Dodik is asking for self-determination? Excellent! It's time for the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina to ask for it

By: Rasim Belko

Milorad Dodik said nothing new in Banja Luka today. He only said what he has been saying for years, but now louder, more confidently, and more dangerously. The call to "abandon the Dayton Agreement" and declare the independence of the Republika Srpska entity is not a political provocation, it is an open secessionist manifesto. The difference compared to before is not in the content, but in the context. Dodik is emboldened today.

He is emboldened by messages he interprets as an agreement with the Americans, Israel's readiness to be his political partner without questions about civilizational values, Moscow's support, and the "Serbian world" ideology that has been ongoing for two centuries and regularly ends in tragedies. Dodik is not improvising; he is riding the continuity of a policy that believes history can be reversed, borders redrawn, and states dismantled without a price.

To be clear, the eventual realization of what Dodik advocates would not only mean the end of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It would open Pandora's box in the Balkans, creating ethnically homogeneous "greater" states of Serbs, Croats, and Albanians, with the permanent expulsion of diversity and the final capitulation of the idea of a multi-ethnic society. This is not the right to self-determination; it is the right of the stronger to destroy the weaker.

In this picture, Sarajevo is again playing the worst possible role. The role of an emotional observer who shouts, threatens, moralizes, and invokes force without any real backing. The initial reactions, like all subsequent ones that follow the same pattern, only confirm that "political" Sarajevo is positioning itself at the very end of the influence chain. Loud, but irrelevant. Always offended, never strategic.

And the most tragic thing is that Dodik has been given all the political space for a decade. This is not the first time he has spoken about the self-determination and independence of RS. But it is the first time he has done so at a time when the international order is shaky, and the world is tired of Balkan stories. And again, nothing comes from Sarajevo except defensiveness.

Never, absolutely never, have we heard a clear, serious, and politically mature response: "Yes, we also want the end of Dayton. Yes, we also want no more entities. Yes, we want a unitary, civic, European Bosnia and Herzegovina."

Such a sentence, spoken coldly, rationally, and directed at the international community, would dramatically change the balance of power. It would take away Dodik's monopoly on radicalism and show that there is political will in this country, not just fear of change. But that stance is absent. Or it exists only in the form of populist slogans, daily political point-scoring, and Facebook patriotism without an idea and without a strategy.

And that is the biggest problem of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Because the moment serious politics from Sarajevo "roars" – not with a shout, but with a quiet, decisive message to the international community: "We are giving up on Dayton. We want the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina" – Dodik's emboldenment will begin to cool. And the foreign factor will finally know what the patriots of this country truly want. And that is a state, not a status quo; a future, not a frozen conflict.

Therefore, the message to Dodik, at least from this journalistic perspective, is extremely clear. Yes, we want self-determination. Not in one entity, but throughout the entire territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. With three possible choices. Let's see the epilogue. If we are going to shatter illusions, let's shatter them completely.