Dodik's advisor argues against Bosnia's NATO membership

Current Presidency Chairman Milorad Dodik is opposed to Bosnia’s NATO path while his two other colleagues, Bosnian Croat Zeljko Komsic and Bosniak Sefik Dzaferovic, are pushing the membership process forward.

Dodik’s advisor, Srdjan Perisic, explained the disagreement is a "big clash of two principles - globalisation and the realistic principle of a national state.”

“The conflict is between the United States on one side and China and Russia on the other. I don’t want to be a NATO soldier,” he declared.

“It would be best for Bosnia and Herzegovina to stay out of it and just watch this from aside, if possible,” he said, adding that siding with anyone in this conflict could be dangerous for Bosnia and could initiate a new internal conflict.

Besides, NATO accession criteria have changed, he said.

NATO is in a hurry to accept new members and is allowing new countries to join without carefully reviewing them, Perisic alleged, offering Montenegro and Albania as examples.

NATO accepted Montenegro and Albania as “criminal states,” he stressed. “The governments of those countries are criminal. All of the weapons and drug smuggling, as well as human trafficking, goes through those countries.”

According to Perisic, “everybody knows” that drugs are reaching the streets of Sarajevo through Podgorica and that 80 per cent of the drug trafficking in Europe is controlled by Albania, “where the mafia and the government are the same.”

If Republika Srpska (RS), Bosnia’s Serb-dominated semi-autonomous entity, comes under pressure to join NATO, it will organise a referendum, he said.

Perisic also rejected the notion that NATO membership brings political and financial stability.

"Today the money is in Beijing. Why would we not financially lean on Beijing? China doesn’t care about your political affiliation,” he said, adding that Russia was not influencing Republika Srpska’s position on NATO.