On the Wilson Center’s website, University of Pittsburgh Professor Robert M. Hayden responds to the recent report entitled, Fixing Dayton: A New Deal for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Professor Hayden’s response, entitled, A “New Deal” for Destabilizing the Bosnian Peace, argues:
There is still no reliable evidence that many Croats and Serbs of B&H are willing to accept governance by a centralized government. Trying to centralize the state against their repeatedly demonstrated opposition is likely to bring on the very conflict that the Report purports to fear.
Professor Hayden further writes:
The most ominous recommendation of the Report is that “EUFOR, or a NATO-led Force” should be able “to enforce High Representative decisions.” This is a call for military occupation, a foreign force to support a foreign viceroy against the local citizens, which also shows the falsity of the statement that this whole scheme would be “domestically driven, citizen-led.”
There is as little evidence that people living in B&H want or anticipate conflict as there is that Croats and Serbs will accept the imposition on them of rule by a centralized government selected by foreigners. However, if someone wanted to produce conflict in B&H, a very promising way to do so would be to try to centralize the state against the will of about half of its population, non-randomly distributed ethno-nationally among those three constituent peoples.
Hayden contends, “Bosnia isn’t the way it is because of the Dayton system; it is the way it is because of the divided nature of Bosnian society.”
The Wilson center also printed a reply to Professor Hayden’s article by the authors of the Fixing Dayton report, as well as a final rejoinder by Professor Hayden.
Read the article, reply, and rejoinder here.
