Edward P. Joseph

HIGHLIGHTS:

Why the adjective is very important

"What are my two words to describe the Dayton Agreement - unnecessarily flawed. So many people will say it's a flawed agreement, and it is. I don't think anyone can really - even the most ardent proponent, a person who is proud of this - cannot say that this is not a deeply flawed agreement. People can say it had to be that way, but I disagree, and that's why the adjective is very important, unnecessarily flawed, agreement or advert."

Breaking the momentum so we can pull all the parties to Dayton

"Probably in the fall of 1995, the United States of America was the most powerful country ever on the face of the earth. Russia was nowhere, China was nowhere. The entire alliance, French and all, were completely understanding, realistic and respectful of the United States' absolute supremacy. The French coined the word hyperpower. And what are we doing? We are struggling to convince a small country, Serbia and this ragtag of war criminal elements in Pale to accept a peace agreement. Momentum is completely on the side of the West. What do we do? We stop the Bosniac-Croat advance and completely break the momentum so we can pull all the parties to Dayton and have this excruciatingly complex negotiation. And we call this a success? With all these complicated formulas and concessions? So, no, I say this was an unnecessarily flawed adventure from the beginning."

What could have been said…

"The momentum, the leverage, was there. What Holbrooke could have easily done, he could have said to Milosevic: We don't want a Bosniac-dominated state where Serbs and Croats are oppressed by the numerically superior group. We don't want that. We want a fair country where all three groups and other citizens have equal rights. So, we are still for a very decentralised state. But no Republika Srpska, no entity and no cantons in the Federation either. We are going to organise the country the way a normal country is, the way former Yugoslav countries are – like Macedonia. There will be a weak central government, and there will be a bunch of municipalities; we can talk about economic regions if you want, but they'll be multiethnic. They will not be one ethnic group. "

The existence of an ethnonational entity relying on the ethnonational solution

"Most of all, the key flaw is that you will then acquiesce and ratify Republika Srpska. Fortunately, Richard Holbrooke later acknowledged that this was a mistake in a couple of different forms. He did acknowledge. This was a disaster. This is the essential disastrous flaw of the Dayton agreement - the existence of an ethnonational entity relying on the ethnonational solution."

A basic axiomatic rule of Federalism

"Why doesn't the Dayton agreement work? It's not that complicated. Of course, the Constitution is a disgrace; it's inviting the ethnonational division… If the central government in Sarajevo gains competencies - as it must to be functional and join the European Union – Republika Srpska's powers are reduced. You cannot have both. You cannot increase the competencies and power of the central government and also increase the powers of RS; this is a basic axiomatic rule of Federalism."

We have the situation of a monoethnic capital in what is supposed to be a multiethnic state

"Madeleine Albright, then Secretary of State, who I admire and respect, she came to Sarajevo and gave a speech, and in that speech, she said these words: We are very pleased now that Sarajevo is finally unified. No, madam Secretary, with all respect to your vision, your courage, determination, and being correct on so many things, no, madam Secretary Albright, Sarajevo is not unified. It is now Bosniac-dominated, Croats are very marginalised, and Serbs are basically gone. So no, Madam Secretary, it is not. So now we have the situation of a monoethnic capital, or Bosniac-dominated capital, in what is supposed to be a multiethnic state. So again, you have just reinforced all the negative zero-sum dynamics. You have just reinforced them. "

Dayton didn't end the war, the war did

"The only lessons to take from the Dayton agreement are negative ones. You can take some positive ones – such as an example where there was a military intervention that did achieve a settlement, but the settlement is a disastrous settlement. So, all these people who say there's another point here, very important that all defenders of Bosnia, of the Dayton agreement, whether they were part or not, or just observers even, they say this famous line, it's a cliche: Well, the Dayton agreement stopped the war. False, I am telling you on this taped message that this cliche is false… The Dayton Agreement didn't end the war. The war was already over when the date negotiations were proceeding. This is false, this cliche that everyone accepts as sort of a common truth."

What is the obstacle

"People know what to do. There are concrete things and avenues and ways that you could reform the Dayton constitution and make the country functional. But what is the obstacle? Even with the most clever arrangement, fair-minded arrangement, what is the obstacle? The obstacle is in the same place where the war was hatched - in Belgrade. So as long as we have a Serbia that's effectively carrying out a latter-day version of Greater Serbia."

Leverage is the fundamental pivot point on which the negotiation rides

"I'm a leverageist. I believe that in all negotiations, including peace negotiations, there is a good analogy, even in business negotiations, that leverage is the fundamental pivot point on which the negotiation rides if the parties understand the leverage that exists and know how to wield it and how to operationalise it. "

TRANSCRIPT:

• Please explain your connection and expertise with the Dayton Peace Accords.

"My name is Edward P. Joseph. I'm with Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. I teach and research at Johns Hopkins SAIS for a number of years now, but my connection to the region is longstanding, and my connection to Bosnia-Herzegovina is longstanding. I have spent in total a dozen years on the ground in the region in all conflict countries, and that includes three years in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the war. I was with the United Nations, initially with UNHCR, but for most of that time, I was with UNPROFOR. I was a civil affairs officer with UNPROFOR. And in that capacity from 1992 to 1995, I was in every permutation of the conflict in BiH, as well as in neighbouring Croatia, in Knin. So I was in Sarajevo in 1992, during the Bosniak-Serb conflict primarily. Then in 1993, I was in Mostar at the height of the conflict between Bosniaks and Croats. 1994, I was in Bihać, the internal conflict between Bosniaks, those loyal to Sarajevo, Atif Dudaković and the 5th Corps versus Fikret Abdić in Velika Kladuša. And I was there during that drama as well. And then finally, in 1995, I and one UNPROFOR colleague were sent to Žepa during July 1995. This is contemporaneous with the genocide, the massacres, next door in Srebrenica. And I and my colleague negotiated directly with Ratko Mladić, with Zdravko Tolimir, with Milan Gvero, other Serbian officers, and obviously these three top generals. And I worked closely there. Our role was to coordinate the evacuation of Žepa, the wounded men, seriously wounded men, the women and the children. And in this capacity, I worked quite closely with Avdo Palić, Colonel Avdo Palić of the Army BiH, who was the, at that point, surrendering commander in Žepa and who ultimately gave his life by remaining there in Žepa throughout this operation. So that's 12 years in total in the region and extensive experience on the ground during the war.

Permit me to just add, because it's relevant here, about my post-war experience. So, there was three years during the war, primarily in BiH, but also a portion next door in Knin, during the Croat-Serb conflict. So that three years portion in BiH. And then after the war, I was on active duty with IFOR, I was an US Army officer, former helicopter pilot. I was by name request by the US Army because of my experience during the war. And I was assigned with IFOR for about a year, almost a year in BiH with the first year of Dayton implementation with IFOR. Then two years after I came off active duty service, with NATO, IFOR and the US Army, I served with OSCE in two interesting capacities. I was the regional director in Mostar and then in Brčko, the two divided cities. Following that, I worked on the Brčko arbitration. I was an advisor to Roberts Owen, the arbitrator, because at Dayton, they could not agree on Brčko. And I was with him and advised him just before he gave the final arbitration award, which governs Brčko. And then also, I should mention, based on Žepa, I testified in two tribunal cases, two ICTY cases in The Hague, one with Zdravko Tolimir, the other with Milan Gvero. And what's significant is that a genocide verdict was brought also for Žepa as part of the Srebrenica-Žepa operation by the Bosnian Serb Army. And I'm just stating here for the record, I have a letter from the prosecutor, the Hague prosecutor in the successful prosecution of Tolimir, which only part of it was changed on appeal. The main conviction stands. But I have a letter from that prosecutor who has also now returned to the United States, a U.S. prosecutor, about my testimony, which he credits for getting the conviction on Zdravko Tolimir."

• Should we observe the Dayton Peace Accords as a continuum, whereby its positive and negative attributes change depending on the context? How do we reconcile this Success-Failure tension when discussing its future and legacy?

"I have not a one-word answer. I have a two-word answer to describe my view on the Dayton Agreement. That answer I will explain with three key points, plus one. Plus one larger one that's often overlooked, but is essential for the whole question of implementation of Dayton or success of the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina. So, let me start first. What are my two words to describe the Dayton Agreement? Unnecessarily flawed. So many people will say it's a flawed agreement, and it is. Even the most ardent proponent, a person who was there, who's proud of this, cannot say that this is not a flawed agreement. It is. Now people can say it had to be that way, but I disagree. And that's why the adverb is very important. Unnecessarily flawed agreement. It's unnecessarily flawed. Why? This is the first point of my three points. Because the United States held the leverage over the Serbs. This is the context, and it's the least understood and most compelling, that here you have Richard Holbrooke who's considered this master, overbearing type of guy, who didn't grasp, along with the US government, that the fundamentals in any negotiation, not just this, is leverage. We see it all the time. You see it right now, it's this ceasefire that's just happening between Hezbollah and Israel. Totally a product of leverage, military leverage that was attained on the battlefield with Hezbollah changing its position fundamentally. So, Holbrooke and the United States government apparently didn't understand what we see that the U.S. government today does understand and the Israelis do understand. We had complete leverage. It's amazing. If we dial back to late 1995 on the ground in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it was an ideal situation. There were no American boots on the ground. There was a Croat-Bosniak alliance that was functioning, that the US had put together following the end of the war between Croats and Bosniaks, the Washington Agreement of February 1993. Al Gore helped put that together. This is, again, why I speak from my experience, because I know about how violent that conflict was. In Mostar, Herzegovina, but also in central Bosnia. And that ended. And the U.S., remarkably, was able to unite these, not just in some type of cold peace. No, no. They were united. The HVO and the Army BiH, they did operations that were coordinated. And, and they were incredibly successful. At the time, the United States and NATO had 100% air superiority using cruise missiles. And U.S. used firepower on its own and with NATO. It was not just NATO. It was both. This was after the Markale Market attack, another fatality, in August in Sarajevo. So, you had complete momentum on the battlefield. And again, no reason for the U.S. to hesitate like: "Oh, well, we have U.S. boots on the ground and we don't want any hostages taken again or more fatalities." Somalia hangover, Black Hawk Down. None of that was even present. And so, you had this ideal situation when effective unified front on the ground allied with us, beholden to us, obedient to us, and NATO air power, total air supremacy. And then there's one other facet that we know now in retrospect. 1995, probably the fall of 1995, represents historically the apex of the zenith, the height, omega, alpha omega of American power. Probably in the fall of 1995, the United States of America was the most powerful country ever on the face of the earth. Russia was nowhere. China was nowhere. The entire alliance, French and all, were completely understanding, realistic, and respectful of the United States' absolute supremacy. The French coined the word hyperpower. And what are we doing? We're struggling to convince a small country, Serbia, and this ragtag of war criminal elements in Pale to accept a peace agreement when we have them on the run here? Literally on the run. Banja Luka, the capital of the Republika Srpska, within easy striking distance, ready to fall, panic, momentum, is completely on the side of the West. And what do we do? We stop the Bosniak-Croat advance, completely break the momentum, so we can pull all the parties to Dayton and have this excruciatingly complex negotiation and we call this a success with all these complicated formulas and concessions. So, I say this was an unnecessarily flawed adventure from the beginning and I will give you the reason why it was. The reason why it was is that the US government had already convinced itself to acquiesce, basically, in the division of BIH. They had already convinced themselves that the return of Bosniaks, or Muslims was the term widely used in those days, to their homes was not going to happen, was not practical. And this was a complete mistake. Not only morally, of course, a mistake, but practically. If you think about it, this division gratifying the ethno-territorial division of the country is the reason the country doesn't work today. So, anyone who would say: “Oh, but you know, you're not realistic, you're being too moral. We had to be realistic and practical, not moral. We had to be realistic. We didn’t have time for that. You know, we were too busy to think about that.” Really? Why are we now in 2024 talking about an utterly dysfunctional Bosnia and Herzegovina, that the U.S. is still having to micromanage to work? The U.S. embassy constantly embroiled in this. So, who was the realistic one in 1995? And who was the short-sighted one? That was the key underlying strategic philosophical flaw here. "Well, we're just going to have to accept some of these consequences of the war." Okay. So, they stopped this advance. All the momentum was lost. All of a sudden, you have to give Slobodan Milošević whiskey. You have to show him all these high-speed things and maps, and you have Holbrooke, building his legend on this. It was completely unnecessary. The momentum, the leverage was there. What Holbrooke easily could have done, is he could have said, unilateral ceasefire, 24 hours, with Bosniaks poised. He could have sent a message to Belgrade. President Milosević, we're going to give you 24 hours, and then we're going to give the green light for the Army BiH and the HVO to continue with our air support. That map that we were talking about, 51/49, right? Well, guess what? That was when we were after you to negotiate, and you weren't interested. And Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić were too busy slaughtering Bosniaks at short range in Srebrenica. You weren't interested in that map. Guess what? That map is gone. But guess what? Here's the good news. We don't want a Bosniak-dominated state where Serbs and Croats are oppressed by the numerically superior group. We don't want that. We want a fair country where all three groups and other citizens have equal rights. So, we are still for a very decentralized state, but no Republika Srpska, no entity, and no cantons in the federation either. We are going to organize the country the way a normal country, the way former Yugoslav countries are, like Macedonia is. There will be a weak central government, and there will be a bunch of municipalities. We can talk about economic regions if you want, but they'll be multi-ethnic, cross-ethnic. They will not be one ethnic group and the other. That's what we're going to discuss. Are you in, or are the Bosniaks and Croats going to march to Banja Luka? You've got 24 hours, and then this all starts again. I'm telling you. You can say hindsight, but that was entirely plausible. Where were the Russians or the Chinese in 1995 to rush to the aid and say, no, you can't do that? Nowhere. Where were any allies rushing to the United States and saying, you can't do that? No, no, no, we want the 51/49. Nowhere. The United States in fall of 1995, were absolutely preeminent. Absolutely preeminent. And I know, and I've heard this, and I know what the counterargument was. There were worries about Serb refugees going into Serbia. I've heard this from an official, a government official who was there at the time. Okay, that's a legitimate concern. But we've already dealt with a million Bosniaks and Croats who are refugees. That didn't stop us before. And refugees do return to their homes. We know that. We saw that. We saw it with Kosovars after 1999 who all went back to their homes. We've seen in North Macedonia the conflict there in what is now North Macedonia. Albanians and Macedonians went back to their homes. You don't have to ratify ethnic cleansing. So that is the real mistake. The first principal mistake. It is unnecessary flawed because we've bought into this idea that we had to ratify the existing construct, and we threw away our leverage, just surrendered it. And so this "successful negotiation", I don't see it as successful at all. We suddenly reestablished the Serbs as an equal party. We invited them to be difficult and intransigent again. So that was the mistake. Of course, if you bring all the parties and then you restore them and take away your military leverage, you're going to have a difficult, very difficult thing. And you're going to have to make all these difficult concessions like they made. And you're going to have a ridiculous constitution loaded with blocking mechanisms and inviting them. And most of all, the key flaw, you will then acquiesce and ratify Republika Srpska. And fortunately, Richard Holbrooke later acknowledged that this was a mistake in a couple different forms. He did acknowledge. This was a disaster. This is the essential disastrous flaw of the Dayton Agreement, is the existence of an entity, of an ethno-national entity, relying on the ethno-national solution. Who were Bosnian Serbs, or to some degree are today? Separatists. Separatists in conflict management terms, that's how we would ascribe them. Separatists. You don't give separatists territory unless they're fully committed to building a new state, and have earned that in part, but they hadn't. They did not earn this. It was the opposite. Murderously, they cleansed, not just Bosniaks. So, this wasn't just about "Oh, we hate Muslims." They murderously cleansed the Croats out of Republika Srpska. This was a clear separatist agenda. So, the idea of, and it never existed in history. This is the thing. Serbs always like to compare Kosovo and Republika Srpska. Dodik, to this day. Belgrade, to this day. Oh, whatever you do, if you make Kosovo independent, Republika Srpska has to be independent. Really? Kosovo existed in history. The border existed in former Yugoslavia. Kosovo is a historical unit, cohesive, obviously of interest to Serbs and Albanians. Republika Srpska never existed. Utterly based on this murderous ethnic cleansing design. And that's what we acquiesced in. Why doesn't the Dayton Agreement work? It's not that complicated. Of course, the Constitution is a disgrace. It's inviting. But the Ethno-national division is the real problem. You can't even make that complicated constitution work. Why? I've written this, spoken about this several times. It's very simple. You don't have to be an expert. Because by creating this entity, Republika Srpska and the central government are in a zero-sum relationship. If the central government in Sarajevo gains competencies, as it must to be functional and join the European Union, Republika Srpska's powers are reduced. You cannot have both. You cannot increase the competencies and power of the central government and also increase the powers of Republika Srpska. This is a basic axiomatic rule of federalism. It's the same in the United States. If the federal government takes more powers, the states have less power. It's in Europe the same. You cannot. It's Newtonian physics. So that's what creating Republika Srpska did, created this adverse zero-sum dynamic. You increase, and that creates the built-in incentive for Serbs not to cooperate in making the country functional, even to join the European Union, which would benefit Serbs and Croats, and Bosniaks, and those who don't identify as any of those. And I was literally in Banja Luka discussing this with officials just last week. So, my knowledge on this, I'm quite au courant. I'm literally just coming from Banja Luka and met a senior advisor to Milorad Dodik just days ago. So, this is where we are in 2024 from 1995. Just one last point on how we blew the Dayton Agreement. We blew it with the concept that we have to stop at this 51/49 and give this map, give Republika Srpska. And those displaced and refugees cannot go back to their homes. That's not realistic. That's the original sin. And we gave away our leverage there, and bought ourselves this completely complicated negotiation, ridiculous constitution, overly complex, inviting blockages, based on the territorial division. So, we did all of that. But we had one last chance, one last chance to mitigate, not to reverse, but to mitigate that damage in 1996. And this is where I remind you my other experience with IFOR, because I was on the ground in Sarajevo, during the war and now after the war, in uniform with IFOR. And so, I remember this vividly. What was this last chance to mitigate the damage? The transfer of Sarajevo. The agreed phased transfer of Sarajevo that did not take place, obviously couldn't, right at Dayton. It had to be phased in under IFOR and under NATO supervision. And what happened? The Serbs all left. The Sarajevo Serbs all left. In Vogošča, Grbavica, Ilidža, all of these parts of Sarajevo that were detailed in the implementation agreement, they didn't stay in their homes. They all left. They even sabotaged and tried to destroy these buildings. They all left. What did that mean? I can tell you. I can remember, not long after that happened, Madeleine Albright, then Secretary of State, who I admire and respect, gave a speech. After that all had been completed, that process, she came to Sarajevo, she gave a speech. And in that speech, she said these words. "We are very pleased now that Sarajevo is finally unified." No, Madam Secretary, with all respect to your vision and your courage and determination and being correct on so many things. No, Madam Secretary Albright, Sarajevo is not unified. It is now Bosniak dominated. Croats are very marginalized. Serbs are basically gone. So no, Madam Secretary, it is not. So now we have the situation of a mono-ethnic capital or Bosniak-dominated capital in what is supposed to be a multi-ethnic state. Again, you've just reinforced all the negative zero-sum dynamics. You've just reinforced them. The capital now is bereft of Serbs. They've all left. Alija Izabegović made negligible, negligible effort to convince those Serbs to stay. NATO helped. I'm telling you, I was a member of IFOR. NATO helped transport them out. This was consolidating the ethno-national division of the country. Now, who expected it to function? Now they're going to turn around and function? Yes, it could function only to a point where you had Paddy Ashdown and NATO troops on the ground, because under Paddy Ashton there was still SFOR and there were NATO troops who the leaders had to think about, potentially being arrested. So yes, under Ashdown you could still force in and squeeze in some compromise and get some level of functionality. But once he left, once Ashdown left, once SFOR deminished and then turned it over to EUFOR, we don't have that. And we have basically, since the demise of the April package, we have this. And that's where we are today. In my view, those are the reasons. It's not all that complicated. There’re not all sorts of extraneous stuff. There's one other factor that remains the obstacle to changing this. But that's the essential point. The United States simply didn't understand the power that it held and didn't understand the implications of acquiescing in ethno-national division. Not just a moral problem, a practical problem that saddles and burdens the United States today. And not to mention all the citizens of BiH."

• Which elements from the Dayton negotiations process can transcend time and context and apply to mediating future conflicts? What are the most important lessons for the negotiators?

"You can only take negative lessons from this. So I teach and have taught in the conflict management realm at SAIS. The only lessons to take from Dayton Agreement are negative ones. You can take some positive ones. It's an example where there was military intervention that did achieve a settlement. But the settlement is a disastrous settlement. There's another point here, very important. All defenders of the Dayton Agreement, even people, whether they were part or not, or just observers even, they say, this is the famous line, it's a cliché. Well, the Dayton Agreement stopped the war. False. I, Edward P. Joseph, am telling you on this taped message that this cliché is false. The Dayton Agreement didn't stop the war. What stopped the war? The directive from the United States in the person of Richard Holbrooke to the Army BiH and HVO to stop on the 51/49 line. That stopped the war. And I know this because I know from someone, an official, a former senior U.S. official who was at Dayton, and when I asked some of these questions about the leverage and why you squandered the leverage, and why not even at Dayton try to use this military leverage, I will tell you the answer. This is from a participant on the ground at Dayton. Well, Ed, the war was already over. I repeat, this is quite significant. The war was already over during the Dayton negotiations. This is coming from an official who's stating the Dayton Agreement to himself. The Dayton Agreement didn't end the war. The war was already over when the Dayton negotiations were proceeding. So, this is false, this cloche that everyone accepts as sort of a common truth. Well, the Dayton Agreement stopped the war. It didn't. The war was already stopped. Again, we had this total power, but we squandered the power. We threw it away. All our leverage, we threw it away. Even though we showed, we even stopped. And I'll give you a quick analogy here that's relevant to today that can make this vivid and relevant for someone watching who would say, well, this is all Balkans history. Who cares? Okay, really? Let's imagine we're on the same thing on the battlefield in Ukraine. Imagine there's efforts to have some negotiations with Putin, and there's various talk about various territories. And imagine somehow there's a military collapse by Russia, and the Ukrainians are on the march, about to recover big portions of Donbass, and even potentially at least the territory that would cut off Crimea, its water supply and so forth and they were on the march. And we said, let's stop them. Because we already discussed with Putin this division of Ukraine. This autonomy thing, "Republica Ruskia" in Ukraine, we already discussed that with them so let's stick to that. And let's stop the Ukrainian army from the march. Would we do that? If you learn the lesson of the Dayton Agreement, it's the last thing you would do. You would want to make Ukraine like Bosnia? One other point that will drive this home, the truth of what I'm saying, the really important significance of this, is look at the negotiations between Kosovo and Serbia, the so-called dialogue, the EU-led dialogue, and the Brussels-Ohrid agreement, and all this consistent pressure on Pristina to implement the Association of Serb Majority Municipalities. What do the United States and others, but most relevant here, what do U.S. officials have to repeat constantly? What is it that they have to repeat to assure Pristina to implement this association of Serb majority municipalities. It's in one phrase. This is not Republika Srpska. This is the assurance that U.S. officials have to give. It's the proof that even U.S. officials tacitly are stating the Dayton Agreement was itself flawed, if not disastrously flawed. It's our own admission, because we have to beg and plead with the Albanians, don't worry, this is not that disastrous concept of ethno-territorial division that we acquiesce to."

• If we look at current global affairs, do you think the international consensus to end a war is weaker today than in 1995? Would the Dayton Peace Accords be successfully negotiated and signed today?

"You know, that's counterfactual. It's really hard to imagine. You know, our leverage is much weaker now. I would say just have a look at Kosovo-Serbia dialogue, how difficult it is. That's for other reasons. That's a self-inflicted wound. I've written about this a report, a SAIS Wilson Center report "From crisis to convergence". It explains that that's a problem of division within Europe. Europe is divided on Kosovo. Four NATO countries don't recognize Kosovo. So, this is handing leverage to Serbia. That's why this is so. Now, it would be in some ways worse because Russia and China would be much more present. Look what happened in 1999, four years later. So, when we bombed, we hit the Chinese Embassy accidentally. Russia was involved. Then Russia and China didn't recognize Kosovo after the 2008 independence. So, you see the opportunity we had in 1995. 1995 is really an absolutely historic moment there. The U.S. had absolute power, and we didn't understand that, and we didn't understand our own interests. Our own interests. Not to be permanently bogged down. Our own interest was to create a functional, self-sustaining peace. That was our U.S. interest. Let's be selfish, you know, like Trump. Let's be selfish. Well, the selfish thing to do would have been to create the conditions for a self-sustaining state where the parties would have incentive to cooperate, not disincentive. And so we didn't look out for our own selfish American interests. Now, the other point I think you alluded to earlier, the real question is, okay, so what do you do about it today? What do you do about this? You have this, you know, completely, almost wholly dysfunctional set up that only worked in that brief period when you still had NATO troops on the ground and you had a determined leader like Paddy Ashdown, then it did work, because then the parties got the impression, gee, they're actually serious about this thing. And I better watch out here. And even Dodik went along with the April package. It only worked at that. Recreating that dynamic, the Ashdown type dynamic is very hard, unless you would have NATO forces on the ground or some other similar way of really exerting and asserting US and NATO / EU power, Western power, which is unlikely. And yet there are some very intelligent ideas and concepts to break through the egregious dysfunction. Obviously, Dodik's departure from the scene would be helpful, but it wouldn't change the strategic point here. It wouldn't change. It wouldn't fundamentally. People need to understand that. Even if Dodik collapsed tomorrow, his there are replacements in Republika Srpska, and I'm not talking about just SNSD. From PDP or another party, they're not all of a sudden just going to toss away these dynamics. The same zero-sum dynamic is going to be at play for them as well, less obnoxiously, less aggressively, and talking about secession, perhaps, and opening up some possibilities, but they're not going to just all of a sudden say: Oh, let's make this work. And that brings the question, how you would achieve some of these ways of changing the Constitution, that are clever and intelligent. People know what to do. There are concrete things and avenues and ways that you could reform the Dayton Constitution, make the country functional. But what is the obstacle, even with the most clever arrangement and fair-minded arrangement? What is the obstacle? The obstacle is in the same place where the war was hatched - in Belgrade. So as long as we have a Serbia that's effectively carrying out a latter-day version of Greater Serbia, "Serb world", under Aleksandar Vučić. And then, who? Dodik or somebody else? Let's say Dodik goes. Let's say even Vučić gets rid of Dodik. Is Belgrade going to say: Oh, yes, let's make BiH functional. Let's embrace these reform concepts. And let's reduce the powers of Republika Srpska and increase the functionality of the central government so that BiH can get into the European Union and everyone can be prosperous. Is Vučić going to say that? Is that his attitude toward Montenegro? Does Belgrade really want Podgorica advancing into the European Union? That's what Mandić wants? That's what they really want? Belgrade wants that? I don't think so. We see the attitude toward Kosovo as well. Banjska? Did anyone think this is wrong? Did they consider why did Belgrade do Banjska? This is the other point here. So, we can talk about, and there are and we should, look at ways of reforming and making BiH less dysfunctional, and maybe even hoping to make it functional, but with the understanding that as long as you have this posture in Belgrade, how is this going to achieve some breakthrough reform in BiH when this Greater Serbia / Serb World notion exists? And what are we talking about, when we speak about this mentality of Serbian nationalism? Obviously, Bosniak nationalism, Croat nationalism, Albanian nationalism, Macedonian, all are nationalisms. But what is this different mentality? We lost all the wars. We lost all the wars. This is this notion in Belgrade. We deserve compensation. We deserve compensation. You have frustration among Bosniaks, Croats, you have opportunism in Herzegovina with Croats saying: Look, as long as Republika Srpska and Dodik get away with it, well then, okay. If The Republika Srpska option is tackled, the Croat issue, in my view, goes away. It goes away. It's not the reason that BiH doesn't work. But yes, nationalism exists. Montenegrin, Macedonian, Albanian, they all have their variants. Greek, Bulgarian, all have their variants. But you have this particular notion in Belgrade. We lost all the wars unfairly. Unfairly. These settlements are unfair. We deserve compensation. And we have Russia and China on our side. We don't buy in to your Western construct. We don't want to join NATO. All the rest are in NATO. All the West, even BiH, technically is on board for NATO. Even BiH. All of them. Everyone else accepts, in my writing, I call it the Western Order. The rest of the region accepts the Western Order, but not Serbia. Of course, not Republika Srpska. So that's the problem. And that makes the greater Serbian nationalism, Serb world, a problem. And that makes reform of BiH, no matter how brilliant and clever the construct is, and how much wedded to the actual views of the population, for example, you know, where you bring in ordinary folks and have them agree, Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and those who don't identify that way, and bring them in, and the citizens themselves, even a citizen's constitution, that's going to be accepted by Belgrade? So that's a different question, and that answer we have, but that has to do with Kosovo."

• Finally, what do you see as the key challenges for the future of conflict mediation?

"You have realists and you have liberal internationalists and you have all these -ists, and various schools of thought. When it comes to peace negotiation, Edward P. Joseph is a leveragist. I'm a leveragist. I believe that all negotiations, including peace negotiations, that's a good analogy, even in business negotiations, that leverage is the fundamental pivot point on which the negotiation rides. If the parties understand the leverage that exists and know how to wield it and how to operationalize it. But we didn't know that. Richard Holbrooke, sadly, did not understand that in 1995. Let's be done with this. You made it harder. You made the negotiation harder because you squandered the leverage. Because you'd already worried yourself into this concept of refugees and people can't go home and all of this. So you gave away your leverage in that case. That was the mistake. With Russia and Ukraine, it will be about leverage. And that's a complex matter because Russia has nuclear weapons. And Putin, we see even just recently, Putin actively reminding us of this. And so how you deal with it, that's a complex thing. How you deal with your various components of your leverage. But let's come back to the Balkans. No one has nuclear weapons. Serbia didn't have nuclear weapons in 1995. And in 2024, it does not have nuclear weapons. It has lithium that we want. It has ammunition that we want Ukraine to get. And if we buy into that and elevate that to the level of a nuclear weapon, well, we give away our leverage once again."