The new buzzword that has popped up in the Balkans recently is military alliance. The cooperation signed by the defence ministers of Albania, Croatia and Kosovo was countered by Serbia and Hungary with a similar agreement. These agreements - or more precisely memoranda of understanding - have been presented in the domestic and international press as if they were military alliances, but a closer look reveals that they are more about the parties sending messages to each other than about establishing new front lines.
The formula - befitting the Balkans - is complex and multifaceted. It involves Kosovo's independence, Serbian-Croatian relations, ideological fault lines and profiting from military procurement - and we have not even mentioned Turkey here.
Not secret, but rather indicative
The ‘military alliance’ signed on 18 March - formally known as a Joint Declaration of Cooperation on Defence - provides a possibility for common capacity building and defence industrial cooperation between Albania, Croatia and Kosovo. The situation is similar with the Hungarian-Serbian pact of 1 April: building on the Memorandum of Understanding signed in Palic in 2023, the current agreement ‘operationalizes and concretizes the Agreement on Strategic Defence Cooperation between Serbia and Hungary’. The content of the new agreement primarily envisages the deepening of military-economic relations. Without underestimating the importance of these areas, in the case of both agreements, we are far from an effective and comprehensive military agreement binding on the parties, covering all the necessary areas of expertise from planning to implementation.
The aim of cooperation between Albania, Croatia and Kosovo is twofold. On the one hand, it sends a message to ‘all those who dare to jeopardize security, peace, and stability in the Western Balkans’, said Ejup Maqedonci, Kosovo's Minister of Defense. This could be a message both to Serbia and to the Serb entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska, which is increasingly accused of destabilisation attempts both from inside and outside the region. These attempts are in a way encouraged by Russia who is providing, if not tangible support, certainly some encouragement. On the other hand, the Albanian and Croatian interpretation of the agreement sees it as a way of containing the Eastern powers - especially Moscow - active in the Balkans, and preparing for a new world political situation full of uncertainties.
Serbia, as expected in similar situations in the Balkans, has elevated the agreement to an ideological level, foreseeing the strengthening of the anti-Serb front. While Tirana, Zagreb and Pristina have justified their cooperation on the grounds of enhancing regional security, Serbia sees it as a means of disrupting it. According to the Serbian position, this is an ‘open provocation’, especially from the Croatians, which, apart from the risk of instability, also affects relations between what can hardly be called good neighbours. The Hungarian-Serbian document signed in Belgrade is intended to counteract the situation and also mixes it with some more practical elements.
According to Hungarian Minister of Defence Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky, Budapest can contribute to the modernization of the Serbian armed forces, while Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has declared the deepening of military-technical cooperation as the main direction of the pact. He also referred to the agreement as 'intensive military cooperation' (whatever that means in practice). There was no tangible justification as to what the further purpose of this 'military alliance' might be, apart from the usual rhetoric (bilateral relations have never been so good, good neighbourly relations are important in an increasingly unpredictable world, but Trump has made international winds more favourable etc.).
Regional relations
The increase in the foreign policy leeway of Kosovo and Croatia may be what has forced Serbia to move and react, and Viktor Orbán assisted in this as a good friend. For Kosovo, the agreement is important for its close relations with NATO, as it will not be a member of the North-Atlantic alliance any time soon. The country with limited international recognition has little chance of persuading the four NATO members, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and especially Spain, which currently do not recognise Kosovo’s independence because of their own minorities, to do so. Without these countries’ recognition, Kosovo cannot join NATO, therefore, the tripartite agreement is the most intensive form of integration currently available for the country.
Moreover, Pristina does not and cannot have an army in the ordinary sense of the word as things stand. Traditional military tasks are carried out by the NATO mission in Kosovo (KFOR), but at a technical level the creation of a 'Kosovo army' has already begun slowly, with the transformation of the light-armed Kosovo Security Force (KSF). This process is supported by certain NATO members, such as Turkey and Croatia. The latter not specifically because of Kosovo, but rather along the logic of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ against Serbia.
Back to the Croatians, Zagreb could be both disturbed and motivated by two factors. On the one hand, this ‘military alliance’ draws and strengthens a kind of political cordon sanitaire around Belgrade and on the other hand it may also hinder Serbia's regional power ambitions. It might be a signal to Vučić that Croatia wishes to occupy this position in the Balkans. If Croatia was indeed an active challenger for regional dominance, that would seriously bother Serbia.
The Hungarian-Serbian axis and its Balkan offshoots
Serbia, the largest economy in the region, has a self-professed policy of military neutrality, rejecting on paper any involvement in military-political institutions. Nevertheless, since 2006 it has maintained close ties with NATO in the framework of the NATO Partnership for Peace programme, and since 2013 it has been an observer member of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, which is centered around Russia. The former includes assistance to the modernisation efforts of the Serbian armed forces, joint military exercises and training activities, which Hungary not only participates in but also sees as a profitable opportunity.
In recent years, Budapest has been keen to sell its old military equipment, which has been gathering dust in warehouses for years, to Belgrade, driven by the modernisation of the Serbian armed forces. The framework for this was established by the 2023 agreement, which set up a working group on defence industry and procurement, envisaging the enhancement of military-economic relations. Thus, Serbia purchased twenty-six Soviet-type armoured infantry fighting vehicles and MiG-29 aircrafts from Hungary, which had become redundant for Hungary's needs due to the development of the armed forces at home.
The current agreement thus marked the trajectory of deepening the economic pact in the military sector, and can be interpreted more as a symbolic gesture to the troubled Serbian President. In simple terms: demand has met supply, which also strengthens ideologically based good neighbourly and regional relations.
The Serbian-Hungarian ‘military alliance’ has, of course, raised the eyebrows of regional politicians who are on good terms with the Hungarian and/or Serbian governments. Milorad Dodik, the convicted President of Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina, who is wanted in his country, argues that Republika Srpska should never join NATO. Following this logic it is all the more in Dodik’s interest to join the Budapest-Belgrade alliance. (It is obviously irrelevant that Hungary has been a member of NATO since 1999, or that the separate entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina do not have independent foreign and defence policy powers).
Montenegro has also been agitated by the developments: according to Milan Knežević, leader of the pro-Serbian and pro-Russian Democratic People’s Party, the Albanian-Croatian-Kosovo cooperation is as much a threat to Montenegro's security as it is to Serbia's, and the Serbian-Hungarian cooperation could be a remedy for this. The questions of how and exactly why this would be good for Montenegro or the region were not answered.
Enter Turkey, Greece gets nervous.
If the balance of power in the Balkans has been easy to follow so far, here comes another twist: Turkey's troublemaking. Ankara, also a NATO member, is not keen to be left out of the growing cooperation in the Balkans, which might be perceived as a threat by Athens. Turkey wants to ratify in the foreseeable future its military framework agreements signed with Albania, Northern Macedonia and Kosovo in 2024, the content of which is almost identical to the cooperation between Tirana, Zagreb and Pristina. In the wake of the Albanian-Croatian-Kosovo and Serbian-Hungarian pacts, Ankara feels that the time is ripe for the ratifications, therefore the agreements have been fast-tracked to the Turkish Parliament all together. Ankara plays an active role in ensuring stability in the region (Turkey is the second largest contingent in the KFOR mission, with almost 700 troops), has intensive defence cooperation with all the states in the region and is also an advocate of the creation of an independent Kosovo army.
With the military framework agreements, Ankara may be aiming to guarantee a suitable market for the products of the Bayraktar defence company, whose chief technology officer is, surprisingly, none other than Erdo?an's son-in-law Berat Albayrak. (A similar ambition might be expected from the Croatian and Hungarian sides too.) In recent years, Turkey has sold a number of unmanned aerial vehicles to Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Romania through Bayraktar. Serbia has interrupted the purchase of the same Turkish aircraft precisely because they were also sold to Kosovo. Nevertheless, there is close sectoral cooperation between Ankara and Belgrade in the field of defence policy.
The Turkish ‘expansion’ in the Balkans - this time in the field of defence policy - is a message to its ancient rival, Greece. After 2019, Greek diplomacy has become active again in the Balkans, at the same time as it has become another venue for pushing back Turkish expansion. In this competition, Albania and Northern Macedonia (Greece's neighbours) have an important role to play, and Serbia cannot be overlooked neither by Ankara nor by Athens. The creation of ‘military alliances’ in recent weeks may have triggered Turkey's increased activity, which, as a chain reaction, may have reignited the fire in Greece against Ankara.
The presentation is important, not the content
The restless Turks and the bilateral and trilateral agreements are more about diplomatic balancing than about establishing actual military alliances - in a Balkan version, of course. This means that agreements focusing on certain policy areas and envisaging deeper cooperation are accompanied by topical political messages and ideological battles.
In their current form, these 'military alliances' are broad enough to be interpreted by anyone as they wish. In reality, however, they are no more than military-diplomatic collaborations, and not the cornerstones of military alliances in the traditional sense. They do not represent a reordering of regional defence and security policy. The punch line is that they are sold and perceived as a much bigger trump card than they actually are.
The writer is an expert on the Balkans
This article was written in the framework of The Eastern Frontier Initiative (TEFI) project. TEFI is a collaboration of independent publishers from Central and Eastern Europe, to foster common thinking and cooperation on European security issues in the region. The project aims to promote knowledge sharing in the European press and contribute to a more resilient European democracy.
Members of the consortium are 444 (Hungary), Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland), SME (Slovakia), PressOne (Romania), and Bellingcat (The Netherlands).
The TEFI project is co-financed by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.