North Macedonia is success story, may it continue!

Here are the remarks I made via Zoom to the Prespa Forum Dialogue in Skopje this morning:

1. First let me say what a pleasure it is to celebrate 20 years since the Ohrid Framework Agreement.
2. My friends in the Balkans often say nothing has changed since the wars of 1992-2001, or that things were better in the 1990s.
3. I beg to differ.
4. I first met diplomats from what was then called FYROM at the United Nations in the early 1990s. They were suspicious and secretive, even hostile toward Americans and their values.
5. You only need to look at the agenda of this conference to realize how much has changed: it opened with sessions on business and civil society, then you talked about accession to the European Union and women’s empowerment as well as the role of diplomacy.
6. That agenda would have been inconceivable 20 years ago.
7. Where are the sessions on security? On ethnic identity? On Balkan history?
8. Those issues are not forgotten, but they no longer command the attention once they did.
9. Yes, there has been progress in the Balkans.
10. Perhaps most of all in what officials now call North Macedonia, but which I will occasionally call just “Macedonia,” as permitted by Article 7 paragraph 5 of the Prespa Agreement.
11. Anyone who objects should ask themselves whether they always call my country “the United States of America,” or sometimes shorten it to “United States” or just “America.”
12. Macedonia is a success story.
13. It survived the 1990s wars of Yugoslav succession, the influx of Kosovo refugees, the uncivil war of 2001, a decade of rapid and necessarily disruptive economic reform, an abusive prime minister, an attack on parliament, contested elections, and waves of crisis coming from outside the country: the 2007/8 financial crisis, the Greek debt debacle, the refugee influx, and most recently COVID19.
14. Along the way, Macedonia has better integrated its society, experienced substantial economic growth, demarcated its Kosovo border, improved its electoral process, resolved the “name” issue, deployed troops in Afghanistan embedded with the Vermont Nation Guard, joined NATO, gained EU candidacy, and tried to resolve its historical and linguistic issues with Bulgaria.
15. The Ohrid and Prespa agreements merit special mention, because more than any others in the Balkans they aim not only to solve immediate problems but also to lay the basis for permanent resolution of the underlying drivers of conflict.
16. Ohrid institutionalized minority rights in Macedonia in a way that has proven durable, even if still not entirely satisfactory to some. Prespa opened the door to a fuller understanding of Greek as well as Macedonian ethnic identity.
17. Both were done as joint US/EU projects, working with the Macedonian government. This is the most important lesson we should learn from the past 20 years: when Brussels and Washington truly share an enterprise with local authorities, it is far more likely to bring positive results.
18. I wish I could say as much about the Dayton peace accords, which became a joint US/EU product only after their signature and now require major reform to disempower the ethnic nationalists who fought the Bosnian wars and have strangled the peace.
19. North Macedonia is far more advanced. Enough so that it can now focus as never before on the economic and social welfare of Macedonia’s citizens.
20. The clouds on the horizon now come mainly from outside Macedonia—Bulgaria’s claims about its own ethnic identity and Serbia’s renewal of its territorial ambitions in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Montenegro, which threaten to de-stabilize the region.
21. I hardly need mention the too frequent rumble of Russian troublemaking and the temptations of Chinese financing.
22. I trust North Macedonia will confront these challenges in the same spirit as it has resolved others: with determination to protect its own vital interests while accommodating when it can those of others.
23. I admire that approach. It is sensible and realistic, but also ambitious and idealistic. I might even hope Skopje’s idealism and pragmatism are contagious and will spread to Belgrade, Pristina, and Sarajevo.
24. Twenty years ago, Jim Pardew, may his memory be a blessing, helped negotiate the Ohrid agreement, along with Francois Leotard. They worked on the basis of ideas put forward by Bob Frowick, then the OSCE representative, may his memory also be a blessing.
25. Americans and Europeans alike should feel pleased and proud that those efforts have paid dividends: we can now count North Macedonia as an ally and friend that shares Western values.
26. Let me conclude by saying: I hope I will see the day Macedonia accedes to the European Union!