Following the 1992-95 Bosnian War, which killed 100,000 people and produced the Srebrenica genocide—Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II—the international community undertook one of the most intensive international reconciliation efforts of the post-Cold War era. More than 30 years later, Bosnia is still widely labeled a “frozen” conflict in Western policy circles, think tank analysis, and media coverage.

The United States and European Union have treated constitutional reform and war crimes accountability as the primary metrics of progress in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The U.S. State Department has listed goals of a “pluralistic and inclusive society” and “improved socio-economic conditions” as entirely separate tracks with no institutional linkage. Bosnia lost access to more than 108 million euros (about $127 million) in EU funds in 2025 for failing to adopt its performance-based reform agenda on time and risks losing an additional 374 million euros ($441 million) if conditions aren’t met by December.

Following the 1992-95 Bosnian War, which killed 100,000 people and produced the Srebrenica genocide—Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II—the international community undertook one of the most intensive international reconciliation efforts of the post-Cold War era. More than 30 years later, Bosnia is still widely labeled a “frozen” conflict in Western policy circles, think tank analysis, and media coverage.

The United States and European Union have treated constitutional reform and war crimes accountability as the primary metrics of progress in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The U.S. State Department has listed goals of a “pluralistic and inclusive society” and “improved socio-economic conditions” as entirely separate tracks with no institutional linkage. Bosnia lost access to more than 108 million euros (about $127 million) in EU funds in 2025 for failing to adopt its performance-based reform agenda on time and risks losing an additional 374 million euros ($441 million) if conditions aren’t met by December.

While governance and social reform efforts are essential, these measures have hardened into extreme standards. If Bosnia has not unified its narratives of the past or produced visibly contrite leaders, Western logic goes, then it has “failed” at reconciliation. By that measure, Bosnia may always register as a failure.

But Bosnia’s most consequential peace process is not happening in ministries, courtrooms, or internationally sponsored dialogue sessions. It is unfolding in factories, logistics hubs, municipal utilities, and cross-entity supply chains—in the daily economic life that keeps the country running. This is demonstrated by persistent economic growth and bolstered by survey data showing increased levels of ethnic integration.

Washington’s and Brussels’s category errors are resulting in a misallocation of resources, distorting genuine reconciliatory progress, and constraining future gains. The fact that cross-entity economic life has continued to function through one of Bosnia’s most serious constitutional crises since the war’s end is itself the most compelling evidence that economic interdependence is succeeding where the political-legal framework is not.

This has important implications for transitional justice more broadly. Future postconflict frameworks should recognize less visible forms of coexistence that make renewed violence materially harder, treating shared economic life itself as an arena for reconciliation.

Bosnia........

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