The International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES)[1], based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, regularly analyses developments in the Middle East, Balkans and around the world. Dejan Azeski, a Macedonian historian, journalist, and publicist, is a member of IFIMES. In his article, “Tito's Velenje and Trump's Balkans,” he examines Donald Trump's (re)election as U.S. president and its implications for the Balkans. We are publishing his article in full.
In honor of the lifelong president of the SFR Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, there was a practice of naming at least one of the cities in the republics after him.
So we had Tito's Veles, Tito's Užice, Tito's Korenica, Tito's Velenje and of course the capital of Montenegro, Titograd. In this way, the unity and respect of the people of Yugoslavia for a single person were demonstrated.
Exactly 45 years after the death of Josip Broz Tito for the first time a politician appears in the world behind whom stand some minority or majority groups in all the countries of the former Yugoslavia. That person is of course the newly elected or re-elected president of the United States of America, Donald Trump who only recently began his second term.
Given the fact that Trump is the most unconventional president in recent American history, this claim of ours sounds a bit unrealistic and therefore we will have to confirm it with a few selected examples from all the former Yugoslav republics and their closest neighbors.
Geographically, we will start from Bulgaria, where the most powerful political figure is still Former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and current leader of the GERB party has already posted a picture with Donald Trump and in the specific post said that we support such policies and better moments in the future. The current President of Bulgaria, Rumen Radev, who is already notorious, probably has similar views. due to his numerous disagreements with many Western countries and of course the old American administration.
Macedonian Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski personally went to Washington for Donald Trump's inauguration and there did everything in his power to meet with as many high-ranking politicians in the Republican Party or in Trump's cabinet and inner circle as possible.
In Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić is an old supporter of the old-new political option in Washington and has not hidden it at all for years.
He is also connected to Trump by specific business interests through people from his closest circle who are currently preparing to invest in a large residential and business complex in the epicenter of Belgrade. Second indicator that Serbia, like Macedonia, is planning a complete orientation towards America at the expense of the European Union and the fact that the sanctions on the Serbian oil industry NIS recently imposed by America were almost met with applause in Belgrade. This gave Vučić the long-awaited chance to save himself from the huge Russian capital in the oil giant which will now try to buy it out at dumping prices. Regardless of the fact that economic mathematics shows that this will be a loss for Serbia and the Serbian economy, Vucic and those around him are convinced that the friendship they can gain with the US in the long run will compensate for both their personal losses and those of the country. Are they in right or not, time will tell.
In Romania, in the recent parliamentary elections that were held and annulled, an option that was a total outsider and that no one took seriously at the beginning of the election campaign won. But the changes that are happening everywhere in the world and which are crowned with the second Trump's term has allowed all political options that have alternative policies to flourish or at least come into an excellent position to govern for at least the next four years.
Similar to Romania and Croatia, the current president Zoran Milanović (who was defeated in the parliamentary elections just a few months ago) elections) managed to make a total turnaround and literally outclass the opposing candidate of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). Despite his free-spirited views and undiplomatic vocabulary, and despite the numerous attacks that Milanović is actually a pro-Russian man, no one has been able to prove it. But now he is given a great chance to return to the American mill without being renounce his dominant and long-known political views.
We don't even have to comment on Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro because those two countries, or rather the powerful pro-Serbian groups in both, have been Trumpists since the time when Trump didn't even exist on the political scene. So they celebrated after the election results were announced as if they had liberated the Republic of Serbian Krajina and the fact that there are so many Trumpists in these two countries is not surprising.
But it is certainly unexpected that even in Kosovo and Albania there are serious structures of government and opposition politicians who identify with the already known direction of Donald Trump's political action is his cabinet.
To complete the picture, there is also Slovenia as a country that has never refrained from expressing its political views, although its political circles at times had to pose according to the wind like Janez Janša at the beginning of the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Now it seems that both, the position and the opposition, get the opportunity to express their true views without being pressured by Washington.
Be sanctioned but on the contrary praised. Naturally, everyone who has been following politics for many years knows that this general well-being of the mind will not last too long because whoever Trump helps or whoever he stands behind in the Balkans, the other parties will remain damaged. Regardless of whether are the relations between Kosovo and Serbia, between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, Bulgaria and Macedonia or any of these countries among themselves. But still, it should be acknowledged to Trump that at least in a short historical segment he managed to do something that no one else has managed to do for half a century, and that is to gain supporters in absolutely all Balkan countries.
Hence, the title of this analysis absolutely justifies its existence.
Donald Trump has been present on the American public stage for five decades and has absolutely always had political ambitions. The problem was that none of the mainstream political players took him seriously, and that was true for the broad masses of the people. And suddenly seven or eight years ago, when his business was probably at its lowest point and when he himself was already an adult, his popularity exploded. Specifically, the Republican leadership and the people themselves are calling on Trump to take over the leadership of the country and the world.
His enemies associate this with the moral erosion that is happening to us, which may be true to some extent, his supporters are determined that the world finally needs a decisive leader who will move all the artificially imposed problems with a sword, which is also true, but what is most likely true is that the problems of everyone and everywhere are so burdensome that we are looking for unconventional solutions in places and people that under normal conditions we would certainly not turn to. We should not forget that historically, after the greatest moral and state crisis in antiquity, after the debauchery of emperors like Nero and Caligula, the Middle Ages were born, which the people themselves asked for, and from which they could not emerge for ten dark centuries.
In any case, at least in principle, it is good for the Balkans to finally have an authority that not only everyone will fear, but also will respect together. That is probably the formula with which at least some of the many open questions could be resolved.
Finally, let us briefly say in gambling terms what happens when you play the last possible trump card and when all the means are placed on just one single number. Then you either win a lot or lose catastrophically. So after four years, we are certainly not waiting for either a new Renaissance or a tragedy similar to the Dark Ages. A third lethargic variant certainly no longer exists.
Ljubljana/Skopje 12 February 2025
[1] IFIMES - International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies, based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, has a special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council ECOSOC/UN in New York since 2018, and it is the publisher of the international scientific journal “European Perspectives”, link: https://www.europeanperspectives.org/en
