An Artificial State

There is good reason to believe that the creation of a federal, multiethnic and multireligious state was a mistake. The Washington Examiner piece is provocative and, on occasion, overstated. Still, its central contention deserves careful, bona fide consideration.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is not an otherwise functioning political community whose problems could be resolved with a little more constitutional imagination, European "sticks and carrots" or increasingly harsh and intrusive forms of international supervision. Rather, it is an artificial state whose fundamental political divisions are too deep to be mended by elaborate diplomatic arrangements.

This is not a vitriolic attack on the Dayton Peace Agreement or on the admirable efforts made by the states involved in the negotiations: the US, the UK, France, Germany and Russia. Dayton put an end to three and a half years of horrifying slaughter that had left almost 100,000 soldiers and civilians dead.

But Dayton, however well intentioned, could not by itself forge a nation where none had existed. Instead, it built a complex and unworkable condominium in which Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats were expected to share institutions while retaining profoundly different conceptions of what Bosnia should be. Three decades later, the international community continues to insist that this arrangement can somehow be made to work if only the locals are properly disciplined.

A Permanent Protectorate

This, however, is a profoundly disrespectful way of viewing the peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina. What is remarkable about post-Dayton Bosnia is not merely that foreigners continue to intervene in its internal political life, but that such intervention has come to be regarded as entirely normal.

More than 30 years after Dayton, the Office of the High Representative remains the country’s highest authority, headed by a foreign official with sweeping powers. These include the power to impose and annul legislation and remove public officials, from judges to political leaders. Meanwhile, the European Union maintains a Special Representative in the country. EUFOR, effectively an EU occupation force of more than 1,000 personnel, remains deployed within Bosnia’s borders.

Bosnia’s institutions therefore continue to operate under international tutelage. With the country effectively prevented by the Dayton settlement from exercising full sovereignty, the question arises whether Article 1 of the United Nations Charter, which enshrines the principle of self-determination of peoples, applies to Bosnia’s constituent peoples.

It is unreasonable, indeed foolish, to expect the current, profoundly demeaning Bosnian settlement to last forever. Three decades after the war ended, members of all three major ethnic groups are still lectured about reconciliation by European officials. In effect, they are told that they are not ready to govern themselves.

Yet the supposed purpose of the international supervision established after Dayton was not to create a permanent foreign protectorate over Bosnia’s peoples. It was to create the conditions under which such supervision would eventually become unnecessary.

A Political, Not Institutional, Problem

The uncomfortable truth is that Bosnia cannot be fixed. Its fundamental problem is not institutional but political. Bosnia cannot exist as a functional state because Bosnia is not a nation. A large share of its citizens do not share a common vision for the future of the state.

The Serbs of Republika Srpska have their own political institutions and seek complete political autonomy and the right to live in closer alignment with their ethnic kin in the Republic of Serbia. Muslim Bosniak parties, meanwhile, generally envision a stronger and more centralized state. Croats have long held grievances over political representation. The system has survived this long only because an external power, the EU, has insisted on holding it together.

The real danger is that this artificial, externally imposed arrangement will collapse uncontrollably when its guarantor, the EU, finds itself distracted by a crisis elsewhere. Instead of waiting for disaster, it would surely be wiser to manage the partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina, ensuring that separation takes place peacefully and successfully.

Managing a Peaceful Separation

Instead of treating Bosnia’s territorial integrity as inviolable, the international community should therefore consider what an orderly separation might look like. Borders, citizenship, debt, minority protections and the ownership of state assets would all present difficult questions in negotiating Bosnia’s breakup. The aim should be to preserve the rights and interests of all the country’s ethnolinguistic communities while allowing them genuinely to govern themselves without permanent foreign tutelage.

There is no lack of precedent for such processes, however complex. Czechoslovakia dissolved peacefully, giving rise to two states that have enjoyed friendly relations ever since. Careful management of the separation process could avoid renewed trauma and allow Bosnia’s different communities to establish new and, at last, functional states.

This would serve them far better than living indefinitely under the ignominy of foreign rule and amid bureaucratic impasse between the authorities in Sarajevo and Banja Luka.

The alternative is ultimately unacceptable. The status quo means preserving an ungovernable state and prolonging a political paralysis that is bound to break sooner or later. Former High Representative Christian Schmidt recently alluded to this "silent deconstruction" of Bosnian state institutions.

The situation is reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway’s famous formulation, "gradually and then suddenly". Europe’s responsibility is to ensure that Bosnia never reaches the latter.