The Politics of Disenchantment

Biden leaves behind an angry, unsatisfied Balkans

After Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, Sarajevo City Hall was lit up with a projection of the American and Bosnian flags and the slogan “unity over division”. The message was followed by an alternating projection of a young Biden with Alija Izetbegovic, the first president of independent Bosnia and Herzegovina, with by the words “Bosnia Remembers”. Anyone with knowledge of the region’s recent history knew exactly what Bosnia – along many others in the Balkans, particularly in Kosovo – “remembers”: Biden, like most other prominent Democrats, had been a faithful ally and advocate during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. A clip of a young(er) Biden making a forceful speech about those wars has been making the rounds on Twitter. “When I was in your position, I was suggesting that we bomb Belgrade,” the 55-year-old Biden insists at a Senate hearing on the crisis in Kosovo in 1998. “I was suggesting we send American pilots in and blow up all the bridges on the Drina.” The performance is unsettling, less for its content than for its delivery, as it contrasts cruelly with the meek and fumbling President Biden of today. The clip reminds us that father time comes for us all.

The Biden administration’s Balkan record also contrasts with those strident words delivered at the turn of the millennium. He will vacate the presidency as a terrible disappointment to those who thought to project his image on Sarajevo’s City Hall so recently. Four years ago, many in the Balkans hoped that the Democrats’ return to power would render Trump and his regional policy an aberration. Trump was viewed as preternaturally disposed to the Serbs, and was frequently compared to Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Biden’s presidency, it was hoped, would course correct and rectify that wrong.