Bosnia’s Existential Threat

Milorad Dodik, the Serb member of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s three-person presidency, is crying wolf yet again. Over the last 15 years, he has threatened to break up Bosnia so often that everyone, including the European Union and the United States, has ceased to take him seriously.

In 2021, Dodik doubled down on his threats, announcing more than 100 pieces of legislation that would withdraw Republika Srpska from Bosnia’s central government and form its own parallel institutions. His threats included withdrawal from Bosnia’s defense forces, judiciary, tax and customs collection, and intelligence services, among many others. Dodik’s latest threats to abolish Bosnia came in combination with Russian pressures to block the yearly renewal of the mission of EUFOR, the EU military force responsible for maintaining a safe and secure environment in Bosnia, at the session of the U.N. Security Council in November. While a compromise was reached, in that EUFOR’s mandate was extended for