Serbia’s “Jurassic Park”

The politics of today’s Serbia increasingly resemble a “Jurassic Park” – an attempt to resurrect mini-imperial reflexes from the past, without resources, without scale, and without any real capacity to sustain them. What remains is noise: lots of posturing, lots of pretension, and ever less reason.

This is an echo of Russian imperial logic, stripped of Russia’s scale. A poor copy of a bad original – nostalgia for the past elevated into state doctrine.

Sulking as foreign policy

The latest symptom is telling. Serbia demonstratively refused to participate in the EU – Western Balkans meeting. The reason was no secret. In Brussels, one uncomfortable truth would have become unmistakably clear – something Belgrade is desperately trying to obscure from its own public.

Montenegro and Albania, despite starting the accession process later, are on track to enter the EU in the coming years. Serbia is not.

This is a geopolitical slap. And instead of acknowledging it and explaining it honestly to the Serbian people, Vucic is repackaged as political sulking. The public is fed insults toward Brussels, claims that the EU is hypocritical, hostile, “unfair.” The truth is far more prosaic. Serbia chose not to keep pace with the rest of Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans. In that sense, the outcome was entirely predictable.

A rude encounter with reality

When reality becomes inconvenient, the familiar toolkit comes out. A few days ago, Serbia’s minister of information and telecommunications – the very ministry from which Vučić’s rise began – declared that it was time for Croatia to be “punished” with territorial losses.

Around the same time, Vučić labeled Albania, Croatia, and Bulgaria as “historical enemies.” Relations with Kosovo are at a nadir. Hungary under Orbán appears to be the only “friend” left – although, viewed through the lens of historical sensitivities, Vojvodina stands out as a reminder of unresolved complexities.

The day after the Serbian minister’s absurd statement, an apology followed. Because even stupidity returns like a tsunami echo. With Vučić, however, there is no real reverse gear.

This is not strength. It is political infantilism, masquerading as toughness and, in a broader sense, as political wisdom.

The problem is not a single minister, nor even Vučić’s provocation. The problem is the systematic normalization of the absurd.

Serbia today

Serbia today:

• maintains territorial claims toward Bosnia and Herzegovina;
• refuses to accept the reality of Kosovo;
• holds deliberately vague and softened positions even regarding the border with North Macedonia.

After the Kushner Trump Tower investment scandal, relations with the United States are on a downward trajectory. The refusal to attend the EU – Balkans meeting, combined with the lack of progress in accession talks, marks a low point in relations with the EU. Even ties with Russia are far from exemplary. Gazprom has refused to sign a long-term contract and, despite being eager for EU customers, agreed to cover Serbia’s needs only for this winter – effectively until the end of September. This, despite Vučić’s repeated appeals for at least a one-year deal.

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Nostalgia as a trap

At the core of all this lies nostalgia for Tito and for former Yugoslavia with Belgrade at its center. Serbia’s leadership sells society the illusion that the country was once “something big,” that it can again be a regional hub, that it is “owed respect.”

But history does not reproduce itself on demand. And geopolitics cannot be built on nostalgia.

The result of this course is not greatness, but self-imposed isolation, instability, and lasting regression – for Serbia and for the region as a whole.

The great self-deception

For a long time, Belgrade convinced itself that it could:

• balance the EU with the United States;
• use ties with Putin as a strategic counterweight;
• extract dividends from “sitting on two chairs.”

Reality proved harsher. This is not balance. It is a pressurized air balloon. And when the balloon starts to deflate, only the noise remains.

The domino effect – North Macedonia and the proxies

This line of thinking is already spreading to Serbia’s regional proxies, including the governing circles in North Macedonia. There, too, the illusion appears that the EU revolves around them, that Brussels needs their membership rather than the other way around.

It is the same logic, the same trap, the same failure – only on a smaller scale.

It is no coincidence that in Bulgaria the North Macedonia issue has practically disappeared from the public agenda. No matter how well-intentioned the rhetoric is from Sofia, the response invariably comes “horns first.” Hence the Bulgarian position increasingly resembles waiting – until the political process there ferments. And perhaps, eventually, matures.

A policy recommendation: strategic restraint, not reaction

There is an important corollary to this analysis. Neither the EU, nor the United States, nor Serbia’s neighbors have any strategic interest in reacting emotionally or reciprocating the irrational line of Vučić’s foreign policy. Overreaction would only validate a narrative that thrives on confrontation, grievance, and manufactured victimhood.

A far more effective response is strategic restraint: holding one’s breath, lowering the volume, and refusing to be drawn into rhetorical escalation. Ignoring provocation is not weakness in this case – it is a conscious choice to deny legitimacy to an unsustainable political posture.

At the same time, it is essential to keep open the channels of normalcy with Serbian society. Governments come and go, but societies remain. Preserving academic, cultural, economic, and people-to-people ties is an investment in the post-Vučić period, whenever it arrives. Isolation should apply to destructive political behavior, not to an entire nation.

In short, the appropriate answer to Serbia’s “Jurassic Park” foreign policy is not confrontation, but patience. Time, reality, and internal contradictions are already doing the work that external pressure cannot.

Ilian Vassilev