Serbia's four pillars are cracking

For much of the 21st century, Serbia's foreign policy has been quietly admired in certain chancelleries as a feat of strategic dexterity. Belgrade managed to pursue EU accession talks while deepening energy ties with Moscow, welcoming Chinese infrastructure investment, and maintaining a security dialogue with Washington. The so-called "four pillars" – the EU, the United States, Russia and China – were not a contradiction. Instead, they were a system. Each relationship served a distinct function, and the art of Serbian diplomacy lay in preventing any single actor from forcing a choice.

 

That system rested on a particular configuration of the international order. It assumed American unipolarity stable enough to be taken for granted, a European Union absorbed in its own enlargement logic, a Russia that competed within rules it occasionally bent but did not openly break, and a China whose ambitions were primarily commercial. In that world, strategic ambiguity was not evasion. It was policy.

 

That world no longer exists.

 

From balance to strategic contradiction

 

The shift did not happen overnight, and Belgrade cannot be blamed for failing to anticipate its speed. However, the cumulative effect is now visible. What once generated diplomatic space is generating suspicion. Brussels questions Serbia's strategic orientation. Washington questions its reliability as a partner. Moscow – which has quietly noted Serbia's role as an indirect supplier of artillery ammunition to Ukraine, documented but never officially acknowledged in Belgrade – has moved from tolerating Serbian pragmatism to actively testing its limits. Finally, Beijing watches the political turbulence in Belgrade and recalculates the durability of its investments.

 

Serbia is not balancing between four pillars. It is sitting on four chairs that are moving in opposite directions.

 

This is not merely a problem of optics or messaging. It reflects a structural change in what the four relationships now demand. During the years when the pillar strategy was constructed, each partner was willing to accept partial engagement. The EU offered a process without a deadline. Washington tolerated ambiguity in exchange for regional stability. Russia valued Serbia's symbolic non-alignment. China asked only for contracts.

 

Today, each of these actors has revised its terms. The EU, accelerated by the war in Ukraine, is under pressure to treat enlargement as a security instrument rather than a bureaucratic exercise. Washington has grown less tolerant of partners who hedge on sanctions and vote ambiguously at the United Nations. And China, facing its own strategic pressures, is increasingly interested in knowing which side of an emerging divide its partners will occupy.

 

The pillar strategy was designed for a permissive environment. The environment is no longer permissive.

 

There is a deeper institutional dimension to this problem that is rarely discussed in western analyses. Serbia has been unable to produce a coherent foreign policy strategy or to align its existing National Security Strategy with the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy framework. This is not merely a bureaucratic failure. Indeed, it reflects a deeper political unwillingness to define Serbia's national interests with any precision. Serbian politicians have shown little appetite for the clarity that strategic definition requires – in part because clarity costs votes. Courting nationalist sentiment while simultaneously pursuing European integration has proven electorally convenient for successive governments. The ambiguity is not accidental; it is cultivated. A state that cannot articulate where it is going cannot credibly claim to be going anywhere. In a period of global geopolitical turbulence that uncertainty carries an existential dimension. In a region where borders, identities, and historical grievances remain actively contested, a state without a defined strategic direction does not simply lose influence – it becomes vulnerable.

 

Why Tivat matters

 

The significance of the recent EU-Western Balkans summit in Tivat was therefore not found in any single declaration. Its importance lay in what it revealed about the changing mindset in Brussels. For years, the European Union approached enlargement as a technocratic process. Membership was presented as the reward for reforms, while accession itself remained deliberately open-ended. That approach was sustainable as long as the geopolitical environment remained relatively stable.

 

The war in Ukraine changed that calculation. Enlargement is increasingly viewed not as a bureaucratic exercise but as a security instrument. For Paris and Berlin in particular, the question is no longer whether the Western Balkans belong to Europe. Instead, the question is whether Europe can afford to leave the region strategically exposed.

 

This is where Serbia becomes both indispensable and problematic.

 

No sustainable European security architecture in the Western Balkans can be built without Serbia. Its geographic position, economic weight, military capabilities, and political influence make it the pivotal state of the region. Yet Serbia is also the state least willing to define its long-term strategic alignment. The result is a paradox that increasingly frustrates European policymakers: the country most essential to regional stability is also the country most committed to strategic ambiguity.

 

For Brussels, this ambiguity is no longer merely a diplomatic inconvenience. It is becoming a security concern.

Beyond Kosovo – and beyond the West

 

Western discussions about Serbia often remain trapped in the framework of the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue. Kosovo remains important, but it is no longer the only – or even the primary – strategic question. A more fundamental issue is emerging beneath the surface.

 

Can Serbia remain geopolitically non-aligned and militarily neutral in a Europe that is rapidly reorganizing around security blocs?

 

But there is a prior question that western analysts too rarely ask: what exactly does "aligning with the West" mean when western interests are themselves diverging?

 

The four-pillar foreign policy framework assumed a coherent western position. That assumption deserves scrutiny. American and European interests in the Western Balkans are not identical – and the gap between them is widening. This divergence did not begin with the current American administration, and it will not end when it leaves office. It reflects deeper structural shifts in how Washington and Brussels calculate their interests in Europe's periphery.

 

The quiet diplomatic conflict over Bosnia and Herzegovina illustrates the point with uncomfortable clarity. The dispute over the appointment of the High Representative, playing out largely beneath the radar of regional commentary, is inseparable from competing visions for the Southern Gas Interconnection – a project designed to give Bosnia access to the Croatian energy system and further reduce Russian energy influence in the Balkans. The project's strategic logic is broadly shared. Who controls the alternative infrastructure is not a settled question. Viewed through this lens, much of the political behaviour emanating from Banja Luka becomes easier to read.

 

Serbia is therefore not navigating a binary choice between East and West. It may be navigating a triangular one – between Brussels, Washington, and the widening space between them. Military neutrality, once a useful balancing mechanism, increasingly resembles a holding position between incompatible strategic realities.

 

This does not mean that Serbia faces an imminent, dramatic moment of decision. International politics rarely works that way. Strategic alignments emerge gradually as circumstances narrow the range of available options. That process is already underway. And when the war in Ukraine ends, the Western Balkans may no longer function as a single geopolitical unit. The consequences of that fragmentation – for Serbia, for the region, for the European project itself – have not yet been seriously reckoned with.

 

The end of strategic ambiguity

 

For two decades, Serbia benefitted from an international environment that rewarded flexibility. The ability to engage simultaneously with Brussels, Washington, Moscow and Beijing maximized diplomatic manoeuvrability while minimizing strategic commitments.

 

The emerging European security order operates according to different rules.

 

In a continent shaped by war in Ukraine, intensifying great power competition, and growing concerns about economic and technological dependency, ambiguity is becoming harder to sustain. Strategic clarity increasingly carries greater value than strategic flexibility.

 

This does not mean that Serbia must abandon all elements of its traditional foreign policy. Nor does it mean that European integration automatically resolves every strategic dilemma the country faces. It does mean, however, that the assumptions underpinning the four-pillar doctrine are eroding – not because Serbian policymakers failed to manage them skilfully, but because the international system that made them viable is being dismantled by forces far larger than any single country's foreign policy.

 

The greatest challenge facing Serbia today is not choosing between East and West. It is recognizing that the international system that once allowed it to avoid that choice is disappearing. The danger for Serbia is not that it will be forced to choose. The danger is that the choice may eventually be made by the strategic environment around it.

 

The era of four pillars was designed for a world of strategic ambiguity. Europe is entering an era that rewards strategic clarity.

 

Nikola Lunić is a Serbian geopolitical and security analyst and retired Navy Captain. He previously served as Serbia's Defence Attaché in London and as Executive Director of the Council for Strategic Policy. He is currently a Strategic Affairs Consultant and a regular guest lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Osijek. He is the author of numerous analyses and media interviews on geopolitical, security and international affairs topics published in Serbia, across the Western Balkans region, and in international outlets including Kyiv Post.