Nemanja Plotan is a political economist currently serving as a Geopolitical Risk Analyst at the Vienna office of the GEA Group, a global technology supplier in the food processing industry.
In 1984, during the Sarajevo Winter Olympics, Bosnia and Herzegovina was presented to the world as Yugoslavia’s poster child—a picture that would fall apart only eight years later. The civil war that subsequently broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995) revealed that the “Brotherhood and Unity” doctrine, espoused and promoted by Yugoslavia’s late president Josip Broz Tito, was not a genuine attempt at reconciling the historical traumas of the Yugoslav peoples. This particularly pertains to the genocide against ethnic Serbs, Roma, and Jews, committed by Bosnian Muslims and Croats in the so-called Independent State of Croatia, which was later followed by retribution from both Partisans and Chetniks. The widely utilized brotherhood and unity narrative was thus little more than a political tool designed to suppress deeply rooted ethnic divisions and impose a superficial sense of harmony.
What many had hailed as Bosnia’s strongest trait—its multiculturalism—ultimately became its chief executioner, as the greatest challenge of Yugoslavia’s dissolution lay in drawing borders along ethnic lines, sparking a fierce armed conflict across the country. Following a number of war crimes committed by all belligerents, the war finally ended on November 21st, 1995 with the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, laying the cornerstone on which modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina was built. Some 30 years later, the country is once again spiraling into a political crisis—one that may very well lead to renewed hostilities and armed conflict.
Bosnia’s Never-ending Political Crisis
The interpretation and implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement serves as both the glue holding Bosnia and Herzegovina together and the poison that is destroying it from within. The central debate from which most political disputes arise is whether the Dayton Agreement was an end in itself or merely a transitional peace agreement.
Annex 10 of the Agreement envisioned the establishment of the “Office of the High Representative (OHR),” whose original objective was to “monitor the implementation of the peace settlement.” In other words, the role of the High Representative was supervisory, coordinative, and mediatory. However, this role changed dramatically after the 1997 Bonn Conference, which empowered the High Representative through the introduction of the so-called “Bonn Powers,” allowing them to impose laws and decisions directly, as well as to remove elected or appointed officials who obstruct the peace process.
With these new powers, the OHR began carving out the political landscape of Bosnia and Herzegovina to suit its own vision, rather than respecting the democratic will of the country’s citizens. To this day, the OHR has unilaterally imposed more than 900 decisions and 430 laws—completely disregarding democratic processes, often to the detriment of the political interests of Serbs and Croats, and in alignment with those of the Bosniaks. In so doing, the OHR has alienated both Serbs and Croats from political dialogue, despite the two ethnic groups making up about half of the country’s population.
In the words of Paddy Ashdown, a British diplomat who served as the fourth High Representative to BiH: “It was a superb agreement to end a war, but a very bad agreement to make a state.” Following this logic, Ashdown removed as many as 60 Serb officials from positions of power in a single day—all of whom were democratically elected—basing such a decision entirely on his own will. In other words, Bosnia and Herzegovina became a protectorate with an imposed governor—eerily resembling the period of Bosnia’s annexation by Austria-Hungary and the country’s subjugation to the will of the nominated administrator, Benjamin Kallay.
Resembling Kallay’s approach to Bosnia—whose goal was to form a common Bosnian identity—the OHR has attempted to reshape the face of the Bosnian state by imposing the Law on the Flag and the National Anthem of BiH. These artificially created state symbols, with no roots in history, now represent a fragmented society: they have been accepted only by Bosniaks, while both Serbs and Croats have largely rejected them, remaining loyal to their respective historical identities.
Although the international community had ample opportunities to create a more suitable environment for all sides to renegotiate and resolve issues through political dialogue, it instead resorted to the use of political force through the OHR—an institution that has become a primary generator of political instability.
The misuse of the powers entrusted to the OHR has resulted in a complete deviation from the original Dayton Agreement, opting instead for a path of nation-building and further contributing to the institution’s erosion of legitimacy. Christian Schmidt, who currently presents himself as High Representative despite never having been confirmed by the UN Security Council, is struggling to portray his actions in Sarajevo as legitimate—even with the help of the West’s creative interpretation of Bosnia’s complex legal framework. Additionally, Schmidt travels on a German diplomatic passport without official UN status or immunity, which is why the institutions of the Republic of Srpska continue to accuse him of false representation and of undermining the Dayton Agreement. As long as this misrepresentation continues, the Republic of Srpska maintains that it is not obligated to implement Schmidt’s decisions.
In June 2023, the National Assembly of the Republic of Srpska adopted a law on the non-implementation of the High Representative’s decisions. This law removed the previous provision requiring the publication of the High Representative’s decisions in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Srpska, meaning such decisions can no longer become legally binding within the entity.
In response, the two institutions established by the OHR—not by the Dayton Agreement—the Court and the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, have launched a politically charged legal process against the President of the Republic of Srpska, Milorad Dodik, for signing decrees that promote the non-implementation of Christian Schmidt’s decisions. The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina eventually sentenced Dodik to one year in prison and barred him from holding public office for six years, pushing the country into its greatest political crisis since the end of the war. However, the court’s police remain unable to arrest Dodik—not only because doing so would require approval from the Government of the Republic of Srpska to operate on its soil, but also because Dodik is protected by the entity’s police, resulting in a political stalemate.
Is There a Solution?
In 1888, Otto von Bismarck remarked: “One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.” Soon enough, a bullet was fired in Sarajevo on June 28th, 1914, by the Yugoslav unionist Gavrilo Princip, killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and setting off a chain of events that would bring mankind to its knees. History attests to the fact that one need not fire more than a single bullet to activate the “powder keg” of Europe.
Today, Bosniak politicians are openly calling for court police to open fire on police officers of the Republic of Srpska should they attempt to prevent the arrest of Milorad Dodik—something that was attempted shortly thereafter, albeit unsuccessfully and without major incident. The current state of affairs in Bosnia and Herzegovina illustrates just how fragile the peace truly is, and how the international community—or more specifically, the OHR—has failed in its mission.
The ongoing political crisis can be resolved peacefully in two following ways: either by allowing the Serbs and Croats to secede from the country in the same manner the West supported the Kosovo Albanians in their secession from Serbia; or by returning the question of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the chambers of the UN Security Council and facilitating dialogue both within the UN and inside the country itself. Additionally, the UN Security Council should formally define the status of Christian Schmidt—either by accepting his role (which both Russia and China have refused to do), or by ordering him to vacate the OHR immediately.
In either case, given that the country has remained in a state of constant political instability and paralysis, one can only conclude that the establishment of the Office of the High Representative was—and remains—a failed nation-building experiment. There are no longer any tangible reasons for this vastly outdated style of governance to be preserved in twenty-first-century Europe. The international community has already lost its legitimacy in the eyes of both Serbs and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina. If it truly wishes to facilitate a peaceful settlement to the ages-old issues of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it must learn from its past mistakes.
