Edit“Greater Serbia has not been historically defeated,” argues Serbian historian
Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Kosovo are subjected to continuous destabilization so that their fragility may one day be cited as justification for intervention or revision
Thirty-five years after the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia began, the ideological core of Greater Serbia has neither been defeated on the battlefield of history nor delegitimized in Serbian political culture, says Serbian historian Milivoj Bešlin.
Milivoj Bešlin is a historian and senior research associate at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. He is the author of the two-volume monograph Ideas of Modern Serbia in Socialist Yugoslavia, as well as numerous scholarly articles, studies, and contributions published in national and international academic journals and edited volumes.
What once appeared under the banners of the 19th-century Načertanije, the Chetnik vision of a “Homogeneous Serbia,” or the Milošević-era war machine has merely changed its name and refined its methods. Today it is called the “Serb World” (Srpski svet) – a phrase lifted from contemporary Russian propaganda yet firmly anchored in two centuries of Serbian expansionist thought.
Under President Aleksandar Vučić, Serbia conducts a regional policy that is unmistakably revanchist. It regards every post-Yugoslav border as provisional and every neighboring state with a significant Serb minority as an illegitimate or failing project. The objective is no longer the crude territorial conquest of the 1990s but the establishment of permanent Serbian hegemony within formally recognized boundaries. Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Kosovo are subjected to continuous destabilization so that their fragility may one day be cited as justification for intervention or revision.
This policy enjoys the tacit or explicit endorsement of the dominant currents in Serbia’s political and intellectual elite – the same milieu that produced the intellectual scaffolding for the wars of the Milošević period. A powerful tabloid media empire, neo-fascist in tone and inflammatory in content, performs double duty: domestically it sustains a climate of fear and distraction that shields the regime from accountability for corruption and institutional collapse; regionally it functions as a weapon of psychological warfare, sowing division and demoralization in neighboring societies while keeping alive the prospect of renewed conflict. As one of the regime’s senior figures, Ivica Dačić, once candidly remarked, the country is merely preparing for “the second half” of the unfinished project of the 1990s.
The “Serb World” differs from earlier Greater-Serbian programs in its deliberate lack of a single canonical document. Its adaptability is its strength. In Bosnia-Herzegovina it already exercises de facto control over nearly half the territory through the Republika Srpska entity and its secessionist leadership. In Montenegro it succeeded, between 2020 and 2023, in capturing the state apparatus and continues to dominate through the Serbian Orthodox Church and allied political forces. In northern Kosovo it maintains parallel structures and a permanent capacity for provocation. Even in Croatia, Belgrade claims the right to act as protector – and therefore implicit co-sovereign, of the Serb minority.
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The current phase is a tactical retreat from open territorial revisionism to a subtler doctrine of limited sovereignty over neighboring states. Borders are no longer publicly challenged (at least not yet), but the independence of Montenegro, Bosnia, and Kosovo is systematically eroded. Vučić no longer presents himself simply as president of the Republic of Serbia; he positions himself as the leader of all Serbs in the region and, by extension, as a bearer of sovereignty in every country where Serbs reside.
This external ambition is inseparable from the internal erosion of democracy. Greater-Serbian ideology has always demanded homogenization: Montenegrin identity must be dissolved, Bosnian Muslims expelled or subordinated, Croats punished, Kosovo Albanians silenced. The same logic operates within Serbia itself, where national uniformity is used to justify the destruction of political pluralism. Electoral manipulation that the democratic opposition condemns when directed against it in Belgrade is applauded when deployed to install pro-Serbian governments in Podgorica or Banja Luka. The methods are identical, only the victims change.
By late 2025, Serbia has entered the most perilous phase of the Vučić era. Sustained student and civic protests have met with repression that has escalated into what many observers now characterize as state terror. Institutions have been hollowed out, and elections, when they occur, have lost all meaning.
The regime has set in motion a spiral of violence whose termination it can no longer dictate. The longer institutional channels are blocked and terror intensified, the higher the eventual cost of political resolution will be.
Only a democratic Serbia that unambiguously accepts existing borders, renounces hegemonic pretensions, and treats its neighbors as equal partners can bring the era of Yugoslav succession wars to a genuine close. Until such a Serbia emerges, the “Serbian World” will remain the central destabilizing force in the Western Balkans – an undead project that has learned to survive by constantly changing its name while never abandoning its essence.
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Caption: A četnik flag in Belgrade, X, public domain.
Updated: December 2, 2025 - 13:49
