FIXING DAYTON: a New Deal for Bosnia and Herzegovina
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NextEurope No. 1 l November 2020 President Slobodan Milošević of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, President Alija Izetbegović of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and President Franjo Tuđman of the Republic of Croatia initial the Dayton Peace Accords. The Balkan Proximity Peace Talks were conducted at Wright- Patterson Air Force Base Nov. 1-21, 1995. Photo courtesy of: U.S. Air Force/Staff Sgt. Brian Schlumbohm FIXING DAYTON: A New Deal for Bosnia and Herzegovina Report and Recommendations Global Europe Program Working Group on the Western Balkans Twenty-five years ago this month, the Dayton Peace created at Dayton froze in place the warring parties Agreement stopped Europe’s worst conflict and (Republika Srpska and the Federation) and rewarded genocide since World War II. More Europeans died in the their commitment to ethnically-based control of Bosnia war than during the entire Cold War. The inability territory. Since then, kleptocratic ethno-nationalists of the United States and its European partners to agree have manipulated Dayton’s provisions to entrench their on ways to stop the killing was the biggest transatlantic power at the expense of the country’s viability. failure in seventy years. This record of tragedy and disaster is why the peace achieved at Dayton in 1995 Without a decisive overhaul of Dayton, Bosnia and was such a striking and surprising success. Herzegovina risks becoming a disaster on the doorstep of a new U.S. administration and during the remaining Today, however, the Dayton arrangements are term of the current European Commission. Bosnia’s associated less with peace than with dysfunction. In implosion risks renewed bloodshed, refugee flows, part that is because Dayton was more a truce than border changes, and widespread economic disruption a settlement. The elaborate governing architecture that could strengthen Russian and Chinese influence The Old Bridge, Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Photo courtesy of: Mikael Damkier/shutterstock.com in the broader region, further fray the NATO alliance, stepped back in hopes that Europe would “backfill” and disrupt U.S. ties with the European Union (EU). responsibility for the Balkans so that Washington could address other global dangers. Yet European As Dayton’s midwife, the United States bears leaders, relieved that violence had been quelled, have particular responsibility to extend Dayton’s success by been unprepared to catalyze the changes needed fixing its deficiencies. Fortunately, Dayton’s architects for Bosnia and Herzegovina, or other untethered never intended its arrangements to remain static. parts of the Western Balkans, to join the European Within its provisions are the means for reform. Fixing mainstream. The EU and the United States were Dayton is also an opportunity for the United States to content to fool themselves with the old Habsburg revive its partnership with the EU and to work with adage that the situation, while hopeless, is not really Bosnia’s citizens to achieve a functional and effective serious. Bosnian state that enjoys popular legitimacy, adheres to the rule of law, curbs corruption, ensures equal This complacency is deeply misplaced. Dayton’s core rights for individuals and protection for minorities, achievement – peace – is deteriorating. Bosnia and jumpstarts economic growth, and contributes to the Herzegovina has been captured by kleptocratic elites security and stability of southeastern Europe. and outside influencers who empower them. It ranks just behind Haiti and Venezuela as the country with Stopping the Slide the most severe brain drain in the world. Almost half of people born there now live in another country and Until now there has been insufficient political will to the number of those emigrating or hoping to emigrate change the Dayton superstructure. Corrupt politicians continues to rise year after year. The country is less and judges profit from it; separatists gain influence secure, and the prospects for violence greater, than from it. The United States, proud that it ended the a decade ago. war and removed Bosnia from the world’s hot spots, NextEurope No. 1 l November 2020 Even though neighboring Serbia and Croatia signed Balkans: a small gravitational center of corruption and on to the Dayton Peace Accords, and are thus bound ethno-nationalist fervor so dense that it pulls in even to respect and affirm Bosnia and Herzegovina’s more negative energy and malign influence, thereby sovereignty and territorial integrity, leaders in both disrupting its neighborhood and the entire region’s countries have joined like-minded collaborators in ties to the rest of Europe. Bosnia and Herzegovina to weaken Bosnian state institutions. Interlocking Problems, These negative trends are further fueled by external Interblocking Institutions actors. The country has become both a target and a Bosnia and Herzegovina faces three simultaneous conduit for opaque investments and flows of monies and mutually-reinforcing challenges: structural from a growing number of sources around the world problems embedded in the Dayton Accords that have with little interest in transparency, accountability, or empowered ethno-nationalists who hold the country the rule of law. back; endemic corruption; and severe economic Although not a major investor, Moscow acts difficulties. opportunistically in the region by sowing distrust among local actors, encouraging and emboldening Dayton has many virtues. It separatist politicians, expanding selective energy, security and intelligence relationships, and exploiting stopped the war. The truce the cyber space with disinformation and disruption. It has held. Dayton affirmed the is arming and training paramilitary forces in Republika Srpska, Bosnia’s ethnic Serb-dominated entity. It continuation of Bosnia and bribes and threatens its way into Bosnia’s domestic Herzegovina as a sovereign country, politics, in part to derail or delay the country’s NATO which is foundational to the further and EU membership. legal evolution of the state. China’s interest in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Western Balkans continues to grow, as the region lies between the Chinese-owned port of Piraeus in Dayton has many virtues. It stopped the war. The Greece and the rest of the EU’s big Single Market. truce has held. Dayton affirmed the continuation Chinese energy, mineral, and transport investments of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a sovereign country, in Bosnia and Herzegovina now total $3 billion, a which is foundational to the further legal evolution significant sum for a poor country of 3.2 million of the state. It created an obligation on the part of people. Yet many projects are being undertaken its guarantors to ensure that its provisions would by Chinese suppliers and workers rather than with be respected, and it created the Office of the local resources. Chinese money further fuels the High Representative (OHR) to make good on that corruption that is endemic to the country. It is also obligation. plunging the country deeper into debt. Dayton also has its problems. To stop the war, the As these dangers gather steam, Bosnia and Dayton architects felt compelled to maintain the Herzegovina risks becoming the black hole of the continuity of the state by according paramount rights NextEurope No. 1 l November 2020 to “constituent peoples” (Bosnian Croats, Bosnian Legal judgments are simply not enforced, whether Serbs, and Bosniaks) over the rights of individual from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), citizens. The constitution also essentially recognizes the Constitutional Court or ordinary courts. Article the continued authority of the warring parties via two II/2 of the constitution states that the European entities: the Federation, mostly inhabited by Bosniaks Convention on Human Rights is above all other and Bosnian Croats; and Republika Srpska, where law, including the constitution. In a series of rulings the majority of Bosnian Serbs live. Brčko District is between 2006 and 2016, the ECHR determined an additional condominium of the two entities. repeatedly that the constitution violates the European Convention on Human Rights, and needs More powers are vested in the entities than in the to be changed without delay, to ensure that individual weak central government, which is led by a rotating citizens have equal rights in an electoral process. This tripartite presidency and a council of ministers also provides the impetus to jumpstart a reform process, divided among the three “constituent peoples.” yet nothing has been done. Decision-making structures are further complicated by an unwieldy welter of institutions. The parliamentary assembly is composed of two chambers with Corruption is endemic and identical duties. There are two five presidents, four growing; it has degraded the vice presidents, 13 prime ministers, 14 parliaments, 147 ministers and 700 parliamentarians, all for a country’s governance, undermined population less than that of the city of Berlin and its democracy about half that of metropolitan Washington, DC. These structures entrench an ethnocracy ripe with Dayton’s institutional framework is also retarding clientelism that inflames ill-will among the country’s the country’s economic development. Bosnia and citizens on a daily basis. Corruption is endemic and Herzegovina is one country, but it is not one economy; growing; it has degraded the country’s governance, barriers to economic activity reflect and reinforce undermined its democracy, reduced public trust ethno-political differences. The country