Shoring Up a European Flank – in the Balkans

The outgoing Biden administration has finally overcome its reluctance to allow Ukraine to use U.S.-provided weapons systems to conduct deep strikes into Russia in its defense, as well as providing almost $1 billion more in lethal equipment – all to provide Kyïv maximum assistance before the uncertainty of the Trump 2 era begins. Similar deterrence gaps – though currently less volatile, to be sure – create vulnerabilities elsewhere in the European Union’s and NATO’s perimeter, too. This risk is clearest in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the EU has consistently understaffed the primary deterrent role prescribed in the Dayton Peace Accords and annually renewed by the United Nations Security Council.

There’s a relatively low-cost way the Biden administration can, in its waning days, carry its lessons to that region, too – that there is no substitute for on-the-ground power in reassuring populations – and deterring potential disruptors.

The EU’s military force for Bosnia, EUFOR, established its military operation Althea to take over the peace enforcement mandate from NATO’s Stabilization Force (SFOR) 20 years ago under a mutual conditional agreement: that it be backed by NATO under a formula known as “Berlin-plus”, which authorizes the EU to request support from the larger Alliance, including logistics, intelligence, and other assets. That allowed the United States and the U.K. to draw down and redirect their forces to Iraq and Afghanistan.

For EUFOR’s first few years, it maintained a credible deterrent of heavy brigade strength (approximately 6,500 troops) against any threats to Bosnia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty and – crucially – to a “safe and secure environment” for its citizens. The expectation was that violence at the command of former belligerents in the 1990s wars who were now political leaders would simply not be permitted.

That assurance enabled the decade of postwar progress through 2005. That was a year of genuine optimism in Bosnia, when the country seemed to be moving toward EU and NATO membership with momentum, and new constitutional models for more accountable governance were widely discussed.

But as the EU’s self-confidence ballooned that it could transform the postwar Balkans solely by bringing them into the union, its will to maintain its military capacity in Bosnia deflated, most markedly in 2007. Assessments that I conducted in