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The legendary Bosnian journalist Boro Kontic said
recently that Bosnia and Herzegovina feels like a decades-long
Groundhog Day: Agreements are being signed, institutions founded and
built, applications submitted, elections won and lost, conferences
convened, issues raised, evaluations prepared, and then—nothing.
Twenty-six years since the signing of the Dayton Peace
Agreement—which was more or less forced on the ethnic Bosniak,
Croat, and Serb leaders to end a bloodbath—everything is being
repeated over and over again, as if there is no time, no memory, and
no history.
But what makes the Groundhog Day metaphor so
accurate is the fact that even those authorized by the U.N. Security
Council to keep the peace so that, presumably, Bosnia could make
progress seem content to leave the country running in place. Despite
the money, effort, and time invested in state-building, whenever
there is a disagreement, policymakers seem to think it’s acceptable
to take the country back 26 years, when it was only just emerging
from one of the cruelest conflicts since World War II. Some
officials are trying to justify this by calling it “the return to
the original Dayton.” The children of the siege of Sarajevo are
approaching middle age now. They need a new narrative.
Instead, there is no new narrative and no new
reality. Bosnia is in the middle of a deep crisis yet again, as one
member of its tripartite presidency, Bosnian Serb leader Milorad
Dodik, uses warmongering rhetoric and savagely attacks Bosnia’s
fragile institutions in a flagrant effort to destroy the country.
Dodik is an interesting but not so unusual
phenomenon. In many ways, he is a small-time Viktor Orban wannabe.
Like the Hungarian prime minister, he started out as a democratic
politician—chosen and promoted by the West. He gradually slid into
nationalism and then into hardcore nationalism. Like Orban, he
became very rich during his tenure in politics, which inevitably led
to autocratic government. And like most autocrats in Eastern and
Central Europe, he looked for and found his protectors in Russia.
Dodik has achieved a measure of notoriety by
challenging the very existence of Bosnia. The key difference is that
Dodik, unlike Orban, doesn’t have a state. This makes his position
considerably more precarious—but also enticing for outside players
seeking to meddle in Balkan affairs.
Earlier in his career, when Dodik thought that his
future lay with the West, he publicly recognized the genocide in
Srebrenica, renounced Bosnian Serb war criminals, and positioned
himself as a staunch supporter of Bosnia’s unity and a future in the
European Union. As he switched loyalties, first to Serbian President
Aleksandar Vucic and then to Moscow for protection, his policies and
rhetoric changed dramatically. It happened gradually, over time.
I first noticed it when taking part in a local TV
program with him in Banja Luka in the early 2000s. We somehow ended
up discussing soccer, and suddenly Dodik said that in a match
between the main team from Serbia and its rival in Bosnia, he would
definitely root for the Serbian team. As soccer in the Balkans is
never only about soccer, even then, when he was still viewed as an
ally of the West, I saw his comment as an alarming sign of a change
in his position.
Since then, Dodik has served as an agent of
Serbian politics in destabilizing Bosnia and as a backup plan for
pacifying the more nationalistic segment of Serbian public opinion
in case Serbia makes a deal and recognizes Kosovo. In that case,
Serbia might use Dodik’s secessionist policies to justify its demand
for the annexation of Republika Srpska—one of the two administrative
units that make up postwar Bosnia—as compensation for losing Kosovo.
But by transforming himself into an instrument of Russia’s broader
geopolitics, Dodik’s relationship with Serbia has also changed.
Today, Dodik is no longer just a pawn of Serbian politics. Instead,
he is holding Serbian politics hostage.
On his own, Dodik is quite unimportant. His
courage, arrogance, and relevance are purely the product of Russian
support. As he said himself when he first threatened the Bosnian
army with destruction and floated the idea of Republika Srpska
forming its own army, “If anybody tries to stop us, we have friends
who will defend us.”
This is why all the recent meetings of the leaders
of EU member states with Dodik have been somewhat pathetic. All the
concessions and compromises they are offering—such as drastically
reducing the authority of the Office of the High Representative,
removing the three foreign judges from the country’s Constitutional
Court, or circulating maps and proposals that would normalize
boarder changes in the Balkans—have not appeased Dodik or changed
his virulent disruptive rhetoric. That’s because he is not really
the one who can make a deal.
Indeed, the destabilization of Bosnia and the
entire Western Balkans region can’t be blamed on Dodik or other
local firebrands alone. They are just agents on the ground for
Russia’s disruptive politics. Before EU leaders engage
diplomatically with Dodik or his Kremlin sponsors, they need to
think carefully about what exactly Moscow seeks to gain from
destabilizing the Balkans and if there is a resolution that could
benefit both sides.
For many years, Russia treated the EU as a
respectable but mostly harmless political club. This changed
dramatically after 2014. At its Eastern Partnership Summit in
Vilnius, Lithuania in the fall of 2013, the EU signed special
agreements with Georgia and Moldova and in June of 2014 with
Ukraine. From then on, Russia started viewing the EU like NATO—as an
enemy.
The war in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea
followed in close succession. The Western reaction was to impose
sanctions and then more sanctions. There is no doubt that Russia’s
actions required and deserved a strong reaction. But one consequence
was the gradual breakdown of communication between Russia and the
West.
The NATO-Russia Council, a permanent item on every
NATO ministerial meeting, was the first to go. Inviting the Russian
foreign minister and other top officials to different EU councils
was next. All official and well-established, unofficial
communication channels were disappearing one by one. At the same
time, Russia’s policies were growing more aggressive, more
intrusive, more disruptive, and more dangerous.
The Kremlin identified the Western Balkans as an
ideal playground for its influence operations and political
provocation—constantly probing how far it could push before the West
reacted. From the Russian perspective, it has many advantages: It is
relatively small, divided among many rather poor states, and,
considering its recent history, not that hard to disrupt and
destabilize.
It is also surrounded by EU territory and filled
with countries that aspire to join the union. The high-level Russian
diplomats and politicians dealing with this issue are likely
surprised at the complete lack of EU response to all their
disruptive efforts in the Western Balkans and in Bosnia in
particular. The region has been transformed into a virtual
chessboard, on which Russia wants to exert influence and compete
with the EU and the United States. But for now, Russia is the only
one playing.
The EU has for some time had problems speaking
with one voice on its enlargement policy, let alone taking concrete
practical steps toward bringing the Western Balkan states closer to
EU membership. Going back on its promise to start accession talks
with North Macedonia, after the country managed to negotiate a
bilateral solution to the seemingly intractable “name issue” with
Greece, was a particularly hard blow to everybody in the region.
After that, the EU lost its sense of direction in
the Western Balkans, while public opinion in the region started
increasingly favoring Russia and China as more reliable partners
than the EU. Meanwhile, two key EU players seem—for now—to have
exited the stage when it comes to EU policy in the region: outgoing
Chancellor Angela Merkel, as Germany puts together its new
government, and French President Emmanuel Macron, whose focus is on
France’s upcoming presidential election.
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