O'Brien's visit could return US policy toward BiH to earlier settings, which would buy us time

(Patria) - US Assistant Secretary of State Antony Blinken's deputy, James O'Brien, is visiting BiH next week. The man who is otherwise in charge of European and Eurasian affairs at the State Department will be in our country from February 1 to 3.

The "father of the Dayton Peace Agreement," as O'Brien is better known to the BiH public, is scheduled to meet with numerous BiH political officials, including members of the BiH Presidency.

Shift in US policy

Professor of political science and international relations expert Zlatko Hadžidedić spoke to the Patria News Agency about the significance of O'Brien's visit to our country.

O'Brien's visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hadžidedić says at the outset, must be viewed in the context of the shift that US policy under President Joe Biden has made regarding BiH, and "a kind of consensus it has reached with UK policy on the partition of BiH."

Hadžidedić points out that we are witnessing increasingly frequent talk about the possible partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina along entity lines, with one part annexed to Serbia and the other to Croatia.

- This is no coincidence; these stories have been circulating since Biden took office. His administration has certainly made a shift compared to earlier US administrations, which started from the principle of the inviolability of borders - says Hadžidedić.

He emphasizes that within the State Department there are several different currents, and that James O'Brien belongs to the traditional one that adheres to the principle of the inviolability of borders and the principles on which the Dayton Peace Agreement was built.

- I would view this visit in the context of his own desire to inform himself about the situation on the ground, how far we have deviated from former US policy. And given that he is the Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasia, the main man in the State Department responsible for this part of the world, one should expect that he has the capacity to propose and make such a shift. But obviously, before undertaking any initiative, he wanted to personally verify the situation on the ground - says Hadžidedić.

Our interlocutor warns that Bosnia and Herzegovina has come very far - to the brink of partition, almost to the point where EUFOR is about to step out onto the inter-entity boundary line and turn it into an inter-state border between Serbia and Croatia.

Hadžidedić does not expect anything spectacular from O'Brien's visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina, except that the US might, under his leadership, return to its previous policy. And that previous policy, he explains, is not particularly good for BiH, but at least guarantees its survival within its current borders. That, the professor states, is the status quo and does not imply progress in any direction.

- We have witnessed that in the last ten years we have made no progress either as a state or as a candidate for NATO membership, and I won't even mention the EU. Therefore, even before President Biden, the US advocated a policy that was good for us insofar as it preserved our bare survival.

I now see the possibility of a return to that policy, because under the policy led by Biden and long advocated by his allies in the UK, we have long since moved from that line of bare survival towards complete disappearance - notes Professor Hadžidedić.

Although at the signing of the Dayton Agreement almost 29 years ago it was said that its intention was to establish lasting peace, the professor emphasizes that today in Bosnia and Herzegovina we have a very fragile peace.

- The agreement itself has been largely violated. I myself have written several times that the High Representative was undermining the Dayton Agreement by engaging in constitutional changes, for which, according to Annex 10, he has no mandate.

O'Brien: Visiting BiH from February 1 to 3

Two years to destroy the state

Not only because of what Milorad Dodik is doing in terms of undermining the constitutional order, but also because of what Christian Schmidt has done, we are largely in the process of collapsing the entire constitutional order, as well as the peace agreement.

Now, is it possible to save it? Well, probably yes, but I fear the main problem is that we have people in power who are not interested in saving the state, but in extracting as much money as possible from those who have promised it to them for destroying the state.

We have a team that is interested in nothing else but destroying this state. It is not located only in Banja Luka and Mostar, but also includes this Troika in Sarajevo. Previously it was the SDA, but it is no longer suitable because it has significantly stretched out the process. Now people have been brought in to speed it up, and they have been given roughly two years to destroy BiH, on which they are working very actively.

That is the only difference between them and the SDA; there is no principled difference. The difference is only in the speed of action. Otherwise, the SDA has never been in a position to defend BiH, from 1990 onwards that has never been the case.

Let those who read this not be deceived; I therefore consider that all are equally involved and equally guilty - those in Sarajevo, those in Mostar, and those in Banja Luka. However, now we have indeed got a team in Sarajevo that is trying to speed up this process to the end, and complete it within these two years.

We had elections in October 2022, so by October 2024 this process of collapse and dissolution of Bosnia and Herzegovina should already be completed - Hadžidedić told us.

And precisely in this context, the professor adds, the arrival of James O'Brien and the possible return to the previous US policy, under which borders are not changeable, would mean a lot to us, because it gives us the opportunity to possibly gain more time, to look for other people in this country who will lead us towards prosperity, not towards ruin.

- But all this requires a lot of time, and the arrival of James O'Brien and the possible steps he could initiate could precisely lead to "buying time," within which we could try to change the ruling establishment that is leading us, and turn to another kind of struggle - not for bare survival - but for strengthening the sovereignty of BiH - says Hadžidedić.

He also emphasizes that the best possible solution for the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina is for us to fight for the return of state sovereignty, which was taken from us as early as the Lisbon Conference in 1992.

- During the war, negotiations were conducted as if that sovereignty did not even exist. That sovereignty was transferred to the leaders of self-proclaimed ethnic parties, and so Dayton was made - on the principle that each of them gets a piece of territory over which they have the ability to govern.

Therefore, the only solution for BiH is the return of sovereignty to the citizen and the state, so that all citizens together bear the sovereignty of the state. That is the principle that exists everywhere in Europe and the world. And BiH is the only exception, as it has been made from Lisbon, through Dayton, all the way to today.

The only way is for us to look at how others do it. We can take anyone's constitution and copy it - the constitution of Serbia, Croatia, Switzerland, Belgium, whichever we want, just so that we are like other states in Europe - concludes Hadžidedić in an interview with Patria.

(D. Kovač)