The admission of Bosnia into NATO will be the next flashpoint of conflict between Russia and the US. Russia warned that it "will have to react" if Bonia moves to join NATO. President Joe Biden has a long history with Bosnia, as well as with Russia. Russia sees an opportunity to meddle in the Balkans. and destabilize the southeastern European region by exploiting ethnic hatred. Bosnia shares no boundaries with Russia and, except for Serbia, all countries in the neighborhood already belong to NATO.
Why is it of concern that the president of Bosnia currently is from the Serbian part of the country? He opposes joining NATO, The presidency of Bosnia revolves every 8 months between elected representatives of three ethnic groups. There is a long and complicated history. For centuries and in the recent history of the bloody wars in the 1990s (famous for the term "ethnic cleansing)", Serbians have been allied with Russia, sharing both religion and alphabet. There are three predominant ethnic groups in Bosnia and the civil war included an attempt by Serbians to rid the Bosniak (Muslim) ethnics from the country. The Ottoman Turks occupied the area for 500 years leaving a large Muslim population in the area.. The result of the civil war was to harden geographic divisions and attitudes, while still remaining in one country. Ethnic Serbians dominate the northern part of Bosnia.. In the southern area, the Bosniaks (Muslims) are the dominant ethnic group and they share uneasy power with the less numerous Croatian Catholic ethnics. Between World War, I and the early and mid-1990's, Bosnia was a province in Yugoslavia.. The bloody civil wars resulted in the breakup of Yugoslavia. The 1990s war became a humanitarian crisis and US involvement was the result of pressure from the US Senate led by Republican Bob Dole and then-Senator Joe Biden to force a reluctant President Bill Clinton to provide air cover and support of UN attempts to end the conflict. The bloodshed ended in the Dayton accord, the Ohio site of the negotiations hosted by the US... Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, died of natural causes while on trial in the Hague, accused of his role in supporting the Serbian Bosnians. My late husband's family roots were in Bosnia; I first visited Bosnia as a junior year abroad student in Berlin traveling there in 1959 and have returned so many times I have lost count.
Fomenting ethnic and racial conflicts both in Europe and in the US is a Putin specialty. .Apparently, he sees weakening western democracies, exasperating existing conflicts within countries as a way to advance Russian influence. A report, written in the waning days of the Trump administration by intelligence services and. released in March about Putin's interference in the US 2020 election documented Russia's attempt to stoke racial divisions in the US to help Trump get re-elected. https://www.dni.gov/.../assessments/ICA-declass-16MAR21.pdf . See page 2 . Russia Studied How to Get Americans to Make Mistakes - The Atlantic
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