Canute in Bosnia

Following through on yesterday’s post on Paddy, I turned to his recent Guardian editorial A Bosnian Powder Keg, co-written with Richard Holbrooke. It’s fair to say that these two have been amongst the most visibly influential people involved in the effort to build a viable Bosnia, but it’s also fair to say that their efforts have been largely futile - hence the need for them to write an article warning that “we are sleepwalking into another Balkan crisis”.

Noticing this, Daniel Korski at Global Dashboard has written a short post, Curing the Bosnian blues. which reprints the recommendations provided by a recent DPC report, itself alarmingly titled Sliding toward the precipice. These recommendations are all well and good, but they stand about as much chance of stopping the disintegration of Bosnia as Canute had of holding back the ocean.

No, while “A destructive dynamic is accelerating, and Bosnian and Croat nationalism is on the rise”, the problem is not the rise of nationalism. It’s the rise of the wrong sort of nationalism - we want them to build up their nation, as long as it’s the nation that we want them to build. At the same time the Bosnian Serbs can look across to Kosovo and wonder why the international community breaks up one state on ethnic lines while forcing another to stay together despite the same sort of division.

Actually, they don’t wonder that at all. No matter what their other flaws, the Serbs have never been under the illusion that the international community operates under any principles except those of realpolitik. So instead of trying to stop the tides of nationalism, Canute should recognise that he can’t stop the tides, get off his throne and work out a better way of keeping his feet dry.