MAKE AMERICA SMALL AGAIN: WHEN THE PRESIDENT'S LANDLORD IS A SERBIAN STRONGMAN
Sub-heading: Trump’s Balkan Side Hustle Reduces America
An American foreign policy guided by Trump’s self-dealing constrains our potential. And Moscow likes that.
The sheer inundation of corruption from this administration means that Donald Trump’s self-dealings in Serbia don’t get nearly the attention they deserve. They don’t see an America that once shone a beacon of freedom in the region, now playing small ball and getting bossed around by a Balkan.
I’ve covered Trump’s shady Trump Tower deal in Belgrade before. To briefly recap, Jared Kushner and Ric Grennell hatched a scheme by which they would develop a Trump Tower on the site of a Serbian national monument. Not only has it enraged the Serbian people to the point of fueling some of the largest mass protests in decades, but it has literally made Serbia’s President, Aleksander Vučić, a man described as the head of a Balkan criminal organization, the landlord of the President of the United States.
It is within that frame that the United States now operates. Russia loves this. China loves this. Europe sees this. Americans seem unaware.
The visit
In early May, Vučić quietly boarded a private plane to Florida bound for Mar-a-Lago. He met with Rudy (of course). He made it to Mar-a-Lago, but according to reports, before he could see the president, he abruptly returned home because of an illness. Official statements claim that he started exhibiting chest pains. But even Florida has hospitals, and it seems ill-advised to board an hours-long plane ride if you’re worried you may be experiencing a heart attack.
More credibly, multiple sources suggest the real reason was that Trump rejected him. Some reports suggest that he may have secretly met with disgraced money launderer and gangster refugee, Slaviša Kokeza, a Serbian businessman and former president of the Football Association of Serbia (FSS) who fled Serbia after reportedly embezzling €640 million. Another report suggested Ric Grennell simply didn’t have the influence to make the meeting happen.
Whatever the reason, we can safely assume Trump’s reason for rejecting him wasn’t a sudden pang of conscience. Vučić, who had announced the trip prior to departing Serbia, returned humiliated and embarrassed.
The revenge
To get his revenge, he did what every Balkan strongman does to exact revenge on the president of a superpower for national humiliation: He basically cancelled the president’s building permit.
While Trump Jr. had recently visited Vučić in Belgrade, a visit critics linked to bolstering Vučić's political standing amidst protests and advancing the Trump family's business interests in Serbia, that trip had not been enough to get Vučić in the door with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and now Trump Tower Belgrade is on ice.
What’s next?
Good. Except that advancing Trump Tower Belgrade was the US government’s entire foreign policy objective for Serbia. The entire national agenda has focused like a laser on preparing the ground (literally) for Trump’s development – and Belgrade’s strongman derailed it because of a snub. America once proudly opposed autocratic and corrupt strongmen in order to undermine them and underscore the rule of law.
Now, American foreign policy has been reduced to securing building permits.
This episode doesn’t have to end this way. For example, Serbia’s student protestors have proven to be quite a force to reckon with. To keep them from dethroning Trump’s landlord, the US government worked against them. Perhaps in a cycle of revenge, Trump and the princelings now stand back and allow the students to bring down Vučić?
As much as I’d like to see that, I’m not holding my breath. Trump still wants to build a Trump Tower in Belgrade. Whatever happens next will likely operate within the framework of Trump’s desire to complete it.
Make America small again
In a world where America dismantles its USAID mission and leaves a power vacuum in places like Serbia, this is the kind of thing that happens. Where once Moscow may have feared the seductive force of democracy and America’s power to facilitate it, it now rests soundly knowing that America, like Gulliver, has been tied down by tiny Serbian ropes and one man’s corrupt vanity project.
So while Middle Eastern potentates bribe Trump with old, tacky airplanes, China, Iran, and Russia stand back and cheer. Even Russia’s Balkan propaganda channel is making fun of this episode.
“Tear down this wall!” has yielded to cajoling over municipal building permits. The world knows America has been brought to heel by a petty autocrat and that the shining beacon on a hill has capitulated to “Dictator Chic.”