Not unusual for Bosnian politicians to claim they've been cheated of elxn victories. The current din, however, is worrying not only for how widespread it is but for manner in which it's accelerating deterioration of already weak parliamentary norms in dangerous global climate.
I fear ordinary Bosnians & the international community have both grown complacent, believing the improbable suggestion that a fundamentally weak & sclerotic state can continue like so indefinitely. It cannot & contingencies & alternatives must urgently be developed.
The nationalist-authoritarians, and their assorted benefactors from Russia, Turkey, China, and the Gulf states, are already creating the architecture for a post-Euro-Atlantic order in the Balkans. Neither the EU nor the US is seriously invested in curbing these efforts.
Much of my book, and the dissertation it grew out of, was written with the explicit aim of advancing this line of argument, at a time when it still seemed like fringe alarmism to speak of the end of the Euro-Atlantic project in the region. Not any more. global.oup.com/academic/produ…
Now it is virtually accepted wisdom that the EU project in the Balkans, at least, is in crisis and that, as of yet, no Plan B exists. Despite this, so many colleagues & peers in Brussels & in the region still continue to insist the future, while not bright, is at least familiar.
We're seeing this rhetoric since the BiH elxns. Yes, there is a significant degree of status quo after these polls. But the status quo in Bosnia & the Balkans is corrosive & toxic. And as global order as a whole breaks down, the Balkans will be especially susceptible to chaos.
That chaos, however, whether produced in the region or exported into it, will not remain contained. The migrant crisis showed the Balkans remains a critical membrane in/between Europe & the MENA. Simply, EU & US abet the crisis of democracy in BiH & Balkans at their own peril. /x
