Isaac Stanley-Becker writes:

In the days after Tuesday’s midterm elections, luminaries of the MAGA movement will gather at Mar-a-Lago to turn their attention to 2028. Speakers will include a Cabinet secretary, the head of the Domestic Policy Council, and several members of Congress. Also present will be Milorad Dodik, the pro-Russia strongman who has bragged about spying on Americans and recently called Russian President Vladimir Putin “one of the most peace-loving leaders of our time.” Dodik is the de facto leader of Bosnia’s Serb population, concentrated in a political entity called Republika Srpska within Bosnia and Herzegovina. His push for secession risks reigniting bloody sectarian conflict in the Balkans.

Dodik’s travel plans were described to me by several people familiar with them. These people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview nonpublic matters, said the details could change at the last minute. (His office did not respond to a request for comment.) But Dodik’s expected attendance reflects his reversal of fortune under the Trump administration, the success of a pricey foreign lobbying campaign, and a further alignment of American and Russian interests.

Republika Srpska paid two of Trump’s top political advisers, James Blair and Chris LaCivita, as consultants and brought them to the Serb-majority political entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina for elections earlier this month. (They later donated their earnings to Trump’s presidential library fund after news of the work became public and the president lashed out at them on Truth Social.) When his party won a decisive result, Dodik credited both Trump and Putin for their support. “If it had not been for Donald Trump’s magnificent victory,” Dodik told supporters after the favorable result, “we would probably be political corpses today.”

In 2022, the Biden administration sanctioned Dodik for what the Treasury Department called “graft,” “corruption,” and “bribery,” as well as threats to the stability of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Balkan nation where ethnic divisions catalyzed a brutal war from 1992 to 1995. The conflict climaxed in the genocide at Srebrenica, which until Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was the most horrific mass murder in Europe since World War II. Dodik, according to the U.S. government, had attempted to sabotage the accords that ended the war, the Dayton peace agreement. He was accused of creating parallel state institutions in the federated country’s Serb-majority entity and of denigrating other ethnic and religious groups, above all Muslim Bosniaks. Numerous family members, allies, and companies were eventually also sanctioned. Formerly Srpska’s president, Dodik was stripped of that position and banned from holding office for six years after being convicted by the Bosnian judicial system last year of flouting decisions by the international envoy overseeing the Dayton Accords. He has rejected those decisions as politically motivated and void of constitutional authority, and continues to exercise near-total control over Srpska’s institutions. [Continue reading…]