Letter from Washington: US Puts Energy, Commerce at Core of Balkans Policy

Greetings from Washington, where over the past month there have been three firearm-related incidents in the immediate vicinity of President Donald Trump, one of them an assassination attempt.

In an atmosphere of constant emergency, officials are weighing up the end of the war with Iran and the possibility of military intervention in Cuba, while Congress is consumed by battles between Republicans loyal to Trump and Republicans who failed to secure the president’s endorsement, lost their primaries, and only then remembered their role as checks and balances to the executive branch.

It is very busy here, but somehow this month the Balkans also made it onto the official agenda: the State Department sent a report to Congress, in accordance with the Western Balkans Stability and Prosperity Act, finally telling us what the Trump administration wants in the region.

The report eschews the language of Trump’s Make-America-Great-Again movement, but its messages are consistent with MAGA policy: the Balkans matter as a region for advancing American commercial interests, and the precondition for that is stability.