The Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Mark Rutte, is expected to use his visit to Pristina, on March 11, to offer guarantees that the European contingent within the alliance’s mission in Kosovo, KFOR, will remain there, regardless of any movement of American military forces.
This is according to Ivan Vejvoda, a researcher at the Institute for Humanities in Vienna, according to whom Mark Rutte’s visit to Kosovo is now very important, considering the geopolitical situation, the new American administration, Russia’s continued war in Ukraine, and “rumors – whether founded or not – that the United States is reconsidering its position in NATO”, reports Free Europe.
Add to this “the fact that, as the Americans say, there is still unfinished business in the Balkans,” Vejvoda said in an interview with Radio Free Europe.
The issue of reconsidering the US position in Europe has begun to circulate since statements made by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in February, when he said that Europeans cannot expect the US military presence on the continent to last forever, while calling on Europeans to increase defense spending.
Even US President Donald Trump has called for Europeans to pay more in this sector, raising questions about whether they would now be able to defend the US, as NATO’s Article 5 requires.
The US has around 100.000 troops in Europe, of which 600 are stationed in Kosovo, as part of KFOR, which has a total of around 4.600 members.
The US Department of Defense told Radio Free Europe a few days ago that for now there are no planned changes in terms of the positioning of their forces.
Even Vejvoda does not believe that American troops can leave Kosovo, at least in the next six months. He believes that KFOR would function stably even without the American presence.
NATO chief Rutte himself said days ago that stability in Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia is in the interest of everyone in the Western military alliance, and that he sees no reason to believe that there could be any dramatic change in terms of American commitment to NATO.
Rutte’s visit to Kosovo follows his visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina on March 10, where he gave the message that the alliance will not allow “the hard-won peace to be jeopardized.”
“We are not in 1992 and we will not allow any security vacuum to be created.” “I know that EUFOR [European Union Force] is fully prepared to guarantee a stable security environment,” Rutte said, referring to the period of the outbreak of war in this country.
He also stated that NATO fully supports the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bosnia, and that the Dayton Agreement – which ended the fighting in 1995 – is the foundation that must be respected.
On March 7, EUFOR announced that it would temporarily increase the number of its members, as a preventive measure, following increased tensions in the country.