations. But they’d now, six years later, be clapping about the shift in White House-Balkan policy from bombing and politically pressuring to diplomacy and cooperatively developing.
As Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said in a recent interview with Fox News: “If you ask people in Serbia just to make a comparison between Clinton and Trump’s administration, or Democrats to Republicans, you wouldn’t believe it. It would be 90 to 10 or 95 to 5.”
And it matters to America.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in the first joint U.S. Serbia Strategic Dialogue in Washington on July 17, with Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs Marko Djuric, announced a new memorandum of understanding to partner on energy and infrastructure, science and technology — including space exploration — and the continuation of a Fulbright program that partners the best and the brightest of American and Serbian scholars.
Given China’s interest in the region, as well as Russia’s, these pledges of partnership aren’t simply matters of economics.
Vucic, a couple of months before meeting with Rubio in Washington, traveled to China to secure bilateral agreements with Beijing. Meanwhile, in September of 2025, while in Beijing for events surrounding the 80th anniversary of World War II’s end, Vucic met with Russian President Vladimir Putin who talked about their countries’ “mutually beneficial” partnerships and the need to “reinforce” them into the future. So the question emerges: Going forward, which country’s influences will dominate in Serbia?
Geographically, Serbia sits at an important junction of Eastern and Western Europe areas. Even Joe Biden’s presidential administration acknowledged that; in a June 2021 statement, Biden’s State Department put out a fact sheet that said, in part, “Serbia occupies a key strategic juncture in the Balkans at the social, political and geographic crossroads of Eastern and Western Europe,” and the United States “wants Serbia to be part of a stable Balkan region.”
More than that, Serbia’s population is largely Christian, and pro-Israel, making them much more aligned with the principles of America than with China or Russia.
“As defense ties deepen,” The Jerusalem Post wrote earlier this month, “Serbia becomes one of Israel’s closest allies in Europe.”
For Israel, a nation that’s regularly treated with contempt by the many antisemitic politicians who serve in Europe’s political systems and within the ranks of the global governments, a friend in Serbia is significant. And if a friend of a friend is very much a friend, well then, an Israel-Serbia friendship is very much an American friendship, as well.
Geography aside, geopolitics aside — add this to the reasons America benefits from a solid collaborative relationship with Serbia: The Serbs have seen up close and personal the atrocities of radical Islamism. America is not immune to this religious-ideological threat. Just look to Michigan, where Islam is taking over the streets, and it’s clear: The Islamist movement is already making inroads in America.
“During the wars of the 1990s,” said Denis Bojic, director of the Memorial Center of Republika Srpska, in a statement provided to The Washington Times, “foreign mujahideen and members of radical Islamist movements, connected to the wider network of international jihadism that later struck America itself, also fought against the Serbian people. It must also be said that Serbs, as a Christian people, have for decades been under attack from radical Islamist structures — the same networks, or those connected with them in various ways, ideologies and structures that on 11 September 2001 carried out the attack on the United States.”
Consider America’s current election cycle and trends: the rise of Democratic Socialists of America candidates, the influences of the likes of the anti-Israel, anti-America, anti-West Hasan Piker on Muslim and Democrat politicians, the growing acceptance of the Democrat Party to regard antisemitism as simply a First Amendment freedom of speech and assembly.
Wouldn’t it be good to have as many Christian-dominated nations who know how to fight the Islamist insurgents on America’s side as possible?
Trump doesn’t get all the praise he should for the foreign policy shifts he’s making that will send America down a path of safety and security for the long term. But that’s because he’s not Obama — or a Democrat. As the Atlantic Council noted, “The significance of [America’s] shift [toward Western Balkans] is enormous.” The focus now involves “hard geopolitical interests: liquefied natural gas terminals, gas interconnections, transport corridors, cybersecurity, defense capabilities and limiting Russian and Chinese influence.” It’s all about energy and technology and reeling in Russian and Chinese authoritarianism.
Trump’s shift in Balkans policy probably won’t win him a Nobel Peace Prize — or even positive press. But he’s taking the steps now that will secure America’s interests for years to come. And history ought to one day reflect his administration’s foresight and strategic brilliance.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.
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