To read the entire commentary and comments, please go to: http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/index.php/2008/12/27/bosnia-hillarys-playg round/
Chronicles <http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/index.php/2008/12/27/bosnia-hillarys-play ground/> Bosnia, Hillary’s Playground by Srdja Trifkovic <http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/strifkovic1.JPG> At a time when the U.S. power and authority are increasingly challenged around the world, the incoming team sees the Balkans as the last geopolitically significant area where they can assert their “credibility” by postulating a maximalist set of objectives as the only outcome acceptable to the United States, and duly insisting on their fulfillment. We have already seen this pattern with Kosovo, and it is to be expected that we’ll see its replay in Bosnia under the new team. There have been strong pressures from the West, ever since the signing of the <http://www.state.gov/www/regions/eur/bosnia/bosagree.html> Dayton Peace Accords 13 years ago, to reduce the authority of the Republika Srpska (RS), to question its legitimacy and to label it a “genocidal creation” unworthy of existence. Prime Minister Milorad Dodik was able to weather the latest storm—caused by the pro-Muslim policies of the “high representative” (i.e., unelected governor, jointly appointed by Brussels and Washington), <http://www.ohr.int/ohr-info/hrs-dhrs/hr-dhrs/default.asp?content_id=40089> Miroslav Lajcak, and his <http://www.ohr.int/> crew of international bureaucrats—but the political momentum in Washington has taken an alarming turn for the Serbs in general and for the Republika Srpska in particular. Now that intervention is <http://www.newsweek.com/id/174523> “an American tradition,” Hillary Clinton is getting ready to practice some more in the Balkans—as if her husband’s contribution in the 1990s had not brought sufficient misery to the former Yugoslavia. She wants to place the entire region, and specifically Bosnia’s “unification” based on a radical revision of the <http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/bosnia/dayton_peace.html> Dayton framework, near the top of her list of foreign priorities. Barack Obama’s foreign policy and national security team includes a number of influential figures, and <http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/sais_review/v018/18.2biden.html> notably Vice-President-elect Joseph Biden, who are committed to the establishment of a centralized, unitary Bosnian state dominated by <http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1230121258404&; pagename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout> Muslims. Mrs. Clinton’s commitment to that goal is of an altogether different order of magnitude, however. Her “framework for peace” in the Balkans is the same as her husband’s and that so doggedly applied by her <http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/35247> friend and role-model, Dr. Albight: unqualified <http://www.srpska-mreza.com/guest/triangle/blowback-Iran.html> U.S. support for Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo against their Christian neighbors. The theme is so important to her that during the primaries Mrs. Clinton listed a number of fact-free, Balkan-related foreign-policy “accomplishments” as proof of her bravery and experience. She repeatedly invoked some <http://www.newsweek.com/id/128977> embelished memories of a “dangerous” trip to Bosnia in 1996, when she was supposedly threatened by Serb sniper fire at Tuzla airport – although the Bosnian war had ended six months earlier, and video footage shows smiling schoolchildren greeting her in Tuzla.
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