In today’s international relations and on the global geopolitical “battlefield,” there is no longer any restraint or rules. There is no referee either inside the “ring” or outside the “ropes”; the gloves are off, the fight is waged with bare fists, blows are struck below the belt, and the opponent is kicked even after falling to the floor.
And it all began — let us recall — in the 1990s with the dismantling of the Yugoslav state in an arrogant, unscrupulous, biased, and explicitly anti-Serbian manner, through violations of international law and all previously accepted principles, charters, and treaties. Especially when it comes to the so-called Kosovo precedent. And then “the bear began to dance in front of their own doors.” Therefore, there is no room for lamentation or surprise.
TRUMP — A SYMBOL OF THE “APPETITES” OF THE GEOPOLITICAL LEVIATHAN
Americans and their European “allies” (read: vassals) spent the entire “unipolar moment” conditioning the whole world to their omnipotence and exclusivity, and to the notion that everything was permitted to them on that basis. Trump merely stated this publicly and crudely, “slamming it in everyone’s face.” In the meantime, China, Russia, and some regional powers have “bared their teeth” and begun a global geopolitical reconfiguration. The United States, whether it wanted to or not, had to adapt to the process of multipolarization, that is, to secure primacy primarily within its own pan-region.
Could even the most imaginative observers just two or three years ago have assumed that the (post)-Cold War monolith would crack and that the “collective West” would be divided, or de-collectivized? That the U.S. would “ditch” the EU and that NATO would become to the White House “as important as last year’s snow”? And moreover, that it would openly display ownership ambitions toward one of the world’s key chokepoints — the Panama Canal — as well as annexation intentions toward Canada, the world’s second-largest country by area and larger than the U.S. itself, and Greenland, the world’s largest island, owned by the “European ally” Denmark?
What is next “on the U.S. menu,” a worried humanity asks? Nearby Iceland, which could be used to block Russia’s (and China’s “Arctic Silk Road”) exit from the Arctic Ocean into the Atlantic? Perhaps Cuba, the decades-long “thorn in the side” of U.S. dominance in the “Caribbean antechamber”? Or Iran, which has “brazenly created a state in the middle of American military bases,” as one tragicomic cartoon put it?
TRUMP’S “NEW NORMAL”
Trump crowned the “new normal” with the operation to kidnap Venezuela’s president, Maduro. He could do it! And he did not wrap it for a moment in decorative paper with a bow of concern for democracy, human rights, or the security of the Planet due to the alleged nuclear or chemical-biological programs of that Latin American state. Instead, without pretense, he said that the reason was its “mineral wealth,” i.e., the world’s largest oil reserves, which the U.S. must not allow to fall into someone else’s hands.
And the world gradually began to accept all this not only obediently, but as logical. Of course the Panama Canal is of “vital importance” to Americans for the maritime link between the Atlantic and the Pacific! Why should Canada exist as a state when it so carelessly found itself right between the U.S. “torso” and its federal state of Alaska? Greenland is Denmark’s possession — and why shouldn’t it pass into U.S. hands, given its extraordinary importance for the “Arctic future” and the security of the leading world power? After all, it belongs to North America as a continent, not to Europe, doesn’t it? And Venezuela — isn’t it natural that it be within the U.S. sphere of interest rather than that of far-away China and/or Russia?
Neo-Monroeism — which many already call Donroeism — is in effect. If Trump were to realize only the ambitions announced so far — U.S. + Canada + Greenland — Washington would directly control or dispose of a territory extremely rich in water, energy resources, and strategic raw materials, covering 22 million square kilometers. Larger than any contemporary state in the world — significantly larger than Russia, that is, comparable to the former Soviet Union.
WHAT IS PERMITTED TO JUPITER, BUT…?
What would happen if the leaders of other major world powers adopted Trump’s manner?
For example, if Putin wished to purchase Mongolia because it lies within the Heartland and is “strategically significant for Russia’s security,” and if Kazakhstan’s natural resources were deemed “vitally important” for Russia’s development — and thus he would simply annex that neighbor since it was once an integral part of the Russian Empire?
Or if Xi announced something similar to the world — that he would not ask the price when buying the island of Java, which connects the Indo-Pacific and lies at a key point of the “21st-century Maritime Silk Road,” and that he would “take over” Australia, whose “minerals” are necessary for China’s further economic progress and its future competition for Antarctica?
And if Modi, unwilling to lag behind in the global land grab and thereby undermine India’s credibility, began listing his own demands — to recover, seize, buy, occupy, and annex Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Chagos, and even wholly or partially Pakistan, due to India’s “vital” interests?
Excluded? Why, when Trump introduced such “rules of the game”? It can no longer be treated as a “special case,” but as multiple, reusable “precedents.”
LET US IMAGINE A “SERBIAN TRUMP”
Let us imagine these examples being applied to lower levels — say, the Balkans, that is, the space of the former Yugoslavia — where a “Serbian Trump” might appear on some occasion. Why Serbian, and not Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian…? Because — analogous to the U.S. as the leading country of the world — Serbia is the key ex-Yugoslav country. Couldn’t some future “Serbian Trump,” in a Trump-like manner — without complexes, explicitly, using fairly universal arguments, and especially “from the Serbian point of view” — present ideas/demands for the territorial reorganization of the post-Yugoslav space?
To begin with, the “Serbian Trump” would state the fact that the SFRY was dismantled violently, in a biased and explicitly anti-Serbian way, under conditions of unipolar imbalance and along internal borders from the period of Titoist dictatorship, contrary to democratic principles and without the consent of the constituent nations. Therefore — he would emphasize — Serbia does not recognize such an imposed division and inconsistent borders, and advocates the formation of an integral Serbian state. In line with the new geopolitical reality, and invoking the example of the American president, the hypothetical “Serbian Trump” could send the following messages, first of all to neighbors:
- First, that the territorial integrity of Serbia is unquestionable and that, sooner or later and by any means, Kosovo and Metohija will be liberated and returned under its sovereignty (in that context, when meeting leaders of countries that have recognized the “false state of Kosovo,” already in the first sentence the “Serbian Trump” would, on every occasion, demand derecognition from each of them).
- That Bosnia and Herzegovina, the “ancestral land of Saint Sava,” alongside Serbia a central and entirely historical Serbian land, should be joined to Serbia so that — paraphrasing the “real Trump” — thanks to its “minerals,” Serbia could secure its development; the annexation would apply not only to Republika Srpska, but, on the basis of originally Serbian ethnic origin, also to Croatian and Muslim/Bosniak areas.
- That the territory of the rudimentary Republic of Serbian Krajina — occupied by neo-Ustasha military aggression and depopulated by expulsions — should be incorporated into the integral Serbian state for “security reasons,” thereby preemptively countering Croatian expansionism (just as Trump’s U.S. counters Russia and China).
- That the annexation of Montenegro to Serbia would be natural and rational, both for reasons of historical connectedness and national identity, as well as for geopolitical and geoeconomic interests — the first, small and barely sustainable, needs a hinterland, while the second needs access to the sea so as not to remain handicapped, a so-called landlocked country.
- That today’s North Macedonia — due to control over a significant part of the Morava–Vardar “spine of the Balkans” and the maritime vector toward the Aegean — has, in the language of the “real Trump,” strategic importance for Serbia, and that, largely as historical-geographical Old Serbia and with a majority population that was amputated from the Serbian corpus through ethno-engineering, it quite understandably should be part of the Serbian state.
The scenario would be complete if the “Serbian Trump” presented all this not wearing the characteristic red cap reading “Make America Great Again,” but a šajkača in the red-blue-white colors of the Serbian flag bearing the inscription “Make Serbia Finally Great.”
Fantasy? Impossible? Grotesque?… Why would it be? Shouldn’t some future leader of small Serbia “on the European path” look up to the president of the most powerful world power, which stands at the head of the “collective West,” whose embrace we so eagerly seek?
