Time for Athens to export stability
I spent a good part of yesterday on one of my least favorite topics: the name of the country whose capital is Skopje.
I started it with yesterday’s post. The NATOniks on Twitter then told me how out of it I was to think that the Alliance could spare the seconds needed to admit Skopje as a member. After all, it has a hefty agenda: Afghanistan, where it will decide what has already been decided, and smart defense, where it will decide something that will not be implemented. Enlargement, they said, is just not part of the narrative. They also suggested nothing, absolutely nothing, would change Greece’s veto of Macedonian membership.
What about a phone call from the President of the United States asking Athens to stand down in his hometown of Chicago at the NATO Summit there this weekend? It would be The FYROM* entering NATO, not “Macedonia,” in accordance with a 1995 agreement the parties to this “name” dispute signed (and Greece violated, according to the International Court of Justice, when it blocked The FYROM’s entry to NATO at the last summit in Bucharest). Athens, after all, might find it useful to build up some credits in Washington.
One of my Twitter friends suggested yesterday that Greece had won the ICJ case because the court declined to order Greece not to repeat what it had done in Bucharest. Here I need only cite what the Court said, citing a previous decision:
“[a]s a general rule, there is no reason to suppose that a State whose act or conduct has been declared wrongful by the Court will repeat that act or conduct in the future, since its good faith must be presumed”
Misreading this as suggesting the ICJ did not find Greece in the wrong is beyond my ability.
By the end of the day, I was having a perfectly reasonable conversation with Greeks interested in resolving the issue, and seemingly willing to think about The FYROM membership in NATO, if only that does not entail postponing a solution to the name issue forever. That is a reasonable concern, one that could be met by taking the issue to arbitration if it is not solved within a specified time frame. I imagine there are half dozen other solutions that people brainier than I am will think up. It is important also to note that Greece can block Macedonia’s process of gaining membership in the EU at any stage, so it will not have given up all its leverage if it allows The FYROM into NATO.
Greece today is in an uncomfortable position. It is in clear violation of an ICJ decision and is exporting instability to its neighbors and friends. It is going to be really hard to prevent the export of economic instability, since the electorate is rejecting austerity and causing real problems for the Euro and the European Union that will ripple far and wide. Check out your 401k today to see what I mean.
But the export of political instability is avoidable. Ethnic tension in Macedonia is on the increase, in part due to failure to get into NATO. This is a treasured goal of its Albanian population, one of whose political leaders told me last summer that it was vital to his ability to contain and counter growing pan-Albanian sentiment. Pan-Albanianism is also growing in Kosovo, where Belgrade makes no secret of its desire to partition the North, so that it can hold on to the largest single concentration of Serbs in Kosovo (even if most of them live farther south).
Partition in Macedonia and Kosovo would lead quickly and irrevocably to partition in Bosnia, and guess where else? Cyprus. Thus, Greece’s resistance to Macedonian membership in NATO and refusal to recognize Kosovo are politicies that risk undermining one of Athens’ most cherished goals: reunification of Cyprus.
The first law of holes is to stop digging. Athens has a real stake in the unity and territorial integrity of The FYROM, Kosovo, Bosnia and Cyprus. Greece should quietly reverse its position and allow The FYROM into NATO at Chicago, provided it gets a firm commitment to resolve the name issue within a defined time frame. That would clear one problem and gain Athens a good deal of credit. Then I’ll want to talk with Greek friends about recognizing Kosovo, which would remove still another issue that risks precipitating partition in Cyprus.
It is time for Athens to export stability.
*The FYROM, for the uninitiated, is “The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,” the name by which the country entered the United Nations and many other organizations soon after independence.
PS: I thought you all would enjoy this reaction from one of my Twitter followers: “Greece is and always was a lighthouse of stability in the region. NATO member, EC member, EU zone member and u claim instability?”
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Many Greeks have no problem with the name ‘Republic of Makedonija’. We really think it can join NATO now. BUT we cannot accept their irredentist maps in their schools and everywhere which show Greece and Bulgaria and Albania part of the Republika Makedonija. And they do not recognise our Macedonia province in northern Greece. Is this the actions of a friend?
Many Greek people like agree with their constitutional name. But do they recognise my right to my Macedonia in my country Greece and to be a Macedonian (Greek)?
Dear Alekos,
I have yet to hear a single official statement denouncing Greek Macedonia, not recognizing it’s greekness or macedoness or whatever, nor have I heard such a thing. My country officially does not want exclusiveness, nor it is in position to demand such a thing, to the term Macedonia, and has in official statements explicitly said so. Whoever wants to call themselves Macedonians is fine by us, as long we are left to call ourselves what we always have. As far as irredentist maps go, everyone on the Balkans have them, even Greeks (Megali Ellada).
FT is, not surprisingly, considering Greece’s current problem in some detail these days. One writer suggests (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4bdda8a0-9dad-11e1-9a9e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1v46d4JWa) that Greece would probably benefit from leaving the Euro and seeing the drachma reintroduced at something like 50:1. In a final aside, he makes the point that the saving of Greece could mean the end of the Eurozone and “perhaps the European project.”
The latter case might actually be more to the benefit of stability in the Balkans than some emergency measure to keep Greece in it at any cost – no more veto on Macedonia joining what remains of the EU, for example. Membership in an association of larger, richer countries would probably still be seen as beneficial, especially for a country with no major debt problem, so I assume they’d still be interested, if only to appease the Albanian minority. And there would be one fewer veto of Kosovo’s recognition. Serbia’s nationalists might use the argument that since there is less to gain by joining the EU that they might as well stop cooperating with it, but with Karadzic and Mladic in the Hague, Europe and the U.S. have what they want out of Serbia already. Improvements in the justice and political systems are really more for Serbia’s benefit than anyone else’s, and eventually they’ll get around to making them. Germany is Serbia’s largest market and largest aid donor – there would still be a source of pressure for reasonable behavior, even without the EU carrot.
Based on Russia’s experience with devaluation, leaving the euro might mean a brief-ish period of unpleasantness for the Greeks, but the next couple of years are unlikely to be a picnic in any case.
An article from 2.150 A.D.”Northern Mexico wants to join Nato with the name Virginia.We must hear those peoples voice because they have the right for self-determination. Recognizing them by this name means also that every Virginian that lived there the last thousand years is only Virginian and they never have been Americans there.Including the eight Presidents that born there and any other historical figure that Americans demand as their own.Virginians are no Americans and the opposite.And ancient Virginians were no Americans also.The history of Virginia is the history of the Former Mexican Republic of Virginia.And some day Virginians(Mexicans) will have the historical right to take Virginia state into their territory because it is their right.”
This is a little example which can make Americans see the problem with the Greek view.I chose this example because this page is American.With the use of our imagination we can think other examples with other American states or other countries. But still it will be a minor example because Macedonia(Greek,Ancient) is many more for the Greeks of what is any American state for Americans.I’ve tried to be brief here.Dozens of books have been written which they cannot fit in a comment.
Mr Serwer
My name is Stephanos Sotiriou
I m a Greek Macedonian,
As you Know the Greek nation (and the most of nations in the world) formed from the integration of the several Greek tribes, like Macedonians, Tessalians, Epirotans, Peloponnesians, Cretans …
If you don’t understand the “paranoia”, as you many times in “Western World” believe, let me give you a simple example.
The Germany is a federal state, which contents several German “tribal” states. Bavaria, Saxonia, Frankonia…
As we suppose, for example, that a neighboring state of Germany, Slavic origin and language, found a federal republic with the name “Bavaria’ in the same borders of Germany and Bavaria, and baptize their Slavic population in “Bavarian nation”, and their Slavic language in to “Bavarian language’…
And after all, if this Slavic Bavarian nation become an independent state (60 years later), and start to claim for:
a) Bavarian minority in to Germany, in to Bavaria, among the (real) Bavarians
b)Falsificate and Usurp the German Bavarian history and cultural heritage
c) Have absurd aggressive territorial claims
What would you do?
Would you say never mind? Would you thing that the only issue is the stability, and if the stability is not in danger because the 1.2 million, small Slavic Bavarian nation, is not danger for the 80 million Germany? What kind of stability is this?
Would you except to exist a Bavarian state and a Bavarian nation, Slavic origin , out of your border, south of German state of Bavaria and would you allow to the German pupil and student to learn in geography that the Germany is bordering in the south east, with the Bavarian Republic and the Bavarian nation?
If you understand this example, why many of you, support the Fyromians?
You Know very well that they became “Slavomacedonia” and “Slavomacedonias” (today only Macedonians) since 1943, for political reasons. Before 1943, none of these people knew the name Macedonia. They were just “Bulgarian speaking population”, in the Vardar (Vardarska) region of the Serbian State.
We, as Macedonians, and Greeks, believe that the fyromians must accept a compromise. A kind of Compromise that would be able to make the difference between us, the 2.5 million Macedonians and them, the 1.2 million Slavs.
Do you thing that is easy for us, the 2.5 million Macedonians, to deny ourselves, our nationality, history, our heritage… To learn in our schools that the Macedonia is bordering in the north with the “Macedonia”, and that, we are not Macedonians, but just Greeks, because Macedonians are the Slavic population of the Fyrom?
To solve the problem for ever, we must find a solution who will be able to make the ethnic difference between us and the Slavs!
Athens cannot except a solution with out Thessalonica’s (Macedonias capital) agreement. They (the fyromians) have any right to be a nation, if they wish so, to have a language… But NOT all these with our national name. The same name “Macedonia” according etymological dictionaries all over the word is Greek!
The argument that, they have any right to use the name Macedonia because they live in the geographic territory of Macedonia is a false argument. Because all the nations, all over the World, have named the territory with their national name.
The same happened with Macedonia. The territory was “the western Tracia” in 1.200 b.c. And when the Doric tribe of Macedonians penetrated in to this territory, the name “Western Tracia” has gone and the territory named Macedonia.
After all, the only historical territory of Macedonia which belongs to FYROM , is the “Pelagonia”. As you know, the city of Skopie never had been part of Macedonia. And until 1913- Balkan Wars and First W. War, was the capital of the region of Kossovo (capital na Kosovski Vilaet).
If you understand how serious is the problem, then you understand that the compromise must be once and for ever.
The Minorities
You must also have in your mind that:
I am Macedonian, like 2.5 more inhabitants in historical Macedonia and I don’t feel member of any minority.
So, it is impossible for us, the Macedonians, to deny ourselves, our history, our heritage, and to recognize the Bulgarian speaking population of FYROM, as Macedonians!
It is absurd to recognize “Macedonian minority” in the real, historical Macedonia (Greece), among the 2.5 million Macedonians. (no matter how many are they- the Bulgarian speaking population in Greece- not more than 1.200 people, the votes to the “Rainbow” political party in the last elections).
In the other side, exist a numerous of Macedomians (Greeks) in FYROM (100-120.000 people) which does not have any human and national right.
The call themselves “Northmacedonians” but they don’t have any right to use this termin, because the regime of Skopie is totalitarian, according the international institutions.
You can see more for the Greek minority “Northmacedonians”.
In the : northmacedonians.com. or in: Macedonian minority in FYROM,vardaraxios.wordpress.com
Sincerely
Stephanos Soririou
Historian Balkanologist
Charmin of the “movement “ New City Capital for Greek State” (somewhere in Macedonia)