Bosnia’s ‘Second Collapse’ is Starting to Look Inevitable

However, this analysis misses the broader strategic picture - that the external scaffolding supporting the Bosnian state has all but collapsed, creating circumstances in which the RS can break away from Bosnia.

Battle of wills that began at Dayton:

Signing the Dayton Agreement. Photo: Wikimedia commons/NATO

In common with other secessionist groups, the Bosnian Serbs view themselves as a separate political community whose interests are irreconcilable with those of the majority group, the Bosniaks. In the early-1990s, they fought a war not to be part of the newly independent state of Bosnia and the reason they remain in the country is only because they failed to win this war outright. Instead, the conflict ended with a reluctant compromise, the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, in which Bosnian Serbs gained far-reaching autonomy but within a formally unified Bosnian state.

This triggered a short-lived internecine dispute between Serb hardliners who rejected Dayton because it conceded too much and moderates who accepted Dayton because it gave the Bosnian Serbs de facto independence. The second camp prevailed, spearheaded by Dodik, who argued that Bosnian Serbs should give their consent to the Bosnian state on the terms set out in Dayton.

However, the settlement was unacceptable to most Bosniaks who refused to cede control of territory they considered an integral part of their homeland and on which they had lived in large numbers until they were brutally expelled during the war.

Over time, the West also cooled on the Dayton settlement because its multiple layers of government led to serious inefficiencies and its complex system of checks and balances, including ethnic quorums and national vetoes, allowed groups with...