Twenty Years of Defense Reform in BiH: Challenges and Opportunities for Future Development

(Patria) - "Twenty Years of Defense Reform in BiH: Challenges and Opportunities for Future Development" is the topic of today's regular session of Krug 99, featuring military commentator and journalist Dean Džebić.

Kulenović: The Key Agent of Failure

The president of Krug 99, Adil Kulenović, states that today's topic was not chosen for the commemoration of an important anniversary, but due to the challenges of our Bosnian, regional, and geopolitical reality.

- Most of us probably think that the defense reform has not yielded the desired results. Especially not in the current times and in the face of real dangers we are facing and may face.

In this context, I recall our last statement regarding Albin Kurti's visit, in which we emphasized that the "conclusions of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska on this visit would be worthy of contempt, were they not an open war threat to BiH through the so-called secession of Republika Srpska."

This will revive all the specters of the tragic recent past of this, and the wider region, as we also mentioned. It is clear to us, of course, that the existing, imposed, ethnopolitical system is the key agent of the aforementioned failure, as much as the alienated sovereignty of the state by Serbia and Croatia.

I also want to mention that we have highlighted the issue of security in numerous sessions as one of the most important political issues for state-building political and social forces.

Today, we should also consider the unused opportunities of civilian structures in the function of defense. We must responsibly address the issue of civil protection capacities and the necessity of its reform.

And especially to seek new answers appropriate to the current times in which every citizen will have their place and position defined in the system, organization, training, and responsibility of civil protection.

At least here, systematic and anti-Bosnian blockades cannot stop us, except for ostriches burying their heads in the sand. Such a system must re-evaluate and further train emergency services, fire departments, Mountain Rescue Service, professional and other intelligence and warning services, etc.

We appeal to cantonal and other authorities to introduce subjects from the field of population self-protection for all emergencies and exceptional situations into the education system as soon as possible - Kulenović stated.

Džebić: Numerous Challenges Hinder the Development of BiH's Defense System

Džebić believes that the reform of the defense system of Bosnia and Herzegovina represents one of the most successful reforms in post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina.

This reform process, Džebić points out, required a series of sacrifices but also compromises that enabled the integration of entity armies into a single unified apparatus.

- The period of building the institution of the Ministry of Defense of Bosnia and Herzegovina did not end with the adoption of the Law on Defense of BiH, but rather it is a process that has been ongoing for 20 years, during which this institution has faced a whole series of challenges that have hindered its functional operation - says Džebić.

According to him, the challenges hindering the perspective and development of the BiH defense system and the Ministry of Defense can be divided into three groups: the necessity of amending and supplementing strategic-doctrinal principles of the Defense Policy (2006) and Security Policy (2008) documents, the failure to meet the financial framework - budget and defense planning, and a set of political-social challenges.

- The strategic documents of Bosnia and Herzegovina's state policy are not in line with existing security trends focused on new security challenges in the domain of human security. This situation creates a poor environment for the functional use of the national security and defense system because it does not provide adequate guidelines for defense planning.

Defense planning of Bosnia and Herzegovina's institutions stems from strategic and doctrinal guidelines that the state creates based on its state policy, and in institutional form for the BiH Ministry of Defense, these are the documents Security Policy (2006), Defense Policy (2008), and the Law on Defense (2005).

What is evident is the archaism and obsolescence of these documents, which were adopted and created more than 16 years ago. During the creation of these documents, the security trends of national, regional, and international security were focused on and burdened by the circumstances of that time, which have significantly changed over the past 15 years.

In addition to legal legislation, which forms the constitutional-legal framework, insufficient budgeting of the MoD BiH for the functioning and implementation of state and defense policy represents an additional challenge.

This challenge has been a trend since 2011 and carries with it a whole series of new challenges whose repercussions are reflected in the operational capabilities of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is in direct conflict with the Law on Defense of BiH.

Among other things, the outstanding costs of maintaining non-perspective military property, i.e., locations, late adoption of the state budget, and the occupation of the Ministry of Defense budget with personnel costs are some of the effects of the inadequate model of financing and budgeting of the Armed Forces of BiH.

In the long term, in addition to these challenges, one of the leading ones will remain the permanent political crisis in which the role and significance of the entire national security system are misused in various ways. On the other hand, in addition to national and regional security challenges, the global or international security level is an additional burden - Džebić believes.

He points out that the international security system is a system of connected vessels, according to which changes in security reality in one part of the world, given globalization, very often have global implications.

- In this regard, the Ukrainian-Russian war has permanently changed the patterns and models of contemporary security threats and has created the contours of the future concept of armed forces for the 21st century.

Understanding and implementing the pattern created under the influence of conventional warfare on European soil is imperative, with additional emphasis for countries like BiH, which are, in many segments, a focal point of geostrategic and geopolitical forces - Džebić concluded.