Most Western Balkan leaders comfortably inhabit an indeterminate gray zone. They want the validation and benefits of being EU partners without paying the freight. In this sense, the entropy in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) serves them all, defining deviancy and dysfunctionality down regionally – and engaging a number of them more directly and unhelpfully.

Part of the regional political class’ leverage lies in effectively forming a regional peace cartel: they monetize – literally and in terms of indulgences – their ability to threaten the peace. Serbia and the Republika Srpska (RS) entity within BiH are the most effective at this. But so is Herzegovinian Croat nationalist leader Dragan Čović – with the engagement and collaboration EU member Croatia. And they have no shortage of other political actors, both formally in power (such as the Troika) and waiting in the wings for October’s elections to serve as foils and/or partners. These include SDA leader and once again presidential candidate Bakir Izetbegović, whom former US Ambassador Michael Murphy asserts embraced the possibility of partition during party leader “constitutional reform” talks prior to the 2022 election, so long as he got “his” piece. The broader thrust of Murphy’s post was that US policy of “empowering local actors” did anything but “stabilize” BiH since lifting sanctions on Dodik last October – and that American commitment to BiH territorial integrity was questionable.

Understandable attention toward northern Kosovo as a flashpoint, especially since the September 2023 assault by Serbia-backed separatists at the monastery at Banjska, in northern Kosovo, in an apparent attempt to spur a wider Serb rebellion - there still has been no accountability exacted from Serbia for the attack. Yet BiH is the regional conflict dynamo. For the region to move steadily forward, it must cease to generate radicalization and instability. Fortunately, the EU and its other democratic allies have a great deal of leverage – and the institutional tools available to them in BiH are the strongest in the region. What has been lacking is the appreciation of how to employ them.

This problem has been evident for some time. But the radical shift in American foreign policy posture over the past sixteen months laid bare the EU’s weakness and amplified the arbitrage capacity of regional actors like head of state Vučić, but also sub-state (wannabe state/quasi-state) fixtures like Dodik and Čović. The latest US policy statement not only omitted mention of hitherto boilerplate support for BiH to join NATO and the EU, but also stated (correctly) that “China and Russia seek to exploit instability, corruption, and weak governance in the region.” Yet the US evidently pursues the same with a neo-mercantilist policy via the gatekeepers noted above, inter alia.

American pressure for High Representative Christian Schmidt to resign and make way for a pliable successor in a substantially neutered office poses a direct challenge to a “geopolitical Europe” that has yet to actually stand up in the Western Balkans. It ought to be exploited as a catalyst for a creative and assertive joined-up Europe+ policy (e.g., in combination with the UK, Canada, and Japan) toward BiH and the entire Western Balkans.

A serious response to this challenge demands seizing back the initiative over the Office of the High Representative from Washington, as I argued in an article last week. This vital peace enforcement tool is a sine qua non of the Dayton constitutional order, along with EUFOR. As long as Dayton prevails, they need to be effective and led by principals who have the resolve – and the political backup – to use them. Protecting OHR from the machinations of a reactionary Trump 2.0 United States is essential both to preventing potential violence and to neutralizing exploitation of that threat for political and financial gain). Doing so will, in turn, give Europe+ greater latitude to act and resist extraction by local leaders.

But while the Schmidt succession provides a trigger for a long-overdue re-evaluation of a broadly failing policy, the response must be wider and bolder if Europe+ is to protect its nearly thirty-year investment in peace in the Western Balkans and defend against authoritarian geopolitical challenge from both east and west. The EU and its democratic allies need to assert themselves in a domain where the Union has a tangible identity in the Western Balkans: military/hard security. The EU has for more than twenty years led and staffed a peace enforcement and deterrent force in Bosnia and Herzegovina: EUFOR/Operation Althea. For much of this time, numerous member states and the EU mothership itself seemed more intent on winding up the operation than genuinely performing the Dayton Peace Agreement’s mandate to ensure a “safe and secure environment,” under Annex 1A and the UN Charter’s Chapter 7. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago, this reflex has dissipated. But the will to assess the environment and reinforce to the point of decisively affecting the political calculus of the peace cartel, which was palpable in 2005, when EUFOR was new on the scene and had everything to prove – to itself and to Bosnians – still remains elusive. The upside of doing so, in BiH and across the region, is underappreciated. But this alone would constitute a response, not a strategy.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at the Munich Security Conference, outlined a vision for a European defensive perimeter, a pronouncement somewhat overshadowed by his call for a European Army. But the perimeter he outlined – which we might call the European Defense Area – was the most innovative element of what amounted to a proposed European defense strategy, or at least key elements of one. To date, no Europe+ leader –within the EU or outside it – has gone as far, though many have developed other facets more. Europe+’s Western Balkan posture ought to fit into this framework. It would pay dividends in the region, to the east, and beyond, eliminating the prevailing ambiguity that has allowed the Balkans’ peace cartel and external geopolitical challengers to operate without constraint.

In part, this would constitute a European (and Europe+-backed) equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine for the Western Balkans – whatever name it ultimately carries. In effect, it could simply declare that the region falls within a European Defense Area, for which the EU and Europe+ (initially manifest as a “coalition of the willing,” on the model of Ukrainian defense support) would guarantee security from external threats. In BiH’s and Kosovo’s case, this would be combined with reinforcement of EUFOR to the brigade-strength necessary for credible deterrence and response capability, along with the clear commitment to offer a Europe+ equivalent to Berlin-plus arrangements for KFOR, should the US withdraw its contingent – as has been mooted – or the force be challenged. This would close the real and perceived security gap that provides regional potentates with their coercive leverage toward their own peoples and their neighbors,’ and their extractive leverage over Europe+. It would also foster a direct cross-pollination between the eastern and western enlargement areas, with potential Ukrainian participation in peace enforcement.

A “geopolitical Europe” must extend beyond the EU’s current membership to the rest of democratic Europe – the UK, Norway, and Iceland, which may yet join – and coordinate closely beyond, as is increasingly the case with Canada. It must also visibly stand for its declared values and demonstrate the will to defend them. Too often, Europe’s hard power development is disconnected from what is ostensibly being defended. This must be made explicit – and would resonate strongly among WB6 populations (three of which: Albania, Montenegro, and North Macedonia already are NATO members). Curtailing the ability of WB6 governments and leaders to engineer instability on the European continent is the sine qua non of real progress on the issues that matter to citizens as well as the acquis/membership perspective.

Furthermore, this approach would help the EU develop a coherent strategy toward the region beyond the two WB6 states that are in their final reform pushes and negotiation processes to join the Union: Montenegro and Albania. Discussions in which I and fellow DPC members have participated revealed considerable of concern about what message will be sent to – and what incentives will remain – for what I will call “the leftover four” Western Balkans states (BiH, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Serbia). By taking security out of the equation, as was the case regionally in the aftermath of the 2001 conflict in North Macedonia, the potential for genuine popular initiative and pressure on political elites rises – and the scope for malfeasance by entrenched political elites correspondingly shrinks. As an additional benefit, asserting a European vision over this geographic space would minimize the potential for non-military extraction and self-dealing by an increasingly transactional US, including pursuit of energy, mining, or other deals that conflict with the EU’s own green transition agenda.

In conclusion, the EU and its wider democratic allies in Europe and beyond have been directly challenged in Bosnia by a combination of reactionary interests from within the country, from its neighbors and from across the Atlantic through the forced resignation of High Representative Schmidt and the rush to replace him with a figure willing to take orders from the US regardless of the consequences for BiH’s European future. Rather than treating this as a mere personnel matter, Europe+ – as manifest in the Peace Implementation Council, together with a broader coalition of democratic allies – should avail themselves of the opportunity for genuine strategic initiative and innovation.

Kurt W. Bassuener is co-founder and senior associate of the Democratization Policy Council, a Berlin-based think-tank.