Archive for September, 2009

Letter: Response to George Will op-ed “Bosnia’s Lesson”

Kurt Bassuener September 23rd, 2009

NOTE:  due to a communications error between the author and the Sarajevo daily Oslobodjenje, which ran

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Mr. Will’s Sunday Sept 20 Washington Post piece in translation, Oslobodjenje ran my response in translation on Sept 22, while it was still under consideration by the Post, which has not run the letter.  I regret the confusion this may have caused.  Below is the original English-language version of the letter, as sent to the Washington Post on Sept 21.

Kurt Bassuener

 —-

To the Editor,

George F. Will wisely recommends that the President read Patrice McMahon and Jon Western’s article “The Death of Dayton,” (“Bosnia’s Lesson,” Sunday Sept 20th).  Yet his conclusion that Bosnia is failing because it was doomed to fail is flawed.
Bosnia is degenerating both because of structural elements in Dayton and its attendant election law and due to false assumptions the international community, and particularly the European Union, continue to hold dear.
 

The postwar structure of Bosnia has always been more of an oligarchy than a real democracy, allowing politicians almost complete lack of accountability to their citizens.  All they need do in an electoral campaign is promise “we will protect you from them,” and distribute public largesse.  They can then safely ignore the electorate for another four years. Until this dynamic is broken, Bosnia is inherently unstable and gravitates toward violent dissolution.
 

By 2005, the international assumption was that Bosnia was irreversibly on a path to being able to join the EU and NATO under its own power.  To compensate for the lack of forward movement from 2006 on, the EU has faked progress, hoping reality will catch-up to its declarations.  Brussels is sticking to its line that ending peace implementation will force Bosnian politicians to be responsible.  Nobody wants to admit that the magical EU formula isn’t achieving that result. Both Bosnia’s current political system and the international approach are at a dead end.
 

Neither blood or treasure, but rather high-level and sustained policy attention is required.  Only the US can catalyze a Western strategy.  Given that President Obama and Secretary Clinton have a lot on their plate, a presidential special envoy might be required to conjure a coherent Western strategy out of the current entropy.
 

The guardrails that have prevented the re-emergence of conflict – the executive High Representative and the EU military force, EUFOR – need to be reinforced.  Bosnians need to be clear that they will remain until a popularly legitimate governing system that can operate without these international failsafes is in place and seen to work.  Without these in place, a solution is impossible.
Even before NATO troops entered Bosnia in late 1995, the US and its allies were telegraphing their will to withdraw quickly.  We have been trying to undo the mistakes of those first two years ever since, with varying degrees of success.  Bosnia’s lesson should be that there are no shortcuts to establishing self-sustaining democratic governance.

Sincerely,
Kurt Bassuener
Senior Associate
Democratization Policy Council