Can the Biden Administration fix its mistakes in Bosnia and Herzegovina?
A few days ago, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg revealed that Russia has announced its invasion of Ukraine in the fall of 2021. “ President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine, ” Stoltenberg said.
He added that, in addition to the above, the Russian president, in his ultimatum, demanded that NATO withdraw all military infrastructure from all countries that became members of the Alliance from 1997 until today. According to Stoltenberg, this would divide NATO into A-class and B-class members. “ he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite. He has got more NATO presence in eastern part of the Alliance and he has also seen that Finland has already joined the Alliance and Sweden will soon be a full member,” said the Secretary General of NATO, and added that he hopes that Türkiye will ratify accession of Sweden soon.
It seems that this event in autumn of 2021 had huge impact on the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
At the end of July 2021, the then High Representative of international community Mr Valentin Inzko brought changes to the Criminal Code in order to ban denial of genocide in Srebrenica. The reaction of Bosnian Serb leadership was negative, but politcal crisis has not yet reached its peak. At the meeting of the Bosnian Serb authorities and the opposition, it was concluded that Bosnian Serb officials will not participate in the work of joint institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, until the Inzko law is withdrawn.
The total crisis occurred only in the autumn of 2021, exactly at the time when Putin announced the invasion of Ukraine. From the phase of passive rebellion (boycott of institutions), Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik moves to active rebellion, parting ways with the opposition, which was against such an intense reaction. Dodik’s majority in Bosnian Serb Parliament adopted the conclusions on “restoring jurisdiction” (unilateral transfer of competencies of BiH to Bosnian Serb entity). He begins the process of forming the Agency for Medicines of the Republika Srpska, and, among other things, makes a statement that it has a ready attack on the barracks of the Armed Forces, which are in the territory of the Republika Srpska.
Let us recall that, in the fall of 2021, when Putin sends an ultimatum to NATO, the Biden Administration appointed Matthew Palmer as a special envoy for electoral reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A month later, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken sent a letter to members of the Presidency of BiH, in which he focused on “Electoral Law and limited constitutional reforms”.
For more than a decade, Bosnian Croat officials have been insisting on Electoral Reform, in order to increase its political influence, so they could have same amount of power as Bosniak parties. But Bosniak side, led by Bakir Izetbegovic at that time, has been opposing that kind of Electoral Reform, because Croats who make 15% of population already had political influence that was close to one Bosniaks had, despite the fact that Bosniaks are 50% of country’s population.
Winter 2021/2022 was the period of the greatest crisis, after the Dayton Agreement. According to many estimates, it was the moment when Bosnia and Herzegovina came closest to war, after 1995. Before the start of the invasion of Ukraine, the Biden Administration imposed sanctions on Dodik, the first since those of 2017. After the start of the invasion, there was also, for the first time after Dayton, until the increase in the number of international military troops in BiH, from 600 to 1,100.
The main point of the American strategy, with the aim of preserving peace and stability in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was shaken by the tectonic changes that occurred after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, was in the rapprochement of the Bosniak and Croat sides in the Federation entity.
Why did the Biden Administration decide on such a strategy?
One of the key people in the creation of the US strategy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the fall and winter of 2021, was Derek Chollet, the general adviser of the US Secretary of State, the author of the book “The Road to the Dayton Agreement” and once a close associate of late Richard Holbrooke, high official of Bill Clinton Administration who brokered Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995.
Thinking about how to stop a possible new war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chollet most certainly had in mind, as the Clinton Administration had already done.
“No longer satisfied to leave the negotiating to the Europeans,” he writes in his book, “ the Clinton Administration also became more active diplomatically. This started with brokering an agreement to create an alliance between Bosnia’s Muslims [Bosniaks] and Croats. While the Bosnian Serbs had successfully captured 70 percent of Bosnia’s territory, the Muslims and Croats were fighting over what remained. The Sarajevo leadership deeply distrusted the Bosnian Croats, who were supported by Croatia’s government in Zagreb. This had led to significant bloodshed itself, and it also further fueled Serb aggression. With a divided adversary, the Bosnian Serbs had little incentive to negotiate, and they pressed their military advantage.”
“The Americans,” he wrote, “believed that the Muslim–Croat alliance was the only chance for the Muslims in Bosnia to develop the resources to balance Serb power.”
Chollet presents a whole series of examples, which confirm that all of Clinton’s diplomats in charge of the Balkans were convinced that the Bosniak-Croatian alliance was key to concluding the Dayton Agreement. This is particularly important, because they are diplomats, who hold the key word even in the current Biden Administration.
For example, the current American ambassador to Serbia, Chris Hill, who was in charge of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995, commented on the situation before the signing of the Dayton Agreement as follows. “The Sarajevo government,” Chollet wrote, “was happy to be finally scoring victories, and wanted to press forward. But they couldn’t do it without the Croatians. Every time the Muslims fought without Croat support, they ‘got their asses handed to them’, Chris Hill recalled.”
A few weeks after the signing of Dayton, as Chollet writes, General Wesley Clarke met with Serbian President at that time Slobodan Milošević, who spoke respectfully of American military and technological superiority against which “the Serbs never stood a chance.” To that, Clarke told him that he was wrong: “You lost to Muslims and Croats.”
Chollet assesses that the aforementioned conversation reminds us how important the NATO intervention was in creating a sense of necessity in Milošević to conclude the Dayton Agreement, “but also reminds us that Dayton also owes its success to another factor, the Muslim-Croatian victories on the ground.”
If we bear all this in mind, Chollet, Hill and their colleagues in the Biden Administration, in the fall of 2021, thinking about the consequences that may be caused in Bosnia and Herzegovina by an invasion of Ukraine, came to the conclusion that the key lies in solving a political, i.e. preventing a possible armed conflict in the Federation.
The goal of the negotiations, led by US envoy Matthew Palmer, in January 2022 was to change the electoral law, so that Bosnian Croats would be satisfied with its participation in the government, after the upcoming elections on October 2 2022.
After the negotiations did not result in success, the international community led by the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union used the Office of the High Representative as an instrument to implement requests of Croat officials, by amending the Constitution and the Election Law.
Perhaps the key moment of this process was when the representative of main Bosnian Croat party (HDZ), at the OHR negotiations, threatened that there would be “unrest in the south of the country” if “Croatian legitimate representatives” were not part of the government after the elections. At the same time, all leading Croat political parties adopted joint conclusions, opening up the possibility of “institutional and territorial reorganization”.
In the eyes of American diplomats, the possibility has opened that Croat officials, if it is not part of the government after the elections, will organize a rebellion against the new government, which, if we follow the logic of Chollet’s study, would be a catalyst for a more radical form of rebellion by the Republika Srpska government against the constitutional order, and event territorial integrity of BiH.
Convinced that the “Sarajevo government” does not have enough strength to suppress both rebellions, and the international community does not have the will because it is focused on Ukraine, the Americans, with the help of the OHR, secured a strong position for the HDZ in power structure (so that there would be no “unrest on south”), and then they facilitated new Bosniak-Croat alliance, in the form of a coalition of two political blocs: one is main Croat party HDZ and the other is bloc of Bosniak parties called Troika, who were in the opposition during 2021 crisis.
Many stated that US engagement in establishing Troika-HDZ coalition was aimed at removing Bakir Izetbegović and his party from power, and even punish them due to “non-cooperation”.
In his book, Chollet says that “if there is any chance of peace, Muslims and Croats must cooperate politically, economically and, most importantly, militarily”, and recalls the words of then Secretary of State Warren Christopher that Bosniaks and Croats must join forces against Serbs.
Almost a year after the restoration of the Bosniak-Croat alliance (through Schmidt’s intervention and the establishment of the Troika and HDZ coalition), the expected outcome did not occur. Andrej Plenković and Dragan Čović did not turn against Dodik when they joined the Troika, but as a rule they remain silent about his secessionism, thereby betraying the logic of the Washington Agreement. The Biden Administration, which facilitated the intervention of the OHR in favor of the Croatian side, did not pressure Čović and Plenkovć to turn against Dodik.
Furthermore, the development of events in the past year has shown that the Bosniak-Croat truce is not enough to stop Dodik, who, after a short period of stability, after the elections, creates a crisis again. In this context, the testimony of Defense Minister Zukan Helez is of the greatest importance, that despite the possibility of forming a government with the Bosnian Serb opposition, the Troika decided to form a coalition with Dodik, after he “promised the representatives of the international community that he would cooperate”. Similar statements from one of the leaders of the Serbian opposition, Nebojša Vukanović, support the aforementioned.
The Biden Administration, directly or silently, agreed to Dodik’s participation in the government, which turned out to be a fatal mistake, because as confirmed by the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, after a meeting with German Minister Annaelena Baerbock, Bosnian Serb leader is a threat to the Dayton Agreement and European security .
Representatives of the Biden’s Administration such as aforementioned Blinken, Chollet, Hill and special envoy for Western Balkans Gabriel Escobar know that establishing a Bosniak-Croat truce (or even an alliance) was not enough for Dayton. The radical leaders of Republika Srpska, such as Radovan Karadžić and Momčilo Krajišnik, who even refused to sign the Dayton Agreement, and later, when Milošević forced them to accept it, obstructed its implementation by all means, until they were overthrown and young leaders (such as Dodik at that time) were brought in to replace them. Now, instead of Dodik irreparably mired in corruption and radical politics, new Bosnian Serb leaders are needed, who will accept the necessity of the Dayton balance.
If the Biden Administration found a way to remove Izetbegović’s party from power, and passively or directly approved the Troika’s decision to form government with Dodik, it must now remove him. Otherwise, dissatisfaction among Bosniaks with the Biden Administration will grow and the Biden Administration will be considered responsible for Dodik’s destructive actions, which, as Blinken personally admits, undermines European security.
