Donald Trump has had an interesting few years. After losing his 2020 reelection bid to Joe Biden and narrowly surviving a second impeachment vote for instigating a riot to overturn the election, being indicted four times in criminal court, found liable for sexual abuse in a civil court, being shot in the ear, almost being shot again, turning a campaign event into a DJ session, he won a sweeping victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

The change in U.S. administration on January 20, 2025 comes just weeks before Kosovars head to the polls to determine whether or not to give Prime Minister Albin Kurti and his Vetëvendosje (VV) party another term. Kurti’s term has been marked by a series of disagreements with the Biden administration and U.S. foreign policy establishment more broadly, as Kurti has prioritized expressions of domestic sovereignty over alignment with U.S. preferences. Nonetheless, Kurti traveled to the U.S. to attend the Democratic Party convention at which Harris was nominated, and earlier in 2024, voiced worries about a potential Trump win. 

Regardless of who is in the White House, the U.S. remains a critical partner for Kosovo, supporting it militarily, in development aid and more. And while the EU leads the dialogue process with Serbia, a process that the U.S. supports, the U.S. still plays a key short-term role for Kosovo and its neighbors, seeking to help them push them toward EU membership in the long run. This may be why, after Trump’s win, both Kurti and Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani were quick to congratulate Trump, and Osmani even had a photo opportunity with Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron at the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.   

Trump’s first win, in 2016 came as a shock for many. The fact that he won narrowly in the anti-majoritarian Electoral College was enough to comfort many into thinking that win was a fluke, a chance win, an oddity. His 2024 victory is different. He improved his vote share among every major demographic group in the U.S. except white people with college degrees, and unlike in 2016, when how Trump would act as president was less known, voters in 2024 know more of what to expect. 

But even Trump’s most ardent supporters may not have anticipated the exact constellation of people he’s nominated for top jobs. These range from people that would be unsurprising to see in any Republican administration, people like Secretary of State-nominee Marco Rubio, to director of national intelligence pick Tulsi Gabbard, a converted Democrat. Trump’s team also includes political novice Elon Musk, a very rich man who The Economist notes “must be clever but constantly finds new ways to make you wonder.” Musk spent over $250 million to help Trump’s campaign and will head the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is not actually a government department and is named after a cryptocurrency meme last funny circa 2015. 

The picks seem to be a clear statement of purpose and show of force, a confirmation of Trump’s dominance over the Republican Party. By nominating numerous people whose main qualification is a willingness to fight for Trump at any cost, Trump has made it very difficult for Republican members of Congress to challenge him as he continues resetting the party’s approach to foreign policy and a host of other issues. 

What will unfold in the coming months and years, and what any of this means for the U.S., or the world more broadly, or Kosovo in particular, is anyone’s guess. In this piece, K2.0 seeks to get at that last question, sketching out how Trump’s picks for key foreign policy roles may, or may not, impact Kosovo’s relations with the U.S. and Kosovo’s broader foreign policy outlook.  

Marco Rubio, secretary of state

Out of the Trump appointments most likely to be relevant for Kosovo, Rubio, a senator from Florida since 2011, is the least unusual. Though predicting anything about politics in the Trump era is a fool’s errand, Rubio is most likely to maintain some form of guardrails against Trump’s most extreme isolationist and unilateral instincts. Back in 2023, Rubio sponsored a statutory provision expressly prohibiting any president from withdrawing from NATO without congressional approval, a move aimed at narrowing Trump’s path to leaving NATO, something that his repeated comments suggest he could entertain. 

Rubio’s personal history, a child of Cuban immigrants to the U.S. — who came to the Miami area shortly before the 1959 Cuban Revolution — is the sort of immigrant American Dream that has been championed, particularly by Republicans, for generations. That family background, and his political upbringing amid South Florida’s anti-communist politics, have led Rubio to historically advocate for a traditionally muscular foreign policy that is increasingly reminiscent of the 1990s and early 2000s, times when Kosovo was a more relevant topic in the U.S. and experienced the costs and benefits of robust U.S. engagement. 

In his political career, Rubio has focused on foreign policy, guarding U.S. interests against perceived enemies like China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Russia, and maintaining robust relations with allies like Israel and Taiwan. His committee assignments have reflected this focus: vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And throughout his tenure in the Senate, Rubio met with then-President of Kosovo Hashim Thaçi in 2018, and Osmani, the current president, in 2024, during their visits to the U.S.. 

In 2011, Rubio called the U.S. military “one of the greatest forces of good in the world during the past century,” a force that “stopped Nazism and Communism and other evils such as Serbian ethnic-cleansing.” In the same speech, he argued that “We can choose to ignore global problems, but global problems will not ignore us.” 

Such arguments fit with the 2011 Republican Party, a party still five years away from being upended and having its foreign policy fundamentals tossed out the window by Trump. Over a decade later, they are out of step with Trump’s isolationist ideas. Rubio — who in 2016 called Trump “a con-artist,” hinted that Trump peed in his pants during a debate and implied that Trump has a small penis — has adapted accordingly. 

He initially supported military aid to Ukraine, for instance, approving military aid in May 2022, but by 2024, voted against it, part of coming to align with Trump-world’s vision of conditioning future U.S. aid for Ukraine on securing a peace deal. This is part of Rubio’s, and Trump’s, overarching emphasis on great-power competition with China. 

For Rubio, that emphasis on China would require that less of Washington’s resources and attention go to Europe: “I think China would love for us to be bogged down in Europe in a conflict and not focused on what’s happening in the Indo-Pacific,” said Rubio in early November 2024. While that comment was mainly in reference to the war in Ukraine, Kosovo is in Europe too. One can imagine the same logic extending to Kosovo should tension with Serbia in the north continue to escalate.  

As such, what Rubio’s nomination means for Kosovo remains to be seen. In contrast to his new boss, Rubio is no isolationist and is committed to the exercise of U.S. power that played a key role in the intervention in Kosovo in 1999, and all — good and bad — that has come with it since. He strongly backs U.S. membership in NATO, and given NATO’s continued role leading KFOR, the international peacekeeping force in Kosovo, this is not insignificant to Kosovo.

But despite institutional credentials, he has become a full-on Trump backer. It seems unlikely that he’d truly stand in Trump’s way on something that Trump or whoever has his ear at the moment deems important. Time will tell whether anything having to do with Kosovo will become such an item for Trump or anyone in his inner circle. 

Richard Grenell, presidential envoy for special missions

Perhaps no appointment was watched in Kosovo as much as that of Richard Grenell, who in Trump’s first term, held the rather grand and misleading title of special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations. He was also ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence for a few months in 2020. Grenell will be Trump’s envoy for special missions in the second term.

Reporting indicated that Grenell wanted the secretary of state job, even attempting to pay conservative social media influencers to subtly push his name for the job, but this is not the role he has ended up in. The envoy for special missions is not a role that has previously existed, so what exactly Grenell will be up to remains to be seen, but Trump cited Venezuela and North Korea as two examples of “the hottest spots around the World,” on which Grenell would likely work. 

In Trump’s first term, Grenell’s bombast turned heads in Kosovo and beyond. Grenell was a social media provocateur well before Trump entered politics, but elevation to high-ranking positions in the first Trump term further amplified his impulses. He blurred the lines between internet trolling and diplomacy, suggesting that Kosovo’s Lake Ujman should be renamed “Lake Trump,” and shocked his hosts in Berlin by saying he intended to empower conservative politicians in Europe to challenge “the failed policies of the left.”  

Perhaps this is why Trump, during his final campaign rally, opined that the day Grenell left Germany “was the best day in Angela’s life,” referring to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. K2.0 is reviewing Merkel’s recently published memoirs and thus far has found no indication of whether or not that day was, in fact, the best day of her life.    

Grenell, who is involved in real estate development in Serbia and Albania with Trump’s son-in-law and says he speaks regularly with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, will reportedly also focus on the Balkans. This comes after his first stint as Trump’s envoy was characterized by efforts to “solve” relations between Kosovo and Serbia through a primarily economic lens, likely in an effort to secure a diplomatic win that Trump could trumpet ahead of the 2020 election.   

That supposed diplomatic win came in the September 2020 Washington Agreement, which was only possible because Grenell may have spearheaded the collapse of Kurti’s first government over its unwillingness to go along with the deal. The subsequent Avdullah Hoti-led government ultimately signed the agreement, which included numerous vague provisions like diversifying energy sources, all of which contributed to the image of “economic normalization,” as long as one didn’t look too hard.   

Grenell has developed a particular animosity with Kurti and increasingly openly aligned with the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK). He has advocated for dropping the cases against Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi in the Kosovo Specialist Chambers. Grenell’s criticism of their indictments has been sharpened by the fact that the prosecutor who indicted them in The Hague, Jack Smith, was also special counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice, overseeing the two federal cases against Trump. 

After Trump’s victory, Smith filed motions to dismiss the two cases due to a long-held Department of Justice policy that sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted and resigned in January 2025. In the last days of the Biden administration, the Department of Justice released Smith’s report on Trump’s election interference, which stood by the decision to bring charges and said that the evidence gathered would have resulted in Trump’s conviction.   

Going forward, a win for Kurti in Kosovo’s upcoming election would set up a collision course between Kurti and Grenell, should the latter opt to refocus his attention on Kosovo and Serbia. Grenell, along with Trump’s son and close advisor Donald Trump Jr., has spent the past few years calling for U.S. troops to be pulled from Kosovo if Kurti continues his “unilateral moves” and “ignoring the international community’s demands.”  

While on the campaign trail, Grenell told a group of Serbian-American voters that a second Trump administration would prioritize the Balkans and would seek to push Serbia, along with “everyone in the Balkans,” forward. The question for Kosovo now is whether it would benefit from being prioritized by Trump in the way Grenell would imagine. 

On one hand, maybe all of Grenell’s huffing and puffing about Kurti and advocacy for Serbia has been campaign talk, aimed at winning some Serbian-American votes in swing states like Wisconsin. After all, Grenell also hosted an “Albanian-American Trump Unity Event” in Michigan, featuring Trump Jr. and singers Yll Limani and Bleona Qereti. 

Now that he has a global profile, maybe he will lose interest in the Balkans beyond his business interests. After all, it is not a region that moves the needle any way in the U.S., choosing instead to tackle higher-profile and more dangerous situations, from a U.S. perspective, on the Korean Peninsula, in Venezuela, Israel/Palestine and in Syria.  

On the other hand, Grenell could return to the region and seek to force Kosovo into a compromising agreement with Serbia, perhaps by conditioning ongoing U.S. military presence or development aid. Indeed, back in February 2024, Trump posted on social media that “We should never give money anymore without the hope of a payback, or without ‘strings’ attached.” 

Matthew Whitaker, permanent representative to NATO 

Trump announced Matthew Whitaker as his nominee for U.S. permanent representative to NATO amid his early wave of nominations. In the U.S., the news brought back memories from 2018, when Trump told reporters “I don’t know Matt Whitaker” while Whitaker was the interim attorney general. It was also one month after Trump called into a Fox News show and said, “I can tell you that Matt Whitaker’s a great guy, I mean, I know Matt Whitaker.” 

Whitaker, among other roles, had previously been on the advisory board of a company that promoted toilets for men with long genitalia and time travel technology. The company was also investigated by the FBI as a scam. 

In Kosovo, however, Whitaker’s name brought back memories of a different event, one from 2019. Whitaker, who at that point was no longer the acting attorney general, showed up in Gjilan with PDK’s Veseli at a campaign rally ahead of Kosovo’s elections that year. Speaking to an audience clad in white shirts with the PDK logo and a photograph of Veseli and Trump together, Whitaker lauded Veseli’s supposed anti-corruption credentials. He also told prospective voters that “your alternative options are dangerous” and a government led by those alternatives — the implication being VV — would threaten relations with the U.S.. He exchanged a big hug with Veseli, who then opened his remarks by saying “my dear friend Matt, thank you very much” in English. 

PDK’s 2019 campaign also paid Sam Nunberg, a former Trump aide, $110,000 for two and a half months of consulting work, another example of connections between the party and people linked to Trump. Nunberg, a campaign strategist, was hired and fired by Trump numerous times and ultimately was fired for good from Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign due to his highly racist and offensive social media posts.  

In the long term, Kosovo seeks to join NATO, and ahead of the upcoming election, some political parties have pledged to push Kosovo towards membership in the alliance. Kosovo’s leaders have appealed to the U.S. to accelerate the country’s bid to join. However, even with  U.S. support, not to mention the U.S.’ central role in the alliance, expansion requires unanimity, so Kosovo’s independence being recognized by the four NATO nonrecognizers — Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain — is an unavoidable prerequisite.      

All this being said, Whitaker promises to be a bit of a mystery as it comes to his posting at NATO, given that he has minimal diplomatic or military experience and served in law enforcement capacities while in government. He could, theoretically, be a vessel for carrying out Trump’s whims and be Trump’s voice at NATO headquarters, as he has been a strong defender of Trump and can thank the incoming president for his rise to national prominence. 

Conversely, he could follow in the path taken by Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Trump’s permanent representative to NATO in his first term. Hutchinson managed to keep a low profile and engage in the job, separate from Trump’s occasional erratic comment or echoing of NATO nemesis and President of Russia Vladimir Putin’s talking points. That being said, Hutchinson, a longtime Republican elected official who spent 20 years as a senator from Texas and was on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was substantially more qualified than Whitaker and in a position to handle the job more independently so long as Trump’s attention was elsewhere. 

A new chapter in Kosovo-U.S. relations? 

Other administration officials like Secretary of Defense-nominee Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Gabbard, as central figures in the U.S. military and diplomatic apparatus, may play tangentially relevant roles as well. Hegseth has tattoos tied to Christian nationalism and according to the New Yorker, screamed “Kill all Muslims! Kill all Muslims!” in a bar back in 2015. 

Gabbard, meanwhile, left the Democratic Party in October 2022 on account of her view that the party is under “complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness” who are “dragging us ever closer to nuclear war.” 

In 2016, she retweeted a New York Times story that referred to Kosovo as a “once-tolerant Muslim society at the hem of Europe” that had become “a font of Islamic extremism and a pipeline for jihadists.” After her nomination as director of national intelligence, that tweet, along with a video of crosses being torn off an Orthodox church, was shared by a Serbian-Canadian filmmaker who congratulated her and thanked her for “spreading the truth about extremism” in Kosovo, concluding with “Together, we can make Kosovo Serbian again.” 

That filmmaker has worked for Russian-funded media outlets in the Balkans, and Gabbard herself has echoed Russian propaganda outlets in blaming Ukraine and NATO for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and defending recently ousted President of Syria Bashar al-Assad.    

These tidbits would not seem to bode well for Kosovo, a country with a predominantly Muslim population, although it’s hard to imagine either Hegseth or Gabbard spending much of their time devoted to anything having to do with Kosovo. 

More than any other in Trump’s orbit, however, Musk’s unpredictability could come to impact Kosovo. Musk’s influence with Trump and recent forays into politics in Europe — loudly backing and supporting the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), and seeking to push Nigel Farage out as leader of the far-right Reform UK party — could offer a blueprint for future involvement in Kosovo. 

Musk seems to have Trump’s ear, at least for now. He increased his potential leverage in Kosovo in December 2024, when his Starlink satellite internet service became available. Starlink was welcomed by Osmani on X, which Musk, of course, owns as well. Starlink’s presence in Kosovo potentially offers Musk significant leverage should he wake up one morning and decide to try to shape Kosovo’s politics. 

Musk has previously drawn ire for tweeting about similarities between Kosovo and Ukraine’s Donbas region. This prompted pushback from figures like Kosovar businessman and politician Behgjet Pacolli. Pacolli seems to have forgiven Musk, happily posting a picture of himself and Musk celebrating Trump’s electoral victory in November 2024.  

As a final note, Jeffrey Hovinier, the U.S. ambassador to Kosovo since January 2022, retired in December 2024. Hovinier presided over a tumultuous time in U.S.-Kosovo relations. During his term, Kosovo came under U.S. sanctions, and the U.S. frequently criticized Kosovo’s government for perceived “unilateral” maneuvers, like banning use of the Serbian dinar and announcing plans to open the main bridge in Mitrovica for vehicle traffic. 

Until a new ambassador is nominated and confirmed, the top U.S. representative in Kosovo is Chargé d’Affaires Anu Prattipati, who has extensive international experience but limited history of involvement in the Balkans. 

On account of all these factors, Hovinier said in August 2024 that the U.S.’ partnership with Kosovo was “not what we would hope.” Whoever Hovinier’s successor is will have to grapple with the fallout of the attack on the water canal in Zubin Potok, and either resetting relations with a Kurti government on a renewed mandate or beginning anew with a new government. 

Therefore, it’s most likely that Rubio, Grenell and Whitaker will play the key roles in defining Trump’s engagement with the region and Europe more broadly. They make up an extremely small portion of the over 4,000 positions filled by presidential nominees, over a quarter of which have to be confirmed by the Senate. Yet they will be on the tip of many Kosovars’ tongues, as whichever government emerges from the 2025 election with Kosovo builds its relationship with a second Trump White House. 

Feature image: Atdhe Mulla / K2.0.

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