Is described by me here at RFE/RL:

… two central questions have never been decisively answered.

Did political reconciliation in post-World War II Yugoslavia depend on an implicit understanding that the horrible interethnic violence of World War II could be put to one side as long as minority communities in the different republics had the wider security of living under a single Yugoslav roof?

If not, how could democracy and minority rights across the former Yugoslav space be guaranteed without creating mainly monoethnic polities?

… Is today’s Bosnia therefore even more vulnerable than yesterday’s doomed Yugoslavia? After nearly five decades of "brotherhood and unity," the Yugoslav ideal did have resonance and popular support separate from the feuding between the republics and their greedy leaders. Bosnia, by contrast, has no political force championing a Bosnian ideal, open to all.

Izetbegovic once told me that it would take 50 years before Bosniaks dared risk "ethnic disarmament." Bosniak politicians don’t lose votes by loudly damning "Serb" provocations and hypocrisy. But by making that the main message, and insisting that only their definition of Bosnia is legitimate, they make it too easy for Bosnian Serbs to argue that there is not enough common ground to build Bosnia successfully.

… the European Union’s own policies are "Balkanized." It is time to reorganize the confusing set of authorities and policies dealing with Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia. These arrangements need to be brought together under a single powerful team which oversees progress towards EU membership.

This would not solve everything, but it should give intelligent but flexible consistency and thereby restore authority to the European effort, which in Bosnia in particular is declining.

If that does not happen, the former Yugoslavia could end up stranded on the steep sand dune of history, unable to climb upward to the green grass of full EU membership or move sideways to a better place without slipping far back down the slope.

Above all, the weary populations concerned do not need a massive legal battle in London over Ejup Ganic, a battle which revisits the origins of the collapse of Yugoslavia and what happened thereafter amid mutual recriminations:

"My just and holy war crime was self-defense!"

"My war crime was also self-defense — and it was much smaller than yours, so it doesn’t count."