How to Win Friends and Influence People: Dodik Lobbies America (Part II)
A discourse analysis of Republika Srpska's Washington Times op-eds; plus: the Epstein associate who introduced Trump to Melania goes to Banja Luka
This is part II of my two-part feature (part I is here) on Milorad Dodik’s lobbyists. The first half of it is free to all, the second half is behind a paywall. If you appreciate my work and would like to see more of it, consider becoming a paid subscriber for just $5 a month. I am grateful for your encourage and support!
Last week, I published an article about Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik’s many lobbyists and the triumphant photo-ops with MAGA personalities that they arranged for him on a recent trip to Washington. For those just tuning in, Dodik resigned as president of Republika Srpska (Bosnia’s sub-state Serb-majority entity) last year as part of an opaque deal with Washington to have US sanctions on himself and his associates lifted, but remains leader of the ruling Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD). This means that despite his official departure, he still retains major sway over politics in Republika Srpska.
Republika Srpska in the News
In addition to the meetings in Washington, Dodik’s lobbyists also appear to have secured him a bit of exposure in downmarket American media. On February 9th, two op-eds about Bosnia ran in the Washington Times, a newspaper with a rather eccentric origin story: The paper was founded in 1982 by the Unification Church, more often known as the “Moonies”, a Christian cult established by a self-proclaimed messiah from South Korea. Accused of brainwashing its members, the Moonies are perhaps most famous for their mass weddings held in football stadiums, in which thousands of couples marry at the same time.
The first Washington Times piece about Bosnia is titled “Republika Srpska deserves independence”, an op-ed written by Deputy Commentary Editor Anath Hartmann. A quick perusal of Hartmann’s other work reveals an arch-neocon perspective (e.g. staunch defenses of the IDF bombing hospitals), and the introduction to his article about Republika Srpska is perfectly tailored to a neoconservative audience in Washington:
Prominently displayed on the outer wall of the Iranian Embassy in Sarajevo is a sign that reads, “In memory of Iranian men who sacrificed their lives for peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
These words might surprise Americans, many of whom likely don’t know about the long history of the Islamist world’s inroads in the Balkans.
It’s clear where this is going. The message here is “support Republika Srpska’s independence from Bosnia because the rest of the country is run by Hezbollah/Hamas/ISIS”. It’s absurd, of course, but once again we see the now familiar propaganda tactic: Your enemies are our enemies. We are on the same side.
But I couldn’t help but marvel at this framing for a different reason. While it is certainly true that Iran smuggled military aid to Bosnia in contravention of the arms embargo during the war in the 1990s, in more recent times, it is Serbia that has cultivated close ties with Iran. These days, direct flights operate between Belgrade and Tehran, Iranian drones are showcased at defense exhibitions in Serbia, and Iran still refuses to recognize Kosovo’s independence. If you’re still not convinced, here’s President Vučić on last month’s protests in Iran:
I ask people to read the books Operation Ajax and All the Shah’s Men. This was the 1953 operation, when (the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad) Pahlavi came to power…Look today at how Mossad and the CIA are carrying out operations using the same formula after 73 years. And here, some were dreaming, 25 years later, that they could repeat what happened on October 5, 2000, the overthrow of former President Slobodan Milošević.
Vučić sees the recent protests in Iran as a Western-backed regime change effort. In contrast to Serbia’s wary posture towards the West, the Bosnian government in Sarajevo has made explicit its desire to join NATO. This has meant that Sarajevo’s relations with Iran have actually been somewhat strained in recent years, while Iran’s relations with Serbia have grown stronger.
Of course, Dodik and Vučić are different men; there are some minor differences in the foreign policy orientation of Belgrade and Banja Luka. But given their efforts to display unity (at least publicly), the idea that the Iran of today is a close ally of Bosniaks and an enemy of the Serbs is absurd. (For what it’s worth, I am not disparaging Serbia for its relations with Iran, and think efforts to strengthen relations with non-Western countries are a good thing).
The rest of the op-ed is an attempt to inspire fear about the alleged Islamist threat simmering in placid Sarajevo. Near the op-ed’s conclusion, Dodik is quoted (emphasis mine):
Nothing good lies ahead for Western values under the current setup.... Young people are leaving. The birth rate is in decline. Under Presidents Obama and Biden, Srpska lost many of the rights granted to it under the Dayton Accords, Mr. Dodik said.
It is strange to see Dodik lament that Bosnia is not fertile ground for “Western values” in this way. Most observers of Serbian politics will know that Dodik regularly rails against the West; indeed, the only way I can imagine him invoking “Western values” is to mock them. For example, here’s a line from a letter sent from the National Assembly of Republika Srpska to US Senator Jeanne Shaheen in 2023 (emphasis mine):
The utter disregard for international law, the rule of law, the Constitutions of BiH and the Republic of Srpska, as well as the hubris expressed through the use of sanctions and threats against the elected officials and institutions of the Republic of Srpska reflect the hollowness of “Western values” and represent an existential threat to the Republic of Srpska.
There’s something unexpectedly interesting here, which is a certain elasticity around Serbian identity in the age of Trump. At the recent Munich Security Conference, it became clear that there are two competing visions of what “the West” means in elite Western circles: one is a liberal vision upheld by the Democratic Party and predicated on NATO and shared liberal values; the other is a conservative vision, espoused in a speech by Secretary of State Marco Rubio at Munich, which is instead rooted in shared religion, civilization, race, and culture. As Nathalie Tocci, director of Istituto Affari Internazionali, put it:
The current political dominance of the conservative interpretation has made it possible for Dodik to invoke “Western values” in a non-derogatory way: in short, when the Democrats are in office, Serbs are emphatically not Western, perhaps even enemies of the West. However, when right-wing conservatives are in power, it’s possible for Serbs to move closer to the West or even become part of it, at least provisionally. But once again, Dodik is also playing to Western sensibilities here. For many outside the West, the notion that there is a civilizational West" and a liberal Atlanticist West constitutes a “distinction without a difference”. As I wrote in my piece “Joining the West” in 2022, Balkan leaders have described NATO accession itself as a “civilizational” choice.
Moving on, the second op-ed is titled “An Islamist State on NATO’s Border?”, and was written by Max Primorac, a research associate at the conservative Heritage Foundation. Primorac attempts to do the same thing Hartmann does: make Bosniaks look odiously Muslim and radical, and therefore somehow threatening to NATO (nevermind the fact that there are Muslim countries in NATO already). Primorac has other strong opinions about how to reshape Bosnia. At a panel discussion on the Dayton Accords in Zagreb in December, he said that the only solution for Croats in Bosnia was to form a “third entity”. In other words, that in addition to the Muslim-majority Federation of Bosnia and Serb-majority Republika Srpska, that another piece of Bosnia should be carved out for Bosnian Croats. Once again, he used a civilizational framework to advance his argument:
The situation for Croats is so difficult that the only way for them to survive is the formation of their own entity. They are the only truly pro-Western people in BiH and can be an important link between Serbs and Bosniaks.
An Epstein Associate and Modeling Agency Founder in Banja Luka
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