The scene where Haris Silajdzic was on CNN looks like a flashback in the early 1990s when Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) was in the center of world media and the attention of diplomats due to the war. Silajdzic recently visited Christian Amanpour on CNN again and spoke again about the threat to the state. In short, that would be a development-descending feature of our diplomacy.
BiH will end up on CNN if there is a big problem. And where has the diplomacy of this state been for more than twenty years?
The path to despair
During the war, when the BiH Army had an arms embargo,when people were killed and expelled, diplomacy did a significant job. They were an alarm to the world that terrible crimes were happening. BiH did not know how to maintain or materialize this moral and diplomatic victory from the 1990s in the years after the war. Those who were supposed to take care of it became ignorant, probably counting on the world to look at BiH with regret forever and keep a fresh memory of what was happening in BiH from 1992 to 1995.
The importance of diplomacy is best seen in the current political circumstances, when everyone is watching the secessionist policy of Milorad Dodik and when the spears are being broken on the Election Law.
If we try to remember when a world statesman visited BiH, it will a while. BiH’s diplomatic activity is closest to Brussels and it is the most common destination of our politicians where they meet with various commissioners.
Diplomacy on shaky feet
But, the first people of the United States (U.S.), Great Britain, Germany, France, and some other countries bypass BiH. The truth is that they sometimes send lower-ranking diplomats and that’s where it all ends. Finally, if we try to analyze the diplomacy of the current Minister of Foreign Affairs Bisera Turkovic, we will see that there are two countries in which the Minister is active – Austria and Qatar. Both countries are important, but it is indicative that in those countries the minister has family members that she visits along the way.
Only slightly stronger diplomatic activity of BiH was shown in New York when BiH was discussed at the Security Council. However, such a campaign approach is not the solution. Diplomacy is not just a gathering of the diaspora for Statehood Day, but daily work on the promotion of the state and the fight for the interests of one’s state in a given country.
How and why did we lose China, which is no longer a neutral observer? Why are we so insignificant and uninteresting to France? Why do we perhaps expect too much from the U.S.? Why did we stop lobbying for our state?
While Croatia has invested enormous energy and lobbied for the HDZ’s vision of the election law for the past three or four years, in BiH people were comforted by Joe Biden’s victory and dreamed of him coming with a magic wand.
The fight for our interests never stops. If only those who send people from political parties as diplomats to the world with whom they do not know what to do could understand that, instead of appeasing them with a paid four-year arrangement in a tourist interesting country.
E.Dz.
Source: Klix.ba
