Bosnia’s ‘Second Collapse’ is Starting to Look Inevitable

However, this analysis misses the broader strategic picture – that the external scaffolding supporting the Bosnian state has all but collapsed, creating circumstances in which the RS can break away from Bosnia.

Battle of wills that began at Dayton:

Signing the Dayton Agreement. Photo: Wikimedia commons/NATO

In common with other secessionist groups, the Bosnian Serbs view themselves as a separate political community whose interests are irreconcilable with those of the majority group, the Bosniaks. In the early-1990s, they fought a war not to be part of the newly independent state of Bosnia and the reason they remain in the country is only because they failed to win this war outright. Instead, the conflict ended with a reluctant compromise, the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, in which Bosnian Serbs gained far-reaching autonomy but within a formally unified Bosnian state.

This triggered a short-lived internecine dispute between Serb hardliners who rejected Dayton because it conceded too much and moderates who accepted Dayton because it gave the Bosnian Serbs de facto independence. The second camp prevailed, spearheaded by Dodik, who argued that Bosnian Serbs should give their consent to the Bosnian state on the terms set out in Dayton.

However, the settlement was unacceptable to most Bosniaks who refused to cede control of territory they considered an integral part of their homeland and on which they had lived in large numbers until they were brutally expelled during the war.

Over time, the West also cooled on the Dayton settlement because its multiple layers of government led to serious inefficiencies and its complex system of checks and balances, including ethnic quorums and national vetoes, allowed groups with divergent interests to block decision-making in the shared institutions.

That posed an insurmountable obstacle to Bosnia’s integration with the EU and NATO, the Europeans’ and Americans’ exit strategy from the country. As a consequence, in the late-1990s, the West awarded itself powers to reform the institutions of state, transferring competencies from lower levels of government to central institutions and limiting the right of national groups to block legislation.

However, the Serbs never accepted these reforms, which were imposed under duress. When the West eventually released its grip on Bosnia in 2006, and politics was again domesticated, Dodik started demanding a restoration of the earlier settlement, backing it up by threats of secession.

Unsurprisingly, the Bosniaks refused and have instead used all available political, legal and diplomatic means to continue the process of centralisation, which the West began. In turn, the Serbs have resisted this, leading to an agonising battle of wills that has retarded Bosnia’s political, social and economic development.

The Bosniaks cannot win this battle because the basic balance of power on the ground favours those who want to break the Bosnian state rather than those who want to make it. The Bosniak goal, of establishing a democratic, multi-ethnic society, requires the active cooperation of the Serbs and Croats, and both groups are withholding this.

But the Serbs do not need the cooperation of the Bosniaks for their plans. If the Bosniaks refuse to restore the original Dayton settlement, the Serbs have the option of unilaterally detaching their territory from Bosnia and uniting it with their mother state across the border. At some point, Dodik concluded that, if the Serbs cannot live in Bosnia on the terms set out in Dayton, by consequence they must leave.

Outsiders, not Bosniaks, are the Serb’s main obstacle:

NATO flag. Photo: EPA-EFE/Toms Kalnins

In contrast to other secessionist disputes, the main constraint on the eventual Serb secession move has not been the opposition of the majority group, since the Bosniaks are too weak and divided to hold the Bosnian state together by force, but the opposition of outsiders, whose actions have rendered RS independence all but impossible.

The United States, the ultimate guarantor of security in the Balkans, has maintained an implicit threat of punishment against the Serbs, including physical attack, if they attempt to secede.

Russia, traditionally the Serbs’ main external sponsor, has opposed any breakup of Bosnia, initially because of its desire for good relations with the West and later because it wanted the Bosnian Serbs to stay put and block NATO membership for the whole of the country.

Meanwhile, the Europeans offered the Balkan countries the chance to become EU members, with all the benefits that this implied – stability, good governance, prosperity and national unification within a borderless union – in return for abandoning nationalism and adopting a Western political and economic model.

The EU’s offer had little impact in Bosnia, where politics remained fixated on the primary questions of population, borders and sovereignty. However, first Croatia and then Serbia accepted the Brussels’s proposal, and subsequently repudiated the secessionist ambitions of their compatriots in Bosnia.

This constituted an insurmountable obstacle to the Bosnian Serbs’ and Croats’ goals, because they relied on their mother states to support them, politically, financially and, if necessary, militarily following any break from the rest of Bosnia.

In a further complication for the Serbs, Serbia itself was forced last decade into a struggle with the US and others to retain its sovereignty over the former province of Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008. As a matter of principle, Belgrade could not simultaneously oppose the partition of Serbia along national lines, and support partition in Bosnia. Nor could Serbia afford to alienate the US, which ultimately held the key to Kosovo’s future, by jeopardising Washington’s Bosnian state-building project.

Window of opportunity for Serbs has opened:

Milorad Dodik in Belgrade, Serbia. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANDREJ CUKIC

However, the position of these various external actors changed decisively in the second half of the last decade, creating a window of opportunity for the Serbs to make a break.

Most importantly, the US made three key innovations to its policy. The first was to end its threat of physical attack on the Serbs, although, in truth, this shift was a long time coming. The risk to the RS fell dramatically with the withdrawal of US forces from Bosnia in 2006. By the time of Barack Obama’s presidency, aversion to overseas military interventions meant the threat was largely theoretical.

However, the risk was all but eliminated with the election of Donald Trump and his rejection of “stupid wars” in peripheral regions like the Balkans. Questioned about Montenegro’s membership of NATO, Trump asked why he should deploy American forces to a “tiny country” with “very aggressive” people.

In theory, the US could still impose a lesser punishment on the RS, such as sanctions. But Washington has already enacted a travel ban and asset freeze on Dodik, to little avail, and the White House is unlikely to advocate economic sanctions on a population that is acting peacefully and poses no direct threat to the US.

The second innovation in American policy is its decision to fight the “New Cold War” in the Balkans, following the escalation of tensions with Russia, which the US now sees as the primary threat to the region’s stability. Following successes in Montenegro and North Macedonia, the US is now focused on neutralising Russia’s influence in Serbia, by getting it to recognise Kosovo and resolving the issue that gives Russia leverage over Serbian foreign policy.

That has led to the third innovation – the end of Washington’s commitment to upholding multi-ethnicity in the Balkans, following its agreement to the partition of Kosovo. In part, this is a matter of practicality: Washington now accepts that if Serbia is to recognise Kosovo, it will need something in return, such as the Serb-dominated north of the country. It is also a matter of ideology: as a nationalist, Trump has little interest in multiculturalism and, as a disruptor, he cares nothing for preserving the reputations of officials in the State Department invested in the success of a multi-ethnic Bosnia.

Meanwhile, in Europe, the EU has withdrawn its earlier offer of membership for the Balkans because of the growing resistance of powerful EU members to the region’s integration.

France is the main opponent because it believes that eastward enlargement weakens the EU, and France’s position within the EU, and upsets the delicate balance of power between France and Germany, the main beneficiary of enlargement. Significantly, France has a democratic mandate for its stance because a majority of European citizens also oppose the integration of the Balkans due to its association with immigration, organised crime and political instability.

Until 2018, Paris toed the EU line on enlargement to avoid a dispute with Germany and the UK, both supporters of the policy. However, with Germany politically paralysed and the UK gone, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, is now free to block the EU’s expansion into the Balkans.

French President Emmaneul Macron. Photo: EPA-EFE/STEPHANIE LECOCQ