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I am writing from New York where, as the city gears up for Christmas and the New Year, politics seems to be on the minds of everyone that I meet. The critical question is who will get the Democratic nomination to run against Donald Trump in November next year.

The two front-runners are clearly Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. The major problem faced by the Democratic Party is that it has, to a very significant extent, been captured by big money and corporate interests. These interests would like a candidate of the centre, just as they preferred Hillary Clinton last time around.

The problem for the party is that, of course, the voters did not prefer Clinton, with the result that Trump won the election. A number of studies showed that if the Democrats had run Sanders against Trump in 2016 they would probably have won the White House.

There was a long period, often dated to when Ronald Reagan crushed the air traffic controllers strike in 1981, when both the Democrats and the Republicans held to what the British historian and political activist Tariq Ali calls the extreme centre on economic issues and used issues like abortion, prayer in schools and gay rights to distinguish themselves from each other.

But everything changed with the financial crisis of 2008. Suddenly ordinary middle-class Americans realised how precarious their hold on middle-class life was, and issues like student debt and healthcare alienated a whole generation of younger people from centrist politics. Some veered to the left, arguing that the primary problems in the US are inequality and the control that the billionaire class holds over party politics and government policymaking. Others veered to the right and scapegoated racial minorities and migrants for their own declining standards of living.

The emergence of the Occupy Movement in 2011, as part of a wave of global activism that began in North Africa, exacerbated the polarisation in US politics. The emergence of Black Lives Matter in 2013 continued the trend towards polarisation. As social movements, both Occupy and Black Lives Matter were, like all unstructured forms of organisation, short-lived. But they both made a huge cultural impact on US society.

In the wake of these three events the financial crisis of 2008, the emergence of Occupy in 2011 and then Black Lives Matter in 2013 a centrist candidate deeply enmeshed in the space where the political and corporate elite meet was never going to win the 2016 election.

Trump ran a scurrilously racist and xenophobic campaign that motivated his increasingly reactionary white base. Clinton was not able to speak to the real issues faced by voters, many of whom were experiencing a steep decline in their life prospects, and, although she still won the popular vote, Trump took the election.

Elizabeth Warren is a little to the left of Clinton, and, of course, is not part of a now-discredited political dynasty. She would certainly be a better candidate in 2020 than Clinton was in 2016. But Warren is only on the left of the extreme centre, and is not even a genuine social democrat.

The military coup in Bolivia has clearly illustrated where Sanders, Warren and Trump sit on the political spectrum. Trump enthusiastically endorsed the coup, Warren said nothing and Sanders strongly condemned it. On this issue, as on so many issues, including migration, increased taxes for the rich and the mass incarceration of poor black and Latino men, Trump is firmly on the right, Sanders is firmly on the left and Warren equivocates.

Sanders has had an extraordinary impact on young Americans, and especially young intellectuals, a good number of whom now identify as socialists. In a city such as New York, there is now a vibrant left with constant debates and discussions that are keenly watched from around the world, including South Africa.

But, at the same time, Trump has reinvigorated the American right. He has also formed an international right-wing network with Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom and Narendra Modi of India as his key allies. In the US, racist language and attitudes that would have been unacceptable a few years ago have become normalised. There have been massive steps backwards in terms of gender, and the sight of migrant children being held in cages has shocked the world.

The normalisation of right-wing ideas has affected South Africa where the Institute for Race Relations, Politicsweb, and the faction of the Democratic Alliance that calls itself classical liberal have all taken up right-wing ideas with a confidence that would have been impossible a few years ago. Helen Zilles paranoid hostility to Marxist ideas, and critical race theory, both of which she clearly doesnt understand at all, comes straight from the script of the new right.

But while Modi seems well entrenched in India, Johnson looks very vulnerable in the United Kingdom, and may well lose the next election to Labours left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn. Bolsonaro no longer looks as well-entrenched as he once did now that former Brazilian president Lula da Silva has been released from prison and the Brazilian left has been reinvigorated.

It is not impossible that Johnson, Bolsonaro and Trump could each fall to a significantly left of centre rival. If this happens, the world will be a very different place, and discussions about issues like climate change and migration, as well as global trade, will take very different forms.

What happens in these three countries will have a global impact, and will be very important for South Africans too. If Trump can succeed in winning another election via racism and xenophobia well face a very tough path ahead for the next few years. But if Sanders can win the Democratic nomination, and then the election, the world will be a much kinder place, and that will be good for everyone, including South Africa. DM

Imraan Buccus is senior research associate at ASRI, research fellow in the School of Social Sciences at UKZN and academic director of a university study abroad programme on political transformation.

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Global politics: When right is wrong - Daily Maverick

Peck tells us that Baldwin left only thirty pages of notes on the proposed book. (If the film has information the viewer needs, then Peck will impart it by means of typewriter noise producing white letters on a black screen.) Peck composed his script by drawing from some of Baldwins uncollected writings, maybe a bit from The Fire Next Time, as well as from two extended essays, No Name in the Street (1972) and The Devil Finds Work (1976), both included in Baldwins collected essays.

In the beginning of his film, Peck juxtaposes smoky black-and-white and Technicolor footage of Baldwin with high-resolution still photographs of Black Lives Matter demonstrations. A line from Baldwin heard later in the film is about how history is not the past; history is the present. Throughout, Peck makes connections between what is going on today and what Baldwin was protesting decades ago. His urgency had a point, and still does, the clip of a Ferguson, Missouri, riot says.

We hear lines from No Name in the Street, in which Baldwin is remembering the fall of 1956, when he was living in Paris:

Facing us, on every newspaper kiosk on that wide, treeshaded boulevard, were photographs of fifteen-year-old Dorothy Counts being reviled and spat upon by the mob as she was making her way to school in Charlotte, North Carolina. There was unutterable pride, tension, and anguish in that girls face as she approached the halls of learning, with history, jeering, at her back.

It made me furious, it filled me with both hatred and pity, and it made me ashamed. Some one of us should have been there with her! . . . It was on that bright afternoon that I knew I was leaving France. I could, simply, no longer sit around in Paris discussing the Algerian and the black American problem. Everybody else was paying their dues, and it was time I went home and paid mine.

Meanwhile, Jackson is speaking over those photographs of Dorothy Counts. We get to look into her face and wonder just how light-skinned she was, but we also can see clearly the faces of the white boys taunting her.

[ Return to the review of Busted in New York. ]

A few of the images may be familiar from other documentaries: deputies prodding King and Abernathy onto the pavement with batons, probably in Selma; a black man shoved up against a wall in Watts in 1965 gets in a blow at a surprised cop and is answered by three or four wildly swinging batons; they are swinging again in 1992, beating Rodney King, and not just for a few seconds of video either. Then there is Ferguson, Missouri. I Am Not Your Negro climaxes in what are probably mug shots of the Scottsboro Boys from 1931 that lead into recent images of police struggling with black men and assaulting black women. At another point, the faces and names of recent child victims of police killings fade in and out.

But one of the strongest features of Pecks film is how much we see of ordinary white people and their violent resistance to integration in the 1950s and 1960s. In the course of the film, we see howling young white males, some mere boys, carrying signs painted with swastikas and tracking demonstrators; the National Guard escorting black schoolchildren through the gauntlet of angry faces in Little Rock. One of the most shocking sequences shows white men attacking what must be lunch-counter sit-in protesters. It is color footage from 1960 or 1961. The violence has not been choreographed. It is sudden and raw. The hatred of black people is out there. The unguarded face of the South contrasts with images that play when Jackson is reading what Baldwin has to say about the myths and ignorance reinforced by American cinema.

The Devil Finds Work is a memoir of Baldwins childhood and youth in the form of his reflections on films that made an impression on him or that express something about how dangerous American innocence is when it comes to race. Jacksons voice-over: I am about seven. I am with my mother, or my aunt. The movie is Dance, Fools, Dance. Suddenly, there she is, dancing away with her long legs in that 1931 film:

I was aware that Joan Crawford was a white lady. Yet, I remember being sent to the store sometime later, and a colored woman, who, to me, looked exactly like Joan Crawford, was buying something. She was so incredibly beautiful . . . and looked down at me with so beautiful a smile that I was not even embarrassed. Which was rare for me.

About his schoolteacher, Orilla Miller, as Baldwin recalled her in The Devil Finds Work:

She gave me books to read and talked to me about the books, and about the world: about Spain, for example, and Ethiopia, and Italy, and the German Third Reich; and took me to see plays and films, plays and films to which no one else would have dreamed of taking a ten-year-old boy. . . .It is certainly partly because of her that I never really managed to hate white peoplethough, God knows, I have often wished to murder more than one or two. . . .

From Miss Miller, therefore, I began to suspect that white people did not act as they did because they were white, but for some other reason, and I began to try to locate and understand the reason. She, too, anyway, was treated like a nigger, especially by the cops, and she had no love for landlords.

While we have been listening to Samuel Jackson, among the images we have also been watching are black-and-white photographs of black children at their school desks; a young HaileSelassie and his court; German children waving Nazi flags; film of Nazi book burnings; and lastly a still photograph of Miss Miller herself:

It is not entirely true that no one from the world I knew had yet made an appearance on the American screen: there were, for example, Stepin Fetchit and Willie Best and Manton Moreland, all of whom, rightly or wrongly, I loathed. It seemed to me that they lied about the world I knew, and debased it, and certainly I did not know anybody like themas far as I could tell. . . .

Yet, I had no reservations at all concerning the terror of the black janitor in They Wont Forget. I think that it was a black actor named Clinton Rosewood who played this part, and he looked a little like my father. He is terrified because a young white girl, in this small Southern town, has been raped and murdered, and her body has been found on the premises of which he is the janitor...The role of the janitor is small, yet the mans face hangs in my memory until today.

And there is the scene of the janitor in his cell, on his bunk, filmed from above, the white faces looking down at him not visible to the audience. He cringes, sweats, and begs, a scene followed by footage from a silent film of 1927, Uncle Toms Cabin, and Baldwins words that because Uncle Tom refused to take vengeance, he was no hero to him as a boy:

In the case of the American Negro, from the moment you are born every stick and stone, every face, is white. Since you have not yet seen a mirror, you suppose you are, too. It comes as a great shock around the age of 5, 6 or 7 to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to see Gary Cooper killing off the Indians and, although you are rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians are you.

The photographs of the massacre at Wounded Knee are a surprise when they turn up.

Before Pecks film ends, Richard Widmark will scream, Nigger, nigger, nigger in a clip from No Way Out (1950), a radical movie for its time, also starring Sidney Poitier, whom Baldwin does not blame for the ridiculousness of the films The Defiant Ones (1958), Guess Whos Coming to Dinner (1967), or In the Heat of the Night (1967). A scene from another Poitier film, A Raisin in the Sun (1961), moves into Baldwins memoir of the plays author, Lorraine Hansberry, and one of the last times he saw her on her feet, at a historic confrontation with Robert Kennedy, in June 1963. After a frosty farewell to the attorney general, Hansberry walked out of the meeting. Hansberry was thirty-four years old when she died of cancer. Baldwin remembers how young everyone was in those days, even Bobby Kennedy.

The use of clips is clever, and they in themselves are often marvelous. We can hear a serious point being made about, say, the American idea of democracy as material abundance, and the screen will fill with something like a mad dance at a picnic from the 1957 musical The Pajama Game. Or Doris Day could be singing along after some sharp analysis concerning Americas infantilism. The clips complement Baldwins way of moving from paradox to paradox.

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Busted in New York: And Other Essays, by Darryl Pinckney: An Excerpt - The New York Times

When did the relationship between the European Union and Turkey go completely off the rails? Its hard to say. Turkeys democratic backsliding has certainly contributed to the fracture in relations. In May 2019, the European Union released its latest report on Turkeys progress towards E.U. membership. On numerous topics the judicial system, corruption, the economy, and human rights the European Union found there was either limited progress or serious backsliding. And after decades of advancing relations with Turkey, any influence the European Union may once have had over the democratic trajectory of the country appears to be faltering. As long as the European Union fails to address its own institutional deficiencies in migration management, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will exploit rising anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe for the sake of political opportunism.

Turkey: A Frontline State to the War in Syria

Similar to other popular uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, demands for democratic reforms, economic opportunities, and an end to corruption and a tradition of impunity could be heard across Syria in the spring of 2011. Instead of introducing liberalizing reforms, President Bashar al-Assad followed in the footsteps of his father, Hafez al-Assad, and authorized Syrias security-intelligence apparatus to crush the civilian-led movement for a democratic state structure. Since the conflict mushroomed into a civil war, the magnitude of suffering borne by civilians has been enormous and unprecedented. More than 11 million Syrians have fled fighting and repression, to other parts of the country or to neighboring frontline states: Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. Over 500,000 people have been killed, wounded or disabled as a direct result of the war. Hundreds of thousands have been subjected to abduction, detention, and systematic torture by the Syrian regime.

Just across Syrias northern border, Turkey pursued an open-door policy for Syrian refugees, allowing them to enter its territory without official documents. Under the auspices of the Ministry of the Presidency, the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority and the Turkish Red Crescent delivered humanitarian aid and constructed temporary accommodation centers for those escaping the war in provinces located along the Turkish-Syrian border. In 2014, Turkey passed Law no. 6458 on Foreigners and International Protection to regulate the legal parameters of protection and assistance. A special temporary protection status granted recipients access to public healthcare facilities, the state education system, and social services. Two years later, in 2016, Turkey eased the entry of Syrians registered under temporary protection into the formal labor market.

Yet, despite these modifications to Turkeys immigration policy, there is no comprehensive rights-based structure for asylum seekers; Turkeys geographic stipulation to the 1951 Geneva Convention means that it only grants full refugee status to citizens from countries within the Council of Europe, which excludes Syria. The economic integration and social inclusion of Syrian refugees were hampered by discrimination, particularly in the labor market, and protracted poverty. Some Syrians believed they could live a more dignified life in Europe. In 2015, reports indicated that up to 2,000 irregular migrants were crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey to the Greek islands every day, with the intent of reaching mainland Europe. Images of refugees and migrants risking unimaginable journeys in the media posed a moral dilemma for Europe.

Refugees as Pawns: Turkeys Shift in Policy

By 2015, Turkeys governing Justice and Development Party had intensified the use of hard power mechanisms in its engagement with Syria. The overthrow of the Assad regime, aiding opposition militias, eliminating the threat of ISIL, and preventing the Peoples Protection Units from establishing an area of dominance along its border overshadowed attempts to establish a rights-based approach to the economic integration and social inclusion of Syrian refugees in Turkey. It is now eight years since the start of the war, and anti-refugee sentiment is intensifying across the political spectrum in Turkey. In a recent address to an audience of Justice and Development Party supporters a few days after the latest military incursion in Syria, Erdogan reduced human life to a commodity, to be bartered for his own political gains. He claimed he would, open the doors and send 3.6 million migrants, to Europe if Operation Peace Spring was questioned and categorized as an invasion.

The pressure to send refugees back to Syria is also mounting. A study conducted by Istanbul Bilgi Universitys Center for Migration Research revealed that more than 85 percent of respondents favored the repatriation of refugees from Turkey. This is extremely worrying. For the time being, the safe and dignified voluntary return of internally displaced people and refugees is not a viable prospect. Arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, the widespread use of torture, military conscription, and dire humanitarian conditions still pose a daily risk to civilians in Syria.

Alarmingly, Amnesty International reported that Turkish authorities have increased arbitrary arrests, detentions, and deportations of Syrian refugees from Turkey to Syria. Ankaras plan to establish a safe zone and repatriate at least one million Syrian refugees in northeastern Syria is nothing more than a project in ethnic re-engineering. Operation Peace Spring has displaced more than 200,000 people and significantly strained access to humanitarian assistance. Civilian casualties are multiplying, with reports of more than 200 civilian deaths and 650 wounded. According to a United Nations Human Rights Commissioner spokesman, Turkey may be held responsible for war crimes committed by its proxy militias that fall under the banner of the Syrian National Army, after video footage appeared to show Kurdish captives being executed. Turkey is also known to have used white phosphorous munitions over non-combatant areas in Syria.

European Union-Turkey Humanitarian Arrangement: Well-Intentioned But Inadequate

Amidst rising anti-immigrant sentiment and the increasing popularity of the authoritarian far-right, the European Union was compelled to devise a new action plan on migration. In 2016, the European Union proposed to strengthen cooperation with Turkey and intensify interventions to decrease irregular migration from Turkey to Europe. To do this, the European Union indicated it would designate funding to assist with the humanitarian response, advance the Visa Liberalization Dialogue for Turkish citizens traveling to Europe, reinvigorate negotiations over the European Union accession process, and accelerate the modernization of its customs union with Turkey. For Turkeys part, the government agreed to strengthen its border-management capacity, especially on the shores of the Aegean Sea, and accept any new irregular migrants who arrived in Greece from Turkey and whose applications for asylum in Greece were rejected. Finally, European Union member states were supposed to accept a designated number of refugees directly from Turkey, as an incentive for asylum seekers to register with the Turkish government and operate within formal immigration procedures. However, the proposal never fully materialized, and three member states, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland, refused to comply with the European Union asylum quota system as proposed by the European Commission.

Despite evolving into the most comprehensive humanitarian endeavor in the history of the European Union, this effort was never intended to address the core factor instigating the humanitarian crisis: the war in Syria. The European Union and its member states should have invested every ounce of influence available to promote an inclusive political settlement at the onset of the war. Instead, the European Union launched two main initiatives, the European Union Regional Trust Fund in Response to the Syrian Crisis (the Madad Fund) and the Facility for Refugees, to funnel more than 6 billion for humanitarian relief and development assistance.

In spending this money, the European Union emphasized livelihoods security to maximize the impact of assistance, prioritizing skills development, employment generation, entrepreneurship, and private-sector development. While these programming elements appeared positive, it is difficult to ascertain their overall impact in the absence of robust monitoring, verification, and evaluation systems. Donors should designate sufficient funding for implementing partners, especially smaller non-governmental organizations, to either develop the institutional capacity necessary to conduct robust assessments of their work or collaborate with firms that specialize in measuring the effectiveness of humanitarian and development assistance.

Furthermore, although some solicitations for development programming included requirements for recipient organizations to adopt conflict-sensitive approaches in their programming, there was usually no formal monitoring mechanism in place. It is important that implementing partners have an in-depth knowledge of local dynamics and political sensitivities in the areas in which they are operating, and of how their interventions impact communities. For instance, only including Syrian refugees in project activities could trigger negative sentiment among host communities that would be difficult to resolve. In an attempt to avoid the negative consequences of their programming, some organizations also recruited members from host communities. However, as I wrote in a piece in early 2019, if local cultural dynamics are not fully understood, such a simple adjustment in operations might still prevent organizations from properly addressing grievances and from pursuing inclusive practices, especially in multicultural and multi-ethnic communities. Equipped with the knowledge of how activities might impact local communities, implementing organizations can adjust their operations in order to prevent negative impacts and maximize positive ones.

Maximizing E.U. Leverage for Syrian Refugees

The European Union no longer has as much influence over Turkeys democratic trajectory as it once had at the height of the customs union and accession processes. With what leverage remains, the European Union should require recipients of funds from the European Union Regional Trust Fund in Response to the Syrian Crisis and the Facility for Refugees to adopt conflict-sensitive approaches in their programming. It is critical that implementing organizations understand how aid impacts the multidimensional layers of society in order to avoid any unintended negative consequences. Despite the absence of robust monitoring, verification, and evaluation systems, local administrations and civil society in Turkey have performed exceptionally well. Since the attempted coup in 2016, many organizations, including municipalities located in the south-east, have been operating under severe stress due to government crackdowns, restrictions on their functions, and increased pressure to operate without adequate resources.

Syrian refugees are still waiting. The political solution that remains the most viable path to reconciliation, justice, and sustainable peace is elusive. Unable to return home, Syrians have become victims of an increasingly authoritarian Turkey and its failing relationship with the European Union. Using its remaining leverage over humanitarian spending to ensure that Syrian refugees get the most out of humanitarian assistance is the best way for the European Union to move forward.

Christina Bache is a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, IDEAS and Chair of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education, Business for Peace working group. Up until March of this year, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, the official political think tank of the European Peoples Party in Brussels.

Image: President of Turkey

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Refugees at Risk: Managing the European Union's Declining Power in Turkey - War on the Rocks

Larry Elliott expresses support for Brexit on the basis that the EU is pro-business, anti working people, and the embodiment of neoliberal ideas (Inside the Guardian, 9 November). However, he does not confront the fact that his decision to vote leave has provided support for an even more extreme form of neoliberalism promoted by the leave campaign of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and the ERG. Out of the frying pan into the fire might be the appropriate observation.Charlie MasonHermon, Pembrokeshire

If the EU is as Larry Elliott says pro big business, anti working people, undemocratic, neoliberal then why are rightwing neoliberals in the UK, across politics, economics and the media, passionate leavers? Surely they should be very happy in the EU?Richard MiddletonCrossmichael, Dumfries and Galloway

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Neoliberalism and the European Union - The Guardian

The European Unions recent decision to freeze any further enlargement into the Balkans made me think of a moment from a quarter of a century ago, when I saw the EU flag for the first time. I was a 16-year-old Bosnian refugee, standing in dirt, holding a humanitarian aid package in my arms. The box I had received contained rice, flour and other relief items that were supposed to last me two weeks. I took out a can of corned beef and on the side saw a dazzling circle of gold stars on a blue background. The text beneath the EU flag read: Donated by the European Community.

This was not how we had imagined our future relationship with the European Union. Its flag was supposed to represent our aspiration for a higher state of existence, close to our heritage as Europes most diverse country. It was not the corned beef, but the dream of joining a community of tolerance and open borders that kept many of us going through rough times. It gave us hope because, deep inside, we knew that we belonged. This belief in what the EU represented was practically coded in our national DNA.

But now the doors seem to have shut in our faces following the decision by EU leaders to block the start of accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania.

To describe this decision as harmful for the western Balkans is an understatement. It is a blow for progressive political forces throughout our region, who have been working hard to build our EU future. Now we know that investing immense political capital to end longstanding disputes, take on difficult reforms, and make painful compromises even to the point of changing your countrys name, as Macedonia did recently to appease Greece will not gain us admission to Fortress Europe. The EU has sent us the message we feared the most: the EU no longer cares. It certainly does not care enough.

Worse than just keeping us outside the club, freezing the EU integration process risks fostering populism, contributing to instability and placing the region in a geopolitical limbo. The consequences will have to be mitigated through some smart EU policies and increased engagement in the region. For Bosnia in particular, this may be the only way out of its dire current predicament.

It might not seem apparent to current EU leaders, but the European Union and Bosnia were built on similar values and born at the same time. The EU (replacing the European Communities) was legally established by the Maastricht Treaty, signed on 7 February 1992. Only three weeks later, Bosnia voted in a referendum to become an independent state. In Bosnia, we saw this as the intertwining of our joint destinies. Just like the founders of Europe, we saw strength in our diversity, and were inspired by the optimism spreading across the continent. Our young nation was built on the narrative that we would eventually join the EU. This was our origin story, and we never imagined an alternative future.

Instead, decades of stagnation, ethnic tensions and failed attempts at reform followed our devastating war. In the past four years alone, 5% of our citizens have left the country. The national parliament has not held a single meeting this year, while the government has still not formed, more than a year after the last elections. The rhetoric of secession and war are pervasive. Bosnia has drifted further away than ever from the EU, and is now in full-blown political and existential crisis, at risk of disintegration. It is, according to President Macron, a time-bomb ticking on the borders of the EU.

Our leaders carry part of the blame. They have certainly lacked the vision, capacity and integrity to take our country forward. Many Bosnians remain entrenched in ethnic divisions and keep electing the same nationalist parties. However, ineffective politicians and a largely myopic electorate are a consequence, rather than the root cause, of the problem. The fault lies squarely with the system within which they operate, and which by default produces such outcomes.

The governance system created by annex 4 of the Dayton peace agreement our constitution is notorious for its complexity, ineffectiveness and discriminatory impact. A population of 3 million is governed by three presidents, 14 prime ministers, about 180 appointed ministers and more than 700 lawmakers, sitting in 14 different parliaments. Ethnic-based elections and appointments perpetuate tensions by continuously pitting the three main groups against each other. Blocking decisions has become the main political tool, and impasse long ago became the norm. Around 15% of the population, including all Jews and Roma, are effectively second-class citizens, unable to run for high political offices.

After more than two decades of sticking-plaster solutions, it is high time we recognised that the Dayton agreement was a valuable tool to end a war, but it created an unjust and unsustainable system. The crisis is real, but Macrons assessment of the situation is decidedly unhelpful. The EU must help Bosnia to lay a new constitutional foundation and rebuild its political structure from the bottom up.

This will be met with resistance from Bosnias governing elite, the only group that stands to lose in the process. Thousands of families are supported by the corrupt and inefficient system, and the political class will be understandably reluctant to let go. This loss has to be acknowledged and carefully managed, through a mix of incentives, pressures and safety nets that should accompany the constitutional makeover.

The process also entails serious risks; reopening a landmark peace agreement and rebalancing historic compromises at a time when Bosnia finds itself in an increasingly precarious geopolitical situation.

But the risk of doing nothing is greater still. Business as usual will lead to Bosnias leadership pivoting to the Gulf states, China and Russia, which will further jeopardise the countrys cohesiveness and its EU future, especially now, when the only national consensus that existed the hope of EU integration appears to be indefinitely postponed. It will become ever harder for Bosnia to avoid becoming a testing ground in a new cold war.

The European council and the new commission should be braver and more ambitious. Our common values and stability are at stake. Otherwise, all we may be left with is a failed state on the EUs doorstep and EU flags on humanitarian relief items sad reminders of a never-realised dream.

Boria Falatar is a Bosnian economist who lectures at Sciences Po, Paris. He stood in Bosnias 2018 presidential election for Naa Stranka, a member party of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe

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Bosnia is at risk of becoming a failed state. Does the EU want that on its doorstep? - The Guardian