NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s visit to Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina comes amid heightened tensions between the US and Europe
By Frauke SEEBASS
Former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also warned time and again about the risk of frozen conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. Now his successor, Mark Rutte, is visiting the two countries for the first time since taking office in October 2024. On March 10, 2025, he will first visit the Bosnian capital Sarajevo and a day later the Kosovo capital, Pristina. The visit takes place in an atmosphere of transatlantic disagreement, which is confronting the European security order with unknown challenges – including in the Western Balkans, whose transformation and unfinished EU integration make it a vulnerable point on the continent.
In Kosovo, the NATO force KFOR has been securing peace and borders since the end of the war in 1999. An international peacekeeping force has also been operating in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995, led by the EU since 2004. More than 20 years after the end of the war, there is no sign of European soldiers withdrawing, on the contrary. Since the beginning of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, the Region has once again found itself in the spotlight, especially since the tense security situation has been exacerbated by global geopolitical changes in recent years.
TENSIONED SECURITY SITUATION
Since Dayton, Bosnia and Herzegovina has been divided into two entities, which enjoy broad autonomy but govern together at the federal level: the Federation, which is home to mainly Muslim Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats, and the Republika Srpska, with an ethnic Serb majority. The latter, under its president Milorad Dodik, who has been pursuing a militant nationalist policy for years, is trying to secede from the Bosnian state, a move that has been heavily criticized internationally. Dodik is under US sanctions. He was sentenced in February by a Bosnian court in the first instance to prison and a six-year ban on holding political office.
But he does not recognize the decision and is supported by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Dodik also maintains good relations with the Kremlin. On January 9, 2025, as every year, a parade of the Republika Srpska security forces with Serbian and Russian participation took place in Banja Luka. This commemorates the day of the proclamation of Republika Srpska in 1992 – its illegal secession was at that time an important stage on the road to the Bosnian war. January 9 was banned as a day of commemoration by the Supreme Court of Bosnia.
TENSIONS IN KOSOVO
In Kosovo, the government in Pristina has been implementing the use of unified national symbols and institutions since 2021. The former Serbian province, inhabited mainly by ethnic Albanians, declared independence from Serbia in 2008, which Serbia does not recognize to this day. As a result, central public institutions such as education and health, especially in the ethnic Serb-majority north, continued to be run by Belgrade and its documents and the Serbian dinar were used instead of the national currency, the euro. When the current government of Prime Minister Albin Kurti began to end this practice, there were repeated revolts and blockades in the border area, which were supported by radical nationalists from Serbia and the Serbian state.
In 2022, almost all Kosovo Serb MPs and civil servants in the police and judiciary resigned, and local elections in the northern provinces were boycotted twice in a row. Therefore, in 2023, the EU imposed political and economic measures against the Kurti government. In September 2023, a terrorist attack by Serb militants from Kosovo and Serbia occurred near the Banjska monastery in northern Kosovo, during which a Kosovo policeman and three of the attackers were killed. As a result, the presence of Kosovo security forces in the north was massively increased and checkpoints were set up, and the import of Serbian goods was stopped. As a result of these developments, interethnic relations have deteriorated. Vučić and Kurti blame each other, while blocking the dialogue between the two countries, led by the EU.
FEAR FOR AMERICAN SECURITY GUARANTEES
In addition to these tensions, Brussels fears the risk of a US withdrawal from Europe, including its contingent of around 600 troops in KFOR. Although European states have played an increasingly important role in Regional stability since the Yugoslav wars, they have always been dependent on the support of the United States. Although Rutte himself says he sees no reason to worry about a rapid troop withdrawal, this scenario cannot be ruled out, given the increasingly escalating rhetoric of the new US administration under President Donald Trump. In addition, domestic nationalists like Dodik feel encouraged by Trump’s leadership style and hope for support.
Thus, the first Trump administration supported plans for a land swap between Kosovo and Serbia in 2018. The plan was to exchange Serb-majority areas in Kosovo for Albanian-majority areas in Serbia. US government officials and Trump confidants, such as special envoy Richard Grenell, oppose Kurti and demand the release of former President Hashim Thaçi, who was indicted at the Special Court for Kosovo in The Hague by the same prosecutor who later served in the US as a special investigator for cases against Trump himself. Pentagon deputy press secretary Kingsley Wilson recently wrote in X: “Make Kosovo Serbia again.”
While NATO’s focus in both countries is primarily on conflicts, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo are both central to the future European security architecture and NATO. In both countries, international missions are therefore responsible for training local security forces. Both countries have diplomatic missions to NATO in Brussels and are aiming to join the military alliance.
However, Kosovo, whose population overwhelmingly supports this goal, is not recognized as independent by four NATO member states. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the government of Republika Srpska is blocking it, rejecting NATO membership. The same can be said for the pro-Russian government in Serbia, while the other Western Balkan countries, Albania, Montenegro and North Macedonia, are already NATO members. Rutte’s visit is a clear signal that NATO is keeping an eye on this Region and that its stability is a high priority for Europe and its partners.
(Frauke Seebass is a visiting scholar at the Science and Policy Foundation (SWP) in Brussels and works on EU enlargement policy with a focus on the Western Balkans)
