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Autopilot to a crash landing

Kurt Bassuener of the Democratization Policy Council, who lives and works in Sarajevo, reacted to my latest on Bosnia with a letter too detailed and interesting to hide in a comment, but stop reading here if you are not interested in the Balkans:

Hi Dan,

Bosnia and Herzegovina is at risk.  I stand by my conclusion  that any dissolution will be violent.  My colleague Bodo Weber and the Atlantic Initiative’s Vlado Azinović, as you know, enumerated the potential conflict factors last October in our security risk analysis.  The situation has worsened since.

You’re dead right to note Sandžak as a factor. I am certain that the distinct minority who espouse a Bosniak {Muslim} national state have it in mind as part of the equation.  Republika Srpska President Dodik wouldn’t care because

a) it wouldn’t come out of the territory he controls,

b) it would strengthen his position vis-a-vis Belgrade.

But a Bosniak state would be exceedingly hard to sell – it would have to be presented as a fait accompli, saving what could be saved.  The last time it was tried, in 1993 with the besieged Republic of BiH fighting both the Serb Republic Army and the Croat Defense Force, the Bosniaks still refused, despite the adverse conditions.

Were I good at detachment, I could almost enjoy watching the political circus here. It looks as if Dodik has assembled the votes to oust Social Democratic Party (SDP) leader Zlatko Lagumdžija from his post as foreign minister.  For the past seven months, Lagumdžija has effectively acted as an unwitting agent of Dodik’s agenda. Now that total political chaos reigns in the Federation, Dodik is demonstrating who’s boss by demanding his ministry back.

This was an Icarus experience for Lagumdžija.  He apparently thought he could lead the Federation in such a way as to compete with the RS and exercise equal influence in the state.  Haris Silajdžić, albeit from a different post, held similar pretensions in the last government.  But given the diffusion of power in the Federation, as well as the view from Banja Luka that state competences inherently infringe on entity competences, whoever rules the RS effectively rules the state by default. The  SDP is likely to get hammered in the local elections.  The sense of betrayal among its voter base is massive.

In a conversation with a friend recently, I remarked that Lagumdžija had served Dodik’s agenda, albeit I doubt he saw it that way. My friend’s retort was that he thought that Croat political leader Čović had done that.  But Čović at least recognized he was getting into a subservient relationship with Dodik, in the hope that he’ll get the crumbs of a divided BiH – de jure or de facto.

I knew when this state-level government was formed that nothing could be done, given its configuration – at least nothing real. Lagumdžija is pushing for anything that will allow for BiH to apply for EU candidacy, however hopeless that application would be at present on both sides of the equation.  Hence the ridiculous deal on how to implement the Sejdić-Finci European Court of Human Rights ruling of December 2009. While it might not put wind in his sails politically, I suspect the EU would jump at the chance to take any Sejdić-Finci arrangement to declare progress.

The fun part of all of this is that Dodik can be forgiven for banking on intra-Bosniak political fratricide as a force multiplier for his playing the long game toward independence – delegitimizing the state, “proving” it’s impossible (with dependable help from within the Bosnian Federation) to the EU (with a lot of uptake among the continentals – especially the European Commission). But it probably won’t be the Federation’s party leaders who literally call the shots when it boils over – and it will if this continues. It’s more likely to be veterans’ organizations or other parallel structures.

So while you’re probably right that there is little interest in recognizing an independent RS, at least in most Western capitals, there is also no will to shift out of the bureaucratic autopilot we’re in, which ultimately ends in violence. That would make this that much worse. Only external actors are in a position to arrest this trajectory.  They’re just not willing to do so. The bill will still land on their doorstep, whether they want to admit that to themselves or not. Total myopia…

Germany recently laid down two markers in rapid succession – the Ambassador said OHR has a negative effect in BiH and Germany announced its withdrawal from EUFOR. The number of troops is insignificant – three, as I understand. But the point was to make clear that the time for executive mandates is past.  The Chapter 7 mandate comes up for renewal by the Security Council in November. Significantly, Dodik has embraced ending the EUFOR mandate for the first time. Previously, the RS had been for keeping EUFOR while closing OHR. The Russians are all for booting both OHR and EUFOR. In Banja Luka last month, the Russian Ambassador mooted BiH/RS joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Cheers,

Kurt