Bosnia and Herzegovina’s recent adoption of a new foreign-policy strategy might seem, at first glance, like a major success. But the document, approved last month by the country’s tripartite presidency, shows that serious divisions still exist within Bosnia and Herzegovina on relations with the European Union, NATO and with neighbouring Croatia and Serbia.
Bosnia’s foreign policy has long reflected the differences between the presidency’s three Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim), Bosnian Croat and Bosnian Serb members as well as among the country’s political parties. The foreign-policy strategy, a set of guidelines for the presidency from 2018 until 2023, does nothing to reverse that trend.
Long on generalities and short on specifics, the paper reads like “three strategies under one roof;” in essence, the foreign-policy version of Bosnia’s much-criticised “two schools under one roof” — an ethnically divided educational system in which Bosniak and Bosnian Croat children attend separate classes in the same school.
Three examples show how this strategy paper will do nothing but intensify ethno-political tensions within the country.
The presidency’s strategy calls for espousing the EU’s foreign and security policies, joining the EU’s “restrictive measures” toward “third countries and entities” and implementing close “inter-departmental co-operation and a common risk assessment.” It reaffirms Bosnia and Herzegovina’s desire for EU membership.
Yet the country has not followed Brussels’ course of action toward the player increasingly deemed a threat to EU security – Russia.
Unlike the EU, it has not imposed sanctions on Russian individuals and businesses for the Russian Federation’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.
Nor, as Sarajevo’s non-governmental Center for Security Studies recently pointed out, has Bosnia supported any of the 20-plus EU declarations about Moscow’s actions in Ukraine or its alleged cyber-offensive against Western powers.
For more read the full of article at The Balkaninsight
