The guests who won’t come calling

Today is turning into a Balkans day.  It must have been less than 5 minutes after I posted about the SecState visit to the Balkans with Lady Ashton that I got a note complaining that they weren’t going to Macedonia.  I’d of course be perfectly happy if they did go to Macedonia, but I’m not sure the Macedonians would be delighted.  When the EU and the U.S. come calling, they do it wanting results.

In Belgrade and Pristina, they will be looking for further progress on the bilateral dialogue, which already had a big moment last week with a meeting between the two prime ministers.  A settlement of north Kosovo is presumably in the works, though I doubt it will be full-fledged by the end of the month.  I don’t really know what they can hope for in Sarajevo.  The political situation there is a shambles. They may be content to give a pep talk.

In Skopje, they would necessarily be looking for progress on the “name” issue, which means they would have to go to Greece as well.  I can think of a lot of reasons why they might not want to do that.  In addition, Washington and Brussels have come to believe that Macedonia’s Prime Minister Gruevski is a big part of the problem in the decades-long search for a name (other than Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM) that Greece will accept.  He seems to think he is better off just leaving things as they are, since everyone except Greeks calls the country Macedonia (even Greek officials don’t object any more).

The big problem for Gruevski and Macedonia is that they have been blocked from entering NATO because of the “name” issue.  This is unjust, as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said clearly and unequivocally last December.  But Athens has convinced Washington not to bulldoze it into accepting FYROM, despite the Interim Accord that obligates Greece to do so.

I imagine that if Gruevski rang up the State Department and told them he is willing to accept a “qualifier” (as in North Macedonia) that he might get a SecState and HiRep visit.  He does not want to do that because Greece is insisting that any solution be used for all purposes, including every time the name of the country is mentioned in its constitution.  I imagine that is at least as difficult for him to swallow as it would be for other prime ministers.

I am notoriously sympathetic with the Macedonians on this question:  I think any country (and people) is entitled to call itself what it wants, as in Estados Unidos Mexicanos.  Also “Americans,” which is a term some of my Latin American and Canadian friends think should be available to them as well as citizens of the United States.  Fat chance they have of stopping us from using it as we like, or we them.

I don’t for a moment believe that Skopje has designs on Greek territory.  Certainly its claims, if it had any, would be no better than those of Mexico on large parts of the United States, and the power relationship between the two countries is similar. Greece needs to get over its fear of Macedonia and unworthy defiance of the ICJ decision.

But none of that is likely to get Skopje a visit from Hillary Clinton and Lady Ashton.