The Republika Srpska is nowhere nearer to integrating with its Muslim and Croat neighbour. The common currency has done nothing to foster a common identity. And the place represents an abysmal reversion to old colonial habits, with a governor to regulate the unruly and unyielding natives, by the application of force if need be. Indeed, the ethnic wars of the modern era are a direct result of said colonial period. Borders, drawn at random and with a minimal and arbitrary knowledge of the terrain and its inhabitants, led to a hundred years of correctional warfare by the victims of this patronising ignorance.
Humans are misanthropes, they love to hate the different, the other.
In the process Russia gave up oil reserves, mineral riches, space launching sites, strategic locations and much of its nuclear and conventional weaponry. Despite all these incredible sacrifices, it was a generally peaceful process. The Czechs separated from the Slovaks in a bloodless break-up of their common state because the two resulting entities were ethnically homogenous. Well, almost - considering the persecution of the Roma in both countries and the significant Hungarian minority in Slovakia . Hence their status as islands of peace and tranquillity in an impossible region.