The Biden administration is increasing the chances of World War III – Washington Examiner

On Thursday, the United Nations General Assembly voted to recognize July 11 as “International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the Genocide in Srebrenica” to memorialize the infamous July 1995 Bosnian massacre which provoked NATO military intervention in the Balkans. 

This vote will only serve to strengthen the increasingly aggressive forces arrayed against the West. The Srebrenica resolution, sponsored by Germany and Rwanda, prevailed, but the expected 100 votes in favor failed to materialize. In the end, the resolution passed with 84 for, 19 against, plus 68 abstentions. The disapprovals and abstentions outweighed the approvals.  

Yes votes, predictably, came from the West, including nearly all of NATO (Hungary voted No while Greece and Slovakia abstained). The No side included Russia, China, and their friends such as Cuba, North Korea, and Syria. Although Iran, a strong backer of the Bosnian Muslims during the 1992-95 war, voted Yes, this is mitigated by the recent comment by Iran’s ambassador to Serbia denying that Srebrenica constituted a genocide. He added that the West had “a hidden agenda” in reviving this issue.

Iranian allegations aside, it’s worth asking why the West, led by the Biden administration, deemed this a good time to bring the contested Srebrenica matter to the world’s attention. It’s 29 years after the event, after all, and much of the world is in flames. The State Department strongly backed the UNGA vote, with the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo hailing its passage, noting Washington’s co-sponsoring of the resolution.

Yet all that’s been achieved here is dividing a badly dysfunctional Bosnia even further. Although the Bosnian Serbs, like their backers in Belgrade, have admitted that the Srebrenica massacre occurred, with the deaths of some 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at the hands of the Bosnian Serb military, they resolutely reject applying the term genocide to that war crime. They likewise oppose the collective guilt implied by the UN resolution. “We are not a genocidal nation,” as Serbia insisted before the vote. 

Bosnian Serbs also objected to the resolution’s ignoring their victims, asserting that during the war, some 3,500 Serbs were killed by Muslims around Srebrenica too. Where is their commemoration? Other Serbs noted the inappropriateness of Germany co-sponsoring the resolution, given that Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia during the Second World War took a million lives, many of them Serbs. 

This isn’t just talk. Bosnia as established by the U.S.-authored Dayton Accords in late 1995 is a ramshackle affair, consisting of two entities, the mostly Muslim Federation (with its dwindling Croatian minority) and the Serbian Republic or Republika Srpska. The awkward Dayton solution, with its weak governance and endemic ethnic animosities and corruption, was intended to be a short-term fix only. Three decades later, it’s still in place, barely. 

President Milorad Dodik, who has led the Republika Srpska for much of the last two decades, hinted at secession of the Serb entity before (a few months ago, Dodik stated that if Donald Trump is reelected, he would declare independence). Dodik attacked the UNGA vote in advance, explaining that its passage would compel the Bosnian Serbs to seek a “peaceful separation agreement” from the Bosnian state. Dodik denounced the vote as “a failed resolution” and “the last nail in the coffin” for Dayton Bosnia. 

Dodik has Serbia behind him on this issue. President Aleksandr Vucic stated, “Those people who wanted to stigmatize the Serbian nation failed and will never succeed,” adding: “They wanted to put a mark on our face, and they failed.”

Nobody knows what happens if the Serbs attempt to secede from Bosnia. Nothing has changed since 1992, when secession efforts by Bosnian Serbs, backed by Belgrade, triggered the last Bosnian war. Since there is no legal mechanism under the Dayton Accords for Dodik to take his entity out of Bosnia, this issue may come down to how much force the European Union and NATO are willing to employ to keep the Serbs in line. 

Unlike in the 1990s, however, the Serbs have bigger friends. Beijing strongman Xi Jinping was just in Belgrade, where he received a royal welcome, cementing the strong bonds between Serbia and China. The Bosnian Serbs are similarly chummy with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Dodik has met with four times since the restart of the Ukraine war in 2022. Dodik regularly praises Putin as a great leader, bestowing the Republika Srpska’s highest award upon the Kremlin leader for his “patriotic love and concern” for his Slavic Orthodox brothers in Bosnia.

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If Dodik moves for independence, he will have Russia and perhaps China behind him. How would NATO reply if Putin, in response to Republika Srpska’s secession from Bosnia, deploys an airborne battalion to the airfield outside Banja Luka, Dodik’s capital? For Putin, another front in what he has termed Russia’s war against the West — Ukraine is merely the battlefield — might prove strategically useful for Moscow.  

The First World War started over Bosnia’s status and Serbian dissatisfaction with it. That Balkan squabble became a European war when Russia opted to fight for the Serbs. Will history repeat? That may hinge upon how Biden reacts to the diplomatic consequences of this resolution’s passage. 

John R. Schindler served with the National Security Agency as a senior intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer.