As it struggles to manage the coronavirus crisis, the White House has begun casting around for policy victories that could fortify President Trump’s reelection chances. It has set its sights on a corner of the world that hasn’t topped American news cycles in some two decades—and which, if Trump has his way, may yet break down into the kind of nationalistic bloodshed that defined the region in the 1990s.

Earlier this month, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić—an ultranationalist former propaganda minister in Slobodan Milošević’s regime—swung through Washington, where he glad-handed with several of the leading sleazy figures in Trump’s orbit. Vučić’s Instagram feed showed the Serbian strongman meeting with Richard Grenell, the troll-cum-diplomat acting as Trump’s director of national intelligence, ambassador to Germany, and official envoy for Serbia-Kosovo dialogue. Also present to receive Vučić was Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose government portfolio ranges from Middle East planning to the U.S.-Mexico border, despite the fact that government officials deemed Kushner a security risk.

Vučić’s photo feed shows him grinning awkwardly at the camera, towering over Grenell, Kushner, and national security adviser Robert O’Brien. Following their meeting, Vučić claimed that Grenell—and, by extension, the United States—had backed his Serbian pressure campaign against neighboring Kosovo, which the Belgrade government still treats as a breakaway Serbian province rather than a fellow nation-state.

The nations’ latest spat centers on a trade war launched in November 2018, when the Kosovar government placed a 100 percent tariff on all Serbian imports. But trade disputes are just the latest manifestation of a bloody, decades-long feud between Serbia and Kosovo, which declared its independence in 2008. Kosovo is recognized by the U.S. and dozens of other countries around the world, but Serbia has attempted to throttle the nascent nation-state, stifling its dreams of self-determination.

For years, Belgrade’s effort seemed largely quixotic: Since the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, successive American administrations have supported Kosovo’s sovereignty and backed their rhetoric with American military sorties. In 1999, Kosovo’s status nearly sparked the first post–Cold War hard-power conflict between the U.S. and Russia, which continues to view Serbia as a close ally. U.S. military forces have remained stationed in Kosovo since then as part of a broader NATO-led peacekeeping force. This American support for Kosovar independence has long remained a bipartisan endeavor.