lediplomate.media – printed on 06/14/2026
By Giuseppe Gagliano, President of the Centro Studi Strategici Carlo De Cristoforis (Côme, Italy)
The gas pipeline that is worth more than a contract
In the Balkans, nothing is ever just economic. A gas pipeline is never just a tube. An energy concession is never just an industrial affair. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, a country still suspended between the unfinished peace of Dayton, Russian pressure, European aspiration and the muscular return of the United States, a project worth more than a billion dollars clearly shows how the geopolitics of energy is changing.
According to the Guardian investigation, the company AAFS Infrastructure and Energy, little known and lacking demonstrated experience in projects of this scale, would be close to obtaining energy contracts of considerable value in the Balkans. The heart of the operation is the Southern Interconnection, a gas pipeline intended to transport natural gas from the United States through Croatia to Bosnia, reducing Bosnian dependence on Russian gas.
The strategic motivation is obvious: to remove Sarajevo from the energetic influence of Moscow. But the method raises serious questions. AAFS would have been designated as a contractor by new Bosnian legislation, without a competitive tender procedure, at the very moment when Brussels is calling Bosnia into consistency with its European integration process and with the rules transparency.
The new business diplomacy
The political point of the matter is not only gas. It is the increasingly close relationship between American foreign policy, private interests and personal networks linked to power. AAFS is represented by Jesse Binnall, a lawyer close to Donald Trump and active in political affairs linked to the Maga universe, as well as by Joe Flynn, brother of former national security advisor Michael Flynn.
It is precisely this gray area that worries: a presidency which tends to confuse political line, diplomatic influence and enrichment of the environment which revolves around it. The American administration presents the operation as a decisive step for Bosnian energy independence. The State Department maintains that the pipeline will diversify the country’s energy sector and reduce its dependence on a single source considered unreliable.
This official part should not be brushed aside. Bosnia depends on Russian gas, and energy vulnerability constitutes a real political weapon in the hands of Moscow. But the less official part is more disturbing. A company without comparable references, with unclear shareholders and financing presented in a general manner, becomes the vehicle for a strategic project. According to the confidential proposal seen by the Guardian, the gas pipeline would cost around 300 million euros, while a further 900 million would be earmarked for three power plants, with financing based on private capital and debt.
The problem here is not just who builds. It is about knowing who controls the tap, who collects the returns, who conditions local politics and who transforms independence from Russian gas into dependence on another center of power.
Bosnia: a fragile state, ideal prey
Bosnia-Herzegovina is the ideal location for an operation of this type. Not because it is marginal, but because it is fragile. The political system born of the Dayton Accords froze the war without building a fully functional state. The Bosnian, Serb and Croat elites continue to operate in a complex institutional structure, vulnerable to vetoes, external pressure and nationalist manipulation.
The gas pipeline should cross precisely this political minefield. For years, the United States has supported the connection between Bosnia and the Croatian terminal, convinced that it could reduce the influence of Vladimir Putin in Southeast Europe. But under the Biden administration, the idea was for the project to be managed by the state-owned Bosnian Gas Company. With the return of Trump, the game changes: a private company linked to Trumpian circles becomes the protagonist.
This is where energy becomes pure geopolitics. It is not just a matter of replacing Russian molecules with American molecules. It’s about redefining the chains of dependence. Moscow exercises its influence through existing gas and links with Serbian nationalists. Washington enters with liquefied natural gas, the diplomatic weight of its embassy and private companies linked to American political power. Brussels observes, protests, warns, but once again appears slow, normative, incapable of imposing its own grammar of power.
Milorad Dodik et le prix de la establishment
The decisive figure remains Milorad Dodik, Serbo-Bosnian nationalist leader, close to Moscow and accused for years of wanting to empty or destroy Dayton’s architecture. The Biden administration had hit him with sanctions for alleged corruption and destabilizing ethno-nationalist rhetoric. With Trump, these sanctions would have been lifted without a clear explanation, according to the Guardian’s reconstruction.
This passage is central. If Dodik controls the Bosnian-Serbian political lever and can block the project, Washington needs at least his neutrality. The Guardian recalls Donald Trump Jr.’s visit to Banja Luka and the warm welcome given by Dodik’s son. Shortly after, Dodik would have suggested that he did not want to obstruct the plan carried by Binnall and Flynn.
The result is paradoxical. To build an infrastructure supposed to reduce Russian influence, the United States seems to have to deal with a pro-Russian leader who is weakening the cohesion of the Bosnian state. It’s the diplomacy of raw interest: you don’t eliminate the problem, you buy it, you get around it, you temporarily integrate it into your own strategy.
But in Bosnia, any compromise with identity-based nationalism has a price. The American illusion could be to believe that a major energy project is enough to pacify local actors. Balkan history says the opposite: when external money enters fragile institutional systems, it does not always stabilize. It strengthens clientelist networks, increases blackmail and fuels competition between foreign protectors.
The defeat of normative Europe
This affair also constitutes a harsh lesson for the European Union. Brussels is asking Bosnia for reforms, transparency, regulatory alignment, consultation on energy policies. The European Union ambassador reportedly warned Bosnian leaders that decisions of this scope, if not coordinated with Brussels, could jeopardize financial opportunities and the integration process.
The problem is that the European Union often continues to act as if the force of the rules was enough to order geopolitical space. But the Balkans are not a legal seminar. They are a zone of competition between powers. Russia uses energy, Orthodox identity, political networks and historical memory. Turkey uses neo-Ottoman culture, religion, investments and influence. China uses infrastructure, credit and technology. The United States uses security, gas, diplomacy and private power.
Europe uses procedures too often. And procedures count, but only if they are supported by a political will capable of defending them. Otherwise, they become warnings that others listen to out of politeness and ignore out of interest.
Also read: ANALYSIS – Syria, gas and geopolitics: The dream of the gas pipeline that could reshape the Middle East
Economic scenario: replacing Moscow with Washington
Economically, the project may seem rational. Bosnia must diversify its supplies. Dependence on a single energy source is a vulnerability. Connecting to the Croatian terminal and opening up to American gas can increase security of supplies and reduce Russian pressure capacity.
However, diversification does not automatically coincide with sovereignty. If the entire financial, technological and managerial architecture ends up in the hands of a private foreign company chosen without a call for tenders, the country does not necessarily become freer. It simply changes the master of the constraint.
Financing by private capital and debt opens another question: who will bear the risk? What guarantees will be required? What rates will be applied? What return will investors demand? If the work becomes expensive, the price will fall on Bosnian consumers, businesses or public finances. If it becomes politically strategic, no one will be able to easily question it.
This is the classic mechanism of geopolitical infrastructures: they are first presented as necessary for security; they then become untouchable; finally, they generate rents for those who control them.
Strategic assessment: energy as a weapon without uniform
From a strategic point of view, the gas pipeline is a weapon without a uniform. He doesn’t pull, but he moves the balance. It does not occupy territories, but it redesigns dependencies. He does not send soldiers, but he produces political loyalty.
For Washington, the operation presents three advantages. First, it reduces Russian energy space in the Balkans. Second, it strengthens the Adriatic corridor and the centrality of Croatia as a platform for liquefied natural gas. Third, it creates American infrastructure in a country crucial to the security of Southeast Europe.
For Moscow, the potential loss is obvious. Russian gas is not just trade: it is political access. If Sarajevo gets an alternative source, Russian leverage is reduced. But Moscow can still count on Dodik, on Bosnian institutional fractures and on the anti-Western resentment of part of the Serbo-Bosnian space.
For the European Union, the risk is to find itself a spectator of a work which directly concerns its own security area. Bosnia is a candidate for entry into the Union, but the decisive energy project could end up under American influence, according to terms that Brussels considers problematic. This is the sign of a larger contradiction: Europe wants to enlarge, but it does not always know how to politically protect its own enlargement process.
The American economic war in the Balkans
This affair shows that the American economic war has not disappeared with globalization. On the contrary, it has become more direct. The United States never really separates security, energy, private enterprise and diplomatic influence. The difference, with the return of Trump, is that the connection between national interest and personal circles of power appears more visible, less mediated, more openly patrimonial.
America is not content to say to Bosnia: free yourself from Russian gas. She also tells him: do it through an infrastructure supported by us, with companies close to our political circuits, in a framework where American protection becomes part of the offer. It is a form of energetic protectorate.
The implicit message is simple: if you buy American gas, if you entrust the infrastructure to an actor linked to our power system, if you do not block the project, you obtain attention, protection and perhaps stability. If you oppose it, you risk isolation, pressure and marginality.
The final risk: Bosnia as a laboratory
Bosnia risks becoming a laboratory of the new Western order. No longer the liberal order of rules, calls for tenders, transparency and progressive integration. But a harsher, transactional order, dominated by leaders, political families, opaque companies, pressure groups, concessions and exchanges of protection.
This does not mean that the pipeline is useless. On the contrary, it can respond to a real need. Bosnia must reduce its energy dependence on Moscow. But the question is that of the means. A strategic infrastructure built without a call for tenders, entrusted to an actor without solid credentials and immersed in a web of delicate political relationships can solve one problem while creating another.
It can liberate Sarajevo from the Russian monopoly and deliver it to a new American dependence. It can strengthen energy security and at the same time weaken institutional transparency. It can bring Bosnia closer to the West while distancing it from European standards.
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The tube and the power
The Bosnian side confirms a simple law of contemporary geopolitics: whoever controls energy controls part of the sovereignty of others. Gas pipelines are not just infrastructure. These are corridors of power. They connect territories, but also interests, ruling classes, diplomatic services, banks, funds, pressure groups and security apparatuses.
Bosnia needs energy and stability. Europe needs credibility in the Balkans. The United States wants to expel Russia from the energy corridors of Southeast Europe. Russia wants to keep its levers. In the middle of this part, a little-known company, linked to figures from the Trumpian universe, can become the pivot of a billionaire business.
Here is the essential point: in the new world, sovereignty is not lost only with the arrival of tanks. It is also lost by signing concessions, by accepting debts, by entrusting strategic infrastructures to opaque actors, by exchanging security for dependence.
The Bosnian gas pipeline does not only tell the story of the end of the Russian gas monopoly. It also tells of the entry into a phase where the West itself no longer always speaks the language of rules, but that of force, personal networks and geopolitical rent. In Bosnia, once again, the future of Europe is seen earlier than elsewhere. And it is not certain that it is reassuring.
Also read: ANALYSIS – Balkans and Ukraine: Weapons, Affairs and Geopolitical Contradictions
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