The situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is becoming serious and it should draw the attention of Europe and the United States as “something needs to be done to prevent the slide towards conflict,” Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies professor, Daniel Serwer, told N1.

Serwer was commenting on the political crisis in Bosnia and the statements of the Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency and leader of the ruling party in the country’s Republika Srpska (RS) entity, Milorad Dodik.

Dodik has announced that he will initiate the return of a number of competencies from the state to the two entities in the country. The RS will withdraw its agreement to a joint state army and judicial institutions and will prevent state police from operating in the RS, he said.

Serwer said that Dodik is “trying to find the limits of what he can get away with with the Europeans and the Americans.”

“And it is high time that the Europeans and Americans make it clear that he is already beyond the limits,” he stressed.

Serwer said he does not want to predict “whether this conflict goes from a political one to a military one,” he said, but that it seems there is the possibility of that happening if the situation continues.

“The odds are that if he (Dodik) were to proceed with the things he is saying, that there will be forces within Bosnia prepared to challenge him,” he said.

Serwer said, however, that he would blame “the ethnic nationalist parties in general” in Bosnia for the dysfunctional situation in the country.

“But at the same time, I have to recognise that they are in power because the citizens put them there. And if Bosnians want something different from what they have got, they need to vote for other people,” Serwer said.

More about the situation in Bosnia, as well as about the work of the European Union and the United States in the Balkans, can be heard in the full interview linked below.