Kurt Bassuener October 22nd, 2009
Today the Heinrich Boell Stiftung, the German Green Party’s political foundation, published a longer analysis of mine of the situation in Bosnia after the failed Butmir talks. In this piece, I had a bit more room to map-out a potential way out of the current dead-end. The article, “What next in Bosnia?,” is on Boell’s website at: http://www.boell.de/intlpolitics/europe-north-america-7682.html
Kurt Bassuener October 22nd, 2009
Today’s issue of the weekly the European Voice carries an op-ed by me in which I argue that the “Butmir process” pursued for the past two weeks in Bosnia by the EU’s Swedish Presidency and the US has failed, and for a different approach: strengthening the Dayton instruments of OHR and EUFOR and extending them until Bosnia undergoes sufficient constitutional reform to obviate the need for them. You can go to the link here for the article. The full text is below.
It is time for a Plan B for Bosnia
The international approach to Bosnia needs a strategic re-think
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For more than three years, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s political situation has been deteriorating. Fears have re-surfaced that the state may violently collapse. The international community, without a strategy for years, has responded irresolutely.
The international community has now re-engaged, at least. On 10 October and again on 20-21 October, Carl Bildt, Sweden’s foreign minister, Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for enlargement, and Jim Steinberg, the US deputy secretary of state, called most of Bosnia’s political party leaders together at Butmir, outside Sarajevo, where they outlined a ‘package’ of reforms necessary, as they sold it, for deeper Euro-Atlantic integration.
The effort, though, has failed. Most Bosnian party leaders rejected the package. And there has been collateral damage: Milorad Dodik, the prime minister of Republika Srpska, called for his largely Serb-populated region to have the right to a referendum on independence. The Butmir process further weakened the international community’s high representative, Valentin Inzko, who was relegated to the sidelines.
This highlights one of the core problems in the EU’s current approach: its fixation on the Office of the High Representative (OHR). The EU’s Swedish presidency and many EU states believe Bosnia is a ‘protectorate’ as long as there is an OHR, the peace implementation body created by the Dayton peace accords. They are categorical that they cannot negotiate with Bosnia on further steps toward the EU until the OHR is closed.
As a result, the aim of the ‘Butmir process’ appears to be more to close the OHR than to halt Bosnia’s downward political spiral.
This poses tactical problems: while Bildt seems willing to give anything away to achieve that end, Dodik seems unwilling to give anything.
But the bigger issue is that the real criterion for closing the OHR should be whether Bosnia can function as a state without it. The European Commission has, to its credit, gone some way toward defining the EU’s demands by enumerating constitutional reforms needed for Bosnia to gain candidate status. NATO too should clarify its requirements.
But Bosnia’s politicians have long shown little willingness to expend political capital to meet EU and NATO standards, a response conditioned by years of the international community fudging its own standards to create the illusion of progress. Those habits will be hard for both sides to break.
Now that the Butmir effort has clearly failed, the entire international approach must be re-thought. What key elements should a Plan B contain?
First, it should be made clear that Dayton’s executive instruments – the OHR and the military side of peace implementation, EUFOR – will remain in place until Bosnia has undergone deep reform. A clear, open-ended commitment would signal to Bosnia’s politicians that they cannot simply wait out the international community.
The roles of OHR and EU Special Representative should not be occupied by the same person, as is the case now. Linking these missions at the top ensures a lowest common-denominator approach, with the EU attempting to veto the use of the extensive Bonn Powers that the OHR has.
The EU and NATO should approach constitutional reform strategically, by forming an international commission tasked with identifying popularly legitimate solutions for Bosnia’s governance.
The status of state (public) and military property, included in the five objectives and two conditions set for the OHR’s closure, must also be resolved.
International judges and prosecutors should remain involved in war-crimes and organised-crime cases beyond the end of this year. The OHR should impose a three-year extension.
Finally, the West needs to develop and demonstrate a long-term common strategy. This was clearly lacking at Butmir. The fact that Bildt can have such influence shows that few member states have firm policies. A US special envoy may need to be the catalyst for any common strategy, working with EU members that share Washington’s concerns, primarily the UK and the Netherlands. They and others in the EU that back a tougher approach now need to bring Germany on board.
Kurt Bassuener is a senior associate of the Democratization Policy Council, a global initiative for accountability in democracy promotion.
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International Community Still Divided on Bosnia Strategy as Situation Deteriorates
The Hague, October 6: The Clingendael Institute and the Democratization Policy Council on October 1 held an expert policy roundtable “The Future of International Involvement in Bosnia and Herzegovina: What is the Strategy?” The aim of the meeting was to attempt to forge a coherent and strategic approach toward the deteriorating situation in Bosnia among members of the EU and NATO.
Participants included diplomats from EU member states, North America, and Turkey, as well as the European Union institutions, the Office of the High Representative (OHR), NATO, the OSCE, and other international organizations and policy experts from a variety of nongovernmental and academic institutions.
The political situation in Bosnia is deteriorating at an accelerating pace. Progress has not merely stalled on most fronts, but is actively being rolled back. All participants seemed to agree that the international community’s current collective policy approach is delivering diminishing returns.
Yet deep fissures were evident, both between Europeans and North Americans and among EU members themselves, on what policy is required. Some advocate reinvigoration of the Dayton instruments, OHR and EUFOR. Others call for accelerating transition to a double-hatted EU Special Representative/Head of EC delegation. Despite efforts to clarify what sort of Bosnia the international community collectively would like to see, and how to get there from here, these remained nebulous at the end of the roundtable. There remains no long-term international strategy to ensure Bosnia’s stability and functionality.
The organizers will publish a summary report on the roundtable’s proceedings well before the November Peace Implementation Council Steering Board meeting. It will be posted on both the Clingendael and DPC websites.
For media inquiries, please contact:
Marianne Rogier, Senior Fellow, Clingendael Institute (+31 70 374 6692, mrogier@clingendael.nl)
Kurt Bassuener, Senior Associate, Democratization Policy Council (+387 61 489 653, kbassuener@democratizationpolicy.org)
