The United States Army War College educates and develops leaders for service at the strategic level while advancing knowledge in the global application of Landpower.
The purpose of the United States Army War College is to produce graduates who are skilled critical thinkers and complex problem solvers. Concurrently, it is our duty to the U.S. Army to also act as a “think factory” for commanders and civilian leaders at the strategic level worldwide and routinely engage in discourse and debate concerning the role of ground forces in achieving national security objectives.
The Western Balkans is transforming into one of the primary fronts of confrontation between global powers, where Russia’s and Serbia’s hybrid strategies directly challenge the stability and sovereignty of countries in the region. This paper examines the complex dimensions of this hybrid warfare, focusing on recent attacks in Banjska and Zvecan, which signify a deliberate escalation aimed at destabilizing Kosovo. Through the use of demographic manipulations, sabotage of critical infrastructure, and the provocation of ethnic tensions, Russia and Serbia are leveraging the Balkans as a battleground to advance their strategic projects, such as “Srpski Svet” and “Ruski Mir”.
Hybrid warfare has made the transition from being a purely theoretical concern to a multifaceted and pervasive strategy that fundamentally affects the structure of modern societies. It has transcended the boundaries of propaganda and disinformation, by transforming these tools into powerful weapons to influence democratic processes and government decision-making. In this context, the Western Balkans represents a dynamic laboratory where hybrid strategies are clearly manifested, which not only challenge the stability of the region, but also reconfigures its political and social landscape.
The MEK (Mojahedin-e Khalq), a terrorist group that has long engaged in terrorism and sabotage against the Iranian people and government, has in recent years tried to use deceptive advertising and staged conferences in various countries, including Berlin, to portray a different image of itself to the world. These conferences, full of false claims that contradict Iran’s internal realities, not only serve as a platform for spreading lies and distorting facts but also aim to incite public opinion and Western governments against Iran by creating a false image of Iranian society.
Hungary’s military neutrality towards the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine angers the West much more than Serbia’s economic neutrality.
Viktor Orban’s chief of staff Gergely Gulyas confirmed that his country foiled plots by some foreign spy agencies, including those of unnamed nominal NATO allies, to redirect Hungarian-purchased arms and ammo to Ukraine and Africa where they’d respectively be used directly and indirectly against Russia. Hungary remains military neutral in the NATO-Russian dimension of the New Cold War despite going along with the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions. Orban has also recently sought to mediate in Ukraine.
An Italian opposition MP has lambasted the start of the scheme to process migrants in Albania as a fiasco – but locals living near the new facilities are eyeing up potential economic benefits.
The first ship bringing migrants intercepted at sea by Italy’s navy to Albania to facilities intended to shore up the EU country’s external borders docked on Wednesday at the port of Shengjin.
The election of Bujar Spahiu as the new head of the Albanias an Muslim Community was marred by opponents’ allegations that he supports Turkish cleric Fetullah Gulen, who is wanted for arrest by the Ankara government.
Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto warned that in addition to the Middle East, there is another front potentially as explosive, which is Kosovo. The interlocutors of Kosovo Online doubt such a scenario but also warn that any radicalization of the situation in the region could lead to new conflicts.
A geopolitical issue of South-East Europe became of very importance for scholars, policymakers, and researchers with the question of the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire as one of the most crucial features of the beginning of the 20th century in European history. A graduate collapse of the one-time great empire was accelerated and followed by competition and struggle by both, the European Great Powers and the Balkan national states, upon the territorial inheritance of it. While the European Great Powers had the aim to obtain new spheres of political-economic influence in South-East Europe, followed by the task to establish a new balance of power in the continent, a total collapse of the Ottoman state was seen by small Balkan nations as the unique historical opportunity to enlarge the territories of their national-states by the unification of all ethnolinguistic compatriots from the Ottoman Empire with the motherland. The creation of a single national state, composed of all ethnographic and historic “national” lands, was in the eyes of the leading Balkan politicians as a final stage of national awakening, revival, and liberation of their nations which started at the turn of the 19th century on the ideological basis of the German romanticist nationalism expressed in a formula: “One Language-One Nation-One State”.[1]
