In 1888, a generation before the First World War started, the German arch-statesman Otto von Bismarck predicted that a great European war was coming over some “damn foolish thing in the Balkans.” Tensions in Southeastern Europe have a troublesome habit of dragging in outside powers, sometimes with terrible consequences.
The region is experiencing another bout of squabbling, which threatens to involve NATO if tensions keep rising. The Atlantic Alliance had to militarily intervene twice in the 1990s to resolve Balkan wars emanating from the collapse of Yugoslavia. Russia, weak and divided in the wake of Communism’s painful downfall, failed to intervene against NATO. We may not be so lucky the next time.
A striking aspect regarding the current Balkan turmoil is how eerily it resembles the tensions that birthed the First World War. The cast of characters is virtually unchanged. At the center of the dispute are the Serbs, seeking national unity around an independent Serbia. However, significant numbers of Serbs reside in neighboring countries, especially Bosnia-Hercegovina. That beautiful yet unsettled country is run as a colony by Teutonic outsiders: in 1914, Austria-Hungary; today, the European Union with NATO support. The EU’s High Representative for Bosnia, the de facto colonial governor, is a German, while his predecessor was Austrian. Behind the Serbs stand the Russians, their Slavic Orthodox “big brothers.”
Since the end of the Bosnian War in late 1995, as enshrined in the U.S.-brokered Dayton Peace Accords, the country has been managed quixotically, with a weak central government in Sarajevo and most powers devolved to two entities: the Muslim-dominated Federation and the Serbian Republic or Republika Srpska. This arrangement has satisfied none of the country’s ethnic groups. Dayton gives less centralized power than most Muslims want, yet there’s too much authority in Sarajevo’s hands for most Serbs (the dwindling Croatian minority, ensconced in the Federation, likewise wants less power in federal, i.e., Muslim, hands).
Dayton was never meant to be a permanent salve to Bosnia’s intractable ethnic problems, yet it’s endured inefficiently for 30 years, thanks to political inertia and the inability of NATO and the EU to come up with a better system. However, it’s being pushed beyond capacity by the current political crisis, which has been festering for decades.
This came to a head in February with a Bosnian court’s criminal sentencing of Milorad Dodik, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, to a year in prison and a six-year ban on participation in politics over his ignoring Sarajevo’s edicts and the EU High Commissioner Christian Schmidt. Dodik pronounced the sentence as illegitimate, so he was ignoring it, while dismissing Schmidt as a foreign interloper, suggesting that the imperious German politician should back off given the Nazi genocide perpetrated against Bosnian Serbs, as well as Jews and Roma, during the Second World War. The 66-year-old Dodik, who has led the Bosnian Serbs in different offices since 1998, longer than Vladimir Putin has ruled in the Kremlin, is a consummate survivor.
In response, a Bosnian court issued an arrest warrant for Dodik, who chose to ignore that, too. Instead, at the end of March, Dodik flew to Moscow as a guest of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Dodik praised lavishly as his partner in their shared “fight against the globalist elite.” The two leaders have enjoyed friendly photo ops over the years, and Dodik made clear that Moscow stands behind his beleaguered little entity — and behind himself, too.
Russia wasn’t the only friend Dodik attempted to enlist in his defense. He appeared in Israel, staging an awkward photo op with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where Dodik effusively praised the Israeli fight against jihadists while comparing the shared history of suffering experienced by Serbs and Jews at the hands of Germans and Turks.
Dodik also reached out to Washington, DC. Dodik enthusiastically embraced the MAGA cause in our last election, while the Bosnian Serb leader views President Donald Trump as a kindred spirit in the fight against globalism. He compared his legal travails to the Democrat lawfare waged against President Trump, with Dodik offering the United States access to Bosnia’s minerals as additional enticement. That failed to work, however, and Secretary of State Mario Rubio publicly came out in support of Sarajevo and the EU in Dodik’s legal brawl.
Moscow was more welcoming. As Sarajevo requested an Interpol warrant for Dodik, which would make his international travels difficult if not impossible – a request which Interpol has rejected to date – Dodik hinted that if Bosnian Muslim pols and their EU and NATO puppet masters kept pushing, the Russians would push back in support of Bosnia’s Serbs. Dodik backed Putin’s 2022 reinvasion of Ukraine as fully justified, while Putin’s recent meeting with Dodik in Moscow indicates Kremlin support.
This shouldn’t be dismissed as an idle threat. One of Dayton’s few unambiguous successes involved disbanding the ethnic militaries that waged the 1992-1995 war, replacing them with a unified but small Bosnian armed force. Dodik has no army of his own, although the Republika Srpska’s paramilitary police is unusually well armed, including with Russian weapons. Recreating ethnic armies has been a firm “red line” under Dayton – at least until now.
Dodik alarmed international observers this spring by hinting that he would recreate his own military, a move which would kill Dayton in any practical sense. The EU’s peacekeeping force in Bosnia, called EUFOR, is only a couple of battalions strong and would need substantial NATO reinforcement in the event of any serious crisis. Western intelligence assesses that Dodik has made plans to rearm the Bosnian Serbs with substantial Russian military aid, but nothing firm has happened yet.
Just as alarming are mounting signs that Serbia, which stands firmly behind its co-nationals in Bosnia in Dodik’s legal skirmish, is cozying up to Moscow too. For years, Aleksandar Vučić, who has ruled in Belgrade since 2014, first as prime minister, for the last eight years as president, has managed a delicate balancing act between East and West. Under Vučić, Serbia kept its options open vis-à-vis membership in the EU someday (until 2023, Vučić even kept potential NATO membership for Serbia on the table). All the while, Serbia has become something of an economic colony of China.
In security matters, Belgrade plays all sides. While Serbia last year purchased a dozen Rafale fighter jets from France for its air force, its ground forces employ many Russian weapons systems, and its air defenses include late-model Chinese surface-to-air missiles.
The intelligence partnership between Moscow and Belgrade has grown particularly close. Under Vučić the relationship between Serbia’s spy agency, known as BIA, and Russian counterparts has blossomed. Russian military intelligence, known as GRU, has a robust presence in Serbia, using its bases there to spy on NATO forces in neighboring Kosovo. In 2023, BIA’s boss, Aleksandar Vulin, was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department over his dubious links to Moscow. After that, Vulin was promoted to deputy prime minister.
There’s increasing spy-directed ideological harmony between Moscow and Belgrade. The former has its “Russian World” concept to unite Russians outside the borders of the Russian Federation, which is viewed as a threat by Russia’s neighbors. Belgrade has recently developed an identical “Serbian World” concept to encompass Serbs living outside Serbia.
Vučić has ventured deeper into Moscow’s orbit as his government has been rattled by major popular protests against corruption. Facing angry marches in cities across Serbia, Vučić sought Russian help. Last month, Vulin, who’s considered Moscow’s top man in Belgrade, stated that Russian intelligence agencies had aided his government against the protests. Vulin made this statement after he met with Sergey Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service or SVR. Widespread allegations that the government had used acoustic weapons against protesters were rebutted by Belgrade, which enlisted the help of Russia’s Federal Security Service. To nobody’s surprise, FSB investigators sided with Vučić, denying any acoustic weapons were employed.
IS IT REALLY THE PERFECT TIME TO BOMB IRAN?
The current relationship between Russia and Serbia can be summed up with the case of Dmitry Iordanidi, an SVR officer who left Belgium in 2023 under a cloud, amid the expulsion of 20 Russian spies masquerading as diplomats in Brussels.
Moscow wanted to get Iordanidi, a rising SVR star, back into the field in Europe, but somewhere safe from NATO scrutiny. They elected to send him to Belgrade, of course.
John R. Schindler served with the National Security Agency as a senior intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer.
