Identity Politics Is Holding Up A Balkan Energy Development

Weeks before President Trump retakes the White House, the US ambassador is filling a strategic gas pipeline this would increase US natural gas exports to Europe. In the process, he damaged the country’s national sovereignty and exacerbated instability in the Balkans, all in the name of the State Department identity policy.

Southern Gas Interconnection pipeline it would supply Bosnia and Herzegovina with natural gas from the USA and end the country’s dependence on Russian energy imports. In 2019, the government of neighboring Croatia opposed its climate lobby building a floating liquefied natural gas terminal to wean Eastern Europe off Russian energy dependence. Its strategic value helped make the US the largest LNG player supplier to Europe. Croatia wants to further expand the gas pipeline.

However, the State Department thwarted the plan with an aggressive nation-building project that seeks to force Croat Catholics into the country and Orthodox Serbs to renounce their national identity and adopt a comprehensive Bosnian identity that is accepted only by the country’s Muslim leadership. In fact, many Bosnian Muslims have adopted Croatian citizenshipbetraying little real belief in the Bosnian construct.

Bosnia and Herzegovina has not moved away from Dayton Agreement from 1995which ended the war in the Balkans. Instead, it is burdened by an unmanageable constitutional framework in which international diplomats pushed an “anti-nationalist” ideological agenda while enjoying ultimate legal authority over the country. Half of the country is ruled by Serbs, and the other half is jointly governed by Croats and a larger number of Muslim Bosniaks. No single entity enjoys sovereignty. Indeed, it is a failed state.

The new law authorizing the extension of the pipeline gave outgoing US Ambassador Michael Murphy one last chance to impose the State Department’s identity politics on the country by forcing Croatian parliamentarians to hand over control of the pipeline to Sarajevo’s corrupt and indebted state gas operator in a country whose level of corruption evaluated worse than in Ukraine. Management of BH Gas team is completely Bosniak, which reflects systematic employment discrimination that led to the halving of the Croat population. Croatian leaders are looking for a new entity to manage the project. Despite this, the law was adopted without the votes of the Croats, which exacerbated tensions between the communities.

Vice President of Parliament Mladen Bošković, Croat, blown up outcome: “This law was written in such a way that Croats were deleted as participants in the process of designing and routing the gas pipeline. All decisions will be left to one company under the complete control of the Bosniak parties.”

Murphy earned a sharp rebuke from Croatian President Zoran Milanović, a proponent of the pipeline. accusatory “foreign governors of humiliation and systematic dismantling of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a state.”

Murphy’s open intervention to get the gas bill passed was unprecedented. He publicly accused Croatian officials of Russian collusion because they oppose them, and their elected leader of seeking “personal political and economic benefit.” However, the previous director of BH Gas was earlier resigned in order to avoid becoming an “accomplice in [the company’s] criminal acts.”

About a dozen US embassy staff chased Croatian parliamentarians into their offices during the vote, prompting some of them to walk out in protest. According to local media, Murphy threatened them sanctions. Bosniak parliamentarians, uneasy about breaking the tradition of consensus on key laws, were threatened with dismissal by our officials.

This area is familiar to millions of American Catholics. The route of the gas pipeline passes by Međugorje, a village visited by 40 million Christians pilgrim who believed that apparitions of the Virgin Mary appeared in it. The combination of Christian fervor and economic bounty he created there is a curse for the global Biden administration crusade pro-abortion and LGBTQ program that is Secretary Blinken declared “deeply in our national interest.”

In nearby Hungary, the American ambassador led a culture war against his conservative government. Nathalie Raysthe American ambassador to Croatia, one of the most prolific countries in Europe, was the vice president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

Who are the winners who came out of this fiasco? First, Russia, since Croatia is unlikely to proceed with its part of the pipeline while its ethnic relatives in Bosnia and Herzegovina are excluded from the project. Communist China to gain from growing tensions within Europe. Turkey winswith regard to their own family relations with the Muslim leadership of Sarajevo and his global ambition to promote political Islam. Losers? Catholic Croats see little stake in a state that treats them as second-class citizens. For America, Murphy’s Law is undermining insurance prospects American energy dominance in Europe.

The gas law now goes to the upper house, the House of Peoples, where a majority of Muslim, Serb and Croat representatives, each of whom has veto power, must be assembled. It is expected that Croats will lose this constitutional protection, and the high representative of the country, a European diplomat who is empowered by Dayton to have the last word on all laws of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Max Primorac is a senior research fellow at the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, The Heritage Foundation. He was acting chief operating officer at the US Agency for International Development.

Image: BalkansCat / Shutterstock.com.