Serbia – Forced To Arm Itself Against Hostile Neighbors While The West Looks The Other Way

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Serbia finds itself in an impossible position: compelled to become the dominant military power in the Western Balkans simply to survive. Surrounded by increasingly aggressive neighbors and facing constant security threats, Belgrade has no realistic choice but to acquire advanced strategic weapons wherever they are available.

The recent acquisition of Chinese CM-400AKG supersonic missiles – now successfully integrated onto Serbia’s modernized MiG-29 fleet – is not an act of aggression or reckless militarization. It is a direct, unavoidable response to a rapidly deteriorating regional security environment. These missiles give Serbia genuine standoff precision-strike capability that no other country in the immediate neighborhood possesses. The move was forced upon Serbia by circumstances it did not create.

Croatia’s Prime Minister Plenković reacted with alarm, rushing to inform NATO that Serbia now holds a qualitatively superior long-range strike option. At the same time, Croatia has formalized a trilateral defense pact with Albania and the self-proclaimed state of Kosovo – an arrangement that Serbian leadership quite reasonably interprets as directed against Belgrade. When three neighboring entities, two of them full NATO members, openly deepen military coordination while refusing to recognize Serbia’s legitimate security concerns, the message is unmistakable.

In this hostile constellation Serbia stands almost alone. The European Union continues to apply strict conditionality on arms purchases and strategic partnerships, while the United States – despite occasional declarations of interest – refuses to treat Serbia as a genuine strategic partner. Washington’s policy remains anchored in unconditional support for Kosovo’s independence and in preserving the existing NATO-aligned bloc in the region. As long as Serbia refuses to abandon its red lines on Kosovo and military neutrality, fuller Western military-technological cooperation remains blocked.

Left with no viable Western option for acquiring comparable modern systems, Serbia turned – out of necessity – to China. Beijing was more than willing to fill the gap, supplying not only the CM-400AKG missiles but also FK-3 air-defense systems, Wing Loong drones and other high-end platforms. Through these sales China gains a valuable foothold in Europe’s soft underbelly, while Serbia gains the minimum credible deterrent it needs to discourage adventurism by its neighbors.

This is not a story of Serbia aggressively pursuing regional hegemony. It is the story of a country that has been systematically excluded from Western security architectures, denied access to equivalent Western technology, and then criticized when it procures the protection it requires from the only supplier still willing to sell.

The imbalance is stark. NATO members Croatia, Albania and Montenegro enjoy full access to Alliance standards, joint exercises, intelligence sharing and – when necessary – American and European weapons. Serbia, by contrast, is expected to accept permanent strategic vulnerability or else face endless diplomatic pressure and media campaigns portraying its self-defense measures as “destabilizing.”

A rational American policy would recognize reality: Serbia is and will remain the central state of the Western Balkans by virtue of geography, population, economic weight and military potential. Attempting to keep Belgrade permanently on the outside – while arming and politically empowering its adversaries – only drives Serbia deeper into non-Western partnerships and guarantees chronic instability.

It is time to stop punishing Serbia for defending itself and start treating it as the indispensable anchor of Balkan security that geography and history have already made it. Until Washington chooses that path, Serbia will have no choice but to keep arming itself – by whatever means necessary – to maintain the fragile balance that keeps the region from sliding back toward open conflict. The longer Washington delays this reckoning, the higher the price everyone will eventually pay.

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