Uloga međunarodnih presuda o Bosni i Hercegovini u geopolitičkim promjenama
Authors:   Tranzicija Association, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Karup Druško Dženana 
Published: December 2024

The verdicts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Courts and the International Court of Justice determined the role and goals of Serbia and Croatia in the conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but did not lead to (expected) political and security implications on the international level, which made it possible for Serbia and Croatia to implement policies and goals towards Bosnia and Herzegovina in various ways until today, which were judged as criminal in The Hague. This was a message to others that it is permissible to disobey the judgments of the United Nations Court in The Hague, and therefore the Charter of the United Nations, UN resolutions, international conventions and international humanitarian law, i.e. that it is permissible to collapse the values learned as lessons after the Second World War on which the United Nations and later the European Union were built. The mistakes of the international community made during and after the conflict in the former Yugoslavia - firstly due to the West's lenient attitude towards the policies of Slobodan Milošević and Franjo Tuđman, when the West showed its impotence (and inability) to stop mass crimes on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, and then to harmonize its policies with international judgments and build policies towards the countries of the former Yugoslavia in accordance with them - they were not used to learn lessons from the conflict in the Balkans. Non-compliance with international judgments, in which the criminal policies of Zagreb and Belgrade towards Bosnia and Herzegovina were decisively determined and judged due to large-state projects (greater Croatia and greater Serbia), which were realized with massive violations of human rights, led to the fact that they are being repeated today in the Balkans in new security crises (Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo), but also in Vladimir Putin's policy and Russian aggression against Ukraine.
In the annexation of Crimea, Vladimir Putin used a modus operandi identical to one used by Slobodan Milošević in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo (which also caused two NATO interventions, and which was confirmed in the judgments of the ICTY and the Mechanism). The West perceived the conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina through victims and crimes, completely ignoring the causes as well as the political and security aspects of that conflict, which were established in the judgments of the ICTY, and which will also play a role in geopolitical changes. Everything that will later be recognized in research and official documents of Western (security) institutions and organizations as Russia's new ways of warfare that threaten international security (and order), began to be investigated more seriously only after the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014 - the covert participation of one state in conflicts in the second, warfare with the aim of hiding real political goals, the operation of the so-called paramilitary formations, the role of the media (propaganda and information operations), diplomacy, the Church, myths and propaganda today recognized as disinformation and fake news – it is factually established in the judgments of the ICTY and the Mechanism in the policies of Serbia and Croatia towards Bosnia and Herzegovina, that is, through their participation in the international conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Disrespecting the judgments of the highest international courts – the courts of the United Nations, but also subordinating justice to (any) peace and security, the policy of stabilocracy (regardless of the fact that, according to many, this is a “recipe for an unstable Balkans”), support for ethnic policies that in the 1990s led to conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and politicians whose attitudes are far from democratic but dangerously close to post-fascist, along with other changes that have taken place in the world since the end of the Cold War, lead to new divisions of the world and the collapse of liberal democracy, which confirms the strengthening of right-wing organizations and political parties, populism, the danger of extreme radicalism, terrorism and militarization of the whole world in which the ”production of death” becomes the most profitable industry.