For years, I believed what most Europeans believed – or were told to believe – about Milorad Dodik.
That he was the saboteur of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the secessionist strongman of Republika Srpska, the man who poisoned every attempt at compromise with ethnic arrogance and Putinist nostalgia. But I now find myself asking: what if Europe got Dodik entirely wrong?
What if, in its attempt to preserve Bosnia as an abstract ideal – multicultural, indivisible, post-war, EU-aligned – the international community inadvertently crushed the only model of Bosnia that could ever survive: the agreed one?
Dodik is not a comfortable figure to defend. He is loud, divisive, unapologetically nationalist. But what if these qualities, abrasive as they are, mask something far more politically mature than most of his critics are willing to acknowledge?
What if Dodik is not Bosnia’s problem, but its mirror?
In recent statements, Dodik has called upon Bosniaks – the country’s largest ethnic group – to “rise to the level of sovereignty, not servitude.” He urged them to sit down with legitimate Croat and Serb representatives, not foreign envoys or UN bureaucrats, and forge a national compact based on mutual recognition rather than colonial supervision.
This is not the language of a separatist. It is the language of a constitutional realist.
And yet, rather than engage with him politically, the West sanctioned him, isolated him, and – worst of all – handed him gift-wrapped to Vladimir Putin. The message? If you oppose the Office of the High Representative or challenge the post-Dayton sacred order, you belong to Moscow.
This may be the greatest strategic miscalculation in the Balkans since the 1990s.
Because what if, in a country built on the ashes of war and the architecture of ethnic consensus, Dodik is not the last obstacle to unity – but its last chance?
In this twisted landscape, Bosniak elites still seek foreign validation over domestic consensus. Sarajevo often treats the international community not as a partner, but as a surrogate government. The pathology of dependency has gone so far that local leaders celebrate when a German bureaucrat unilaterally changes election laws – bypassing parliament, consensus, and even dignity.
And yet, in Banja Luka – of all places – sits the last politician still invoking the idea of a negotiated Bosnia. Not imposed. Not imagined. Real.
Perhaps that’s why many Bosnian Croats, long frustrated by political marginalisation, are now standing closer to Dodik than to their own political elites. It’s not because they like him – it’s because he talks about Bosnia in terms they recognise: as a house with three keys, not one owner.
So let me be brutally honest: the more Europe demonises Dodik without engaging his message, the more it erodes what little remains of Bosnia’s constitutional soul.
The West’s attempt to enforce centralism by foreign decree has weakened not just Dodik, but the very idea of Bosnia as a political community.
We are, quite possibly, living through the 1878 moment again – when local uprisings were co-opted by empires, when resistance was reframed as rebellion, and when the price of defying foreign designs was permanent infantilisation.
Today, Dodik calls for a domestic solution. Europe answers with a cold shoulder. Putin, meanwhile, listens.
So I ask again, not as a nationalist, but as a Bosnian citizen: Who is really Bosnia’s last chance?
And if the answer is Dodik – are we prepared to admit it before it’s too late?
Ivan Urkov l POSKOK