U.S. and Serbian officials first made overtures to establish diplomatic relations in 1867, but it was not until 1881, three years after the country gained its independence from the Ottoman Empire, that the United States officially recognized the Kingdom of Serbia.
With the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire at the end of the Great War in 1918, many of the empire’s southern Slav minorities sought the protection of the Serbian throne, and entered into union with Serbia as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes in December 1918. The United States recognized the kingdom in February 1919. As Serbia was the dominant partner in this state, the U.S. Government has considered the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes and then later, Yugoslavia, as the successor government to the original Government of Serbia. In 1929 the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes adopted the name Yugoslavia. In 1946, Yugoslavia became a socialist federation of six republics: Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia. At this time, it adopted the name Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY).
The U.S. shared diplomatic relations with the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia through 1992 when Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia all seceded. At the time, the Republics of Serbia and Montenegro claimed to be the successor state to the SFRY. The United States Government, however, adopted and subsequently maintained the position that the SFRY had dissolved without any successor state, thus terminating relations between the United States and the SFRY.
In response to the conflict in Kosovo, and one day prior to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, on March 23, 1999, the U.S. severed relations with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and closed Embassy Belgrade. Diplomatic recognition and full diplomatic relations between the two countries were established in November 2000, and ambassadorial relations between the two nations resumed with the appointment of William Dale Montgomery as U.S. Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary on November 26, 2001.
In 2003, the FRY became Serbia and Montenegro, a loose federation of the two republics with a federal level parliament. The office of President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, held by Vojislav Kostunica, ceased to exist once Svetozar Marovic was elected President of Serbia and Montenegro in March of 2003. In May 2006, Montenegro invoked its right to secede from the federation and, following a referendum, declared itself an independent nation on June 3, 2006. Two days later, Serbia declared that it was the successor state to the union of Serbia and Montenegro.