The Balkan theater is one of the best examples of how Russia is pressing the West to change the rules of the international security order. The next will be Bosnia…

Escalating the conflict in Ukraine would be catastrophic. This calamity would largely affect the Ukrainian people, but the war’s consequences would be felt well beyond Ukraine, and the war’s outcome might rewrite the laws of European security.

This would subsequently erode the already precarious global security institutions. Despite its troubling proclivity for invading its neighbors, Russia continues to play a critical role in the United Nations system, most notably the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

A full-scale war in Europe, as it did during much of the Cold War, would cripple the UN.

However, this stalemate does not spell the end of peace efforts. The crisis will inevitably force Western states to work on the sidelines of Russia on matters where Russia has used its Security Council seat to sabotage peacebuilding and stabilizing efforts. The situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is a good example.

In November of this year, the UN Security Council will meet to assess the situation in the country. The members of the institution will vote on whether EUFOR Althea, the EU military mission in responsibility of ensuring peace and security in Bosnia and Herzegovina, should be extended for another year.

Russia has veto power over the deployment of the 600 EUFOR forces stationed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a small, non-threatening force made up largely of Hungarian, Austrian, and Turkish troops with insufficient people and equipment to safeguard Bosnia’s borders.

As Russia is aware of EUFOR’s weaknesses, it is not interested in terminating the mission. Rather, he has used his veto over the EUFOR mission to extract concessions that undercut US and European policy objectives in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which are intended to promote the country’s constitutional reforms and give it with the foreign policy capability it needs to move forward.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s comments at a Moscow press conference with his German counterpart on January 18, 2022, reveal how Russia intends to use the UNSC to achieve its goals.

Despite the fact that the discussion was centered on Ukraine, Lavrov specifically highlighted Bosnia. He emphasized that Russia is interested in international actors reaching an agreement on all of their decisions about the country’s future.

He was alluding to Berlin’s determination to bypass UN approval and ignore Russian objections to the recent selection of German politician Christian Schmidt as the next High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Dayton Peace Agreement’s institutional custodian.

Moscow opposes this nomination because it wants to close the Office of the High Representative (OHR). He fears that a reinforced version of the institution will reclaim its role in defending Bosnia’s sovereignty and support the constitutional revisions needed for Bosnia’s EU and NATO membership.

As a result, at a UNSC meeting in November last year, Russia threatened to block the renewal of EUFOR Althea. Moscow was able to erase any references to the OAR and prevent Schmidt from presenting his report in person. Bosnia faces the gravest existential threat since the end of the war in 1995, according to the research.

Russia’s behavior in Bosnia reveals its goals and strategies, as well as its intent to undermine the West’s influence and political objectives outside the former Soviet space. Russia is striving to do this in a variety of ways, and its desire to create a new international security architecture — one that excludes the US and NATO — extends to areas where the US and its European allies have traditionally played a prominent role in security issues. In all of these locations, Western powers have invested a significant amount of time, money, and political capital in peacekeeping and democratic reforms.

Russia’s objective in both Bosnia and Ukraine is to keep the country out of NATO and NATO forces out of the country, while weakening the US politically and militarily. The Kremlin’s strategy is simple: shut down the Western executive presence in the form of the OAR, where the US continues to appoint the chief deputy high representative, prevent constitutional reform that can only happen with US support, and keep the central government from gaining the foreign policy independence it needs to make decisions about joining NATO and the EU.

Moscow pursues its agenda in a variety of sectors, selectively violating norms and utilizing international law to weaken Western power. It threatens to use force against Ukraine in order to wrest concessions from the West and reclaim what it considers to be its rightful sphere of influence. If Moscow succeeds, it will be committing a gross violation of international law concerning state sovereignty and territorial integrity. In Bosnia, the Kremlin is attempting to utilize this prerogative to ignore the OAR, demand international consensus, use its UNSC power to diminish Western influence, and assist secessionist groups who are actively undermining Bosnia’s sovereignty.

The West should not allow Russia to dictate the boundaries of international institutions’ interaction with a country that borders the European Union and is vital to European security. The use of Russia’s veto over EUFOR last year resulted in mostly symbolic concessions that had little bearing on the OAR’s work (which is already in many troubles itself). But it isn’t going to end there. Russia is likely to go much further next year, seeking at the very least a deadline for the OAR’s collapse, or maybe political concessions to its ‘proxies,’ who are now carrying out a disruptive agenda on the ground with Moscow’s support.

Germany and its Security Council allies must devise a strategy for sustaining the EU’s military presence in Bosnia, which must not be contingent on Russia’s goodwill. NATO should demonstrate its willingness to replace EUFOR if Russia blocks the force’s deployment in order to properly respond to Russian blackmail. NATO’s mandate would be derived directly from the Dayton Peace Agreement in this event, and it would be required to secure political commitments from its major member states to ensure peace and stability in Bosnia. Let’s be clear: Russia doesn’t want NATO to take over for EUFOR. However, unless Moscow relents, the West will be in a stronger negotiating position if NATO pledges to doing so.

Meanwhile, if Russian forces start a serious offensive on Ukraine, a more pressing question will arise: how much longer will Western democracies allow Russia to dictate European security terms by manipulating a system of international norms and laws that it routinely violates?

*Analysis by Majda Ruge for the European Council on Foreign Relations titled ‘Peace of the action: The Kremlin’s plans in Bosnia and Ukraine’.

Image Credit: Getty

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