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Bosnia still needs the U.S. as well as Europe

International Crisis Group, in a piece published today, urges a kind of unilateral coup by the EU to take over the lead international role in Bosnia:

European Union (EU) member states should make 2011 the year when the lead international role in Bosnia and Herzegovina shifts from the Office of the High Representative (OHR) to a reinforced EU delegation.

With scarce reference to coordinating with the United States or its future role, ICG claims Bosnia and Herzegovina has outgrown the OHR, the arbiter of Dayton agreement implementation, and will do just fine if current conditions for its abolition are dropped or finessed and the weight of the international community’s intervention is shifted to the question of EU membership, with no executive authority for the EU representative.  Somehow conditions for EU membership will be much more effective, international community credibility in imposing conditions will not be reduced just because the last set is being ignored, and OHR can be left to tidy up its unfinished business and wither away.

I confess a serious temptation to support wholeheartedly ICG’s bold proposition.  The Washington has too many issues on its shrinking plate today–getting rid of a few leftovers from the 1990s would be most welcome.  Bosnia was never a vital U.S. interest.  President Clinton’s intervention there in the 1995 was precipitated by an accumulation of secondary interests, combined with Senator Dole’s sharp criticism of the Administration for not intervening as it promised it would during the previous electoral campaign.  Today, Bosnia lies way down the list of priorities.  As a taxpayer, I would count Europe taking over as a big plus.

The trouble is that I doubt Europe can do it with anything like the forcefulness and clarity required, and nothing in the ICG report convinces me otherwise.  The ICG report simply ignores Milorad Dodik’s many threats to take Republika Srpska (RS) in the direction of independence, as if they are not to be taken seriously (unless they present themselves in military guise, at which point the report seems confident the U.S. will join Turkey and the EU in preventing it from happening).  The report treats the RS’s many acts of defiance as rightful and all attempts by the international community to block or blunt them, except the most discreet, as arbitrary, mistaken or unjustified.  It is hard to imagine how the report would be much different if it had been written in Banja Luka, where RS’s masters call the tune.

The sad fact is that Europe and the U.S. need to act in close concert in Bosnia, where Europe’s voice is still weak and divided and the American voice is heard more loudly and clearly.  A quick visit to Mostar, where the EU has achieved little since 1993, and to Brcko, where the U.S. has led a real effort at reintegration, would show what difference it makes.

My own worst fear is that Europe, left to its own confused devices, will begin to de facto negotiate EU membership separately with the RS, which will happily volunteer to implement the acquis communitaire without any help from Sarajevo.  Already European ministers regularly call on Milorad Dodik in Banja Luka as if he is leading an independent state, something the Americans have generally tried to avoid.  If Dodik can prevent formation of a government in Sarajevo for a few more months, as he likely can given his showing in the last election, he’ll be in a position to leave Sarajevo in the figurative dust when it comes to implementing European requirements.

I would not protest a well-coordinated move to shift more weight to a truly amped up EU Delegation, but that should include a plan for meeting the conditions for closure of the OHR (the ICG description of the current state of play on these makes interesting reading) as well as for strong American participation in the European effort.  There is nothing unusual about this.  The head of the International Civilian Office, who is also the EU representative in Kosovo, has a strong American deputy, and Americans have participated in many EU missions, starting to my knowledge with the European customs mission in Bosnia right after the war.

No effort that simply drops the Americans from the picture, or ignores the local political context as much as ICG’s does, will succeed.  Bosnia still needs the U.S. as well as Europe.

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