What America Owes Bosnia

As that tragic, broken country heads for the abyss again, it’s time for the United States to act wisely and impartially in the interests of Balkan peace

How laggardly Bosnia changes is one of the few reassuring things about that charming yet ill-starred country. Observers can look away from Bosnia for years, even decades, and the basic issues there shift barely at all. Right now, Bosnia is grappling with the challenge of possible Serb secession over fears of Muslim domination by Sarajevo. Which is precisely the same problem which plunged the country into a terrible war in 1992. Nothing has changed.

Similarly, the historically minded will observe that the current conundrum facing Bosnia, with its European colonial-style system imposed from the outside that’s unable to keep the country together, particularly when Bosnian Serbs don’t want to be part of it, and they have the backing of neighboring Serbia and their big Slavic Orthodox brother, Russia, looks exactly like what sparked the First World War in 1914. Any world-weary Austro-Hungarian functionary from over a century ago could be briefed up on Bosnia’s current problems in under five minutes. Only some names have changed. Without seeming alarmist, I recommend that no archdukes, or their current European Union equivalents, journey to Sarajevo this season.

Right now, headlines are filled with the troubling news that Bosnia (formally Bosnia-Hercegovina) is coming apart at the seams again. To condense a good deal of painful recent history, after the 1992-1995 war that shattered Bosnia, killing a little over 100,000 people, NATO intervened in the conflict and the United States brokered a peace deal at the end of 1995 termed the Dayton Accords. This agreement maintained a weak central government in Sarajevo with most power being devolved to two entities: the Serbian Republic (in their language Republika Srpska or RS) and the Muslim-dominated Federation of Bosnia-Hercegovina.