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I am pleased to publish this piece by Ajdin
Muratovic, a Washington, D.C.-based Security Fellow at the Truman
National Security Project. He has extensive experience working,
studying, and living across Eastern Europe.
Targeted sanctions—an increasingly popular item in
Washington’s Western Balkans toolkit—are supposed to change behavior
and deter future malign conduct. Yet the sanctions the US has
leveled against Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik for violating the
peace agreement that ended the Bosnian war are failing to achieve
either objective. The results could be catastrophic. Failure to
maintain peace and stability in Bosnia risks triggering another war
in Europe. That could lead to untold human suffering, while sapping
resources and bandwidth from strategic priorities such as the war in
Ukraine. Such an outcome is easily preventable. US policymakers
should modify a sanctions regime that is insufficiently tough,
poorly targeted, and lacks multilateral support.
How we got here
In late 1995, the US-led Dayton Agreement ended
nearly four years of extreme violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The
Bosnian war introduced the term “ethnic cleansing” to the world. It
featured genocide, concentration camps, mass rape, and hundreds of
thousands of dead and wounded for the first time in Europe since the
Second World War––all less than an hour’s flight from Germany. The
Dayton Agreement succeeded in reconciling warring parties and
preserving Bosnia’s territorial integrity, but at a price. Postwar
Bosnia became a highly decentralized state with two powerful
subnational “entities” – the Bosniak-Croat dominated Federation of
Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH), and the Serb-dominated Republika
Srpska (RS), the latter currently led by Dodik.
Dodik has led Bosnian Serb politics for most of
the almost three decades since the end of the war. He was initially
seen as a moderate with whom the West could work rather than a
hardline Serb nationalist. He started his political career as a
State Department darling. But he eventually came to undermine the
Dayton peace agreement by creating illegal parallel government
institutions, seizing Bosnian central government property, ignoring
Bosnian constitutional court orders, and obstructing policies that
would improve the Sarajevo government’s ability to function, all
while promising unification with Serbia.
Sanctions and the reaction
In response, the US sanctioned Dodik, twice: in
2017 for “actively obstructing the Dayton Agreement” after he defied
constitutional court rulings; and again in 2022 for numerous
“corrupt and destabilizing activities,” including accumulating
“personal wealth through graft, bribery and other forms of
corruption.”
Yet Dodik has only become bolder and more extreme
since being sanctioned. A recent report to the UN Security Council
stated that “secessionist rhetoric and action” has “intensified”
during the past six months. The report cites as evidence Dodik’s
March 2023 proclamation that “our goal is unification, meaning
leaving Bosnia-Herzegovina and joining Serbia.” He added that he and
his allies “are just waiting for the moment to do that.”
Rather than idly waiting, Dodik and legislators
from his party are acting, implementing a stealth secession. In
June, they voted to suspend all rulings of Bosnia’s constitutional
court, effectively removing Republika Srpska from the court’s
jurisdiction. This and similar moves by Republika Srpska officials
violate the Dayton Agreement and threaten to ignite a war. If
history is any guide, it will quickly become a regional conflict.
Unrivalled American influence
This is happening in a country where, unlike in
Iran or Russia, the US has unrivaled influence. American officials
designed Bosnia’s contemporary political system during the Dayton
negotiations at an Ohio military base. The agreement, part of which
also serves as Bosnia’s constitution, renders it a non-sovereign
state with ample opportunity for American intervention.
The most powerful official in the country is not
its elected head of government, but a foreign diplomat appointed by
internationals known as the High Representative (HR). He oversees
civilian implementation of the Dayton Agreement. The HR has immense
powers to ensure treaty compliance, including vetoing legislation
and firing Bosnian officials. US support is vital for the
appointment of a HR, and the Deputy HR is always an American.
An EU-led military force, currently over 1,000
troops, supplements the HR’s treaty enforcement. Additionally, the
Dayton Agreement, and a subsequent UN Security Council resolution,
permit NATO deployments, including US troops, without consent from
Bosnian officials. Although Europeans occupy key civilian and
military roles in Bosnia, they only do so with American blessing.
Perhaps no example better illustrates American centrality in Bosnia
than the fact that key decisions, such as new election laws, are
frequently negotiated in the U.S. Ambassador’s residence, rather
than in Bosnian institutions.
Strategic irrelevance and tactical errors
Yet Bosnia is not a strategic priority for the
United States government. The US Trade Representative’s website,
which lists over 110 trading partners, does not include Bosnia.
Neither the US National Defense Strategy, nor the National Security
Strategy, mentions the country. In fact, the two documents only
refer to the Western Balkans region only once. Washington’s
assessment that Bosnia is not a priority has led to a concomitant
lack of consistent US engagement and high-level policy attention
when it comes to the region. This includes insufficient US pressure
on problematic actors such as Dodik.
Tactically, sanctions against Dodik have failed in
three primary ways.
No isolation
First, they have not isolated him politically or
economically. Dodik and his political party continue to win
elections. Internationally, he punches above the weight of a
sub-national leader. He has allied himself with fellow European
right-wing and pro-Russian politicians such as Hungary’s Viktor
Orban to avoid potential EU sanctions, attended Turkish President
Recip Tayyip Erdogan’s recent presidential inauguration, and is a
frequent guest of Putin.
Still, American officials regularly meet with
Dodik and behave as if he is a good-faith actor. Dodik has replied
to such American attention by doubling down on pro-Russian and
secessionist policies. Such meetings only served to highlight the
irrelevance of existing sanctions – a point that both Dodik and the
opposition make. The sanctions have also been financially
inconsequential. Bosnian politicians mostly confine their assets and
dealings to the EU and neighboring Balkan countries.
No multilateral complement
This highlights a second tactical shortcoming.
There are no multilateral sanctions to complement American ones. So
far, only the United Kingdom has joined the sanctions against Dodik.
EU sanctions would impose serious economic and lifestyle costs on
destabilizing individuals. But the Union refuses to activate a more
than decade-old framework to sanction individuals that “undermine
the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and constitutional order” of
BiH.
Hungarian and Croatian officials have signaled
that they would not provide the necessary unanimous support, despite
abundant evidence of sanctionable offenses. Reports also indicate
that the EU’s envoy to Bosnia advised against joining the US
sanctions for fear of making Dodik a “martyr.” The response to Saudi
Arabia’s murder of Jamal Khashoggi demonstrated that individual
member states, such as Germany, can levy sanctions independent of
the Union. No individual EU member, however, has been willing to
join the US in sanctioning Dodik.
Inadequate targeting
In addition to not bringing allies along in
support of sanctions, Washington has done an inadequate job of
targeting Dodik’s network of political and economic accomplices and
proxies. In 2022, the US Treasury, acting on a new executive order
that includes corruption as a targetable offensive, sanctioned a
Dodik-linked construction firm and a TV station. This
well-intentioned attempt has yet to bear fruit.
The construction firm, Integral Inženjering,
continues to profit from EU-funded projects, such as a
newly-constructed bridge to Croatia. It participates in European
Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) projects, despite the
US being a founding member of the bank and its biggest capital
contributor. Alternativna Televizija, formerly a USAID-supported
outlet that Dodik’s proxies took over in 2017, has continued with
the same pro-Dodik coverage as before the sanctions.
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
While the US failure to dedicate significant
attention to Bosnia has placed the region’s security at risk, it is
not too late to make tactical adjustments to sanctions policy. The
limited goal should be stopping Dodik’s attacks on the peace
agreement.
Get real
Policymakers first need to be honest about the
present failure. State Department officials regularly claim, without
concrete evidence, that sanctions are having an impact. American
lawmakers, rather than serving as an accountability mechanism, are
reinforcing the State Department’s narrative. Senator Shaheen,
usually an astute foreign policy observer, stated that Dodik, “is
upset about the U.S. sanctions, so clearly they are having an
impact.”
But merely upsetting a targeted individual is an
unserious metric. The US must hold itself to a higher standard. The
American-led Dayton Agreement provides ample political and military
leverage to maintain regional stability.
Stop the useless meetings
Second, U.S. officials should stop meeting with
Dodik and other sanctioned individuals until they start reversing
their destabilizing policies. Six years of meetings have not
achieved anything other than making US officials appear feckless and
incompetent. In a symbolic example of his approach to the US, Dodik
humiliated the American ambassador to Bosnia in 2017 by refusing to
shake her extended hand. Despite his clear contempt for Washington,
every US Ambassador and visiting State Department official since
then has continued to meet with him.
Dodik uses these meetings as a spectacle to
demonstrate to local audiences his strength relative to the
superpower’s emissaries. Frequently he will insult U.S. officials,
or even walk out of meetings. None of these meetings have resulted
in substantive policy changes on his part. If Washington wants to
effect change, its officials need to stop serving as props in this
humiliating charade. He is not a good faith actor. Dodik is an
aspiring strongman who respects strength, not goodwill gestures.
Target the enablers
Third, the US needs to target Dodik’s economic and
political enablers. Earlier rounds of sanctions against
Dodik-affiliated entities demonstrated that a business doesn’t need
to be registered in Dodik’s name to be considered under his control.
While sanctioning Dodik-affiliated television station ATV was a good
first step, Washington should go further and lead sanctions against
the crown jewel in Dodik’s collection of businesses. That is ATV’s
sole owner at the time of sanctioning, a tech services firm named
Prointer.
Institutions controlled by Dodik’s political party
have awarded Prointer tens of millions of dollars in no-bid IT
contracts. The bulk of Prointer’s offering is American software
services – 15 of the 22 companies it lists as “technology partners”
are US-based. Dodik has confirmed that his son works for the firm.
That gives credence to allegations that he was secretly managing the
firm on behalf of his father. Prointer is one part of a vast
business empire – stretching from real estate to fruit exports –
that provides Dodik with unrivaled financial resources to maintain
power and pursue his destabilizing agenda.
Avoid contradictions
The US should also sanction the political enablers
of Dodik’s secessionist agenda. Treasury’s recent sanctioning of
Dodik’s right-hand woman, Zeljka Cvijanovic, is an important step
after six years of misguided and contradictory policies. Both
Cvijanovic and Dodik celebrate convicted war criminals, engage in
genocide denial, defy constitutional court rulings, and call for
secession.
The US also appropriately sanctioned Dragan
Stankovic for expropriating central government property, but it was
Cvijanovic who signed into law the unconstitutional framework for
him to do so. The UK sanctioned Cvijanovic in 2021 for violating the
Dayton Agreement, but American officials continued to host her in
Washington. This accommodating behavior, despite her secessionists
policies, only served to embolden separatists by implying that the
US was not willing to reinforce its rhetoric of upholding the Dayton
Agreement.
Washington should not put itself in such a
contradictory and counterproductive situation again. It must
demonstrate the same decisiveness that it did in 2004 when it
sanctioned every single member of the Serbian Democratic Party for
obstructing war crimes prosecutions. Additionally, it banned from US
entry every coalition partner of the SDS. These moves sent a clear
message about US values, policies, and commitment to upholding the
Dayton Agreement. They also contributed to SDS’ political collapse
by effectively isolating a whole network of destabilizing
individuals.
Secondary sanctions
Fourth, the US should impose so-called secondary
sanctions on Dodik himself and his family, forcing non-US firms and
individuals to choose between doing business with the U.S. or with
Dodik. This type of sanctions leverages US dollar dominance in
global trade and American market power to effectively compel non-US
entities into implementing American policies. Such sanctions, for
example, would apply to any bank dealing in US dollars – practically
every legitimate bank on the planet – and conducting business with
Dodik.
Secondary sanctions can be controversial for many
reasons, including for imposing opportunity costs on non-U.S.
businesses for the sake of American interests. While there is rising
pushback against them – from China to Russia and plenty of countries
in between – there are no American allies that engage in significant
business relations with Dodik, meaning that secondary sanctions
would be less of a burden than other examples. Additionally,
secondary sanctions would partially compensate for the current
absence of multilateral sanctions.
Multilateral sanctions
Fifth, irrespective of whether the U.S. implements
secondary sanctions, it should ensure that sanctions against Dodik
and his allies are multilateral, rather than easily evadable
unilateral ones. The US should, at a minimum, coordinate its
targeting with the UK to avoid an inconsistent approach, as was the
case with Cvijanovic. While getting agreement from all 27 EU member
states to sanction Dodik may be unlikely, Washington can still
convince individual member states to levy their own.
Germany, for example, has already suspended
development projects in the RS, but it should also employ a more
targeted approach by punishing destabilizing individuals instead of
the whole citizenry.
WHY THIS MATTERS
History demonstrates that seemingly isolated
Balkan tensions can quickly escalate to regionally destabilizing
events. Yet Europe lacks the willpower, coordination, and capacity
to address continental security challenges without American support.
To avert humanitarian catastrophe and distraction from strategic
priorities, the US should refine its existing sanctions regime.
Dodik’s current trajectory makes peace
unsustainable. Future actions to uphold the Dayton Agreement will
inevitably require more funds and bandwidth at a time when there is
already one war in Europe. The current US sanctions policy
undermines its earlier investments in the region and squanders its
influence. US taxpayers contributed over $15 billion from 1992 to
2002 on military operations to stabilize BiH and implement the
Dayton Peace Agreement.
A National Defense University report assessed that
Bosnia was the “exception” to otherwise “poorly coordinated and
executed foreign interventions.” This US investment created
unprecedented leverage to ensure stability in a volatile region. The
current sanctions policy, however, is undermining this investment
and making it likely that Dodik will collapse a US-sponsored peace
agreement.
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