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A fortiori

Marko Prelec of International Crisis Group asks a good question:

…if it is indeed a “miracle that the Kosovo government gets anything done with so many foreigners people looking over its shoulders” and thus “the time is coming this fall for this overly supervised country to struggle on its own”, is not the same true a fortiori of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where international supervision will this year mark its seventeenth anniversary?

The difference is in part constitutional. Kosovo has a workable constitution.  Bosnia and Herzegovina does not, because the Americans in their haste froze in place the warring parties and then the international community failed to make adequate provision for returns. Had we written a constitution for Bosnia that was even half as savvy as the one for Kosovo (which had the benefit of the Bosnia experience), and achieved as much implementation, we wouldn’t still be hanging around.

The High Representative and EUFOR are also a lot less present in Bosnia than UNMIK, EULEX, and KFOR and the rest of the alphabet soup in Kosovo. The ICO (the International Civilian Office) is the exception that proves the rule. It has “Bonn”-type powers in Kosovo but hasn’t had to use them. That was wise restraint in part, but it was also that no really compelling occasion arose. The Dayton agreement is just a whole lot harder to implement than the Kosovo agreement, except in northern Kosovo. And there it will not be easy for the Kosovars or the international community to end supervision.

It is therefore not the length of time that the international community hangs around that determines whether it needs to stay longer. We stayed in Germany–administering Berlin no less–for 45 years, because of the Soviet occupation of the East.  That’s the general rule:  it is the specific conditions of the peace you are trying to implement that determine how long you stay. Kosovo has implemented the Ahtisaari plan.  Bosnia has not fully implemented Dayton.  Stability could break down and cause a big mess. So we stay until conditions allow us to leave.  That isn’t unreasonable to me.

One could argue of course that shifting responsibility to the locals, as we are planning to do in Afghanistan, would force them to behave more responsibly.  But that hasn’t really worked in Iraq, isn’t likely to work in Afghanistan and certainly won’t work in Bosnia, where Republika Srpska has no intention at all of implementing the provisions of the Dayton agreements that it doesn’t like, much less help prepare Bosnia for European Union membership.  A fortiori, it is not wise to expect better if international supervision is withdrawn.  So it needs to stay.