On the eve of 25 May – the date on which the birthday of lifelong president Josip Broz Tito, whom many regarded as the “creator of the Yugoslav nation”, was celebrated in the former Yugoslavia – the State Department published a report stressing that, in the Western Balkans, “the era of US-led nation-building has passed”.
This sentence “rang alarm bells” across the region and raised questions about how important the report is and whether it signals a shift in American policy towards the Western Balkans.
The State Department also stated that the direction of “American policy in the Western Balkans is not rescue or reconstruction, but stability and mutually beneficial partnerships”.
To a large extent, the US Department of State merely “said out loud what had long been whispered”, though it does not represent a significant shift in US diplomacy, according to Amanda Thorpe, a fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council, in a written response to BBC Serbia.
“For a long time, there has been an inconsistency between maintaining a strong American (or European) presence in the region and clearly acknowledging that the Balkan countries are capable of harnessing their own strengths as a region that serves as a major transport corridor, possesses a skilled workforce, and is rich in natural resources,” she noted.
The State Department report was mandated by the Western Balkans Act, adopted by Congress in December 2025, and does not represent a departure from previous policy.
What does differ from past American foreign policy practice is the way diplomacy functions under Donald Trump’s second administration.
“Trump is surrounded by people he trusts, while other institutions have been reduced to auxiliary bodies,” Vesko Garčević, professor of international relations at Boston University, told BBC Serbia.
What does the report say?
The document identifies the main priorities of US foreign policy in the Western Balkans as maintaining regional stability, strengthening economic and energy cooperation, countering the influence of Russia and China, and combating organised crime.
It states that organised criminal groups from the Western Balkans pose a direct threat to American security. Six states are mentioned – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. “The consistent mention of the six Western Balkan states may also be interpreted as a message that countries refusing to recognise Kosovo are fuelling ongoing regional instability,” Amanda Thorpe points out.
BBC Serbia requested comments on the report from the foreign ministries of the countries mentioned in the document. The Trump administration is focused on “empowering local actors to resolve their own challenges, rather than prolonging excessive dependence on international intervention or oversight”.
In the section dealing with regional stability, the document states that talks are planned for 2026 with the governments of Serbia and North Macedonia, where the right-wing VMRO-DPMNE party has been in power since 2024. “There is ideological closeness between the administration and, above all, the governments in Belgrade and Skopje, and partly in Albania too, although in that case I think there is also a strong economic motive linked to investment projects,” Garčević believes.
A few days before the report was published, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić wrote an opinion piece for the Republican-aligned Fox News in which he claimed that “Europe demonises Trump, while Serbs see in him a kindred spirit”.
In June 2025, Albania established a state-owned company to acquire a stake in a major $1.4 billion tourism project led by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump.
As in previous years, one of the areas Washington continues to insist upon is reducing dependence on Russian gas, though the document also highlights American interests in the energy sector. American liquefied natural gas, nuclear technology, and renewable energy offer commercially attractive and geopolitically sound alternatives, the document states. “All of these are projects in which America is highly interested, especially the one intended to connect Serbia and Croatia via Bosnia, in which some of Trump’s close associates are directly involved,” Garčević explains.
In April this year, the authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina approved the $1.5 billion Southern Interconnection energy project, intended to reduce the country’s dependence on Russian gas. The project is being led by a newly established company headed by Joseph Flynn, brother of Michael Flynn, Trump’s former adviser, and Jesse Binnall, a former lawyer for the US president.
“The message to the countries of the region is to become involved in projects this administration wants to carry out. If they cannot participate in the energy sector because they are not part of those corridors, they can engage in other areas such as strengthening capacities to counter the influence of China’s ‘Digital Silk Road’, including 5G networks, arrangements with Huawei, and surveillance cameras,” Garčević says.
What is not in the report, but may be important?
Support for the territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the preservation of the Dayton Agreement – one of the tangible legacies of American foreign policy – will remain the guiding course of the US diplomatic ship in the region. However, the recent resignation of Christian Schmidt, the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose mandate was marked by disputes with the leadership of Republika Srpska, suggested that he had lost US support.
“His decision to leave Sarajevo comes at the right moment, as the international community works together to turn a new page and ease tensions in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” a State Department spokesperson told the BBC. The report does not mention the Office of the High Representative (OHR) even once, which indicates a certain shift compared with previous similar documents. “America stands behind Dayton, but supporting the agreement without calling for its reform – as previous administrations did – is one of the key messages from the US,” Garčević believes.
Reforms to the Dayton Agreement, which ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995, were advocated by High Representatives such as Christian Schwarz-Schilling and politicians in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, while Dodik claimed that changing the agreement would amount to a “death sentence for Bosnia”.
The report’s message that the US is prepared to offer support “where its involvement is requested” suggests that Washington is not ruling out a more active role in the region. “That wording may also refer to Bosnia’s current illogical constitutional structure, which was created in the US and with strong American involvement. “America has a special mandate to engage in implementing positive constitutional reforms – particularly from a security perspective – which would enable Bosnia’s NATO membership,” says Amanda Thorpe of the Atlantic Council.
Besides the OHR, another noticeable aspect of the State Department document is that “European partners” are mentioned only once.
The fight against corruption is also mentioned only once, and only in the context of preventing the “malign” influence of Russia and China. “An independent judiciary and media freedom, which were often key principles in previous US reports on the region, have now disappeared,” says Garčević.
What next?
Congress requires the State Department, as part of the executive branch, to provide details and explanations of foreign policy, and this report is a standard part of that process.
“The US will continue pursuing a policy that enables both stability and economic cooperation, while regarding as adversaries those actors who obstruct progress,” Thorpe assesses.
In the past, State Department reports often influenced Congress’s stance on foreign policy issues, especially when envoys for a particular region were called to hearings before the chamber. “Under this administration, many things are being done outside the formal channels through which America previously operated in the Balkans,” says Thorpe.
American foreign policy is currently preoccupied with challenges greater than the Balkans, such as seeking an agreement to end the conflict with Iran and the war in Ukraine, while another potential flashpoint is emerging – Cuba. “But if you take the broader picture into account and compare the Balkans with the crises the US is facing, you can see how significant – or insignificant – the region really is to America,” Garčević concludes.
(BBC Serbia, 25.05.2026)
https://www.bbc.com/serbian/articles/c5yrr97wkr9o/lat
