By BV
The United States’ 2025 National Security Strategy signals a quiet but consequential shift in Washington’s approach to the Western Balkans, prioritising stability, security cooperation and deal-making over the European Union’s long-standing enlargement-driven reform agenda.
While the strategy contains no standalone section on the Balkans, the region features indirectly across chapters on Europe, NATO, migration and great-power competition, revealing a U.S. policy that treats the Balkans less as future EU members and more as a geopolitical buffer zone vulnerable to external influence.
Stability over transformation
The document frames Europe as economically and demographically weakened and calls for an end to what it describes as “perpetual instability” on the continent’s periphery. For the Balkans, this translates into a focus on containment rather than political transformation, diplomats and analysts say.
Washington’s emphasis on ending wars and preventing escalation — notably its call for an “expeditious” end to the war in Ukraine — suggests limited appetite for prolonged reform-driven engagement in fragile regions such as Bosnia and Herzegovina or Kosovo.
Instead, U.S. policy appears geared toward preventing renewed crises that could trigger migration flows, ethnic tensions or security vacuums exploitable by rival powers.
Kosovo–Serbia as a template
The strategy explicitly cites a U.S.-brokered Kosovo–Serbia agreement as one of several conflicts resolved through direct presidential diplomacy, placing it alongside non-European disputes such as Armenia–Azerbaijan and Pakistan–India.
The reference underlines Washington’s preference for transactional settlements over EU-led, process-heavy dialogue frameworks. Analysts say this could foreshadow renewed U.S. pressure for pragmatic arrangements in the Balkans, even where EU legal or institutional benchmarks remain unmet.
NATO expansion loses momentum
A key passage states that Washington seeks to “end the perception, and prevent the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance,” language with direct implications for the Balkans.
While Montenegro and North Macedonia are already NATO members, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo remain outside the alliance, and Serbia maintains military neutrality. The strategy suggests U.S. security guarantees will increasingly depend on burden-sharing, defence spending and regional responsibility rather than automatic integration into Western structures.
EU role diminished
Notably absent from the document is any endorsement of EU enlargement or accession timelines for the Western Balkans. The omission contrasts with previous U.S. strategies that framed EU integration as the primary stabilising force in the region.
Instead, Washington signals a preference for bilateral engagement with national governments, potentially weakening the European Commission’s leverage over reforms linked to rule of law, governance and judicial independence.
External influence a red line
The strategy repeatedly warns against foreign penetration of Europe through infrastructure, technology and energy projects — a message widely interpreted as targeting China and Russia.
In the Balkans, where Chinese-backed construction projects and Russian political influence remain significant, the United States is expected to push governments to reduce strategic dependencies, offering security cooperation and selective investment in return.
Implications for Balkan leaders
For Western Balkan governments, the shift means greater emphasis on security alignment, migration control and geopolitical reliability, and less tolerance for prolonged political paralysis.
Washington is not walking away from the Balkans, but it is no longer waiting for Brussels to deliver stability through enlargement.