Strategic Disinterest

This chapter proposes a heterodox interpretation of contemporary Western Balkan geopolitics, and how the same should be understood in a historical context. In contrast to many recent writings on “great power competition in the Western Balkans” (Wilson, 2019; Bagheri, 2020; Schwarz, 2021), the analytical emphasis here is not on the great powers per se nor on how the Western Balkans (do not) fit in their respective strategic postures. The level of analysis is local, namely how regional actors have capitalized on – or even weaponized – the prevailing disinterest in and ignorance (Considerations of disinterest, ignorance, ambivalence, inconsistency, or reluctance in international relations are relatively few and far between but not entirely novel (Dueck, 2008; Fehl, 2012; Destradi, 2016)) of foreign powers in regional affairs and dynamics. Because of this prevailing ignorance, regional actors, above all Serbia and Croatia, have in recent years again leveraged the fleeting interests of great powers – in whose grand strategies the Balkans have remained perennially peripheral – to advance their own local agendas. The essence of this program has been the expansion of Serbia and Croatia’s borders and/or their influence, at the expense of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of neighboring states like Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Kosovo, Montenegro, and to a lesser extent North Macedonia (Notwithstanding continuing concerns with Serbia’s pretensions toward North Macedonia (Belford et al., 2017), in the recent years nationalist sentiments in Bulgaria and Greece have posed a far greater challenge to Skopje than the general revanchist orientation of Belgrade).