Serbia – United States relations

Serbia – United States relations

Serbia	United States

Serbian–American relations are bilateral relations between the governments of Serbia and the United States. They were first established in 1882. From 1918 to 2006, the United States maintained relations with the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (later Serbia and Montenegro), of which Serbia is considered the legal successor.

At the end of the 19th century, the United States sought to take advantage of the Ottoman Empire's retreat from the Balkans by establishing diplomatic relations with the region's newly emerged nation states, among which was Serbia. The two countries were allies during World War I. After the war, Serbia united with Montenegro and territories previously held by Austria-Hungary to a create a unified South Slavic state that would come to be known as Yugoslavia. The country had diplomatic relations with the United States up to the start of World War II. During World War II in Yugoslavia, the United States supported the Serbian royalist Chetniks over their rivals, the communist Partisans. The Chetniks ultimately lost out to the Partisans and Yugoslavia became a single-party communist state with Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito at its head. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Yugoslavia and the United States had little diplomatic relations. The end of the war also resulted in the mass emigration of refugees from Yugoslavia, many of whom were Serbs that ended up moving to the United States. This helped create the first major Serbian diaspora in the United States. Some of the Serbian refugees who settled in the United States after World War II were anti-communist exiles who attempted to undermine Tito during the Cold War, using the United States as a venue for their anti-communist aims.

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