Ahead of the October Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina, former US Ambassador Michael Murphy said citizens will have the opportunity to decide the country’s future direction and whether European integration will become a priority. Murphy believes that, if citizens across Bosnia and Herzegovina “make the right decision”, it would be less important that the United States might not do what it should for a certain period of time.
Murphy said Bosnia and Herzegovina has an opportunity today, compared to the European Union, which it did not have when he arrived in Sarajevo in 2022 as the US Ambassador.
“Geopolitics partially explains this, but it is also true that some political leaders in Bosnia and Herzegovina put in more effort in securing this opportunity than the previous governments,” Murphy wrote.
According to him, that effort paid off. He ascribed credit for this to the politicians who, as he said, placed the country’s interests first.
At the same time, Murphy believes that the United States should retake the constructive role in the process of the Euro-Atlantic integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He sees such a role as one of the ways to secure the country’s stability.
Citizens Decide about the Future Path
The former US Ambassador particularly emphasized the role of the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the upcoming elections.
“In the meantime, voters in Bosnia and Herzegovina will have a chance to decide on the path the country will take in the future and whether EU integration will become the priority it should be for the political leaders of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Murphy stated.
He added that from his experience, he believes that citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina are aware of the significance of this decision.
“If this October citizens across the country make the right decision, it will be much less important that the United States might not do what is right for a while,” he wrote in an article focusing on the analysis of Washington’s current policy toward Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Murphy is in a dilemma regarding the existence of a coherent long-term strategy and warns that the policy led by part of the US administration strengthens ethno-nationalism and can jeopardize the country’s stability.
He especially criticized the attitude toward Milorad Dodik, Christian Schmidt, the OHR, and Southern Interconnection, while simultaneously rejecting part of the interpretations about the US policy he sees as conspiracy theories.
He noted that the administration’s strategic aims are the stability of Bosnia and Herzegovina, local property over processes, and protection of American economic and commercial interests. He recalled that these principles were discussed in Dayton in May 2025, while in May this year, the report on the policy towards Bosnia and Herzegovina was submitted to Congress.
According to Murphy, the issue is that publishing the strategic document itself does not mean that the policy is really shaped according to the coherent strategy.
“The administration may have published the strategic document, but it does not mean that the coherent strategy is shaping the US policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Most analysts would agree that it is about the administration’s policy towards Iran, Canada, or mostly any other part of the world that makes the headlines. In all those cases, day-to-day decisions are often ad hoc and not tied to any clear strategy at all, as media headlines clearly demonstrate. Why would it be any different in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina?” Murphy stated.
Are These the Fundamental Principles of the US Foreign Policy?
The former ambassador questioned the claim of the current US administration that Washington will further on “listen more to other countries”, instead of telling them what to do.
Murphy cited Venezuela and Hungary as examples, and raised a question of whether such principles are really the basis of US foreign policy or are used to justify concrete decisions towards Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“Is the United States really “listening” to others, instead of telling them what to do? Venezuela certainly did not experience this, nor was that how Hungary experienced U.S. policy in the lead-up to Viktor Orbán’s major defeat. There are other examples that raise a question: Are these core principles of the US foreign policy or merely principles the administration relies on to justify its policy toward Bosnia and Herzegovina?” Murphy wrote.
His assessment is that there was a change in Washington’s stance on its own interests in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“It seems that the administration redefined American interests in Bosnia and Herzegovina and then used some of these principles to cover that change. What does this revised outlook on U.S. interests in Bosnia and Herzegovina look like?” noted the former ambassador.
Murphy also reflected on the claims by the current administration that the former US governments were focused on “state-building” according to preferences of individual U.S. bureaucrats, while ignoring the ethnic reality of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
He called such an interpretation a caricature of US policy and pointed out that Washington, according to his view, had long since abandoned the approach that the current administration now calls “state-building.”
“This administration will challenge this and claim they want only stability in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They will claim that the previous administration focused on building a Bosnia and Herzegovina defined according to the preferences of individual bureaucrats- preferences that ignored the country’s ethnic reality. This is a caricature of US policy, as demonstrated by any review of historical facts,” Murphy said.
He added that the U.S., including the Biden administration, did not support undermining the Dayton Agreement or the concept of constituent peoples to create a unitary civil state based on the rule of law.
“In any case, the U.S. halted what this administration calls state-building during Obama’s term, and the U.S., including the Biden administration, never supported undermining the Dayton Peace Agreement or the concept of constituent peoples to establish a unitary state based on majority rule,” Murphy wrote.
In that context, he cited criticism directed at him and U.S. policies by Bakir Izetbegović and Željko Komšić, as well as criticism aimed at U.S. officials Matthew Palmer and Gabe Escobar.
Stability Entails Preserving the Territorial Integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Murphy relates the matter of US policy to the territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In his words, the U.S. has previously tied the country’s stability to preserving its territorial integrity by respecting the Dayton Peace Agreement and institutions at the state level.
“If we reflect on what U.S. officials said (or did not say) about Bosnia and Herzegovina, or what the U.S. did (or didn’t do) in Bosnia and Herzegovina over the past 19 months, questions inevitably arise regarding this administration’s sincerity when it comes to stability. In the past, the U.S. understood that stability entails preserving the territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It shouldn’t be necessary to explain why this is the case,” Murphy said.
He recalled that the U.S. expected domestic political actors to respect the Dayton Agreement, state-level institutions, and institutions formed after the establishment of peace, including the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the intelligence service.
“The U.S. expected all political actors to respect the Dayton Peace Agreement and state-level institutions—both those responsible for the implementation of the agreement and the ones formed when peace was established, such as unified armed forces and the intelligence service—and to respect the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” wrote the former ambassador in the article published this month in Oslobođenje.
