The influence of the small state factor and historical traumas on the foreign policy of Serbia in the context of the confrontation between Russia and Western countries

The subject of this article is the foreign policy of Serbia as a small country in relation to Russia and the West during their confrontation since 2022. The object of the study is the Republic of Serbia. The author focuses on the analysis of Belgrade's behavior through the concept of a "small state" and through the peculiarities of the historical development of the republic. When analyzing the factors of small countries, special attention is paid to their foreign policy strategies, which were identified by researchers of the 20th century and which Belgrade is currently applying. In identifying the factors of the historical development of political leadership in Belgrade from a comparative perspective, the focus of the study is on the periods of external Yugoslavia under J. Broz Tito and the opposite course under S. Milosevic. All these factors add up and explain Serbia's chosen foreign policy strategy of balancing between the two major players. The study uses social constructivism to analyze how Serbia's historically established identity (Tito's neutrality, Milosevic's isolationism) influences its current foreign policy course. The Neorealist approach is used to assess the systemic constraints that Belgrade faces as a small country. The official content analysis allows to analyze the statements of the Serbian authorities and the media discourse in a given period. The novelty of this study lies in the analysis of the internal political factors of the Republic of Serbia in the context of its foreign policy strategy in the period from 2022. The analysis of Serbia's foreign policy through the prism of the theories of small countries is also new. In the Russian scientific literature, research is focused only on the bilateral relations between Moscow and Belgrade. In this paper, we study the factors that motivate the Serbian leadership to conduct relations with both Russia and the West. The author concludes that Serbia's foreign policy remains strategically cautious and balanced between the great powers due to historical experience (the negative consequences of the isolation of the 1990s under Milosevic and defeat in the Yugoslav wars, on the one hand, and Tito's neutrality and the growth of the Yugoslav economy, on the other) until internal and external circumstances they will force Belgrade to make a choice in favor of one of the great powers.

Serbia, Small State, A. Vucic, Russia, Belgrade, Ukraine, Kosovo, European Union, EU, NATO