If the end of the Cold War brought an end to many of the proxy wars through which the parties tried to increase their influence, February 2022 changed world geopolitics. Russia's intervention in Ukraine showed that the era of conventional war in Europe is not over. The change of the Ukrainian borders by force and the beginning of the war brought back to the table the biggest security thesis in Europe after the fall of the Berlin wall. Should the borders of the existing states be preserved or not?

In turn, this conflict awakened all the old dormant conflicts. That of Nagorno-Karabakh, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and aggravated the situation in the Balkans. Geopolitical alliances are being reshaped by conflicts in peripheral states. This old preamble to imperial policies has perverted, sometimes to the point of absurdity, international relations.

Politics is not an exact science says Bismarck. States that aspire to regional and continental integrations find themselves under the pressure of proxy war factors, which is becoming the dividing line between integrative and disintegrative perspectives, due to internal political configurations. Rationalists follow the present to grasp the future, while nostalgics look back to move forward, reminding us of one of Einstein's pearls when he says that stupidity is nothing but doing the same thing over and over again, and waiting. different results. This imbalance of local worldviews is the axiom of a potential Balkan proxy.

The Balkans is the natural border between East and West, and like any other border, it is divided and established by language and balances of power. The east-west demarcation is not only a border war but a power model war. This was clearly seen in the last elections in Serbia. In other words, on the one hand we have a Balkans that sees the EU and NATO where membership criteria are the rule of law, democracy, human rights, etc., on the other hand we have a nostalgic Balkans with the Republic of Serbia and Serbia where the Putinist model of the state and logic of force are decisive.

"Serbian world" is the project of Greater Serbia which the Putinists in Belgrade seek to implement through 3 key factors: democracy, demography and force. The three-vector plan is clearly active mainly in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, and North Macedonia. But of course military force is Belgrade's karma. There is no danger of aggression against Serbia, so the only explanation for the strengthening of the Serbian army is to use it aggressively to achieve the goals of building the Serbian world.

In the indicators of the progressive growth of the defense budget, Serbia is at the top of the list of European countries. The trend of increasing military spending in Serbia has been observed since 2016. According to the London Economist, defense spending in Serbia has increased by about 70%, reaching 1.4 billion dollars per year in the last six years. Mi-35M attack helicopters, Mi-17V transport helicopters, MiG-29 fighter jets, T-72 tanks, BRDM armored vehicles, Wing Loong drones, PVO Pancir S1 and S-400 missile systems are part of the new Serbian armaments , bought and donated by Russia, Belarus and new friend China.

Foreign magazines place Serbia in the second place in the world, in terms of the number of weapons in the hands of citizens. According to Deutsche Welle, experts estimate that around one million illegal weapons are in the hands of Serbian citizens. According to the Guardian, for several years Serbia has been supplying the Serbian entity of Bosnia-Herzegovina with automatic rifles, in training centers with Russian advisers and members of the paramilitary group "Honor of Serbia" trained in Russia, often parade in the streets of Banja Luka. Meanwhile, former Serbian politician Nenad Canak, just a few days ago, raised the alarm of the danger of war in the Balkans, mentioning the arming of Serbian groups through the Serbian Orthodox Church. According to Çanak, in Bosnia-Herzegovina the smuggling of weapons for the Russian terrorist camps of Dodik goes through the Serbian Orthodox Church, in Kosovo all terrorism and 'patriotic' weaponry goes through KOS and in Montenegro the Serbs are armed to the teeth, while elections are bought through the church.

The hybrid war model of 2014, when Russian soldiers without identification marks entered the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, an act that led to its annexation by Russia, was executed last September in Banjska, Zvecan. All elements can be repeated such scenarios exist. The "Serbian world" project and Belgrade's will for destabilizing acts in order to replace Western influence in the region is evident. The victory of Aleksandar Vucic in the parliamentary elections in Serbia, according to political analysts, will increase the efforts of supporters of the "Serbian world" in favor of Serbian-Russian interests. This is clearly seen in the political deadlock in Montenegro. While the Prime Minister of Montenegro, Milojko Spajic, presented in Brussels the work plan of the government's European agenda for the next year, Mandic, the leader of the Serbian New Democracy (member of the pro-Serbian and pro-Russian Democratic Front) emphasized that the priorities of his party's foreign policy are the lifting of sanctions against Russia and the withdrawal of recognition of Kosovo's independence. His party remains an opponent of Montenegro's membership in NATO.

Thus, with an army that gets stronger year by year, with pro-Serb political ghettos in armed Serbian minorities in Kosovo, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina, with Russian military bases in Nis and Banja Luka, with a strategy document national that allows the Serbian state to "intervene" in other countries where there is a Serbian population to protect them, Serbia is trying to place itself at the negotiating table with the EU as a potential destabilizer for the West. Before this reality, the calls for the harmonization of the Serbian foreign and security policy with that of the EU are completely comical.

The situation imposed by Serbia makes it inevitable to arm the bordering countries with defense capabilities. Especially in the conditions when the Serbs of Kosovo and those of Bosnia-Herzegovina have shown in recent years that they have the potential but also the desire for possible conflicts. The delusions of Belgrade have a hard time digesting the reality of Kosovo. Under these conditions, the presence of KFOR for quick defensive response in Kosovo, while the government of Serbia does not hide its desire to sponsor, support, finance and create the "Serbian world", is not enough. The three-vector project of creating a "Serbian world" is not limited to peaceful means. The slide towards an armed conflict seems an inevitable option, so the program of equipping Serbia's neighbors, led by Kosovo, with defensive combat capabilities is also inevitable. Despite the fact that Serbia is surrounded by NATO member countries, the history of international relations has shown in similar cases that the side that has weak military strength does not guarantee security, stability and stability. Otherwise the future is no more certain than the present. He who gives up liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security, says Benjamin Franklin.