The unforgettable image of the end of the Bosnian war is that of the world leaders of the mid-90s keeping a close eye on the presidents of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, Croatia's Franjo Tudjman, and Bosnia and Herzegovina's Alija Izetbegovic as they sign the peace to end a bloody conflict in the heart of Europe, which claimed the lives of about 110,000 people, civilians and military, and forced another 2.2 million into displacement, the largest since World War II.
That ceremony, held on December 10, 1995, at the Elysee Palace in Paris, was the result of another signing, whose photo made history 19 days earlier. It was on November 21, at a remote U.S. base in Ohio, Dayton, linked to the Wright brothers and the birth of aviation.
Bill Clinton, then U.S. President, tasked the renowned diplomat Richard Holbrooke, at that time Under Secretary of State for Europe and Canada, to do what neither the Old Continent nor the UN had achieved: to isolate Milosevic, Tudjman, and Izetbegovic from external pressures and force the bitter enemies to reach an agreement for three weeks.
The U.S., as it had done 50 and 77 years earlier with the two world wars, resolved another major war in Europe. Similar to what the current White House occupant, Donald Trump, promised to achieve in Ukraine within the first 24 hours of his second term, but has not succeeded almost a year later, despite his close relations with Vladimir Putin. In his photo album is already the snapshot from Sharm El-Sheikh on October 13 that sealed a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, but the European snapshot eludes him.
An Europe that, three decades after Dayton, no longer feels the calm and security it thought it had achieved after these bloodsheds. While the war in Ukraine is approaching its fourth year, the hybrid threat from Russia looms over the rest of the continent with increasing strength. "It shows that the disintegration of communist countries and bloody conflicts marked by ethnic struggles or nationalism have not ended," explains Mira Milosevich, a researcher at the Elcano Royal Institute and a Belgrade native. "I believe that conflicts after the end of the Soviet Union were simply postponed," emphasizes this expert.
He mentions cyberattacks, Russian drones flying over European soil, and sabotage, like the one that occurred last Monday on the train line in Poland destined for aid to Ukraine and for which the country's authorities blame Moscow. "Undoubtedly, this war is perceived as a much greater threat to the stability of Europe and the European Union than the Balkan wars were," adds Milosevich, who recalls, however, that phrase from Churchill that said, "The Balkans produce more history than they can consume."
Javier Antón, coordinator of the Political Science Degree at the University of Burgos, paints a picture in which 1995 has little to do with this 2025 in terms of geopolitics. Back then, after the Cold War, the U.S. was the only power and "could impose a ceasefire in conflicts like the Bosnian one," although "peace was achieved, but the existing issues were not resolved."
"Currently, we live in a multipolar world and in Europe we have an interstate conflict that affects the entire security architecture of the European Union, as Ukraine is a country bordering our European partners and Russia is a military power. The pacification project in Ukraine is still up in the air. Dayton can serve as a lesson and a guide to mistakes that should not be repeated, as peace should solve the conflict and not just halt it, perpetuating a security and instability problem," analyzes Antón.
The Dayton Agreements halted the penultimate war in the Balkans - the Kosovo war would follow, ending in 1999 under NATO command, with U.S. bombings over Belgrade. It served for Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina to be recognized as sovereign states and set the future of the latter, which celebrated its independence for the first time, divided along the lines left by the war front: two entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska, both with Sarajevo as the capital, and three peoples, the Bosniaks (previously known as Bosniak Muslims), the Bosnian Serbs, and the Bosnian Croats.
The interethnic political division was formalized in the Constitution, the number of representatives for each ethnic group was set, complicating their institutions to the extent that today it is almost impossible for them to join the EU and branding the small country, with just over three million inhabitants, deeply. As a significant example, the highest authority in Bosnia and Herzegovina is an international representative, currently German Christian Schmidt, which turns it into a kind of protectorate.
"These representatives have never generated consensus due to the impossibility of pleasing all parties," says the writer and translator from Girona, a staunch Balkan enthusiast, Marc Casals, who has been living in that region for 20 years. "They have often either been inactive or taken measures clearly benefiting one group at the expense of others," he asserts.
According to José Ángel Ruiz Jiménez, director of the University Institute for Peace and Conflicts, "while at the time the Peace Agreements were welcomed for ending the most media-covered war of the 90s, in the long term, they have led to several dysfunctions." He points out that their institutions "have not been able to adapt to new realities different from the post-war scenario."
This professor of Contemporary History at the University of Granada, who advises students wanting to do Erasmus in the Balkans, highlights that with Dayton, the division among ethnic groups was perpetuated, leading parties to base their programs on national identity, with more officials than the former Yugoslavia and with territories "living in isolation from each other." He explains how "in Republika Srpska, no one feels Bosnian but intensely Serbian and overwhelmingly desires independence or union with Serbia." For him, "Dayton was very important and a success for the U.S., after the diplomatic failure of the UN and the EU, as it stopped the killings but condemned them to an unsustainable state structure and an artificial country in perpetual post-war."
"Bosnia is practically a snapshot of the end of the war in terms of territories and structure," adds Casals, who lived there for 10 years and maintains a strong connection with the country. Translate their authors, like the Nobel laureate Ivo Andric, into Spanish. "The population has indeed changed due to massive emigration and the demoralization of a large part of those who have stayed." Bosnia has one of the highest per capita emigration rates in the world, especially among the younger population.
His analysis of the country reveals that "everything that stagnates slowly decays, and that is what has been happening to Bosnia. Since 2005, it doesn't seem like the country is moving forward or backward entirely, and the conditions are deteriorating." For him, "although there have been political changes in recent times such as the formation of a non-strictly nationalist government in the Federation, one of the two entities that make up the country, and the dismissal of the President of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, the established structures for years continue to suffocate the country, and at least for now, there has been no paradigm shift."
However, 30 years ago, that photo from Paris, with Felipe González, Bill Clinton, Jacques Chirac, Helmut Kohl, John Major, and Viktor Chernomyrdin watching as Milosevic, Tudjman, and Izetbegovic signed, silenced the guns and brought the much-desired peace, even if it meant an imperfect peace.