https://t.co/GcuDipM8Wb
neki djelovi o BiH:
Chair:
Anthony, set out for us the good, the bad and the ugly of how the international community has been doing in the last 17 years or so in the Balkans.
Anthony Monckton:
I call it “stable instability” as opposed to “violent instability”. We have just let things wander on without any real sense of vision or purpose. I was talking the Kurt before the meeting: it is almost like Einstein’s definition of stupidity—you keep trying to do exactly the same thing and expect a different result. We need some imagination to take things forward. Having elections so quickly after the conflict just reinforced the nationalist parties in place and all the policies that have happened since then, particularly in Bosnia, including the recent election law change, have only reinforced those nationalist parties and suppressed the moderate voices.
Chair:
Can I press you on that point about the election change that happened? Obviously, we had Christian Schmidt with us yesterday. Are you surprised at how little protest there was on the streets of Bosnia? If we went to the polls in the UK and voted under one set of rules, and then when polling closed and we were suddenly told, “Well, that’s great that you thought you were voting on this basis, but we are now changing the basis on which your vote is being counted and we are going to do it in a whole new way,” I think there would be riots. The response in Sarajevo and across the country was quite muted, given the context. Do you think that is an unfair question or analysis?
Anthony Monckton:
No, I think it is because we have had several hundred years of democracy, and they have not. They are used to being told what to do and accepting it, and being slightly trodden upon and not listened to, so I am not surprised at all.
Chair:
Thank you. Kurt, how do you see things in Sarajevo?
Dr Bassuener:
I think the 17-year bookend that you set out—it is to the day that Paddy Ashdown went to Sarajevo; he coined the phrase from the “push of Dayton” to the “pull of Brussels”. We have been on bureaucratic autopilot and have effectively had a zombie policy towards the region for 17 years, with the presumption that European enlargement would take it the rest of the way and that local leaders would be impelled by what a great deal they would get if they joined our clubs.
Quite clearly, they have decided on a cost-benefit analysis that this works for them; it is just rotten luck for the overwhelming majority of their citizens. On top of that, we are effectively treating Bosnia and Herzegovina like a condominium of Serbia and Croatia now, which is exactly what the nationalists always argued during the war: that it can only exist on their sufferance.
Chair:
As a result, what is the standing of the High Representative—the position rather than the individual? In this place, we have spoken about the importance of standing behind that role, given its responsibility to uphold the Dayton agreement.
Dr Bassuener:
It’s crucial.
Chair:
Do you see that role to currently be undermined, enhanced or in the pocket of certain sectors? What is the situation?
Dr Bassuener: I have never seen the role of that office, which is absolutely crucial to not only holding back further regression but enabling progress, more diminished in popular estimation than it has been now; it is at a low ebb.The other element of that enforcement is the military deterrent angle, which I would be happy to discuss further later on.
Edward P. Joseph:
... Madam Chair, yesterday you had High Representative Schmidt here and you talked about the parade. Well, who attended that parade that ultimately ended with an award to Vladimir Putin? The Serbian Foreign Minister, Ivica Dačić, attended that parade, as did the son of the Serbian President. So the driver there is Serbia’s strategic orientation.
Chair:
The Foreign Secretary said earlier that Britain would not accept any creation of a Republika Srpska-style Serbian enclave in Kosovo. That was a surprise, because it breaks with our European partners. How significant do you think it is for a Minister of the British Government to have said that on the Floor of the House? Is it not a surprise, and what does it mean in terms of where we go from here and how powerful the voice of objection might be?
Dr Bassuener:
It is completely the opposite of the disposition of Britain in Bosnia, for example, where Britain has been the only western power that basically followed the United States’ lead in pushing these election law changes. I would welcome it if it is the case. The question is, what kind of diplomatic weight is going to be put behind trying to convince Britain’s partners that that is the right approach? This idea of embracing ethno-territorialism, which was considered to be the foundational problem of Dayton that even Richard Holbrooke talked about—if we entrenched it in Kosovo all the way down to the Macedonian border, that would be an error. It is dependent on how much political heft is put behind that position.
Royston Smith:
What impact has Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had and what impact is it likely to have in the future on security and stability in the Western Balkans?
Edward P. Joseph:
This is the impact it should have had. The Russian invasion has exposed Russian weakness. It has exposed Putin’s ineptitude and his brutality. There is no question about it. This is what Germany has realised with the Zeitenwende and so forth; we have all seen it. It should have had that same effect in the Balkans. We should have seen within Serbia anyone, despite Orthodox affinity, saying, “Oh my God, we don’t want to be associated with this declining power. We want to redouble our interest,” but it has not had that effect. That was the whole subject—I won’t repeat it, Chair—of my thesis: that what allows this to persist is the Kosovo card, and that is fundamentally the problem in the region. This instability in these three countries—Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Kosovo—is because Serbia did not change its strategic orientation. The way I say it when I speak in the region is that the world changed on 24 February last year, but the Balkans did not change, and that is because Serbia did not change.
Royston Smith:
We were out there and we met Dodik, and all of this is well documented. If, as we would all like, Russia fails in its ambitions in Ukraine and perhaps we would all like, too, that Putin was no longer part of the picture, that would make people like Dodik weaker, wouldn’t it? Therefore, although Anthony said they have the ability to mess themselves up anyway, would that not make it more difficult for those people to be so influential in that region?
Dr Bassuener:
He would definitely look to find another patron but, yes, he had put most of his eggs in that basket—unlike Vučić, who has juggled a lot. The fundamental point here is that we have put ourselves in a vulnerable position that we do not need to be in. If it were clear to everybody—I disagree with Ed that Kosovo is a central front. Bosnia and Herzegovina, so long as that is in question, bring out the worst in both Serbia and Croatia, and we have seen it. Srpski svet cannot exist without Bosnia and Herzegovina on the menu. We could take it off the menu. We used to take it off the menu. When Paddy Ashdown left, it was not considered a threat. Now, whatever your worst fear is in the region, and there are many different varieties thereof, they seem possible in a way that they were not possible 17 years ago because of our posture— that is on us. The local actors are taking full advantage of that latitude. We could deny that to them; we are not doing it.
Chair:
Can I just push you on that, before we go to Saqib? You just said that we have got the latitude to do it, and you said earlier that we have got all the tools in the box—we are just choosing not to use them. Can you unpack slightly what those tools are?
Dr Bassuener:
Certainly. Speaking specifically about Bosnia—but a lot of these pertain to Kosovo as well, in terms of hard security tools—we have NATO deterrents. Bosnia and Herzegovina has a de facto NATO security guarantee that we are not living up to, and that is through annex 1A to the Dayton peace agreement. It has an international High Representative, which, as the Chair mentioned, is an absolutely essential tool. We are the overwhelmingly predominant economic actor, despite the caveats mentioned by my colleagues on the panel, which were all relevant. We have the best narrative. I want to underscore something that Anthony mentioned, and it concerns the biggest let-down for citizens on the ground. The constituency that we courted in central and eastern Europe in the big bang enlargement of 2004, we did so with the promise that they were joining a community of values, but that has not been part of our narrative for the past 17 years. It was presumed that you just plug in and play with European enlargement; you didn’t even need to say it. Then we started to gravitate towards just courting the leaders and thinking that all their citizens would just follow them like sheep. We can undercut those leaders with their own citizens, if they think we are serious, which right now they don’t. Their perception is that we only care about stability, which means pacification—and it is not stable. The business model of the existing elites in the region is, “We can destabilise it whenever we want—pay us. Pay us indulgences in letting us get away with depredations on our own populations and give us funds.” That is what we have been doing.
Chair: Including by allowing Republika Srpska to raise the majority of their secessionist funds on the London stock exchange, year after year, which is one of the sole places that they are able to raise funds for their interests.
Dr Bassuener: Bingo.
Saqib Bhatti:
To follow on from that, given that Ukraine has exposed weaknesses within the Russian military force and subsequent economic power, has that changed Russia’s approach to the Balkans, since the Ukrainian resistance?
Edward P. Joseph:
Yes. This is that thing: Russia is totally preoccupied with this war. There are massive, unprecedented sanctions. They are running out of ammunition. Their urgent preoccupation is that they can continue to destabilise and keep the Balkans in this condition and disorder at low cost. How? Because they have a partner in Belgrade. That partner remains their partner, again, as long as it has the leverage that the west gives it. I will quickly address the points that Kurt and Anthony made about Bosnia and Herzegovina. Anthony said that if they recognise Kosovo, Dodik will secede with RS. Kurt was saying that Bosnia was the centre of it. Before there was a war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which ultimately culminated in genocide in Srebrenica and Žepa, there was war in Croatia. The first “Greater Serbia” ambitions started in Croatia, and later there was a war between Croats and Bosniaks. The way it happened is that we tolerated Serbian aggression in the 1990s, and we got Croat-Bosniak tensions and “Greater Croatia” ambitions. That is what Čović realised. If you leave Dodik unaccountable for 15 years, since Paddy Ashdown’s departure, you are going to get Dragan Čović. You are going to get collusion like that. Turning it around, the answer is not with the High Representative, Christian Schmidt, who is doing the best he can. The answer is in Belgrade. It is curtailing this Serb world—the “Greater Serbia” aspirations. Anthony, that is why Dodik has no possibility of seceding if Belgrade recognises Kosovo. Why? Because the game is finished. There is no more Serb world. Serbia has no strategic option to join the west. I tell you, Madam Chair, that Serbia will join NATO in that case. It will all be finished and, as I said, you can hold far fewer hearings on this subject.
Sir Chris Bryant:
I think Russia also played quite a role in disinformation in the Catalan independence movement through social media. It is pretty obvious that a lot of the stuff that we saw here in the UK was stuff that had been faked and promoted by the Russians in relation to Catalonia. I have one more question. How should the UK engage with Serbia and Croatia to improve the situation?
Edward P. Joseph:
I see them as very distinct. I am sure that Kurt and Anthony each has his views on this. With Croatia, this was all flowing, as the High Representative told you all yesterday, from the Bosnian Constitutional Court decision in the Ljubić case. Now that that has been addressed, Croatia should support addressing what was the real core Bosniak interest, which was the Sejdić and Finci case at the European Court of Human Rights, Pilav and these other cases. That is what Croatia should support. It should support a joint position of Bosnian Croats—not from Croatia, but Bosnian Croats—and Bosniaks, all the parties and nonethnic parties on how to implement the Sejdić and Finci, Pilav and other cases. The kicker is this: it should encompass Republika Srpska. It should not be, as the US and EU previously said, RS-neutral. It should not be RS-neutral; they should say, “This is how we see these important cases being implemented. This is how we want to move towards a more non-ethnic country.” That can be presented to the RS as a negotiating position. That is my opinion on Croatia. Serbia is of a completely character. This is, again, the Kosovo problem, and that is in Spain and is for other neighbours.
Chair:
Kurt, is it fair to say that the electoral reforms that Schmidt brought in unfairly supported the Croats to essentially reinforce their position? Western policy in the Balkans in the ’90s was very much characterised by long delays. Do we think Vučić and Dodik have that in their thinking and, in essence, are hoping to set the facts on the ground now, before the west finally wakes up and realises that it has to do something? Is that in their calculus? Dr
Bassuener:
To answer the second part of your question first: yes. They have taken the measure of us; they’ve got our number, but we are yet to get theirs. It is not just those two, but it is definitely those two. The rationale for pursuing these was the Ljubić case, but the real reason was that the HDZ BiH was holding the Federation government formation process hostage for four years. It was a case of, “Give them what they want and maybe they will be co-operative.” Zagreb is no more co-operative, and it is certainly arguing for dealing with the presidency, which was always the hood-ornament goal for the HDZ. They attacked the election methodology for the presidency, which has been the same ever since Dayton; it has not changed. The presumption was that everybody would stay in their lane and nobody would vote crossethnically. You can sort of hear the undercurrent from the HDZ saying, “That wasn’t the deal”.
Instead of trying to get an klix, accountable democratic system in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we have defaulted to asking, “How do we keep the oligarchs happy?” The squeakiest wheels are the ones that we cater to; in this case, it was the HDZ BiH, but it will be others in the future.
...
Dr Bassuener:
Sorry to interrupt, but this is a very important point. We are leaving our potential allies in these societies effectively without friends. We need to enlist the general population in something they want. They want less corruption. We abhor corruption, but then we make political deals with the most corrupt people who are the apex predators in these societies. That sends the message that we are not really that serious about corruption—not if they could create problems for us. If we want to get traction in these societies and give the citizens the ability to have their hand on the tiller, we need to demonstrate that we are for real and we are willing to have some constructive instability. If we are willing to control for the most threatening element of instability, which is violence, we have decisive leverage there that we have not used.
