Under NATO’s shadow, Serbia is being targeted again

This Tuesday marks 27 years since the start of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, and the Western Balkans today is drifting toward a dangerously familiar pattern: polarization, militarization, and the construction of rival blocs. At the center of this unfolding story stands Serbia – once again cast not as a partner in regional security, but as a problem to be contained.

For years, Belgrade has pursued a policy of military neutrality, positioning itself as a stabilizing force in a region still haunted by the unresolved legacies of the 1990s. Serbia has balanced East and West, maintained open channels with Brussels, Washington, Moscow, and Beijing alike, and avoided the kind of rigid alignment that historically turned the Balkans into a geopolitical battlefield.

That neutrality, however, is now under mounting pressure – not because it has failed, but because others are abandoning restraint.

The making of an anti-Serbian bloc

The March 2025 Joint Declaration on Defense Cooperation between Croatia, Albania, and Kosovo should be understood for what it is: the foundation of a bloc explicitly designed to shift the balance of power against Serbia once again.

Its language speaks of a “shared vision for a secure future,” of alliances forged through “sacrifices for freedom.” Yet behind the rhetoric lies a hard strategic core: mutual military assistance, joint exercises, intelligence sharing, coordinated responses to “hybrid threats,” and – perhaps most provocatively – support for Kosovo’s deeper integration into Western military and political structures.

By anchoring itself in NATO’s Strategic Concept and the EU’s Strategic Compass, the trilateral initiative effectively imports great-power competition into one of Europe’s most fragile regions. The push to expand defense budgets under NATO’s Industrial Expansion Pledge and the EU’s ‘ReArm Europe’ plan only accelerates this process. What is being built is not a confidence-building mechanism, but a forward-leaning security architecture that excludes – and implicitly targets – Belgrade.

The prospect of Bulgaria joining this arrangement would only deepen the sense of encirclement. One does not need to indulge in paranoia to recognize the emerging geometry: a tightening ring of militarily aligned states, increasingly interoperable, increasingly coordinated, and increasingly willing to define Serbia as the ‘other’.