Tag: Balkans
A bad 1995 idea that is worse now
An invitation to meet with Croatian officials this week has prompted me to think once more about the Bosnian Croats. I dealt extensively with them between November 1994 and June 1996 as the State Department Special Envory for the Bosnian Federation. The Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks (Muslims in American usage, but many prefer Bosniaks because it lacks religious connotation) had made their peace by then. My role was to help them implement its provisions for creating a joint Federation. In parallel, the Croat Defense Council (HVO) and the Bosnian Army (ABiH) were fighting the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), supported by Serbia. That continued until November 1995, when the war ended with the Dayton accords.
The Bosnian Croats were uninterested in a “third entity”
The Bosnian Croats were a force to be reckoned with in 1995. The Croatian Army, fresh from victories earlier in 1995, backed the HVO to the hilt. That was a major factor in the successful HVO/ABiH summer offensive against the VRS inside Bosnia. Croatia controlled the Adriatic coast, through which arms shipments to the Bosnian Army had to pass (in violation of a UN arms embargo). So when we got to Dayton, the Bosnian Croats were in excellent negotiating position.
Dick Holbrooke did not make it easy. He refused to meet at Dayton with Kresimir Zubak, the President of the Federation. But still the Bosnian Croats got an excellent deal. Zubak asked for and got a tripartite presidency (Croat/Serb/Bosniak) despite the relatively small percentage of Croats in Bosnia even before the war. They were 17.38% in the then most recent (1991) census. They are now fewer: 15.43% in 2013.
Dayton gave them one-third of what the Bosnians call “the state” in addition to their half of the Federation, which became 51% of the territory. They also held, like the Bosniaks and Serbs, various constitutionally established vetoes. A Bosnian Croat became Foreign Minister in the state government. There were lots of other goodies along the way. No wonder no Bosnian Croat at that time asked for what is now known as “the third entity,” that is a Croat sub-state like Republika Srpska.
Now things are different
That has changed. Despite favorable election rules and constitutional provisions, the ethnic nationalist Croats have not been adept. The country has even dared elect an anti-nationalist Croat to the presidency, thrice. So the Croat nationalist leader, Dragan Covic, has conducted a major campaign to change the rules in his own favor. This despite several court decisions to the contrary.
Covic does this in collaboration with Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik. Russian President Putin encourages them, both because he is an ethnic nationalist like them and because it causes the US and EU heartburn. Covic gets a lot of face time with weak-kneed Western diplomats desperately seeking to make progress on electoral reform.
That effort has failed, but the Croat/Serb campaign continues. Both leaderships feel threatened. They fear a civic Bosnia. Each person would then have one vote. Ethnic nationalist institutions and vetoes would be reduced or eliminated. Dodik and Covic denounce this option as leading to an Islamic state. Bosnia now has a slight Bosniak (Muslim in their terms) numerical majority.
No one should be fooled
The real threat is different. Strengthening ethnic division in Bosnia, which is what the nationalist Croats and Serbs advocate, would lead to the formation of an Islamic state. The third entity implies two others, one of which would necessarily be Muslim. It would be land-locked and barely viable. Most Bosniaks don’t want that. They are too fractious to achieve it anyway. Only Croat success in getting a third entity could make it happen.
Franjo Tudjman, the war-time father of independent Croatia, understood this. He was no liberal democrat. He collaborated despite his ethnic nationalist politics with formation of the Federation and its role in post-war Bosnia. The reason: preventing the emergence of three entities. Somehow Zagreb has forgotten that an Islamic state next door would not necessarily be a good neighbor. Too many Americans and Europeans have forgotten it too. So I hear lots of third entity talk, either explicit or implicit, especially from Croatians as well as Bosnian Croats.
It was a bad idea in 1995. We in the State Department worried then that it would become a platform for Iranian-supported terrorism in Europe, because Tehran was providing ample support to the Bosnian Army. Sunni Islamists didn’t teach us about terrorism in the US until 2001. A democratic Bosnia has no need of ethnically defined sub-national entitites. If a third entity was a bad idea in 1995, it is a worse idea now, including for Croatians and Bosnian Croats.
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Irredentism is not limited to Russia
I am pleased to publish this piece, which I co-authored with SAIS colleague Sinisa Vukovic:
One of us has been critical of US State Department praise for President Vucic of Serbia. Some American diplomats are accepting the notion that he is genuinely pro-European and concerned only with the welfare of Serbs in neighboring countries. That is a mistake, especially in the midst of the Ukraine war. His reasoning about Serbia’s responsibilities and relations with its neighbors bears a distinct resemblance to Vladimir Putin’s justifications for aggression:
– Protection of ethnic kin, based on the assumption that the President of Russia or Serbia is responsible to defend Russians or Serbs wherever they live.
– Exaggeration of the threats Russians/Serbs face in other countries and calls for preventive action, including interference in the internal politics of neighboring countries.
– Use of gross disinformation to exaggerate urgency, while attributing the reports to others so as to maintain plausible deniability.
– Exploitation of the Orthodox Church to claim ethnic unity in the face of alleged religious persecution.
– Abuse of linguistic identity to claim that anyone who speaks Russian/Serbian is protected by Moscow/Belgrade.
These and other examples indicate that Vucic, like Putin, rejects civic identities and the notion that sovereignty stops at a state’s borders.
Vucic has moved definitively away from liberal democracy and back towards repressive ethnonationalism. The press is not free in Serbia and dissent is increasingly perilous. Vucic has befriended Vladimir Putin, refused to align with EU sanctions on Russia, and even now is allowing Air Serbia to double service Moscow. Vucic claims to support Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, as he must because of Serbia’s claims to Kosovo, but he is doing little to support Kyiv.
Like Putin, who advocates a “Russian world,” Vucic has also attached himself to people who believe in creating a broader ethnonationalist polity than the territory Serbia currently occupies, the “Serbian world.” He habitually refers to his own role vis-a-vis “Serbs” (Serbi) not Serbians or citizens of Serbia (Srbijanci).
Here is some of the evidence for Vucic’s irredentist ambitions:
Serbian world
September 26, 2020, (then) Minister of Defense Aleksandar Vulin started talking it up:
Vucic must create the Serbian world. Belgrade must gather in itself and around itself all Serbs, and the President of Serbia is the President of all Serbs.
(Vučić treba da stvara srpski svet. Beograd mora da u sebi i oko sebe okupi sve Srbe, a predsjednik Srbije je predsjednik svih Srba)
On April 9, 2021, Vulin specified:
Current geopolitical circumstances do not favor the idea of unification of all areas where Serbs live, but this will inevitably happen in ten, twenty or fifty years…wherever they live, in Serbia, Montenegro, Republika Srpska. What we need is the situation where the care for all Serbs, wherever they live, is managed from one center, and that is Belgrade, and I see nothing controversial about it.
During his party convention, July 18, 2021, Vulin explained the rationale behind Serbian world:
The people that has experienced genocide in Jasenovac, that has experienced Oluja [the Croatian military Operation Storm in 1995], and the March pogrom [in 2004 in Kosovo] does not have the right to surrender its fate to the hands of others, that others decide about the future of their children. People whose experience postulates that when it does not have its own soldier, its own police officer, its own judge, it does not have the rights…Serbia needs to have an army that can defend Serbia and Serbs wherever they live.
Effectively, he is calling for protection of Serbs by creation of Greater Serbia, the idea that drove Slobodan Milosevic to war at least four times.
On the same day Vucic reacted:
The official state policy is that Serbia’s state borders are inviolable, and we do not care about others’ borders. We have to protect our own, and unequivocally demonstrate what is our policy.
No doubt having gotten an earful from Western diplomats, Vucic backed off a bit the next September:
In that notion [Serbian world] there is nothing threatening, nothing that would endanger anyone else… it does not talk about borders or anything else, and besides, it is not part of the official state policies.
But it is
It is state policy and Vucic must know it. The National Security Strategy of the Republic of Serbia, that the Parliament adopted in December 2019, is centered around the following premise:
Protection of sovereignty and territorial integrity, military neutrality, safeguard of Serbian people outside of the Republic of Serbia’s borders, European integration, and efficient rule of law
(očuvanje suverenosti i teritorijalne celovitosti, vojna neutralnost, briga o srpskom narodu van granica Republike Srbije, evropske integracije i efikasna pravna država)
Regarding the safeguard of Serbian people living outside of Serbia’s borders, the Strategy specifies it “is an existential matter for the survival of the Republic of Serbia.”
It’s dangerous to Bosnia, Montenegro, and Kosovo
The same Strategy also exclaims:
Preservation of Republika Srpska is one of the foreign policy priorities of the Republic of Serbia
(“Očuvanje Republike Srpske jedan je od spoljnopolitičkih prioriteta Republike Srbije”)
To explain what is meant by this, Vulin (again as MoD) stated in May 2019:
Republika Srpska has always been a priority of the Government and the President of the Republic of Serbia. Republika Srpska may not have its own army, but Serbian people heve their own army.
(“Republika Srpska je uvek prioritet politike Vlade i predsednika Republike Srbije. Republika Srpska nema svoju vojsku, ali srpski narod ima svoju vojsku.”)
This is essentially a pledge to intervene militarily in Bosnia if the RS is threatened, something Milosevic declined to do.
Vucic agrees:
We are one people, as President Milorad Dodik said. There is no such thing as Croatian Serbs or Bosnian Serbs. My father is not a Bosnian Serb, he is a Serb. He may be from Bosnia, but he is not any other Serb but only a Serb.
The threat to intervene is not only against Bosnia. Responding to Montenegrin President Djukanovic’s accusations that Serbia is expansionist, Vucic stated:
Djukanovic should know that I will always defend Serbs, and I will always defend Serbia. I have not alternative, but my own country and my own people
On Kosovo, the risk is even clearer: Vucic mobilized the Serbian army when Kosovo insisted on implementation of an agreement concerning cross-boundary/border recognition of license plates (!).
Serbia is serious
I take Serbia seriously. Its vast re-armament (with Russian and Chinese as well as Western weapons) serves its national security purposes, which are clearly not limited to the current territory of Serbia. No one watching Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine should fail to recognize the risks in the Balkans.
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Stevenson’s army, March 14
– Talks and fighting over Ukraine.
– WSJ says US won’t exempt Russia from sanctions to save Iran deal.
– Various sources say Russia has asked China for military aid.
– NYT assesses how the war might end.
– WaPO reports return of earmarks.
– SAIS & WIlson Center have upcoming event on Ukraine & the Balkans.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Blatant falsehoods parading as diplomacy
Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland tweeted today:
Pleased to speak with Serbian President @avucic to thank Serbia for its support for Ukraine, ongoing efforts to address the humanitarian crisis, and commitment to regional stability. We welcome Serbia’s good relations with neighbors & continued progress along its European path.
It would be hard to write two sentences with more misconceptions.
Other than the volunteers joining pro-Russian forces there, Serbia has offered Ukraine little. Belgrade voted for the General Assembly resolution denouncing Russian aggression. Serbia has also said it will accept Ukrainian refugees, but how many and through what channels is unclear. If it were to accept them in the same proportion as its adveraries in Kosovo, the number would be upwards of 15,000. Belgrade has also promised medical assistance, but when, where, and how is unclear.
What is clear is that Serbia has refused to join international sanctions against Russia, despite its commitment to align its foreign policy with the EU. This is nothing new. At last count, the EU viewed Serbia as 56% aligned, far less than its neighbors. Albania and Montenegro were fully aligned, with North Macedonia at 96% and Bosnia and Herzegovina at 70%.
Serbia is a primary factor in regional instability, not stability. Its leadership is calling for a “Serbian world,” analogous to Russian President Putin’s calls for a “Russian world.” That is one of the goals that precipitated the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Serbia’s Montenegrin, Macedonian, and Kosovo neighbors were already nervous about Belgrade’s massive re-armament before the Ukraine war. They now need to worry about whether Serbian President Vucic will, like Putin, claim genocide against co-nationals and invade one or more of the neighbors. Serbia’s relations with its neighbors, in whose internal politics it interferes, are notably lousy, not good.
Serbia is basically stalled on its EU accession path, for good reasons. While it implements the technical requirements, it lacks a free press and independent judiciary as well as a serious effort at transitional justice. Petrit Selimi (@Petrit), a Serbian-speaking Kosovar, tweets daily on the Serbian press. Today’s delicacies:
Here’s today’s Vesti, which has a front page big focus on “USA bringing plague to Europe”. In small letters you can read about how China and Russia have found proof USA and #Ukraine have developed many diseases to use against Russians in the war. Quite sick.
(2) oldest newspaper in #Serbia, owned now by governments is asking on front page “Who is collecting DNA of Russians”. It’s another conspiracy theory peddled by #Moscow & #Belgrade that Ukrainians & Americans have collected Russian DNA for special biological warfare. Silly stuff.
(3) Another known tabloid, famous for warmongering, hateful propaganda since 1980s, reports proudly “#Russia building its own world in East.” This is done to counter “Washington threats” and is “new global architecture”. A sinister, murderous version of @MacaesBruno’s Euroasia.
(4) the tragedy in Serbian media scene is that former liberal media have all now become affiliates or serventa of #Serbia government. B92 daily starts with Russian version of the war events in #Ukraine. Today they report Moscow lies on how “Ukraine planned for war in March”.
To be fair, one still finds pockets of smaller newspapers, regional web portals which are independent & try to counter official pro-Russian propaganda in #Serbia. NGOs protested against war in #Ukraine. However the dominant media are beholden to forces supporting death & mayhem.
@Petrit
I’m well aware that diplomats sometimes feel they have to say nice things about foreign leaders in order to bring them around. But this is a case of blatant falsehoods parading as diplomacy. #fail
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What happens in Ukraine won’t stay in Ukraine
Here are the speaking notes I prepared on the Balkans and Middle East for this noon’s event on “What’s Next for Russia, Ukraine, and the World?” It featured Johns Hopkins/SAIS faculty:
Balkans
- American policy since the end of the Cold War has aimed at “Europe whole and free.” That isn’t going to happen so long as Putin or someone of his ilk rules Russia.
- Serbia claims neutrality, but its current leadership advocates a “Serbian world” akin to Putin’s “Russian world.” Belgrade also refuses to sanction Moscow. De facto Serbia is siding with Russia.
- That puts Bosnia, Kosovo, and NATO member Montenegro at risk from Serb irredentism.
- The line between democracies and autocracies will therefore also be drawn through the Balkans unless Belgrade changes its inclinations.
Countering Russian ambitions and Moscow’s Serb proxies needs higher priority:
- Deployment of an additional 500 EU troops to Bosnia is a good first step. But more are needed. The UK should augment that deployment. The US should beef up the military presence in Brcko and move some troops to northern Kosovo .
- The EU should tell Serbia that continued adherence to neutrality in Ukraine will result in a halt to the EU accession process.
- The US, UK, and EU should end bilateral and multilateral assistance to Republika Srpska and threaten likewise to Serbia.
Middle East
In the Middle East, the situation is more ambiguous. The interests at stake are less compelling and US policy more accepting of autocracy:
- Syria backs Russia and Iran is attempting the Chinese straddle (for peace but against Ukrainian membership in NATO). Egypt, the UAE, and other small Gulf monarchies are ducking for cover. Saudi Arabia so far has decided to enjoy high oil prices.
- Israel has backed Ukraine, but cautiously to avoid Russian retaliation against its interests in Syria and domestic political complications. Turkey has also backed Ukraine, less cautiously.
- Ultimately, the Middle East will go with the flow. If Russia is successful, no one in the Middle East will refuse to maintain diplomatic relations with a puppet government in Kyiv.
- OPEC+ will gain traction and Russian inroads in the Middle East will expand.
- But if Russia fails, the Middle East countries, democracies and autocracies alike, will claim they supported Ukraine, even if OPEC+ suffers irreparable damage.
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Belgrade and Banja Luka should draw the right conclusions
Here is an interview I did for Rasim Belko of Patria, a Sarajevo-based news agency, on the repercussions of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in Bosnia and Herzegovina:
Q: Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you announced that Russia would continue to destabilize the Western Balkans. Will Putin go to war with the West in another hotbed such as the Balkans?
A: Russia isn’t going to war in the Balkans, where it has few military resources. But it uses its proxies there to de-stabilize: Serb nationalist organizations, Dodik, and Vucic.
The danger of Bosnian collapse is not the issue
Q: Bosnia and Herzegovina is a key focal point of the Balkans. In your opinion, how real is the danger of its collapse?
A: I would not call the risk “collapse.” There is a real possibility that Dodik will go too far and provoke a response.
Nor is NATO membership for now
Q: Many believe that Bosnia and Herzegovina should be admitted to NATO under a shortened procedure. Do you think it is realistic that this will happen soon?
A: The pre-condition is consensus within the Bosnian leadership. So far as I can tell, that does not exist. I doubt NATO be interested in enlargement so long as the crisis with Russia continues. But eventual NATO membership is certainly possible. I have no problem with Bosnians pressing for a “shortened procedure.”
Separatism demands a vigorous response
Q: Milorad Dodik’s separatist policy is Putin’s dangerous extended arm in the heart of Europe. Have the US and the EU missed the chance to address this threat to peace in the Western Balkans in time?
A: They have waited too long, but there is still time. What has been lacking is political will. The invasion of Ukraine may help the US, UK, and EU find the political will.
Q: Is it time for more concrete and stronger measures of the West towards such a policy of Milorad Dodik?
A: Yes. All international funding that finds its way to Republika Srpska should be cut off.
Serbia has reason to hesitate
Q: Serbia and its President Aleksandar Vučić sided with Russia, and at the same time they are continuously working from Serbia against the sovereignty and integrity of BiH. In your opinion, does Europe have grounds for fear of a Serbian invasion of BiH, like Putin on Ukraine?
A: Nothing about the Russian invasion of Ukraine so far should encourage Serbia. Even Milosevic opted not to intervene openly in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I imagine Vucic will not want to take the risk.
Q: How do you see the outcome around Ukraine and what are the possible consequences for Europe, and especially in relation to the Western Balkans?
A: A quick Russian victory in Ukraine would have been bad news for the Balkans, as it would have encouraged Serb irredentism. In addition, many Serbs in Republika Srpska and in northern Kosovo would welcome an invasion more than the Ukrainians did. That said, things have gone so badly so far for Russia that even a victory would not be very rewarding. And Western solidarity has been strong. Belgrade and Banja Luka should be able to draw the right conclusions.
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