Former Bosnian Ambassador to the United Nations, Muhamed Sacirbey, told N1 on Friday that he will vote for Joe Biden both because of the future of the US as well as the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“As an American, I will vote for the man who is best for America and I have no doubts about that – I choose Joe Biden,” he said.

But it is also about Biden’s foreign policy which affects Bosnia.

“Biden would surely be interested in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but I don’t know how deep his knowledge about it is,” he said, adding that Biden at some point believed that the Dayton Peace Agreement was the right solution for the country.

Sacirbey saw the peace agreement as a temporary solution and a path towards the country’s NATO and EU membership.

“The only reason Dayton was signed was to end a war, but real peace was always meant to be achieved with Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Euro-Atlantic integrations,” he said.

In general, the difference between Biden’s and Trump’s foreign policies is enormous, Sacirbey said.

“America is close to falling from the top position and many people who are listening to Trump’s rhetoric are not able to understand that because he keeps repeating ‘America first’, but the World sees Trump as an incapable and weak leader and other countries, particularly those with hopes and ambitions – including some in the Balkans – are trying to misuse this situation,” he explained.

Regarding domestic policy, Sacirbey criticized Trump’s approach.

“Trump believes that there is only one way to look at America – the selfish way. Whoever is of another faith, skin colour, sexual orientation, should be seen as a potential enemy and Trump has pushed America into a great division and we know what that can produce,” he said, drawing a parallel to former Yugoslavia.

“I never expected America to reach this level of division,” he said. “Divisions emerged in former Yugoslavia 30 years ago and I asked myself whether such a thing could happen in America, and now I saw that it can.”

America did have a civil war and was destabilized, Sacirbey said. But he never expected that the question of a new civil war could emerge again, “at least not in the next 100 years.”

A significant issue in determining how people will vote will also be how Trump handled the coronavirus pandemic.

“That’s one of the bigger problems with Trump,” he said. “Not only how he handled America's resources as a president but how he was never willing to take responsibility as a person and his selfishness never allowed him to have any empathy toward those who have been affected by the disease.”