Europe anxious over potential Trump return, Kosovo PM admits

The growing potential of Donald Trump’s return to the White House fills European leaders with “stress and anxiety,” in large part because of the former US president’s proclivity for wild and unexpected policy swings, Kosovo’s prime minister told Semafor in an interview.

Albin Kurti also said that his own poor relations with Richard Grenell — previously a Trump special envoy for peace negotiations between Kosovo and Serbia — “could be a challenge,” were Grenell to secure another senior foreign policy or national security position in a new Trump administration.

Kurti urged Western nations to ease Kosovo’s path to join NATO and the European Union, pointing to increased defense spending amounting to 2% of GDP, a target set by the military alliance for its members.

“We deserve more,” he said.

The risk of a geopolitical crisis in the Balkans is a persistent worry for the West: Kosovo and Serbia — from which the former declared independence in 2008 — are persistently at loggerheads, with Pristina demanding Belgrade recognize it as a sovereign state, and Serbia arguing Kosovo treats its Serb communities poorly.

Kurti said that “unprecedented” polarization in the United States was increasingly an issue for European leaders, who have to grapple with the uncertainty surrounding US politics in much the same way as American politicians: “There are certain aspects of governance, and policymaking, and of public opinion that the US nowadays is facing for the first time,” he said.

Speaking on the sidelines of an event at the ODI global affairs think tank in London, Kurti said long-term US support for Kosovo was unlikely to change, but “with the return of President Trump… there is a certain stress and anxiety across the continent, and Kosovo is no different.” The issue, he continued, was not that “something bad can happen,” but rather “anxiety for something unknown.” Put simply: “What they [the US] will do and how they will think, and how a certain urgency can hijack the entire agenda, this is what people worry most” about.

Kosovo has upped its defense spending to meet NATO’s 2% defense target, Kurti added, despite not being a member of the bloc: European nations spending below that threshold and not taking on enough of a military burden was a bugbear of Trump’s during his time in office. “So perhaps we are not at the top of [Trump’s] list,” the Kosovar leader said, laughing. “He will be dealing with some other countries beforehand.”

Kurti also pushed for increased engagement with NATO and to join the alliance, but that ambition is currently blocked by four member states, and Kosovo lacks recognized statehood under the United Nations, another hurdle. “We do not have the imminent threat like Ukraine or like Moldova from the Russian Federation, but Kosovo, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and even Montenegro, I must say, are not completely safe,” Kurti said. “We are not afraid, but we are vigilant. Our vigilance must also be supported by NATO.”

Referencing Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s trip to Serbia this month, Kurti said that between Beijing and Moscow, “Russia is more destructive… in the sense that Russia wants to see the democratic West and especially the US destroyed.” China, on the other hand, was “not into destroying the West or US, but rather into dividing it.”

Kurti’s comments are remarkable for their frankness, voicing in public what many European leaders, officials, and diplomats have said mostly in private: That a second Trump presidency poses a particular risk to Europe, which benefits from a US security umbrella and has built interconnected trade and economic ties across the Atlantic over the course of decades. Europe saw the value of both questioned repeatedly and the latter at times curtailed during Trump’s time in the White House.

Yet they also betray a growing worry about the US more broadly. Even under Joe Biden, the US has been slow to ferry much-needed military aid to Ukraine in recent months, and has erected protectionist measures which — while mostly targeted at China — have shut out European companies from key industries, too.

Kurti voices unalloyed support for the US: When asked whether Kosovo, like other small countries, faced a difficult choice between the US and China, he replied simply, “We don’t have to choose because we’ve already made that choice, and we never had nor have second thoughts.”

Washington, however, is not as happy with his government: Politico reported in June 2023 that Kurti is viewed by both Democrats and Republicans as “stubborn, and at times, reckless,” with the Biden administration blaming him for unrest in Serb-majority areas of northern Kosovo and the US ambassador to Belgrade acknowledging Washington has “some very fundamental issues with him.”

Grenell, meanwhile, has been a vocal critic of Kurti’s, saying just last week that the prime minister was “holding Kosovo back.”

Asked how he would deal with Grenell if he became a significant figure again , Kurti replied: “Yes, he criticized me time and again, but I don’t mind critique… If I don’t find the common language, if he happens to come back to some position, then perhaps I should try and make sure that my minister of foreign affairs does that job.” But he added, Grenell or other critics of his leadership in government “could be a challenge.”

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly dated a Politico story about US relations with Kurti to May 2024. It was published in June 2023.