Victoria Hudson

On 7 July 2020, Serbia experienced the most turbulent political unrest since the fall of Slobodan Milošević in 2000. Protesters across the country were shocked by the government’s decision to re-impose a blockade to contain the second wave of Covid-19. Thousands of protesters took to the capital, Belgrade, and other Serbian cities such as Novi Sad, Niš, Kragujevac, and Smederovo. Protesters stormed the parliament building, and riot units and special forces of the Serbian police intervened against the demonstrators with tear gas and violence.

However, as the “War on the Rocks” blog reports, something rather unusual happened amid the riots: pro-government tabloids accused pro-Russians and right-wing anti-Europeans of organizing the protests. Since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, the Serbian government has nurtured its partnership with Russia to gain support on the Kosovo issue, build leverage with the West and win votes among pro-Russian sides of the country. Serbian electorate. Therefore, these accusations by the Serbian media and the tabloids are interesting. The government’s willingness to blame Russia for the protests demonstrates the scale of the political crisis in Serbia, and highlights, how Serbian-Russian ties are no longer what they used to be and the power that President Aleksandar Vučić has. Independent institutions no longer exist, and Vučić is ruling a deeply polarized society, where people can only channel their anger into the streets.

The editorial line of the Serbian tabloids does not mean that Belgrade will soon break ties with Moscow, but it does show that the geopolitics of the Balkans is changing. Russia can no longer count on the loyalty of the Serbian government, which is now willing to scapegoat Russia to win the favor of the West.The coalition led by Vučić and his Serbian Progressive Party is made up of former collaborators of Milošević and has been in power since 2012. Vučić and his party now dominate Serbian institutions, including the national security apparatus and the media.

When the pandemic hit Serbia, Vučić responded with a state of emergency and a strict curfew. After two months, the government ended the state of emergency, allowing citizens to return to their lives. Despite the virus, Serbia has made it possible to play football and tennis matches with a high turnout of the public and without social distances. Serbia was the first country in Europe to hold national elections after the blockade. The parliamentary elections on 21 June had low turnout as the opposition boycotted the vote. As a result, the Serbian Progressive Party won a two-thirds majority in parliament. The victory removed the control from Vučić’s power.

After the elections, a report came out according to which the Serbian government hid the Covid-19 data. Vučić, after power securing, decided to reintroduce the weekend curfew in Belgrade.This decision sparked protests with a strict and, in many cases, excessive police response.The accusation against Russia was the scapegoat for the government’s media machine. Interestingly, pro-government tabloids avoided mentioning Vladimir Putin’s name in their headlines, and Vučić denied allegations of Russian involvement. Allegations of Russian interference continued even as the protests faded. On July 23, SrpskiTelegraf reported that the deep Russian state, without Putin’s permission, was trying to overthrow Vučić. The Russian ambassador to Serbia reacted on Twitter, saying that Russia is “unpleasantly surprised and revolted by the text on the front page, which without any evidence tries to promote an incredible hype about Russia’s” Deep State.” Putin was not named directly, but the fact that the Russian ambassador reacted to a tabloid cover story shows that the Russian government recognizes that Belgrade is, at least for now, turning its back on Moscow.

New agreements, new policies, and new international horizons. The Leopards saying “everything changes so that nothing changes” perhaps this time could lose its meaning, because the States around the world, involved in the coronavirus health challenge, could field alliances and synergies never seen before. The EU-US-China triad is catalysing investments to access a vaccine, and we are increasingly moving in international fora under the banner of unity.

The chancelleries of the globe have understood that solid alliances are globally needed or the agreements already in place reinforced. You don’t go far alone. That is the case of the EU, which has planned a series of investments to make the vaccine available to all 27 member States, bypassing the national and local ambitions of its members. Too much, too much money and unsustainable investments require new approaches to the international race against Covid-19.

Compared to past epidemics, like the Hong Kong of 1969, despite the thousands of deaths, Western countries have not reacted with the same promptness. Perhaps, because of the perception of the geographical remoteness of the emergency has counted. Furthermore, Covid-19 threatens above all an elderly ruling class who leads an elderly society, and therefore, governments have felt directly called into question. But what if this epidemic hit young people?The reaction would have been quite different, perhaps less drastic. Covid-19 has set in motion a process that is unavoidable at this point. The awareness that the current state of things appears as “finished” and not “indefinite” over time has put modern society in crisis. Some question the capitalist mechanisms of our economy, others the promptness of health care, others the solidity of the world’s geopolitical hierarchy.

The certainties that came from the World Health Organization are creaking, and even the sacred monsters of top-level scientific publishers such as The Lancet have made missteps. Like in the case of chloroquine. In all this, the vaccine race is currently the only certainty, albeit within the international context, in which each power seeks to take advantage of its financial and technological capabilities to get ahead of the others.The race to the new atomic, as the tycoon Bill Gates prophesied a few years ago, is having several political repercussions. The feeling is that science, declined in the treatment against Sars-Cov-2 infection, can rise to a new ambition of power and decision making in the international institutions that matter.

Trump, in his logic of unscrupulous attack, thought that blaming China could be electorally profitable. Probably, he is ready to change course when will emerge a commercial compensation. Trump is well aware that public opinion, in general, does not look positively to China, but he has understood that Beijing appears more collaborative. In this battle for global supremacy, this head-on attack will not end up in his favor. China knows how to respond.

Just think of how many nations have received Chinese support. The electoral advantage is not guaranteed unless a series of commercial compromises that the American community will deem profitable. Among other things, with the large donations of personal protective equipment, China has expanded its influence, despite a US retreat. Beijing has made itself more available than Washington. Also, because China first of all understood how to deal with the health crisis.

“We need to do more to protect Western technology from being bought up by Chinese companies,” John Sawers, the former chief of Britain’s MI6, told Sky News last week. “I don’t think it’s an existential threat in the way the Soviet Union was in the Cold War, but nevertheless there is going to be deep rivalry over control of technology.” While Europe’s economic relations with China continue to move forward cautiously, now that economies are facing a massive downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, both NATO and EU officials are warning governments to block Beijing buying spree.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking after a videoconference of defense ministers Wednesday, noted that the geopolitical effects of the pandemic could be significant if economic difficulties made some allies more exposed for situations where critical infrastructure can be sold out. He said ministers had discussed the point that “resilience” is enshrined in Article 3 of the alliance’s founding treaty and talked about “making sure that we have resilient, critical infrastructure, industries, and that we are able to, for instance, provide critical equipment during crises.”

According to the latest report of the Netherland Institute of International Relations, Chinese investments in European seaports have increased rapidly in recent years. This process has triggered a debate in Europe on the significance of, and how to deal with, growing Chinese influence in European ports. This process is part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – in particular, its maritime component, the Maritime Silk Road (MSR) – and is among the financial and geopolitical effects of China’s growing role in international affairs.

“This time around I think there’s more attention and there’s more scrutiny of China’s activities, and there are greater protection measures put into place,” Erik Brattberg, director of the Europe Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told Deutsche Welle’s online magazine. “We have yet to see how successful and effective those measures will be should China seek to take advantage of an economic crisis in Europe.” He added.

At the beginning of the Chinese expansion, Western European countries believed they would not be vulnerable to Chinese influence, but they were wrong. New measures were introduced by the EU a year ago. They are part of the so-called foreign investment screening framework, aimed at safeguarding the bloc’s strategic interests. By October 2019, EU member states were due to have a process in place under which they notify each other and the European Commission if an investment offer from outside the EU could be uncertain. In light of Chinese and Russian influence operations during the pandemic, the commission has urged governments to speed up the implementation of this process.