A Tear over Bosnia and a Tear over Europe

*Why did the most experienced German diplomat Christoph Heusgen, chairman of the Munich Security Conference (MSC), cry in his closing speech?

By: Fuad Đidić

Do you remember Sonja Lokar. She is the woman who cried the moment the delegation of Slovenia left the 14th Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia on January 22, 1990. Those were tears that announced disaster. No one could hide what was really happening in the country into which all our dreams were woven and for which millions lost their lives. As the years passed, it became harder and harder to live with these tears. Her tears most heavily submerged Bosnia and Herzegovina.

A few days ago, at the most important world gathering, I saw tears again. This time, a man cried. The cold and rational German, Christoph Heusgen, chairman of the Munich Security Conference (MSC). Like Sonja, Christoph could not hide the truth at a historically pivotal moment. In his crying, the truth about Europe spoke. The great dream of millions was crumbling to dust. The vision of Europe, woven with the sacrifices of tens of millions, collapsed in an instant.

As he addressed the world public in his closing remarks, the experienced German diplomat Mr. Heusgen cried with the eyes of millions of Europeans. Through his tear in the closing speech, the deep and hidden unease of more than 600 attendees boiled over. It wasn't just what he might have heard before his closing speech that gathered in him. Such as the news that Trump spoke with Putin for 90 minutes, a leader accused of war crimes. I believe he didn't cry because he heard the warning from US Secretary of Defense Hagseth that Ukraine would not be admitted to NATO. Something else gathered in him. Something broke him, both as an experienced diplomat and as a man, a European with the vision of Beethoven's symphony.

It was the preceding speech by US Vice President J. D. Vance. This man of Trump's defeated the European century in just a few sentences. J. D. Vance called on Europeans to stop avoiding far-right parties, to restore their dignity in discussions and show them respect. He then went on to say that Europe is narrowing freedom of speech, that it is silencing hate speech, Islamophobia, and so on.

By a mere coincidence of history, Sonja Lokar also cried when she heard similar words from Milošević's party stormtroopers. She recognized that the penetration of far-right parties, which would bring down a great Yugoslav project, was behind it all.

In his speech, Christoph said: “We have to be afraid that our value base is no longer the same…” In these words, the chairman recognized Europe, lonely, abandoned by its best allies. These words contain the icy fear of millions of Europeans, millions who believed in a humane vision of humanity.

After the speech, J. D. Vance avoided meeting with German leader Scholz and met with Alice Weidel, the leader of the German far-right AfD, over whom the terrible shadow of Hitler looms. Christoph surely questioned himself: What makes sense here anymore? Where did our dreams go? What happened to us overnight? Into what abyss are we rushing? The same fear that spoke from Sonja Lokar's tears spoke from him.

The tear of the German diplomat carries all the sadness and all of Bosnia's longing for a normal country. It contains the concern – what does America really intend with Bosnia, what does it see as the final goal in this country, how does it intend to defend at least a minimum of its proclaimed principles… Suddenly, Europe cried over the very same American actions over which millions in Bosnia have long hidden their deep resignation with America.

Where has American diplomatic strategy gone? What are its methods, its directions now? Did the chairman of the Munich Security Conference, Mr. Heusgen, sense in J. D. Vance's speech the same spirit that we here have recognized in the actions of the most important American diplomats in recent years? Did he, like us in BiH, see Murphy's cowboy boot with which he mercilessly trampled his chosen interlocutors, choosing the worst from the worse? Surely Mr. Heusgen felt that malicious policy driven by impulses, passions, instincts instead of a policy driven by principles of discipline and carefully considered actions.

Therefore, this tear of the most experienced diplomat in Germany, a man who knows how to control his emotions exceptionally well, rolled down most heavily onto this suffering and battered country – Bosnia and Herzegovina. Just as Sonja Lokar's tear also rolled down onto Bosnia.

Will we, after Sonja Lokar's tear, understand Christoph Heusgen's tear in time? But the stake, neither then nor now, was just BiH. The stake was all of Europe.