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The US has changed its strategy, it is no longer present in the homes of its allies, but forces them to run around and fight over who pays the most for a visit to its backyard...
The Balkan states continue to be without the presence of an American ambassador. Currently, Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, and North Macedonia are without one. Some of them have not had an ambassador since before Donald Trump came to power, others since after he came to power.
This effect was initiated by Trump's confidants as early as 2024, with JD Vance suspending a series of nominations submitted by the Joe Biden administration. Then, with the arrival of the Trump administration, it was decided that there would be a reformatting of the US diplomatic corps around the world, which led to the withdrawal of several ambassadors in several countries and left without proposals countries that had already been without the presence of an ambassador for almost three years, as is the case with Albania.
The absence of an American ambassador in the Balkan countries means a free hand to sin for the leaders with increasingly autocratic tendencies of the Western Balkans, but as is known, sins are paid for in the end.
At first glance, this approach of the Trump administration seemed as if the US was giving up its influence in the Balkans, but time showed something completely different. After more than a year of governance by Donald Trump, we understood that the philosophy of the US President is: “nothing is free”, which means that in order to have contacts with the US, countries, governments, leaders, politicians have to pay.
In other words, the presence of an ambassador made it very simple and cost-free to send and receive messages and codes from the US for certain political actions and beyond. The ambassador served as an intermediary, but this entire process was paid for by US funds. With the arrival of Donald Trump, things have changed. Embassies have been almost emptied and their function in the countries where they operate has been minimized so much that their most frequent reaction is to repost statements by Trump and Marco Rubio on social networks. Contact with Trump administration officials now costs millions.
In this second term, Trump has used his position, and precisely this vacuum, to enrich his family, close people, and those who remained loyal to him while he fought to get a second term in the White House, which he claimed Joe Biden stole from him. This approach of Trump is not hidden, it is done openly and the President of the United States promotes it with pomp.
Since his rise to power, a flood of millions of dollars in lobbying has flowed into lobbying firms run by people close to Trump administration officials. From Albania to Serbia to Bosnia and Herzegovina, various leaders and politicians have spent millions of dollars in official and underground lobbying to reach the Trump administration; some to remove the stain from the DASH, some to remove sanctions from the Treasury Department, and some to ensure that their rotten power will not collapse in a second, as in the case of Venezuela's Maduro.
Trump's new approach of having those who need it pay for US aid has been successful, and the numbers show it. From January 2025, the start of Donald Trump's second term, to January 2026, total official federal lobbying spending in the US reached $5.08 billion, according to an analysis by OpenSecrets (the leading organization that monitors lobbying in the US), based on federal reports submitted through the end of 2025. This figure is a historic record in the US, where for the first time official lobbying spending in Washington has exceeded $5 billion.
Compared to Joe Biden's last year in power, there is an increase of 635 million dollars in lobbying and it is expected that next year this figure will be exceeded. In these conditions and with these figures, it is not a small thing but safe to say that the time of ambassadors in countries like Albania, Kosovo and Serbia is over. The US has changed its strategy, it is no longer present in the homes of its allies, but forces them to run and fight over who pays the most for a visit to its yard./ Pamphlet
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