Dayton Bosnia and Herzergovina – New Berlin Wall of the International Community

Abstract

The fall of the Berlin Wall does not represent the end of East-West divisions, but their relocation into new geographical frameworks. The collapse of communism and, together with it, the Yugoslav federation, represented an
opportunity to move geopolitical faults from the epicenter of Europe to its periphery.
Ever since World War II, the leaders of the Anti-Fascist Coalition had
an agreement “about our affairs in the Balkans” (Syracusa, 1981: 381), dividing
Yugoslavia into the Western and Soviet zones of influence (Šulce, 2002). The functional reflection of this division will be expressed by the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the remaining of Serbia in the eastern, that is, Slovenia and
Croatia in the western political hemisphere. The Balkan border between the new West and East will be set in Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose predominant
Bosniak demographic substrate has been turned into a living political wall. Such a development of events was ensured by the permitted war against Bosnia and Herzegovina, which changed the political reality of this country, left on the margins of Europe. Formed “on the basis of Christian values” (Davie, 2005:
23) and the logic of painful but realistic renewal of its own Christian content
(Branch, 2009), Europe did not accept the possibility of a predominantly
Muslim state within its borders. Unitary Bosnia and Herzegovina, then and today, was interpreted as a euphemized political domination of Bosniaks. In this regard, international decision-makers ended the war against Bosnia and
Herzegovina with a peace agreement, which built two new geopolitical walls:
the first - in the western hemisphere of Bosnia and Herzegovina - separated Europe from its Muslim rest, while the second, in the east of the country,
between the West and Russia amortized by inserting a Bosniak demographic
buffer zone. It is a historical question whether a peace treaty can be considered
valid if it “tacitly contains a reason for future war” (Kant, 2000:115), that is,
whether the international community, creating the Bosnian peace, creates the conditions for its opposite.