Be afraid of what Trump proposes for Bosnia

Ambassador Dorothy Shea, Deputy US Representative to the United Nations, offered this explanation of vote after the Security Council passed a resolution on re-authorizing the mandate for the European Union’s Operation Althea peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina:

…The United States remains committed to the Dayton Peace Agreement and the goal of a democratic, peaceful, and prosperous Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Mr. President, our discussion today takes place at an especially critical moment, as the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina continues to evolve. Stability and de-escalation must be the top priority. We continue to call on all parties to refrain from actions that could undermine stability.

Over the last several years, Bosnia and Herzegovina faced an extended and destabilizing political crisis.

The United States stepped forward and led diplomatic action to defuse this situation. Over the past several months, we have worked deliberately and discreetly to secure de-escalation and provide space for greater stability in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In this context, we welcomed the steps taken by the Republika Srpska’s National Assembly on October 18 to take legislative action that set Bosnia and Herzegovina on a more stable footing.

In response to these positive actions, we removed U.S. sanctions on Republika Srpska officials as a responsive measure to defuse the crisis and promote stability.

These sanctions, like all U.S. sanctions, were not meant to be permanent. They were imposed in response to specific actions that contributed to the political crisis. The Republika Srpska National Assembly took significant steps to unwind these actions on October 18.

Colleagues, the United States is no longer pursuing nation-building or heavy-handed international intervention. Now is the time for local solutions, led by local actors representing Bosnia and Herzegovina’s three constituent peoples. These actions reflect a step in that direction and the spirit of U.S. policy.

We call on all the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina to take advantage of this opportunity for greater stability, and to move away from a persistent state of crisis and instead work to promote shared prosperity through compromise.

The United States will continue to work with our partners to protect and advance American interests by supporting stability and progress in Bosnia and Herzegovina and throughout the region.

I find this statement puzzling and concerning.

Opportunity, not crisis

First, it suggests that Bosnia has been in a crisis. From my perspective, Bosnia was in a moment of opportunity, not crisis. The opportunity was to rid itself of Milorad Dodik and his cronies. They have milked the country for private gain and repeatedly threatened its sovereignty and territorial integrity. But the State Department thought it needed to pay a price for his stepping down from the presidency of Republika Srpska and annulment of legislation that the High Representative had already voided.

The price was high: withdrawal of sanctions levied on dozens of people for good reasons that have not been reversed. No one has returned their ill-gotten gains or expressed regret for denials of genocide as well as other war crimes. Not to mention the many threats to secede from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The sanctions relief is unlikely to promote stability, which is not in the interests of the people de-sanctioned. They can now continue to use their riches to empower politicians opposed to the Dayton accords and Bosnia’s European future.

Nation-building depends on who does it

Second, the statement that the US is no longer pursuing “nation-building or heavy-handed international intervention” is bunk. Nation-building is precisely what Trump is proposing in Gaza. There he has proposed a carbon copy of the 1990s interventions, albeit with Muslim under American suprevision rather than American troops. The international intervention Trump is pursuing in Venezuela is unquestionably heavy-handed. He has now also proposed military intervention in Nigeria.

I suppose what Shea really means is no more nation-building in Bosnia. The alternative proposed is clear: local solutions led by representatives of Bosnia’s three constituent peoples. I, too, think the solution should be local, but the devil is in who sits at the table. “Representatives of the three constituent peoples” is a formula for putting the solution in the hands of ethnic nationalists. They have given us two decades of stagnation.

The leaders of the major ethnic nationalist parties are prepared, if left to their own devices, to partition Bosnia.

They won’t agree to implement the Dayton accords. They would prefer to create two more “entities” in addition to Republika Srpska. One would be a Croat entity, known during the 1990s war as Herceg-Bosna. The other would be a Muslim entity, contemplated during the war as “The Green Garden.” From that to more ethnic cleansing and breakup of the state is an easy downhill slide. The 1990s interventions sought to avoid that. First with the creation of the Croat-Muslim Federation and later with the Dayton accords.

Why Bosnia should be saved

We were committed then to building a multi-ethnic democracy. Anything less would have presented an unfortunate model for the post-Cold War world. It would also have perpetuated war crimes. The Trump Administration is ethnonationalist (white supremacist), so it does not share this goal. Nor is it committed to democracy, at home or abroad.

But it should share the second. We also in the 1990s wanted to prevent the emergence of a “rump Islamic Republic that would be a platform for Iranian terrorism in Europe.” The Iranians are no longer as big a threat as they were 30 years ago. But terrorism in the United States is a reality that had not yet occurred then. The Bosniaks I am friendly with all want to move the country westward and into the European Union. But a big segment of the Bosniaks would object if the Croats and Serbs succeed in reducing the country to a third (or less) of its current territory, with only Muslims as citizens. A few extremists will move in the terrorist direction.

There is one potential saving grace. People in Zagreb and Belgrade could realize that an Islamic state on their borders is highly undesirable. They might then conclude, as President Tudjman eventually did in the 1990s but President Milosevic did not, that keeping Bosnia whole is in their interests. But I am not holding my breathe for that kind of rationality. It would be far better if the Americans were to realize the error of risking the breakup of the Bosnian state.

One more thing

The Trump Administration vaunts its transactional skills. This deal looks like a bad one. Which makes me wonder why the White House would agree to it. Some enterprising journalist needs to go further than the New York Times already has to discover what Trump got to convince him to do something so unlikely to produce good results for the United States.