@jasminmuj
Political Scientist, PhD. Author of "Hunger and Fury: The Crisis of Democracy in the Balkans" (2018) and "The Bosniaks: Nationhood After Genocide" (2023), both available via Hurst and OUP. 📍 LAX via SJJ. 🌐 www.jasminmujanovic.com
Thanks for listening to the launch mini-episode of my new international & Balkan affairs podcast Balkanomnicon.
The first full episode will be posted on Friday.
You can listen to all episodes via the @odgovor.bsky.social YouTube channel & all major streaming apps. youtu.be/uDJ74Zf4NoQ?...
There will be hiccups along the way. But I am excited to grow
Balkanomnicon with your support, and look forward to hearing your constructive feedback, and vicious, but hopefully colorful, personal attacks as well. For now, be sure to subscribe on RSS too. rss.com/podcasts/bal...
Thanks for letting me know. Here is the RSS link. rss.com/podcasts/bal...
Thank you, sir!
Folks, it's here: the first mini-episode introducing you to
Balkanomnicon, my new international affairs & Balkan politics podcast w/ @odgovor.bsky.social. Listen now on YouTube, RSS, Apple Music & in a few mins also on Spotify & all other major streaming platforms. www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDJ7...
To be clear, privatization in BiH is needed but with reliable partners, whose interests are in line with both long-term US strategic interests, and BiH's own EU and NATO accession plans.
Joe Flynn, brother of registered Bosnian Serb secessionist lobbyist Mike Flynn, now wants his newly formed company, AAFS, to both build Bosnia's Southern Interconnector gas pipeline and to privatize both the Sarajevo and Mostar airports. They have no exp in either field. odgovor.ba/article/12380/
Friends, I am happy to share some exciting news with you. I have partnered with Odgovor.ba to produce a new English-language international affairs podcast with a Balkan accent. It's called Balkanomnicon and the first mini-episode drop will drop this week. Stay tuned!
At least Pyrrhus of Epirus knew Heraclea was a debacle.
Mike Flynn, registered lobbyist of Kremlin-backed Bosnian Serb secessionist regime of Milorad Dodik, continues his tour of Banja Luka. Note two others: Andrija Mandic, suspected coup-leader and party boss of Montenegro's Democratic Front, and US-based arms dealer Ranko Ristic.
Mike Flynn, a registered lobbyist of the Kremlin-backed Serb secessionist regime of Milorad Dodik in Bosnia, wines and dines with Dodik’s son, Igor. Dodik has attempted to reinvent himself as a “MAGA loyalist” in recent months, after three decades of anti-American militancy.
Context: "There are forty-nine people from Bosnia and Herzegovina listed by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations, twenty-eight of these were Bosniak...The social ties between Jews and Muslims in [Bosnia], forged for over 400 years are remarkable." blogs.timesofisrael.com/bosnian-holo...
Bosnia and Herzegovina marks its Independence Day on March 1. A joyful occasion to be sure but given the trajectory of the world also a sobering one.
Sovereignty, if it is to endure, must be rooted in the rule of law, democratic legitimacy, and popular participation.
Onwards.
Kremlin-backed militant Bosnian Serb secessionist Dodik has hired yet another US lobbying org, on top of millions he’s already spending. Part of the firm, Lucas Compton, is also the former OSCE chief in Bosnia Jonathan Moore. Quite the career change!
Hungarian analysts and several EU diplomats in Budapest fear Orbán may be triggering a long-rumored worst-case scenario: using a fabricated national security threat to crack down on the opposition or even cancel the election. This military deployment puts that scenario into play.
The sudden pivot towards “actually, there are serious issues with Ukraine’s possible entry into the EU” in Brussels and the capitals was entirely predictable, as folks from the Western Balkans tried to tell you in 2022. It was never a serious policy proposal but a cruel ploy.
I am wary of terms like "grand strategy" (and "geopolitics") but there are evident political synergies that require a far greater degree of explicating and addressing in key Western capitals if we are, collectively, genuinely committed to the defense of the Euro-Atlantic project.
Because both the Kremlin and the CCP act consistently with reference to that arc. They support Orban specifically because they see - and reinforce - the connection(s) between, say, Ukraine, Moldova, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Leaders in Brussels, Berlin, Paris, London, or Washington generally do not.
What remains frustratingly out of grasp, however, is the singularity of that threat perception in key Western capitals.
So long as Atlantic decisionmakers treat events within polities along that arc as peripheral to their broader postures viz. Russia and China, they remain on the backfoot.
...the Balkans, and then bends towards Turkey and the broader Middle East.
We can debate the length, depth, termini of that arc but that Orban is part of a cohesive axis with malign designs on the security of, inter alia, Ukraine, Moldova, Bosnia, Kosovo, and the EU itself, is not in question.
The results of the upcoming Hungarian elections will significantly shape the security of Europe in the coming years.
Indeed, arguably the central strategic pivot point of contemporary international affairs resides along a singular arc, which stretches from the Baltic through Eastern Europe and...
I said this four years ago, I say it today: in international affairs, it does not get any clearer than Russia's criminal invasion of Ukraine. An unprovoked war of expansion by an autocrat against a democratic neighbor. There is zero moral or historical ambiguity here. None.
Bosnia’s Amb. to U.S., also a prominent member of the country’s historic Jewish community, unloads on the “synchronized xenophobia” promoted by two recent Washington Times op-eds; “Dodik and…Primorac promote ideologies that have led to mass atrocities.” www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/fe...
At the Belgrade Tourism Fair, glossy billboards invite visitors to stay at the Vilina Vlas Hotel in Visegrad, BiH — arguably the most notorious Serb nationalist rape camp of the Bosnian War, where Bosniak girls and women from across eastern Bosnia were systematically brutalized.
Today saw the largest anti-govt protests in Sarajevo since a deadly tram derailment nearly two weeks ago. The Sarajevo Canton govt has already collapsed but the youth-led crowds continue to demand large-scale reforms of the local public sector. www.klix.ba/vijesti/bih/...
A newly discovered photo shows BiH Constitutional Court judge Marin Vukoja, a recently appointed cadre of
Dragan Covic's Croat separatist HDZ, at the concert of Croatian neo-Nazi Thompson in Siroki Brijeg. A constitutional judge cannot be a crypto-Nazi. He must resign. istraga.ba/sudija-ustav...
Following a deadly tram derailment and three days of protest, Nihad Uk. Sarajevo Canton PM, BiH's largest metropolitan area, has resigned. Protests expected to continue and popular appetites for further resignations will grow. BiH heads to the polls in Oct. www.klix.ba/vijesti/bih/...
Heartening that German military officials grasp the security implications of the state property issue in BiH. Unless the same are clearly owned & administered by the BiH state, they may become literal runaways for Russia's little green men & thus a pan-Euro concern. www.vijesti.ba/clanak/74188...
After a deadly tram derailment, a youth-led protest has erupted in Sarajevo tonight, blocking major intersections and calling on resignations from local authorities. A tragic incident but I am heartened by this civic mobilization. Full solidarity. www.vijesti.ba/clanak/74185...
“The foreigners who paid for the privilege of killing innocent civilians were mainly wealthy men, but there were women too, claimed Licanin…who was a volunteer with a Bosnian Serb tank unit…They included Britons, Italians and Germans, he said.” www.thetimes.com/world/europe...