The growing Sino-Serbian military partnership and its implications on Western Balkans' peace and security

  Focus - Allegati
  15 December 2022
  14 minutes, 11 seconds

Abstract

The delivery of Chinese FK-3 surface-to-air missiles to Serbia reflected the growing collaboration between Serbia and China in the military field. The military is certainly not the only area of cooperation between the two countries with the economy playing a key role considering the amount of Chinese investment in infrastructure projects in Serbia. However, because of Serbia’s tensions with some of its neighbors, the arms build-up by Belgrade has alarmed leaders in the region and in the West. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Sino-Serbian military collaboration while also looking at its implications on the region’s security.

Author

Jovan Knezevic - Junior Researcher, Mondo Internazionale G.E.O. - Difesa e Sicurezza

Introduction

In April 2022, six Y-20 cargo jets delivered the Chinese FK-3 surface-to-air missiles to Serbia. This marked the second military transaction between the two countries, the first one being the delivery of six CH-92A drones in 2020. As the military ties between the two countries grow, political leaders in the region as well as in the West fear that Serbia’s acquisitions of Chinese arms may endanger peace and security in Western Balkans. As a matter of fact, the military is only one of the areas of cooperation between the two countries, the most important one being economy. Indeed, China has been investing significantly in infrastructure projects in Serbia in light of the country’s strategic position for the One Belt and One Road Initiative (OBOR). The OBOR is a commercial corridor connecting China to the European Union (EU) through infrastructure projects that allow Chinese goods to reach the wealthy markets in the EU. However, it is the military ties between the two countries that politicians in the region and in Western countries fear the most. Indeed, Belgrade holds frosty relations with some of its neighbors and the resentment against NATO and the West is still an issue. For these reasons, analysts and politicians believe that the military cooperation with China might push Serbia to adopt a more assertive behavior vis à vis its unfriendly neighbors. The aim of this paper is to analyze the growing Sino-Serbian military partnership and its consequences on the region’s already fragile security. For analytical purposes, the paper is divided into two main sections: the first one discusses the evolution of the partnership and details on the weapons supplied by China, while the second one is aimed at assessing the effects of the military collaboration on the region’s security.


Serbia’s military cooperation with China

While economy is the most relevant aspect that ties China and Serbia, cooperation in the military field has increased in the last years. Indeed, according to the 2009 National Security Strategy of the Republic of Serbia, People’s Republic of China is mentioned among the country’s key international partners in the field of defense and security (Strategija Nacionalne Bezbednosti Republike Srbije, 2009). It is worth noting that, in those years Serbia embraced “military neutrality”. According to this concept, the country refrains from joining military alliances without ruling out collaboration on military issues at a bilateral or multilateral level. The role that NATO played in Kosovo’s secession indeed caused Belgrade to adopt a different attitude toward military alliances. The importance of China for Serbia’s security was reiterated in the subsequent National Security Strategies, also in relation to Serbia’s territorial integrity. Indeed, because of its refusal to recognize Kosovo’s independence, China is considered by Serbia as a key diplomatic protector of the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity (Strategija Nacionalne Bezbednosti Republike Srbije, 2020) even more so because of its status as Permanent Member within the United Nations Security Council.

The intensification of Sino-Serbian military ties was reflected in the numerous exchange of visits between representatives of the respective armies and ministries of defense since 2016. Such initiatives advanced the military cooperation between the two countries. Among the main topics were counterterrorism and purchase of Chinese weapons through semi-secret agreements (CEAS). However, the most evident manifestation of the growing military collaboration between the two countries was the delivery of Chinese-produced Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and surface-to-air missiles. In June 2020, Serbia took delivery of six CH-92A drones manufactured by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation and 18 FT-8C laser-guided missiles. The Chinese-produced drones were later used in a military drill attended by President Aleksandar Vucic under the name Cooperation (Vuksanovic, 2021). The CH-92A can be used both for surveillance/reconnaissance purposes and as an attack drone. It has a 250 km radius and can fly up to 16,400 feet with a maximum speed of 124 miles per hour. Each drone can be equipped with up to two FT-8C, laser-guided missiles with a range of 9 km plus thermal cameras, laser rangefinder, a targeter with a range of 12 km and a moving target indicator (Roblin, 2020). Most importantly, along with the delivery of the Chinese UAVs was a transfer of technology that is helping Serbia produce its own drone known as “Pegasus” (B92, 2022). The technological expertise China offered to Serbian engineers played a crucial role in the completion of the Pegasus project, especially for the realization of the launching pad (B92, 2022). Indeed, according to Serbian media, Pegasus drones are very similar to the Chinese CH-92A in terms of capabilities, with the Serbian model being slightly smaller. Thanks to the delivery of the CH-92A and the manufacturing of its own drones, Serbia will reconstitute the 353rd Intelligence Surveillance squadron, inactive since 2006. In turn, this will allow the country to police its air space and to “have minimal deterrence capabilities against any external air force” (Vuksanovic, 2021). Indeed, pursuing air superiority is seen as a top priority in Serbia ahead of the Nazi invasion in 1941 and the NATO bombings in 1999 when the country had to deal with superior air power (Vuksanovic, 2021).

Apart from UAVs, China has supplied Serbia with HQ-22, (FK-3 is the export version) surface-to-air missile systems, a sign of growing military cooperation between the two countries. The Chinese missiles were delivered to Serbia using six Chinese Y-20 cargo jets that landed at Belgrade airport in April 2022. The fact that the delivery took place during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine alarmed some Western analysts. According to them, Serbia wanted to emulate its historical ally and launch a military operation against its regional enemies (Urciolo, 2022).

One battery of the FK-3 system typically consists of 3 Transporter Erector Launchers vehicles which are based on a 8x8 military truck carrying four missile containers. The battery also features one H-200 multifunctional illumination and a pointing radar (Army Recognition, 2022). FK-3 are designed to destroy planes, drones, cruise missiles and helicopters up to 27 km in altitude, even under adverse weather conditions (Urciuolo, 2022). The missiles have a firing range of 170 km while “the whole air defense system can engage up to 6 aerial targets at the same time” (Army Recognition, 2022). The FK-3 surface-to-air-missile system can be compared to the American Patriot or the Russian S-300 (Stojanovic, 2022), which made some analysts believe that, Serbia was replacing Russia with China as its main non-Western military partner (Urciuolo, 2022).

Overall, the Sino-Serbian military relationship is mutually beneficial. For Serbia, the military partnership with China is a way to modernize its outdated defense systems, especially in terms of airspace control and patrolling (Vuksanovic, 2021). Moreover, unlike US or EU member states’ produced-drones and missiles, Chinese ones are cheaper and come with no political requirements from Beijing, an aspect which the President of Serbia and the ruling party appreciate (Pestarino, 2020). Last but not least, military transactions with China allow Serbia to pursue its balancing act between West and East, taking advantage of the geopolitical competition among the great powers.

China, for its part, is “mainly motivated by trade ambitions” (Fruscione, 2021) in its military cooperation with Serbia. Indeed, “the idea of establishing defense industry cooperation with Europe has appealed to China for years” (Vuksanovic, 2021), and Serbia, being the first country in Europe to receive Chinese produced drones and missiles, represents a big opportunity for China's defense industry (Pestarino, 2020). In addition, by fostering military ties with Serbia, China can further increase its already strong foothold in Serbia and Western Balkans, showing that it is not only a relevant economic player but also a military one.

How Sino-Serbian military partnership is threatening peace and stability in the region

Serbia’s growing military ties with China raised concerns regionally and internationally. Indeed, Serbia’s purchase of Chinese weapons caused harsh reactions by the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, who stated that Belgrade’s almost constant acquisition of military capability poses a risk to the region (Glas Amerike, 2022). It is worth recalling that Serbians and Kossovars fought against one another in the 1990s over the issue of Kosovo’s secession from the then Yugoslavia and that tensions between the two countries are still high. For his part, the President of the NATO member Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, criticized Serbia’s tendency to buy weapons from countries which are NATO and EU enemies (Glas Amerike, 2022). Whereas Montenegro’s secession from Serbia was a peaceful process, relations between the two countries have deteriorated recently, especially among the political elites. Western countries were concerned as well, because they feared that Serbia’s military partnership with China may fuel another war. In this respect, Germany and the US were particularly vocal, inviting Serbia to align with the EU's foreign and security policy if it wanted to join the Union or other Western alliances (Stojanovic, 2022). It must be noted that, however, China is not Serbia’s only military partner. Indeed, the country has collaborated militarily with both Western (United States of America, Norway, Denmark, Great Britain, France) and non-Western countries (Russia, Israel) but also with military alliances such as NATO and the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization. Belgrade has also received weapons from many of these states with the United States being Serbia’s most important donor followed by China, Norway and Denmark (Vuksanovic, 2020). Still, the fact that Belgrade is strengthening its military ties with an authoritarian, anti-NATO country such as China is perceived as a source of insecurity in the region.

Nevertheless, while Serbia’s military exchanges with China may increase neighboring states’ insecurity, a war in the Balkans prompted by Serbia is highly unlikely for the time being. In spite of Belgrade’s political tensions with Kosovo Albanians, the Muslim entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, Belgrade has no interest in engaging in a war. The reasons for this lack of interest are multiple and cannot be addressed in this paper. In fact, the President of Serbia confirmed that the purchase of Chinese weapons is to be seen as “only a powerful deterrent against potential attackers” (Al Jazeera, 2022).

Apart from directly threatening security in the Balkans, Serbia’s arms build-up with Chinese weapons may also affect other socio-political dynamics in Serbia which, in turn, can negatively impact on the region’s fragile security landscape. China is one of Serbia's most important economic partners with €10 billion of investments (Stanicek, Tarpova, 2022), of which €8 billion were used for infrastructural projects. However, most of these investments lack transparency and are often used for projects which have a harmful impact on the environment and on society. Indeed, according to some legal experts, China’s influence in Serbia had a negative impact on the country’s legal system and already fragile democracy. In their words, “its business activities increased the number of loopholes in the law, which made exceptions for highly polluting large-scale infrastructure investments” (Wang, Resare, 2021). For their part, Serbian politicians are more than eager to collaborate with China as this allows them to finance large-scale, infrastructural projects with little political demands from Beijing (BIRN, 2020). In this context, the growing military ties with China may further curb democracy in Serbia as most of the military agreements between the two countries are semi-secret and lack transparency. This became evident in 2020, when Vucic refused to reveal the price of the CH-92A drones (Vuksanovic, 2021). As in the case of Chinese investments and loans, “Belgrade likes the fact that transactions with China are non-transparent and do not involve the same stringent legal standards as the ones with the EU'' (Vuksanovic, 2021). The deteriorating status of democracy in Serbia can have destabilizing effects on the social and political landscape of the country and on its neighbors. Moreover, it can complicate Belgrade’s relations with its regional “enemies”.

More in general, the benefits derived from the military collaboration with China may push Serbia further toward its partners in the East in its complex foreign policy balancing act between EU/US on the one side and Russia and China on the other. This, in turn, will affect domestic and regional dynamics because both Russia and China, albeit to a lesser extent, support Serbian interest in the Balkans, fueling inter-ethnic tensions and instability. Also, with a cheaper and less politically and legally demanding military market, Beijing provides Belgrade with an alternative to the EU in terms of military collaboration.


Conclusion

The purpose of this paper was to discuss the increasingly strong military ties between China and Serbia while also looking at their implications on the region’s peace and security. Although a war prompted by Serbia in the Balkans is highly unlikely, Belgrade’s arms build up through Chinese provided weapons may indeed be a source of instability regionally.

If no action is taken by Western powers, the two countries are likely to further deepen their military collaboration because of the mutual benefits that stem from it. Consequently, other leaders in the region may be encouraged to engage in military partnerships with China, which will be more than eager to expand its defense market beyond Serbia. Most importantly, Serbia’s increased arms build up with China may lead to a “security dilemma” in which Serbia’s regional enemies engage in their own “arms race”. In doing so, they will try to increase their defense capabilities. At the same time, they will increase regional instability as well.


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