On April 29, 1999, precision-guided NATO bombs tore through the brick facades of two defense-ministry buildings in Belgrade, the capital of the rump state of Yugoslavia. The targets were chosen more for symbolic reasons than operational ones: The American-led coalition wanted to send the country’s authoritarian government, at that time engaged in a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, a clear message that human rights weren’t just words. They were backed by weapons.
For decades, the ruins of the buildings, on either side of a major artery through central Belgrade, were left largely untouched. Tangled concrete and twisted rebar stuck out of pancaked floors. Serbian architects fought to preserve the destroyed buildings; the government has treated them as a war memorial.At the time of the 1999 NATO bombings, Aleksandar Vučić, Serbia’s minister of information, was tasked with denouncing the West and backing his country’s despot, Slobodan Milošević.
Vučić is not Milošević—he has not led his country into genocidal wars or faced judgment for war crimes at The Hague—but until recently, he might have expected that his authoritarian style would make relations with Washington rocky. That time is past. Instead of harshly condemning Serbia’s abuses, America’s president, Donald Trump, will build a Trump Tower Belgrade on top of the defense buildings’ ruins. “Belgrade welcomes a Global Icon,” the slick website for Trump Belgrade proclaims. “TRUMP. Unrivaled Luxury.” The contract for the project has been signed with Affinity Partners, Jared Kushner’s investment firm, which is largely funded with billions of dollars in cash from Saudi Arabia.
This story is the material expression of the second Trump administration’s turn against a long-standing tradition of Western democracy promotion—and of an embrace of conflicts of interest from which the world’s despots can only take inspiration. The authoritarians who govern small countries such as Serbia no longer need to fear the condemnation, much less the bombs, of the American president when they crack down on their opponents, enrich themselves, or tighten their grip on power. On the contrary—the American flirtation with similar practices emboldens them.
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