Bosnia and Herzegovina in global geopolitical tectonics and regional metanarrative anchorage

Abstract

The region of Southeastern Europe has been going through a series of transition processes in the last thirty years, and Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the states most strongly affected by all these events and, therefore, continues to face problems whose “tails” reach into the near and distant past. Aggressive raids by neighbors during the disappearance of the common state of the South Slavs, demographic collapse and war destruction, and burdensome national relations have burdened democratic processes to the point where every issue is the subject of major and fundamentally important discussions. One question stands out and the top answer is what will be the future of the country. It is a question of security and overall Euro-Atlantic integration. In the new and fundamentally changed geopolitical circumstances that led to the growth of new centers of power, the growth of a multipolar world, the area of the (Western) Balkans becomes a significant zone of conflict between global powers. The region of Southeast Europe is not at all immune to impulses coming from the Eurasian area, especially after the NATO alliance's attempt to move the “big border” to the banks of the Dnieper. Serious opposition to this approach in Europe, first in Hungary and then in Slovakia, led to a series of complex political processes in Central and Southeastern Europe. With growing Turkish dissatisfaction with the attitude of Western partners towards Ankara, the question of NATO's strategic goals began to arise. The withdrawal from Afghanistan pointed to the American understanding that they found themselves in front of a great burden (imperial overstretch), but it also opened up a discussion about the future of the global influence of liberalism and the West in general. This crisis of liberal hegemony, which led to a new approach and repositioning of world powers and rising powers, which began to be clearly observed after 2016 in the actions of China as well as the emergence of a new American isolationism. The first quarter of the 21st century opened up a multitude of new opportunities for rising powers thanks to the difficulties faced by the US, the undisputed global authority since the early 1980s. The great pressures that led Washington towards strategic withdrawal also crystallized a new concept of US foreign policy - the construction of an Anglo-Saxon alliance and the dubious treatment of the EU as a partner suitable for the role of guardian of American interests towards Eurasian powers. Likewise, the new geopolitical game in which various integrative processes stirred up world politics (primarily BRICS and its rapid growth and importance) began to create conditions for the emergence of new axial poles. Just as they rejected many instruments of the liberal order, they also sought to promote a new type of governance and global coexistence based on their own worldviews and values. The context opens up the great topic of a multipolar world and a new order, so that the entire European continent, due to its visible loss of position on the global level, can be problematized as a space of possible polar non-belonging. Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Balkan Peninsula in this sense, as the “soft belly” of European geopolitics but also a centuries-old “in-between space”, are in a dead end bordered by regional hegemons and their national interests on the one hand and the aspirations of pro-democratic, weaker forces on the other. That is why, over time, the future of the Western Balkans began to be defined by resolving the complex issue of the integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia into the NATO alliance. The issue and problem of cooperation between the NATO alliance and these two states is one of the most sensitive security policy issues on the southern wing of the Alliance, and old “fraternal” alliances and cultural matrices play a significant role in the success or failure of the integration.