Why Albania Has So Many Tributes To U.S. Presidents

Albania has been gaining momentum as a travel destination in recent years. The country’s stunning blue coastlines tend to get most of the attention, but there’s plenty to discover inland as well. When I visited the capital of Tirana last month, I was struck by the dramatic architecture and mountain views ― but also by a particular street sign I noticed.

One of the busiest roads cutting through the city center was called Rruga George W. Bush, or George W. Bush Street.

While driving through the nearby city of Fushë-Krujë, I spotted even more tributes to the 43rd U.S. president. There was a George W. Bush Bakery, a George W. Bush Bar and even a 9-foot-tall statue of George W. Bush proudly waving from his pedestal in the aptly named George W. Bush Square.

So what’s with Albania’s very specific love affair with former U.S. President George W. Bush? It turns out it’s deeply rooted ― and more layered than you might expect.

“George W. Bush is especially revered in Albania for three historic roles the former U.S. president played,” Edward P. Joseph, a lecturer and senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and longtime Balkans expert, told HuffPost. “First, the Bush administration strongly supported Albania’s membership in NATO, formalized shortly after Bush left office, in 2009.”

The second point of interest is the Bush administration’s role in shepherding Kosovo ― a majority-ethnic-Albanian country ― toward its 2008 declaration of independence, which Joseph described as “a torturous process that required intensive U.S. leadership.” This independence came after the brutal 1999 war in which Serb forces carried out an ethnic cleansing campaign with killings, expulsions and other atrocities against Kosovo Albanians.

“Finally, in 2007, Bush became the first-ever U.S. president to visit Albania, garnering an expected, exuberant reception in Tirana,” Joseph noted, pointing to the impetus for the Bush statue, square, bakery, bar, etc.

Indeed, reports from that June visit show the scale of the excitement, with massive crowds, American flags everywhere and even the Tirana Municipal Council’s vote to rename the street in front of Parliament “George W. Bush Street” ahead of the president’s arrival.

After this momentous occasion, the bakery and bar that the former president visited changed their names to George W. Bush and the bronze statue was unveiled in 2011.

Besar Likmeta, the editor-in-chief of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, told HuffPost that Albania’s response was rooted not just in Bush himself but in a deep, decades-long national affection for the United States.

“Albania is a small country, and a visit from a sitting U.S. president just doesn’t happen every day,” he said. “It’s also a very pro-U.S. country. The U.S. is viewed as Albania’s main ally, and it played an important role in developing Albania’s democracy after the fall of the Iron Curtain.”

He explained that Albanians saw the U.S. as “a shining city on the hill” and embodiment of freedom and opportunity ― particularly after the decades of isolation under the totalitarian dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, who ruled from 1944 until his death in 1985.

“Albania was the North Korea of Europe,” Likmeta said. “The U.S. had this idea of freedom that was very popular for Albanians after the Stalinist regime. And Albanians tend to identify with a lot of U.S. values like self-achievement and making your way in the world by your own work and effort. They’re very entrepreneurial people.”

Today, U.S. citizens can stay visa-free in Albania for up to 12 months. And presidential fandom among Albanians is not limited to Bush.

Just across the border in Kosovo, the love for former President Bill Clinton is evident with Bill Clinton Boulevard in the capital city of Pristina, complete with an 11-foot-tall statue and 25-foot-high mural of the leader. There’s a nearby clothing shop named Hillary in honor of the former first lady and a statue of Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as well.

These tributes honor the Clinton administration’s actions in launching the 1999 NATO air campaign against Serbian forces amid their attacks on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Other nods to the country’s fondness for U.S. leaders include a statue of Sen. Bob Dole, a restaurant called The White House (which features some familiar design elements) and a street named for George W. Bush.

A Kosovar musician even released a song called “Thank You USA,” which has reached amused American audiences in recent years on TikTok.

Back in the country of Albania, there’s also a longer history of presidential fandom that goes back more than a century.

“Albania’s affection for U.S. presidents stretches back to Woodrow Wilson,” Joseph said, pointing to his role at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, where he vetoed plans to partition Albania and defended the nation’s right to independence following World War I.

“In Albanian eyes, it was Wilson who stood up for Albania against European powers, insisting on the creation of the Albanian state in the Balkans ― in the aftermath of the war and the prior collapse of the Ottoman Empire,” Joseph explained.

The gratitude was so enduring that in 1924, the coastal city of Shëngjin briefly renamed itself Qyteti Uillson, or Wilson City. Many Albanians reportedly even started naming their sons Wilson. And to this day, there’s even a statue of Woodrow Wilson in Tirana in Sheshi Uillson, aka Wilson Square.

Likmeta noted that the proliferation of statues of foreign leaders also reflects Albania’s artistic and political history.

“Building statues of visiting leaders is part of our way of doing things,” he said. “It goes back to our communist past, when there were many statues of Stalin and Lenin. Now we have George W. Bush, both popes who visited and other artistic expressions to mark these occasions.”

He acknowledged that the concept of building a statue after a world leader visits Washington, D.C. might seem strange to Americans.

“But these are important once-in-a-century events for a small country like Albania,” Likmeta said. “And for Fushë-Krujë, which is a small town, to have a U.S. president visit is something they would want to record for later generations to remember.”

Joseph noted that this appreciation for the role of the U.S. in this part of the world in recent decades extends across the Balkans, at least among Bosniaks, Croats and Croatians, Macedonians and Montenegrins.

“Like Albanians ― and this is enduring ― across the region, most citizens and leaders see the U.S. in sharp contrast to Europeans and the EU,” he said. “Essentially, Balkan citizens and leaders see the U.S. as the true source of power and principle in the region, while Europe is seen as weak and often divided.”

How that dynamic will shape the region’s geopolitical future remains to be seen. But as Albania grows as a tourist hotspot, U.S. visitors might be amused to snap a photo with the various George W. Bush tributes scattered around the country.

And on a different trip, they might venture to Paraguay, where President Rutherford B. Hayes is a national hero ― complete with his own holiday and a city named in his honor.