The President Who Wants to Break Up His Own Country--The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/01/serb-president-dodik-bosnia/579199/


Super interesting article. Gets a lot of things right. The difficulty is that in this non interventionist, anti-Muslim presidency, noone will want to do anything. And thus Russia will intervene, to quote George Friedmann from his book The Next Hundred Years:

The broader issue, though, will be the extreme fragmentation of the entire Islamic world. Historically divided, it has been badly destabilized by the U.S.– jihadist war. During the U.S.–Russian confrontation of the late 2010s, the Middle East will be further destabilized by Russian attempts to create problems for the United States to the south of Turkey. The Islamic world in general, and the Arab world in particular, will be divided along every line imaginable in the 2020s.

The Balkans, to Turkey’s northwest, will also be unstable. Unlike the Cold War in the twentieth century, when U.S. and Soviet power locked Yugoslavia into place, the second round of the U.S.–Russian confrontation will destabilize the region. Russia will be much less powerful than it was the first time around and will confront a hostile Hungary and Romania. Just as the Russians will work to contain Turkey (through the Arab countries to Turkey’s south), so they will attempt to contain Hungary and Romania by trying to turn Bulgaria, Serbia, and Croatia against them. They will cast a broad net, knowing that they will fail in some cases but hoping for enough success to divert Turkey’s attention. As Greece, Macedonia, Bosnia, and Montenegro are drawn into the Balkan conflicts, the region will once again become a shambles. The immediate periphery of Turkey is going to be unstable, to say the least.

Here we go again!