The Balkans: A Tinderbox Once More
Robert Cole
Just when you thought the world could not get any more complicated or chaotic, the Balkans break back into the news cycle. International attention has been drawn to the region because of Bosnian Serb ethnic leader Milorad Dodik’s recent threats to effectively secede from Bosnia and Herzegovina (frequently abbreviated as BiH). In comments made in October, Dodik promised to push for the judiciary and military to separate from the larger BiH government and form new Serb-only bodies.
The significance of these statements and their potential ramifications lies in the recent past of the region. During the collapse of the Cold War state of Yugoslavia in the late 1980s and early 1990s, ethnic nationalism began to rise, resulting in new states being declared along largely ethnic lines. Bosnia and Herzegovina however is a mix of three major ethnic groups, each with their own dominant religion, but without discrete territories. These are the Muslim Bosniaks, Catholic Croats, and Orthodox Serbs. The region thus could not easily be divided up into clean ethnostate parcels like some parts of the Balkans, contributing to a destructive war that turned into the deadliest European conflict since World War II. When the war finally came to an end thanks in part to a NATO intervention in 1995 and subsequent US-led talks in Dayton, Ohio. Per the Dayton Accords, the country was again unified under a power-sharing plan amongst the three major ethnic groups, which each elect a president as part of the tripartite executive body, which most notably controls centralized institutions such as the military. The rest of the government of BiH is divided into two semi-autonomous states, Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The result is a system that is very carefully balanced to prevent another conflict but is unavoidably slightly cumbersome and fragile.
This brings us to the modern post-war period, in which President Dodik plays with fire in order to score points with his ethnonationalist Serb base by engaging in behavior that could easily tear the country apart again. The Croat leadership of BiH has referred to the move to separate from the central military a “criminal act of rebellion” and the US government has already moved to sanction Dodik over “threats to the stability and territorial integrity of BiH”. The situation intensified around the end of 2021 and in the weeks following, with incitements to violence against Muslims by Serb nationalists on Christmas and a chilling parade by Serb special forces in early January chanting praise of medieval Serbian rulers while at least one convicted war criminal from the Bosnian War joined President Dodik to watch.
On the international level, the sides are somewhat unclear. Russia has offered some limited support to Dodik, but has thus far tread carefully with regard to the overall situation and has not made any public assurances of how far that support extends. Hungarian leader Victor Orban has publicly made a number of statements in favor of Dodik, and Hungary has paid out millions of Euros in financial assistance to Republika Srpska. Further, Orban has promised to veto any EU move to sanction Dodik, a move that has so far staved off any EU actions like those taken by the US. Serbia, a key player in the 1990s Bosnian War, has so far been hands-off, likely fearing the ramifications of another war. For both Russia and Hungary, their current behavior is probably an attempt to increase their influence in the region and pick away at the legitimacy of the BiH as currently conceived, which has been championed as a triumph of US-led efforts at promoting stable democracies where they do not previously exist. However, both nations also still bear the scars of a certain twentieth-century war that began in the BiH capital of Sarajevo, and certainly do not desire a massive conflict on their doorsteps. As such, it serves their interests to keep BiH dysfunctional in order to tarnish the success of the Dayton Accords.
Domestically, it appears that most Serbs are against another war, and have far more mundane priorities than the creation of a glorious new ethnostate. In its statement explaining the leveling of sanctions on President Dodik, the Treasury Department indicated that it feels that much of his political maneuvering is driven by the need to create a crisis to cover up corrupt practices that he and his allies engage in. Conveniently, the current saber-rattling comes after a close political ally of the president was found to be selling covid treatment hospitals industrial oxygen tanks not fit for human use. This combined with popular protests against limits on free speech and corruption around the same time posed an existential threat to his political position. Many Serbs are tired of a lack of upward mobility and opportunities due to nepotism and corruption and thousands of young people emigrate every year to seek a better life.
From this grim picture several things are apparent. The majority of Serbs and most of his friends abroad do not want to see Dodik plunge the country back into war. Indeed, he himself probably only seeks to sow dissension as a means to cover up for his own improper conduct, not actually start a shooting war. With that in mind, the chance for miscalculation remains, particularly with the temperature in Europe on the rise over the current Ukraine-Russia tensions. The US and its allies should continue to vocally condemn President Dodik and his corrupt friends whenever possible, and keep an eye toward a region that has already endured far too much pain. Hopefully, it does not take another Srebrenica to attract Western attention.