You’ll be hard-pressed to discover a nation the place a random midsized metropolis within the American Midwest is talked about extra typically than New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago mixed—except you’re in Bosnia. Ever since November 1995, when the Clinton administration corralled Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian leaders at Wright-Patterson Air Power Base in Dayton, Ohio, to barter an finish to the battle in opposition to Bosnia and the genocide of its Muslim inhabitants, “Dayton” has develop into etched into the nation’s collective reminiscence. For Bosnians, Dayton is greater than only a place—it’s an settlement that introduced peace but additionally saddled Bosnia with a flawed and dysfunctional governing political system that continues to form the nation’s future.
This Could, practically 30 years after the unique peace talks, former Dayton Mayor and present U.S. Rep. Mike Turner hosted the Dayton Dialogue convention in the course of the NATO Parliamentary Meeting’s spring session. Billed as a forward-looking dialogue on Bosnia, U.S. management, and the way forward for U.S.-Bosnia relations, the occasion quietly became a stage for Croatian nationalist speaking factors.
You’ll be hard-pressed to discover a nation the place a random midsized metropolis within the American Midwest is talked about extra typically than New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago mixed—except you’re in Bosnia. Ever since November 1995, when the Clinton administration corralled Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian leaders at Wright-Patterson Air Power Base in Dayton, Ohio, to barter an finish to the battle in opposition to Bosnia and the genocide of its Muslim inhabitants, “Dayton” has develop into etched into the nation’s collective reminiscence. For Bosnians, Dayton is greater than only a place—it’s an settlement that introduced peace but additionally saddled Bosnia with a flawed and dysfunctional governing political system that continues to form the nation’s future.
This Could, practically 30 years after the unique peace talks, former Dayton Mayor and present U.S. Rep. Mike Turner hosted the Dayton Dialogue convention in the course of the NATO Parliamentary Meeting’s spring session. Billed as a forward-looking dialogue on Bosnia, U.S. management, and the way forward for U.S.-Bosnia relations, the occasion quietly became a stage for Croatian nationalist speaking factors.
The convention got here at a precarious second: Milorad Dodik, a Kremlin-backed proxy supported by Serbia and the present president of Republika Srpska (RS), one of many two entities created by the Dayton Settlement, had simply launched his most aggressive assault but on the settlement itself. Whereas worldwide actors have lengthy handled Dodik as a handy goal for condemnation, scoring simple diplomatic factors with out delivering actual beneficial properties for Bosnia, they’ve largely ignored, and in some instances even enabled, a extra coordinated and insidious menace from hard-line Croatian nationalists in Croatia and Bosnia. Their political agenda not solely undermines many years of worldwide effort and billions of {dollars} invested in Bosnia but additionally poses a critical and rising menace to regional peace.
Nowhere was this extra evident than on the Dayton anniversary occasion. The gathering echoed Croatia’s wartime narratives from the Nineteen Nineties. Amongst different rhetoric that raised critical issues was the Croatian delegation’s open embrace of ethnic segregation in Bosnian colleges, revisionist accounts of the civil battle, and overt interference in Bosnia’s inside affairs, significantly regarding proposed adjustments to its election legislation.
The Dayton anniversary occasion was not an outlier. For practically twenty years, Croatian management has systematically undermined Bosnia’s sovereignty. The Dayton Settlement envisioned Bosnia and Herzegovina as a single state with two entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, principally comprising Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) and Croats, and RS, principally comprising Serb-majority areas. HDZ BiH, the Bosnia-based counterpart of Croatia’s ruling social gathering and a wartime political actor, has lengthy served as Zagreb’s major instrument of political affect and meddling in Bosnia.
Now, Croatia’s coverage towards Bosnia continues to replicate its unfulfilled wartime ambitions, during which, in accordance with Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman’s plan, Bosnia was to be carved up into ethnically pure territories between Croatia and Serbia by means of the systematic expulsion and mass killing of non-Croats and non-Serbs. Whereas this plan was in the end recognized by the Worldwide Felony Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia as a joint felony enterprise, its legacy persists—albeit in a distinct political type. Though the preliminary Tudjman-Milosevic plan failed, the institution of RS granted Bosnian Serbs huge autonomy. As an alternative of strengthening the Bosnian state and supporting its Euro-Atlantic path, Dodik has exploited that autonomy to wage a relentless marketing campaign of secessionist destabilization. Crucially, the extent of self-rule granted to RS in Dayton was one thing by no means achieved by the Croats in Bosnia.
In the present day, Croatia’s ambitions have morphed into a brand new political technique: a continuation of the Tudjman-Milosevic wartime mission by political means. And as Western responses to Dodik have grown more and more toothless, the coverage of appeasement towards his actions has led Croat leaders in Bosnia to imitate Dodik’s ways—pursuing the identical damaging ends by means of political subversion moderately than power.
Croatia’s rising stature on the worldwide stage has solely intensified its political give attention to Bosnia. As European Union and NATO membership has expanded its foreign-policy affect, so too have the time and capital that Zagreb has invested in meddling in Bosnia’s inside affairs. Inside EU establishments, Croatia has framed the alleged endangerment of Bosnian Croats as a central concern, turning it right into a everlasting merchandise on the European agenda, together with on the European Council.
Croatian MEPs routinely use the European Parliament as a platform to push for deeper ethnic gerrymandering in Bosnia, not much less. Progress on Bosnia’s EU path is more and more held hostage to electoral reforms designed to entrench Croatia’s political pursuits. Even NATO and EU summits have been co-opted to amplify these narratives, successfully subordinating Bosnia’s democratic future to a slim, ethnonationalist agenda.
On the coronary heart of Croat coverage in Bosnia, pushed by HDZ BiH and its chief Dragan Covic, is the notion of “legit illustration.” Though by no means formally outlined by Croat officers or grounded in political or authorized principle, the idea boils right down to a core tenet of ethnonationalist politics: HDZ BiH’s declare to the unique proper to outline who counts as a Croat and who will get to characterize them. The clearest expression of this got here in a current modification to the electoral legislation proposed by HDZ BiH in Bosnia’s Parliamentary Meeting. The proposal would successfully exclude Croats residing in combined cantons, permitting solely these residing in Croat-majority “particular territorial zones”—dominated by HDZ BiH—to vote for the Croat member of the presidency. It’s a blatant try to engineer electoral outcomes by means of ethnic and geographic exclusion.
Past the truth that these proposed territorial zones hint their lineage to the wartime thought of Herzeg-Bosna—deemed a joint felony enterprise by the Worldwide Felony Tribunal—the proposal enshrines a harmful precept: the territorialization of ethnonational exclusivity. In essence, it asserts that solely sure ethnic teams ought to reside in or politically management particular elements of the nation’s territory. This isn’t only a redrawing of electoral maps; it’s a thinly veiled push for a “third entity,” a definite Croat-majority political unit. Such a transfer doesn’t merely reshape Bosnia’s electoral geography; it entrenches ethnic segregation, emboldens separatist forces, and instantly contravenes rulings by the European Courtroom of Human Rights (ECHR) that decision for the dismantling of ethnic discrimination in Bosnia.
HDZ BiH and different main Croat political events in Bosnia have constantly refused to suggest election legislation reforms or amendments grounded within the ECHR rulings, although such rulings are, by Bosnia’s personal structure, superior to the structure itself. Each HDZ BiH and its sister social gathering in Croatia have brazenly opposed these rulings, calling them “politically motivated and fabricated”—most notably Kovacevic v. Bosnia and Herzegovina—as a result of they problem the very foundations of ethnically divided electoral zones and as an alternative affirm the primacy of particular person civic id over ethnic affiliation. Unsurprisingly, the Kovacevic ruling discovered Bosnia’s political and electoral system, rooted within the Dayton Settlement, structurally discriminatory. The courtroom concluded that Bosnia’s framework rests on outdated rules that tie political rights not solely to ethnic id however to put of residence. It referred to as explicitly for complete constitutional reform.
The ruling struck on the coronary heart of the HDZ’s political platform, threatening its core id and maintain on energy. In response, the Croatian authorities, working in shut coordination with Bosnian Croats, mounted an aggressive marketing campaign to overturn the choice, with the unprecedented help of the Workplace of the Excessive Consultant by means of an amicus transient. Though the ECHR’s Grand Chamber ultimately annulled the ruling on procedural grounds, the substance of its conclusions was by no means contested.
The results are clear: This determination will deepen the divide between two competing visions for Bosnia’s future. On one aspect are the ethnonationalist actors, decided to protect a dysfunctional establishment that blocks democratic progress. On the opposite are civic reformers, pushing for a modernized structure aligned with European human rights requirements. With out such reform, Bosnia can not transfer ahead on the trail to EU and NATO membership.
It wasn’t at all times this manner. There was a time when key Croatian leaders actively promoted a constructive, cooperative relationship with Bosnia. Former Croatian Presidents Stjepan Mesic and Ivo Josipovic, together with former International Minister Vesna Pusic, championed the concept Bosnian Croats ought to view Sarajevo, not Zagreb, as their political heart. Their imaginative and prescient for the area’s European future was rooted in mutual respect, state sovereignty, and real partnership. Crucially, they superior this imaginative and prescient with out preconditions or nationalist calculations, inserting the steadiness of each nations, and the broader area, above slim social gathering pursuits centered in ethnonationalism.
In the present day, nevertheless, these voices have been relegated to the margins. Political figures who as soon as championed civic cooperation at the moment are largely absent from Croatia’s public discourse. Even inside left-leaning events, as soon as the pure dwelling for such rules, the rhetoric has shifted dramatically. Many on the Croatian left have and adopting more and more antagonistic attitudes towards Bosnia and its establishments.
A hanging instance of this political regression is Croatia’s present president and former prime minister, Zoran Milanovic. 20 years in the past, Milanovic publicly supported and even campaigned for Zeljko Komsic, a progressive Bosnian Croat politician who opposed HDZ’s ethnic exclusivism and as an alternative championed civic rights and particular person liberties. In the present day, Milanovic has reversed course totally. He not solely vilifies Komsic with demeaning slurs however repeatedly employs inflammatory, ethnonationalist rhetoric, typically veering into brazenly racist and fascist overtones, significantly when referring to Bosniaks. Amongst his most infamous feedback is the “first cleaning soap, then fragrance” comment, implying that lengthy earlier than Bosniaks may even ask for civic rights and particular person liberties, they first wanted to “clear themselves.” Milanovic’s transformation just isn’t merely a private betrayal of former rules—it displays a broader collapse in Croatia’s political discourse on Bosnia, one which threatens to unravel many years of fragile peace and regional cooperation.
Briefly, the times of Josipovic, Mesic, and Pusic are over. Whereas Bosnians stay grateful that the Dayton Settlement ended the battle, it additionally set a troubling precedent: It legitimized a politics of aggression with out accountability. That legacy lives on, in each the spirit and the letter of the Dayton structure.
In the present day, in what quantities to the most critical assault on Bosnia’s constitutional order because the finish of the battle, the present Croat leaders in Sarajevo and Zagreb are actively escalating tensions by aligning themselves with Dodik and RS’s secessionist agenda. They’ve used the newest disaster to push their long-standing nationalist purpose of dividing the Bosnian state. With Dodik remaining in energy and the worldwide neighborhood unwilling to work on significant reforms, HDZ BiH and Croatian policymakers have grown more and more daring of their efforts to undermine Bosnia’s political stability, all with out going through actual penalties.
Extra troubling nonetheless, this reveals a deeper, extra sinister fact: Bosnia’s sovereignty is tolerated by the worldwide neighborhood solely as long as it features as a condominium between Croatia and Serbia, its independence perpetually contested, partitioned, and held hostage by its neighbors. The result’s persistent instability by design.
If the worldwide neighborhood continues to deal with Bosnia as a secondary concern—or worse, as a everlasting buffer zone between competing nationalist initiatives—it would have successfully surrendered its postwar commitments to peace, democracy, and human rights. What’s unfolding in Bosnia isn’t just a disaster of governance however a managed disintegration—a gradual erosion of statehood, masked by procedural diplomacy and hole affirmations of European integration.
Croatia’s more and more aggressive posture, couched as concern for Bosnian Croats, is in actuality a strategic marketing campaign that advances ethnic partition beneath the quilt of legitimacy. This marketing campaign, more and more aligned with Russian pursuits, threatens not solely Bosnia’s sovereignty but additionally regional stability and the credibility of Western alliances. Removed from being a stabilizing power, Croatia is turning into an unreliable accomplice, one whose actions undermine each Bosnia’s future and the strategic pursuits of Europe and america.
Bosnia doesn’t want new traces drawn on outdated maps or “particular territorial zones” born of wartime ambitions. It wants a full reckoning with the discriminatory underpinnings of the Dayton system and a decisive shift towards a civic, inclusive democracy, the place citizenship, not ethnicity, determines political rights. That transformation just isn’t solely potential; it’s important if Europe and america are to stay devoted to the very values they declare to defend.
