How do they know they can?

Geoffrey Nice asks a question that Ratko Mladić never answered: how did he know he could tie up UN members, humiliate the international community, and then kill more than eight thousand Bosniak men and boys?

This question is not just for Mladić. It is also for those who, before Srebrenica, watched him test the limits of their resolve. After the NATO strike in May 1995, his forces captured hundreds of UN personnel, tied them to potential targets, and used them as human shields. The strikes were called off, negotiations began, and Mladić got his answer: the international community would back down before his blackmail.

The genocide didn't just start when Srebrenica fell. It also started with the teaching of impunity.

Thirty-one years later, the same question should be asked of Andrija Mandić: How does he know he can do it?

How does he know that as the President of the Parliament he can send condolences to the family of a convicted war criminal, erase the verdict for genocide, call it all a "custom" and then accuse others of recognizing his actions?

He knows because he too is testing the limits.

Sends a telegram - no consequences.

Silence the victims - there are no consequences.

Call critics liars - there are no consequences.

Rewrite your own past - there are no consequences.

Every move he makes is a small test of the system. The system lays down its weapons every time.

The European Union says glorifying war criminals is incompatible with European values. Marta Kos cancels her visit to Serbia. There is concern and shock for several days. Then the calendar reopens, the meetings resume, and the red line moves one more step.

Mandić does not have to call Ratko Mladić a hero. It is enough for him to participate in his triumphalization, knowing that Brussels will treat his policies as unpleasant rhetoric, and not as an obstacle to Montenegro's European path.

In this play, a special role belongs to civil society organizations.

We are asked to document genocide denial, preserve the memory of victims, monitor institutions, and warn of danger. The EU bureaucracy then takes our knowledge, translates it into “challenges” and “worrying trends,” and places it in the footnotes of reports. Our work becomes evidence that civil society has been consulted, while the people we warn about remain European partners.

That's not partnership. That's administrative domestication of resistance.

And we often agree. We listen like sheep. We write the same recommendations, fill out new matrices, tone down the language, and count the workshops while nationalists take over institutions. We are expected to be brave in project applications, polite in consultations, and grateful in final reports.

We become the registry of our own defeat.

The European Union cannot remove Mandić. But it can stop legitimizing him as a European partner. It can clearly state that a parliament speaker who politically packages the past and normalizes the triumphalization of a war criminal is an obstacle, not a folkloric nuisance.

We can also stop pretending that the invitation to consultations is political influence. It is not enough for them to listen to us, take our data and record our presence. The question is what they did after they heard.

How does Mandić know he can do it?

He looks at Serbia, which sends Mladić off with state logistics and military honors. He looks at the EU, which cancels a visit. He looks at the Government of Montenegro, which remains silent. He looks at civil society, which writes yet another report.

That's how he knows.

We taught him.

The author is a psychologist