In Serbia, after the visit of the French President Emmanuel Macron, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the director of the BIA, there are indications of a subtle turn of Serbian foreign policy towards the West.
Neighboring Croatia is not far behind. In parallel with the acquisition of weapons, Croatia is returning to mandatory military service from New Year's, while in Serbia the topic has been brought up several times in public, yet removed from the agenda, writes Voice of America.
There will be no war, investments in security are normal
Executive director of the Council for Strategic Policies and retired officer Nikola Lunić believes that these moves, although they carry certain warnings, do not necessarily mean preparations for a state of war, but investments in the security of the state.
"The world is definitely in "geopolitical hysteria", and Europe has come out of the post-war period and is now in a pre-war state. Many European leaders have warned their citizens to prepare for war. In such a situation, it would be wrong to ignore it and turn a blind eye to current security threats", says Lunić.
Although he claims that any news about arming is generally "ominous", Lunic assesses that not a single country in the Western Balkans has the potential for a war conflict, as well as that "in the immediate danger of war, higher allocations for the military budget are quite normal".
He believes that Serbia should reconsider its "unsustainable" military neutrality and harmonize its strategic and doctrinal documents with vital interests.
Serbia's turn towards the West
The US ambassador to Serbia, Christopher Hill, also spoke, claiming that Serbia is starting to make important strategic decisions that will not be changed by the situation on the ground in Kosovo.
He added that lithium mining with Germany is "the right way to go".
"One of those decisions is related to the purchase of these fighter planes, the 'bursts'." What Serbia is doing is not just buying airplanes, but buying relations with the NATO air force," said Hill, writes 021.
The ambassador said that during the visit of French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a clear shift in orientation was made and that the USA would like to see Serbia continue on that path.
Speaking about President Macron's visit to Belgrade and the signed agreements, Sonja Biserko, analyst and founder of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, believes that this event represents Serbia's turn towards the West," she writes. Voice of America.
"The visit of Macron, before that the Assistant Secretary General of NATO and the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, is the rounding off of the Western strategy towards the Balkans at a stage when the confrontation with the East is dangerous and when the Balkans want to be brought under control primarily in terms of security, especially in the next 70 days until the elections in the USA".
The Balkans is a security priority, she believes, especially after the start of the war in Ukraine and especially after the incident in Banjska in Kosovo, which "were turning points in relation to how they treat Serbia - through criticism, but also through the effort to involve it more and more into the Western security sphere".
Lithium in exchange for fighter jets
Tonino Picula, the former head of Croatian diplomacy and MEP in the fourth term from the Croatian opposition Social Democratic Party, tells Glas Amerika that "it could be concluded that Vučić is using lithium - a project allegedly worth 2,4 billion euros - to buy 'Rafales' worth 2,7 billion euros".
Time will tell whether "the EU's one-dimensional policy towards the Western Balkans and Macron's arrival in Belgrade mean a kind of 'brain death' of the EU's enlargement policy to this area, based on the complex Copenhagen criteria", concludes Tonino Picula.
Pre-war situation in Croatia as well
Croatian President Zoran Milanović also spoke about the fictitious war, who believes that the government in Serbia is arming itself for a week of fictitious war that will never happen.
"Serbia will buy rifles, as it buys French anti-aircraft systems, as well as first-class Chinese and Russian tactical ones, perhaps the best in the world." We have none of that. "You have a government in Serbia that is actually arming itself for a week of fictitious war that will never break out," Milanović said.
Responding to a question about Serbia's contract with France for the purchase of 12 new Rafal multi-purpose fighter planes, Milanović said that Croatia is "equally arming itself".
The United States recently approved the delivery of a powerful artillery weapon in high demand among Western allies, the sophisticated HIMARS missile system.
Tonino Picula says that approving the delivery of HIMARAS is a matter of relations within NATO.
"This is in line with the recent sale of HIMARS to allies such as Poland, Estonia and Norway with an already existing presence in Romania." "Washington's move is proof of good cooperation between Croatia and the USA, as well as trust in Zagreb, since Hungary's request for HIMARS was rejected last year," says Picula for Voice of America.
Source: Voice of America
