What Trump can learn from the Balkan wars

If he understands how peace was really achieved in Bosnia in 1995, Trump will have a better chance of steering the Ukrainians towards an agreement in 2025. He must convince Putin to accept Milosevic's realism about the future of the conflict - that there are no further victories for Russia in it.

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From the signing of the Dayton Agreement, Photo: wikipedia.org
From the signing of the Dayton Agreement, Photo: wikipedia.org
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

If President-elect Donald Trump, as he promises, succeeds in ending Russia's war against Ukraine, he will surely boast that he has achieved something that no one has managed for more than 100 years - ending a major war on the European continent through negotiations. And he'll be right - well, almost right. American diplomats who ended the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s will be his only rivals. However, Trump must understand their success, because it was achieved by overcoming instincts and tendencies that are very similar to his own. He should know that policymakers in President Bill Clinton's administration were tempted to act like Trump — and succeeded only because they didn't.

If Trump can get an aide who is willing to explain the Balkan wars to him in a few sentences, he will immediately see the parallels with today's war in Ukraine. The conflicts of the 1990s erupted after the slow collapse of Yugoslav communism, which had long suppressed aspirations for independence among the many ethnic groups it controlled. The dictator who led the largest post-collapse state - Serbia's Slobodan Milošević - based his rule on resentful nationalism, and neighboring states such as Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, both with large Serb minorities, immediately felt the pressure. Although the ensuing bloodshed reached genocidal proportions, Western governments were unable to stop it for years. When the warring parties finally agreed to attend a peace conference in Dayton, Ohio, in late 1995, many senior US officials - even Richard Holbrooke, who led the US team - expected failure.

Trump's aide will enjoy describing those negotiations to him, as the story seems like a near-perfect confirmation of the president's instincts about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The first parallel is the role played by Milošević himself, an obvious counterpart to Russian President Vladimir Putin. American negotiators got to know him well and considered him the most decisive of the key actors in Dayton. Milošević constantly criticized his hosts for, as he believed, their misunderstanding of the essence of war. (Bosnia, he believed - as Putin always says of Ukraine - was not a real country.) Despite the insults, Holbrooke and his colleagues still found the Serbian leader strangely charming - a hardline leader they hoped could end the conflict. .

Donald tramp
Donald trampphoto: Reuters

It will not be difficult for Trump to find similarities between the other participants in the Dayton talks and the Ukrainian leaders he faces today. They will tell him that the Bosnian Muslim participants were stubborn but divided, unsure of their political future and unable to clearly define the peace terms they could accept. What American decision-makers saw in Bosnians 30 years ago — that they were exhausted by the travails their country had gone through — will further bolster Trump's confidence in relations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky now. When he accepted the 1995 agreement, the leader of the Bosnian independence movement complained (just as Zelenski will complain) that it was not a "just peace". But he admitted: "My people need peace."

European negotiators in Dayton will supplement Trump's knowledge of those talks. They will conclude that they were ineffectual panic-mongers, who contributed little to the outcome but complained at every turn (including terrible food and accommodation). Ignoring European governments - except perhaps when it comes time to gather them together for a signing ceremony and tell them the problem is now their responsibility - will seem as appropriate today as it did in the 1990s.

Holbrooke and his colleagues still found Milosevic strangely charming - a hard-line leader who they hoped could end the conflict.

All of these elements will reinforce Trump's beliefs about how to resolve what he calls the "ridiculous" war in Ukraine. However, if he goes by this version of the story, he will miss the key factors that actually made peace in Dayton possible. By doing so, he will condemn himself to failure in advance.

The comparison of Milosevic and Putin, in particular, shows how much Trump could benefit from a better understanding of how the war in Bosnia ended. The Serbian president was a cunning and sophisticated bully, but he agreed to the agreement the United States made in Dayton because he realized that endless warfare had become financially unsustainable. He needed the lifting of sanctions that only peace could bring. For Milosevic, genocidal nationalism proved to be a poor strategy, leading him - repeatedly - to salvage the negotiations by making significant concessions.

While boasting that Russian troops in eastern Ukraine have a "strategic initiative," Putin likely wishes the United States would help him end the war on favorable terms. Trump's challenge is to shatter the false confidence of the stalwarts. He must convince Putin to accept Milosevic's realism about the future of the conflict - that there are no further victories for Russia in it. The Russian leader must feel the fear that, after a year of slow but constant territorial gains at a high but for now bearable price, in the next year he risks the reverse scenario: constant territorial losses and increasing costs. Putin has not yet publicly admitted that he is waging a "ridiculous" war. If he wants to be a successful peacemaker, Trump will have to prove it to him.

Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putinphoto: Reuters

If he understands how peace was really achieved in Bosnia in 1995, Trump will have a better chance of steering the Ukrainians towards an agreement in 2025. Like the Croatian and Bosnian Muslim leaders in Dayton, Zelenski is concerned about the demoralization and exhaustion of his people. He must also be concerned about any deal that would look like a humiliating defeat and make it more difficult to preserve Ukraine's unity after the war.

Trump should ask his aide how those concerns were overcome 30 years ago. Two key answers can help him in his relations with Ukrainian leaders today. First, American negotiators won Croat and Bosnian Muslim support for the agreement not only by exploiting their exhaustion, but even more by helping to improve their positions on the ground ahead of the Dayton talks. Second, Holbrooke and his team showed them that peace would be accompanied by greater security cooperation with the United States. At each stage of the war, Washington has been cautious and reluctant to expand its military role in the conflict, much as President Joe Biden's administration has been for the past three years. However, the introduction of NATO peacekeeping forces after the end of the war showed everyone that US interest in the Balkans would not weaken.

For Milošević, genocidal nationalism turned out to be a bad strategy, which led him - more than once - to save the negotiations by making significant concessions.

Trump reportedly considered the stationing of European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine as part of the peace agreement, so he may already know how much the deployment of NATO contributed to the success in Dayton. But he should be told that European troops were present in Bosnia long before Dayton and that they achieved absolutely nothing on their own: they were passive and shamefully ineffective observers of the crime. It was only the involvement of NATO - with the US commander demonstrating US commitment - that convinced the warring parties that the Dayton agreement would survive.

Everything we know about Trump’s foreign policy priorities suggests that he will be extremely careful not to get bogged down in the security arrangements that follow the war in Ukraine. Yet Bosnia offers a different lesson, one that should reassure him. By getting involved enough to resolve a major conflict, the United States has strengthened its power and international standing. What has diminished U.S. influence has been its aloofness. After Dayton, friendly and less friendly governments have seen Washington’s success as a symbol of its renewed effectiveness. European leaders, who had worried about America’s declining influence after the Cold War, began to call it a “hyperpower” (a term not entirely complimentary). “America is back,” they marveled.

A Ukrainian policeman examines the remains of a Russian rocket in the Zaporozhye region
A Ukrainian policeman examines the remains of a Russian rocket in the Zaporozhye regionphoto: Reuters

If the president-elect's aide can hold his attention a little longer, there are two more facts about the US success in Bosnia that Trump should keep in mind as he tries to end Russia's war in Ukraine. The first is that, although their diplomacy at Dayton amazed the world, American policymakers were faced with a replay of the conflict just three years later. This time, Milošević's target was another ethnic minority of the former Yugoslavia, the Kosovo Albanians. Otherwise, little has changed: similar crimes, with fears of even worse; similar imperial rhetoric; and the same need to make Milosevic aware that he will not be able to win in the second attempt. (To get that message across, even greater US military involvement was needed.)

By getting involved enough to resolve a major conflict, the United States strengthened its power and international standing. What diminished US influence was being sidelined

Nothing will tarnish Trump's mediation in Ukraine more than if Putin, like Milosevic, does the same thing again in three years. A lesson? Trump needs an even better, stronger deal than the one reached in Dayton — one that is more than just a respite between conflicts. The president-elect has, of course, already rejected one idea - the inclusion of Ukraine in NATO - that could offer a credible security guarantee. But if he does not want war to break out again during his tenure, he will have to come up with other, equally credible ways to protect Ukraine or ensure that it can protect itself.

The final lesson from Bosnia concerns the same question: What will Ukraine be like when the war is over? After Dayton, American diplomats ultimately regretted the weak state they had left Bosnia in: a country too divided for its government to function, too poor to induce the return of those who had fled it, and too isolated from the rest of prosperous Europe. Holbrooke and his aides wondered whether a better agreement would have been possible if there had not been so much pressure to reach a quick agreement.

Similar concerns will follow any negotiations Trump organizes once he takes office. All interested parties - Ukrainians, Russians, Europeans and Americans - will want to know whether Ukraine will retain the unity that the war brought to it, whether it will succeed in repatriating the millions of refugees necessary for the reconstruction ahead, whether it will be left to fend for itself or find their place in Europe, and whether they will feel defeated or reborn. Trump must be aware that the success of his diplomacy will depend on whether he can provide answers to these questions.

The author is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and professor emeritus at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs

The article was taken from the magazine "Forin Polisi"

Translated and edited by: A. Š.

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