Global Europe

The political situation in Bosnia has been in decline for nearly four years.  Yet the EU bureaucracy (and many member states) remains on autopilot, confident against the evidence that its tried and tested enlargement formula need only be applied to bring forth a flowering of political responsibility.

In early October, the EU Presidency of Sweden under Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg announced an effort to jump-start reforms and accelerate transition by summoning Bosnian political party leaders to the EUFOR/NATO base at Butmir, outside Sarajevo. Both the EU Presidency (with Council and Commission) and the US entered with their own agendas.

For Bildt, getting a decision on Office of the High Representative’s (OHR) closure during Sweden’s Presidency was paramount. The US had wanted to restart a constitutional reform process before the end of the year. Each hoped to co-opt the other.  While Butmir was meant to be a take-it-or-leave-it package deal, almost immediately, the sights of the international community were lowered, and Butmir became a “process”. It is still ongoing, with no results on the horizon.

Or rather, no positive results, as there are a number of negative ones. The Butmir process exposed the fact that there was no strategy, and that despite a façade of unity, there were fissures, both transatlantic and intra-EU. An aura of desperation attended the effort from the beginning: for Bildt, it seemed any deal would do. High Representative Valentin Inzko was cut-out of the planning and execution, and was restrained from performing his peace enforcement role so long at the “process” limps along.

The undisputed winner has been Republika Srpska (RS) Prime Minister Milorad Dodik, who availed himself of the rules-free environment to amp-up his rhetoric on Bosnia being a lost cause, and the right of the RS to go its own way, while rejecting the very concept of internationally convened meetings on constitutional reform. 

All this leads to the conclusion that the international position in Bosnia has been weakened by the Butmir effort.

On November 18-19, the Peace Implementation Council (PIC) Steering Board, an ad hoc international body assembled to oversee implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords, will meet.  The criteria for the OHR's closure – including the contentious issue of state property allocation – are unmet, and there has even been backsliding.  Nobody expects major decisions to be made.

So what should be the way forward? The current approach of episodic engagement with a focus on expediency between spells of strategic sclerosis is untenable. A clear, consistent and sustained policy, based on a strategic assessment, is required.

 The EU has no escape from dealing with Bosnia, though it is easy to get the impression that some think there is. Failure for the EU in Bosnia will have a direct impact on global perceptions of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). If the EU can’t manage in Bosnia, where can it? While failure would also hurt the US, given Dayton’s made-in-America label, the EU has far more to lose.

The EU needs to get over its passive presumption that its standard enlargement approach is enough, and recognize the need for sustained political engagement in Bosnia. This change is unlikely to emanate from Brussels – member states must take the lead.

Sweden has been able to drive the policy and no EU heavyweights have made efforts to oppose it, despite misgivings. Nevertheless, there are relative hardliners and softliners, though none has put forward a strategy. While this shows that creating the conditions for Bosnia to function is not a high priority for any of the 27 EU member states, it also shows that relatively small shifts in position and willingness to propose a strategy could carry the day within the EU and in the Peace Implementation Council (PIC).  What is needed is vision and sustained political will. However, in the PIC, the ugly reality is that only Turkey is truly committed for the long haul.

Germany is a charter member of both the EU and the PIC. Together with the US, operating with a designated special envoy, it is in a position to develop the necessary strategy and to assemble the necessary coalition in the EU and the PIC. The obvious candidates for this group in the EU are Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, and perhaps Poland and Ireland. But even those presently in the softline camp might be won over by a strong German position – or at least mute their protests. These include France and the many Central Europeans.

 Germany also has its own reasons why success in Bosnia should be a priority. Both the emergence of the CFSP and Germany’s pretension to become a global political player are inseparably linked to Srebrenica and Europe’s failure during the genocide in Bosnia.  No other EU member is as likely to understand the long-term consequences for Europe of another failure in Bosnia.

So a coalition including as many EU members as can be mustered, as well as the US, Turkey, Japan and Canada, could easily carry the day in the PIC; a group of such strength could easily overcome Russian objections, which are unlikely to be made in such a case.  But to do what?

Bosnia requires strategic patience – the international will to maintain and use the Dayton instruments of the OHR and EUFOR (with its Chapter 7 mandate) until they are no longer needed to ensure stability.

But if the strategic endpoint is a state that has popular legitimacy and is moving itself toward the EU and NATO, a far more active and creative international approach is required:

- The roles of High Representative and European Union Special Representative should be decoupled, as the current arrangement ensures the lowest common denominator.  The “reinforced” EUSR could then perform its role of assisting Bosnia in the enlargement process, while the High Representative could ensure Dayton implementation and compliance.

-  The EU and NATO both need to make clear that while constitutional reforms will not be imposed, they are conditions for Bosnia’s further progress toward membership.  Clear guidelines are needed.  An international expert commission with a mandate to interact with civil society and citizens at large, not just politicians, should attempt to identify workable solutions for Bosnia’s governance.

Bosnia is far from a lost cause. Its citizens have long hungered for accountable governance, but the Dayton system and its inherent incentives has locked-in an oligarchy utterly detached from their concerns. The goal has to be a country where citizens from each self-defined group feel their rights and interests can be respected.  Bosnia’s citizens, not their unaccountable leaders, must be the EU’s partners.