ABSTRACT
While the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 have drastically altered
and redefined states’ priorities worldwide, in particular those of the United
States, the transformation of international policy towards Bosnia has been a
matter of degrees instead of a dramatic U-turn. The country has been
downgraded to a position of marginal importance in the hierarchy of inter-
national concerns. Bosnia finds herself in a context broadly similar to the one which surrounded the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. The
United States has a low strategic interest, limited to a narrow concern for
the possible presence of al-Qaeda cells. European institutions are expected
to provide security and stability for the foreseeable future by extending
political, military and economic guarantees to the entire Southeast Eur-
opean region. While history does not always repeat itself, sometimes it
rhymes. A similar scenario of marginal US interest and growing European
involvement could not prevent bloodshed breaking out in Bosnia in 1992. Today the EU is much better equipped to play a constructive role, but the
long-term outcome remains in balance.
