Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, on November 21, the world will mark the 20th anniversary of the Dayton Agreement, which ended the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina that began in April 1992.

Last July, the Senator from New Hampshire and I had the privilege and distinct honor of being part of a delegation of House and Senate Members to visit Srebrenica as part of the official U.S. delegation to remember the genocide in Srebrenica on its 20th anniversary. So a few months later in November, we commemorate a happy occasion, a positive development in the history of Europe and in international relations, the Dayton Accords.

I commend a bipartisan duo for securing approval within the United States. President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican, were both instrumental--along with a host of others--in persuading on a nonpartisan basis Americans and American Congressmen to support this agreement, which involved a bit of risk for the United States. It involved troops of the United States going into this area and risking their safety in order to make this accord work. So I appreciate this, and on the 20th anniversary of that agreement and their leadership, I commend them.

The Dayton Agreement was part of a response to a conflict that helped the international community transition from a world divided between East and West in order to meet post-Cold War challenges.

I wish to mention three accomplishments of the Dayton Accords and then Senator Shaheen will speak for a few monuments about that aspect. Then we will talk about some legislation that she and I have had the honor and privilege of working on together as a result of this trip that she and I took, along with others, to commemorate this tragedy in Srebrenica.

Back to the Dayton Accords, among the accomplishments is a successful and robust peacekeeping force under NATO, which actually replaced the U.N. peacekeeping group with a NATO command group. It was deployed for the first time, and NATO also intervened out of area for the first time to make peace.

Secondly, persons were held accountable for war crimes on an international basis--crimes against humanity and genocide. This is the first time this had happened since World War II.

Third, international cooperation on demining and a concerted search for missing persons became essential parts of post-conflict recovery.

Dayton also put the OSCE on center stage--the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, of which I am a committee chair representing the United States of America. The Accord mandated that the OSCE oversee arms control efforts and develop confidence-building measures within Bosnia and regionally and make it possible for a country divided and almost destroyed by war to hold elections in a reasonably Democratic manner.

So let's celebrate that accomplishment, and I am sure the Senator from New Hampshire will have some more important insights to offer at this point.

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Mr. WICKER. I certainly agree with my colleague from New Hampshire, and I commend her for her leadership in getting this legislation drafted.

It is an opportunity to provide a very meaningful chance for Bosnians and Herzegovinians to live the good life and remain in the area, but it is also in the absolute national security interests of the United States of America. We can't tend to everything, but we saw 20 years ago--25 years ago and forward--with the war in the Balkans what could happen and what almost happened to security in all of Europe. We know this has been a flash point down through the decades and even the centuries. To the extent that we can address some things that we didn't get done at Dayton, this will help people in the region and the former Yugoslavia and also help the United States of America.

The Dayton Agreement was a crowning achievement, but it didn't provide Bosnia with a constitutional framework and political structures that could effectively govern on into the 21st century.

And the Senator from New Hampshire and I certainly saw that. We were meeting with the tripartite head of the government after the ceremony we attended.

Dan Serwer of Johns Hopkins University recently observed:

We imposed the Dayton Accords, but we imposed what the ethic nationalist warring parties told us they could live with. It is therefore unsurprising that one way or another, ethnic nationalists have dominated Bosnia almost continuously, making it ungovernable, since 1995.

So we are hoping the Bosnians and Herzegovinians can address this issue, and while they are doing that, our legislation would establish an enterprise fund directed by a board of American investment professionals capable of leveraging both public and private funding to provide entrepreneurs access to the same kinds of loans and investment opportunities afforded to small- and medium-sized businesses here in the United States.

By strengthening the private sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina, this legislation would help create space to continue moving forward on the political reforms I just alluded to. As the Senator said, it would establish an enterprise fund modeled after U.S. programs that supported central and eastern European economies after the fall of the Berlin Wall, with approximately $10 billion of public and private funding.

I would also point out that this legislation doesn't score as an expense. I think we are being very frugal with the authorization we are providing to the Congress to build on this, if our legislation passes.

Per capita income in Bosnia and Herzegovina averages less than $5,000 annually. And that is a shame 20 years after the Dayton Accords. Compare this $5,000-a-year per capita to $13,000 a year right across the border in neighboring Croatia. The unemployment rate stands at 40 percent.

Things are at a critical juncture in this country, and that is why I think our trip over there with former President Clinton and with former Secretary Albright and Members from the House of Representatives came at such an important time and prompted us to work together on legislation to help make the situation better for individuals over there but also help make our national security stronger and more reliable here in America.

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Mr. WICKER. The Senator from New Hampshire makes two very salient points I do want to underscore. And it pains me that we have to be on the floor of the Senate this afternoon talking about an aggressive Russia. Russia was trying to help 20 years ago in the Dayton Accords. They were trying to be part of getting things done. This is no longer the case. Russia and some of the few countries aligned with their interests now seem to be trying more to block effective responses to the international problems.

In addition, some of the aggression of Russia in Ukraine, for example, is eerily, troublingly reminiscent of some language in previous decades--talk of violating a neighbor's sovereignty, territory, and claiming they are doing nothing more than defending a threatened local ethnic population. That is troubling and familiar rhetoric from a very dangerous past time. So I would underscore the Senator's point there about Russia.

Before I toss this back to her to close, I would simply say this about her comments about American leadership. No one could have made this work except the United States of America in the early 1990s and in the mid-1990s. There was one people on the face of the Earth, and that was the Americans. The world turned to us, and we stopped a conflagration in Europe that was about to get out of hand.

With regard to Syria, I am so glad my friend mentioned this. The United States is being looked to internationally for leadership. No one else can provide that leadership. Again, it is incumbent on us to help people who are suffering in other locations, and we want to do that if we can, to the extent we can afford it. But we need to act with leadership on behalf of the United States of America, on behalf of our own citizens, on behalf of our own national defense interests and the interest of every American to live in the absence of fear from terrorism and the attacks and ill wishes of those who would cause us injury, if they possibly could.

I very much appreciate her point about American leadership, and I know this will not be done unless we do it across the aisle. It is why it means so much to me to take the floor this afternoon in this colloquy, with a Democratic Senator from New Hampshire and I, a Republican Senator from Mississippi, pushing in the same direction and asking for American leadership.

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