Selmo Cikotić was born on 25/01/1964 in the village of Trpezi (Berane, Montenegro), where he finished his primary school. Military High School was attended in Belgrade to be followed by graduation from the Military Academy (orientation: Air Defense Artillery Missile Unit) in Belgrade, Rajlovac and Zadar. From 1986 until the beginning of war, he worked in the Air Defense Artillery School in Zadar.

With the outbreak of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, he left the Yugoslav Peoples’ Army and joined the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the war, he performed several different duties in the R BiH Army, the most important being the commander of the Operational Group “West” and the Chief of Staff of the 7th Corps of the R BiH Army.

As of beginning of 1995 to the middle of 1997, he worked in the United States of America as the military attaché of R BiH, and, as such, participated in the Dayton Peace Agreement negotiations as a military representative of the national delegation.

Following the return from the USA, he performed several different duties in the F BiH Army, the most prominent being the commander of the 1st Corps, from the beginning of November 2000 to the end of May 2004.

For three subsequent years, he worked in Sarajevo for a private construction company “OKI doo”.

From 21/04/2007 to 12/02/2012, he was the BiH Minister of Defense.

A year later, he worked as the Dean of the American National Faculty at the American University in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

From the beginning of 2013 to the beginning of 2016, he led the representative office of the “BIGMEV Foundation”, responsible for development of economic relations between BiH and Turkey.

Since the beginning of 2016 until October 2018, he was an advisor in the Cabinet of a Member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bakir Izetbegović.

Since early November 2018, he has been teaching at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Sarajevo.

He holds a master’s degree as of 2004, and a doctorate as of 2008 from the Faculty of Political Sciences in Sarajevo, where he works as an associate professor. He is also a visiting professor at the Geneva Center for Security Policy (GCSP), the American University in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the NATO School in Oberammergau.

So far, he has published five books and a number of articles in domestic and foreign professional journals and publications relating to security, international relations and leadership.