Thread by @JasminMuj

Those who do not follow Balkan politics will not grasp the full scope of this story.

It is two foreign govts covertly channeling $ to Trump in exchange for his (2nd) admin's support for potentially the wholesale redrawing of the map the southeast Europe.

I'll explain.

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1768720718349349010

First, recall Serb nationalists were from onset of Trump's 1st campaign all in on him. Like the Russians, they saw in Trump both a kindred ideological spirit but also a categorical transactionalist who was willing to put all of US foreign policy on sale. balkaninsight.com/2016/11/11/ser…

Once he took office, they began openly directing monies twd his cronies. Bosnian Serb secessionist Dodik - virtually whose entire regime is now under both US & UK sanctions - hired Trump's team to lobby for him in DC... motherjones.com/politics/2018/…

...while Tiffany Trump, Trump's fourth oldest child, even travelled to Belgrade - of all places! - for spring break in 2019. Suffice it to say that Belgrade in March is not exactly bikini weather, so presumably something else was going on there. businessinsider.com/tiffany-trumps…

To wit, the reason why Serbia & Albania are channeling $ to Trump is bc they want to reboot a ploy frm his frst admin which was known as the land swap: the purportedly peaceful exchange of territories btw Kosovo & Serbia which would result in normalization btw the two countries.

Who exactly hatched the plan remains unclear. But it was openly supported by Serbia's Vucic, Albania's Rama, Kosovo's Thaci, John Bolton & Federica Mogherini, among others. But it sent the region into a spiral of panic -- for obvious reasons. theguardian.com/world/2018/sep…

The idea of redrawing the map of the Balkans along ethnic lines after the bloodshed of the 90s immediately raised fears of renewed conflict & more atrocities. Proponents, like @CharlesKupchan, absurdly referred to the idea as "peaceful ethnic cleansing". nytimes.com/2018/09/13/opi…

And specifically, few believed that a "land swap" btw Serbia & Kosovo would end there. Serbia would likely next seek to annex territory from Bosnia, to bring Montenegro under its fold. Would Albania annex Kosovo? Would Croatia want its own chunk of Bosnia as in 90s?

Those fears become even more pronounced when a series of Balkan "non-papers" became public, the most explosive of which showed just that: a scheme for the wholesale territorial reorganization of the Balkans w/ BiH & Kosovo disappearing almost wholly. n1info.ba/english/news/n…

Those papers it soon emerged had been drafted by Janez Jansa, the former PM of Slovenia, and close Russian and Serbian ally. But Jansa was recognized as only the conduit for their dissemination: the real author was through to be Serbia's Vucic. rferl.org/a/non-papers-p…

At the same time senior Serbian officials began declaring their desire to create a so-called "Serbian World," ie a Greater Serbia ala Milosevic's campaign in the 90s carved out of neighboring states & seemingly modeled also on the "Russian World" concept. aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/19…

Now, in the interim, Ric Grenell was appointed by Trump as the Serbia-Kosovo "Special Presidential" envoy, in which role he primarily found himself clashing w/ Kosovo's new PM, Albin Kurti, who believed Grenell & Mogherini were carrying water for Vucic & thus the land swap.

That clash culminated in 2020 where Kurti was booted as PM, new gov fell quickly then Kurti stormed back to power on a broad popular mandate. Amid all that, Kurti accused Grenell of having personally orchestrated his ouster, which he called a "coup".npr.org/2020/06/05/870…

Other Trump era State Dept officials were also linked to the govt in Serbia by Balkan tabloids, w/ Belgrade rejecting the accusations but clearly also reveling in their new found dominance over American policy in the Balkans. euractiv.com/section/politi…

While Kurti's 2nd elxn was key in halting the land swap deal, the plan was not dead. Rama & Vucic began championing the so-called "Open Balkans" - a free movement zone - which Kosovo, Bosnia & Montenegro all rejected for fear of growing Serbian influence.prishtinainsight.com/open-balkan-pr…

Biden's elxn also helped quiet the situation for a moment but only temporarily. Grenell continued to remain closely tied to Vucic throughout Biden's term, championed Serb nationalists causes on Twitter, & received state honors from the regime. b92.net/o/eng/news/pol…

Rama's govt was implicated in a major corruption scandal in which it turned out they'd been channeling hundreds of thousands of dollars to a FBI counterintelligence chief, who had also received money from Russia. npr.org/2024/02/17/123…

Rama had also developed a seething rivalry w/ Kurti throughout this period largely owing to his close relationship w/ Vucic & growing resentment in Kosovo over his govt's attempts to redelegate Kosovo to Serbia's dominion. prishtinainsight.com/false-attempt-…

For their part, the Biden admin did little to distance itself from Trump's policies in the region. They continued cow-towing to Serbia in an inane gambit to pull Serbia out Russia's orbit, while Rama transformed Albania into a major NATO hub....foreignpolicy.com/2023/05/04/bid…

...even as accusations of systematic corruption & self-dealing mounted against his govt. Like Serbia, Albania became suddenly strategically indispensable to Biden & so all those rule of law concerns vanished into half mumbled State Dept concerns. balkaninsight.com/2023/07/31/tim…

Biden's WH also engineered a major retrenchment of Serb & Croat sectarian interests in Bosnia but also presided over a major flareup of Serb nationalist violence in Kosovo, even raising fears of an actual invasion in Sept 2023. voanews.com/a/us-warns-of-…

This is the context in which the NYT scoop must be understood. This is a down payment by Vucic & Rama on land swap 2.0 & reboot of the Serbian World initiative. It should be recognized as an existential threat, first & foremost, to Kosovo but also Bosnia & very likely Montenegro.

It is imperative DOJ but also Congress open investigations into this affair bc if Vucic, in particular, has his way & Trump is re-elected, Grenell is Sec of State & Belgrade starts pushing for new borders in Kosovo & the region, we'll have a war in the Balkans in the nxt 4 yrs.

That's not alarmism, that's the writing on the wall. Can the US & EU afford another conflict in Europe in the midst of the aggression in Ukraine, the events in the MidEast, the threat against Taiwan? Please, take this seriously. The threat is real & imminent.

There's much more to be said - much more esp on Bosnia, the Hungarian factor in all of this (cf Trump's recent meetings w/ Orban) - but for the moment what's important that this be recognized as a major influence peddling scandal in the US w/ transatlantic implications. /x