Milan Krstić

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland officially left the European Union in 2020. In line with this great geopolitical change, official London has produced a new integrated strategy for the so-called "Global Britain" in international relations. Considering that British influence on the Balkans has been present since early 19^th century, this geopolitical change got the attention of the Western Balkan relations analysts as well. This text aims to provide an answer to the question of what kind of United Kingdom’s policy can be expected towards the Western Balkans region, and towards the Republic of Serbia in particular, as well as what strategic options Serbia has at its disposal in its relationship with official London. The paper claims that the United Kingdom's actions in the region will be largely determined by the global British strategy, aimed primarily at preventing the spread of Russian and, to a lesser extent, Chinese global influence. It is also claimed that Serbia's attitude towards Russia and, to a lesser extent, China will primarily affect the future of Belgrade-London relations, although other issues will certainly have an impact (Kosovo and Metohija, Bosnia and Herzegovina, security cooperation with NATO, etc.). Through analysis of main strategic documents in the field of foreign and defence policy, as well as through the analysis of the recent UK behavior in international relations, the first part of the paper presents the international strategy of "Global Britain" after Brexit and outlines the general international goals of the UK. The second part of the paper presents British in the Western Balkans region. The third part of the paper presents a brief overview of Serbian-British relations in the last five years and points to key trends, benefits and obstacles in mutual relations. The fourth and last part of the paper summarizes what the goals of Serbian action towards the United Kingdom should be, and in what way certain strategic, but also more concrete political decisions of Serbia can affect bilateral relations between the two countries.

Many analysts expected a radical change in President Joseph Biden’s foreign policy compared to the foreign policy of previous President Donald Trump. A year after his electoral victory, opinions about how much Biden actually changed in the US foreign policy vary from those who see it as a revolutionary change to those who perceive it as a difference only in tone and continuity in the majority of crucial policy aspects. This paper aims to contribute to this debate by addressing the issues of continuity and changes in the new administration foreign policy towards the Western Balkans. Although many expected that Biden’s policy to the region would be much more similar to President Barrack Obama’s or even President Bill Clinton’s approach, this paper claims that the new administration has a lot in common with the course of the previous President Donald Trump. There are also some changes and modifications, but they seem to be less crucial than the elements of continuity that exist between Biden’s and Trump’s administrations’ foreign policy towards this region. The paper also addresses the causes of this continuity and claims that the main reason for that are structural factors on the level of the international system. However, some reasons for the continuity are also on the state (internal) and individual levels of analysis.

The genesis of regional cooperation in the Western Balkans over the past two and a half decades has had different stages, with long-term crises and problems related to the development of its own concept. Therefore, in this paper, the authors have analysed its achievements so far, with special emphasis on the period after the transformation of the Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe into the Regional Cooperation Council in 2008, as well as on the attempt to reconceptualize cooperation within the Western Balkans Six in 2013. At the same time, they pay attention to the achievements of the Berlin Process after 2014 and the creation of a new form of transition of regional cooperation to regional economic integration (the Common Regional Market) from the end of 2020. In that context, the authors are considering whether it will come to the deepening of political cooperation through the eventual establishment of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Western Balkans and the introduction of regular meetings of prime ministers and foreign ministers. The authors, therefore, point to certain fears in the region that the already initiated integration in the field of economic cooperation, which would be accompanied by intensified political cooperation, could result in the establishment of the "Balkan Union". This essentially encounters significant resistance and opposition in the Western Balkans region due to the fear that it will become a permanent solution, which as such excludes the membership of the countries of the region in the European Union in the long run.

This paper aims to classify foreign policy attitudes and stances of Donald Trump in his 2016 presidential campaign according to the U.S. foreign policy traditions. In the first part of the paper, we analyze speeches of Donald Trump since the moment he became the Republican Presidential Nominee. The analysis is based on digest reports of Trump’s speeches, published on his official web-site in the period from the Republican National Convention (June 18 – 21) until the Election Day (November 8). We present his main foreign policy messages pointing to foreign policy determinants, instruments and goals towards particular actors (such as China, Mexico or Russia).  In the second part of paper we present main ideas of distinctive foreign policy traditions classified by Walter Russell Mead (2001) – Hamiltonian, Wilsonian, Jeffersonian and Jacksonian – and compare them with the most important foreign policy stances of Donald Trump. The main argument of this paper is that Trump’s foreign policy concept incorporates elements of different traditions. His stances mostly reflect the elements of Jacksonian foreign policy tradition. However, due to its overwhelming emphasis on the economic issues, it seems that Trump’s positions are closer to Hamiltonian thought in terms of foreign policy determinants, while some aspects of Jeffersonian thought are also present in Trump’s articulation of foreign policy issues.

A year ago, during the devastating floods that hit Serbia, writings of certain users of social networks, characterized as panic spreading and threat to security, was met with condemnation of public officials. They were led by the Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic. In this paper, we are trying to carry out a scientific description of the actions of the government, especially of the Prime Minister, towards one group of social networks users. The theoretical framework that we are going to use is the theory of securitization, as a normatively neutral analytical framework. The primary method we are going to apply is critical discourse analysis. We are going to test whether the Prime Minister of Serbia securitized the activities of certain users of social networks in the Republic of Serbia, which is the first research question of this paper. The starting point of this paper is that the Prime Minister did commit aforementioned securitization. Bearing in mind the different form compared to traditional securitizing move, another issue to which this work will seek to provide an answer is what the reasons that led to the successful securitization were, despite of certain shortcomings in relation to the purely theoretical model (primarily in terms of “security grammar”). The paper argues that this is due to the socio-political and socio-linguistic dimension of the context in which the securitization was carried out.