The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World has been learning a lot about the sociopolitical dynamics of Southeastern Europe while in Serbia for the past five days.1 The Serbian affection for Vladimir Putin is definitely a thing. The resentment directed at the European Union is most definitely another thing. Serbia’s flirtation with the BRICS and simultaneous desire for better relations with the United States is worthy of further discussion. The memory politics of the Kosovo war and NATO bombing of Serbia is worth some serious ruminations. I mean, this kind of graffiti is all over Belgrade:
I promise to write up all of these points later in the week. For now, however, I need to process the fact that the 2024 U.S. presidential election is going to be a totalizing news event. One of the hidden perks of the post-Trump era had been that one did not need to check any social media feeds to learn what the one-term president said or did while we were, you know, living our lives. Even as the general election campaign was heating up back home, a trip to the Western Balkans surely seemed like a way to forestall U.S. political news for a spell.
And then, of course, the New York Times’ Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman, and Jonathan Swan had to ruin everything with about Jared Kushner, Ric Grenell, and their real estate plans for the Balkans:
Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald J. Trump, confirmed on Friday that he was closing in on major real estate deals in Albania and Serbia, the latest example of the former president’s family doing business abroad even as Mr. Trump seeks to return to the White House.
Mr. Kushner’s plans in the Balkans appear to have come about in part through relationships built while Mr. Trump was in office. Mr. Kushner, who was a senior White House official, said he had been working on the deals with Richard Grenell, who served briefly as acting director of national intelligence under Mr. Trump and also as ambassador to Germany and special envoy to the Balkans.
One of the proposed projects would be the development of an island off the coast of Albania into a luxury tourist destination.
A second — with a planned luxury hotel and 1,500 residential units and a museum — is in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, at the site of the long-vacant former headquarters of the Yugoslav Army destroyed in 1999 by the NATO bombings, according to a member of Parliament in Serbia and Mr. Kushner’s company.
Now just to be clear, most of this story is about how Kushner and Grenell are using the contacts they developed while in office to try to make some money now that they are out of office. This leads to some hilarious cognitive dissonance from Kushner, who, “rejected any suggestion that he was getting preferential treatment because of his time in the government, or that any of the work was connected to the former president,” according to the Times. He then said, ““No one is ‘giving’ me deals. I operate fairly meticulously.”
Grenell, on the other hand, “has been vocal about his efforts to turn relationships he built in Albania and elsewhere in the Balkans into personal profits.” According to the Times story:
Mr. Grenell added in a nearly 90-minute television interview in Albania last year that there was nothing wrong with his deal making because he was now out of government. “I’m working on projects, private equity projects, that I get to make money on,” he said. “No one should ever apologize for wanting to make money.”
I’m sure Hunter Biden would agree.
A follow-up story by Lipton, Haberman, and Swan provided a bit more color on what Kushner and Grenell have planned in Belgrade:
The tentative agreement between the Kushner team and the Serbian government would grant Mr. Kushner’s investment firm a 99-year lease, at no charge, and the right to build a luxury hotel and apartment complex and a museum on the site of the former headquarters of the Yugoslav Ministry of Defense in Belgrade, which was bombed by NATO in 1999. A draft outline of the agreement was provided to The New York Times by a Serbian official….
Richard Grenell, whom Mr. Trump had appointed as a special envoy in the Balkans, pushed a related plan during the Trump administration that Serbia and the United States jointly work to rebuild the Defense Ministry site. He argued in favor of using American investments to transform the Belgrade site while he was still serving in his official capacity as an American diplomat in 2020, according to transcripts and a recording of remarks made during several government news conferences….
The draft outline of the agreement provided to The Times by a Serbian government official also specifies the option of formally transferring ownership of the property to Mr. Kushner’s partnership free of charge, after the hotel complex and luxury residential units are built.
Mr. Kushner, in an interview, did not dispute the veracity of the document obtained by The Times. He said the parties had tentatively agreed to give the Serbian government 22 percent of the profits generated by the approximately $500 million project….
Danijela Nestorovic, an opposition party member of Serbia’s Parliament, and other members of her party condemned the proposed Kushner deal in a statement to The Times, noting that several people were killed and 40 wounded during the period of the NATO attack when the building was struck.
“The General Staff HQ building is a memorial for us,” she said in the statement, referring to the bombed-out military headquarters. “It initiates deep, hidden emotions to the victims of the NATO bombing. To build a hotel there — it would be a mockery to the citizens of Serbia.”
Mr. Grenell, in an interview, said that the Kushner deal represented an opportunity to “turn a symbol of previous conflict into a bridge of friendship and renewal,” and that it “symbolizes the tremendous progress that has been made to heal the wounds from the past.”
I have only spent six days in the region, but I’d like to think I know a little something about: a) international affairs; and b) how Jared Kushner and Ric Grenell think. And I can assure you of the following points:
They believe using the spot of the NATO bombing to build a hotel would be a nifty feat of statecraft. There is a part of me that wishes that were true. The obvious problem is that the NATO bombing casts a long shadow in Belgrade, and I doubt that even a leader like Serbian leader Aleksandar Vučić can get Serbian public opinion to turn on a dime in response to the this kind of real estate development;
Jared Kushner absolutely believes that he has achieved everything in life on his own merits. He thinks those merits are significant. Of course, he also thinks that Israel’s assault on Gaza creates an opportunity because “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable” and “it’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.” That is… how to put this… emblematic of Kushner’s foreign policy acumen;
Vučić would strongly prefer Trump to win in November in the hopes that it would improve his bargaining situation in Kosovo. So I would expect the Serbian government to string Kushner and Grenell along for as long as possible;
It is honestly disturbing to see how well the Balkan mode of politics meshes with Trump acolytes. Little wonder that Kushner wants to do business here.
That is all.
One think I’ve learned: say “Southeastern Europe” on occasion rather than “Western Balkans” just to be on the safe side.
I'd be worried, except Jared says he's "operating fairly meticulously." What more do you want? "Reasonably carefully"? "More or less ethically"? "Sure, we're cutting some corners, but not any major ones"? "I checked it out with myself and Ambassador Grenell. We're mostly cool with it."
If Trump is reelected, that hotel project also would be a real symbol of the pivot from U.S. support to NATO and Free Europe to far-right nationalism. Imagine the POTUS’s name on a “museum” that doubtless would portray NATO as the aggressor.