Serbia’s European Illusion and Vučić’s Authoritarian Reality

While Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are giving their lives bravely, fighting for their right to a European future and against violent attempts to return them to the darkness of Russian totalitarianism, the leader of the corrupt regime in Serbia is acting in the exact opposite direction. Despite the ruthless geography and the fact that the only possible future for Serbia is the one offered by EU and NATO membership, Aleksandar Vučić persistently challenges the gravity of his own nation’s geostrategic and national interests.

Aware that there is no place for authoritarian and corrupt regimes in the European family of nations, Vučić has done everything to preserve the illusion of Serbia’s European path, trying to keep the country forever on that path without a final goal and destination. Thinking of himself as a modern Serbian Moses who will lead his people for 40 years in the desert, only to postpone as long as possible the arrival in the “promised land” where there will be no place for him and his power, Vučić has successfully played this game until the moment when the EU showed its irrefutable determination to expand to the Western Balkans by 2030. From that moment on, the Vučić regime’s resistance to European integration became open, while flirting with renegade authoritarian regimes from the East became the main axis of false neutrality and the schizophrenic politics of the four pillars. This determination of the re-radicalized Vučić is accompanied by the regime’s all-out propaganda against the EU and European democratic values. An important impetus in this direction was given to the Vučić regime by the victory of Donald Trump and the questioning of the previously unquestioned commitment of the USA to building and preserving democracy in the world. Hoping that in the noise created among the transatlantic allies he would find space to continue his strategically unoriented policy, Vučić turned to Beijing and Moscow, completely ignoring the fact that over 80% of the Serbian economy depends on cooperation with the EU, and that the vast majority of pensions and salaries of everyone in Serbia originate precisely from these economic activities.

How vital relations with the EU are for small Serbia is also shown by the fact that, in the absence of European investments, Serbia’s much-vaunted economic growth has completely melted away; inflation has almost equalized domestic prices to European ones, while salaries and the purchasing power of the population have remained at the European end. At the same time, due to widespread corruption, the suppression of media freedom and the ongoing obstruction of the process of normalizing relations with Kosovo, Serbia has found itself at a dead end on its false European path – without the opening of Cluster 3, without funds from the Western Balkans Growth Plan and without further advancement of political dialogue with Brussels. Faced with the cognitive dissonance between his radical fantasies and reality, Vučić chose to return to the 1990s, a period in which he was formed in the shadow of his political father, Vojislav Šešelj. Defying the undeniable facts about Serbia’s future, Vučić found himself at the dictators’ fair in Beijing, where he was given a humiliating treatment, but which nevertheless served him for his internal use and desperate efforts to stop the complete collapse of his shaky regime. All this at the expense of Serbia’s national interests, which he began to mercilessly sell out in search of the support of Russian and Chinese rulers. With this, the self-aggrandizing chess player has essentially checked himself, finally sealing the fate of his power. Now all that remains is for the iron law of determinism to lead this predictable process to its only possible end: its political end!

/The Geopost