By Denko Maleski
In 1995, as a representative of Macedonia, I attended the ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of the United Nations. Back then, I concluded that the world wasn’t as harsh on small states like ours. It was the “unipolar moment” of American dominance in global politics. The key themes were respect for borders, individual and collective human rights, democracy, poverty eradication, and solidarity.
Listening to speeches from representatives of major powers at the UN General Assembly in New York and the San Francisco theater where the UN Charter was signed in 1945, I recalled history lessons about the collapse of the League of Nations. I remembered Emperor Haile Selassie’s futile plea to the League to defend Ethiopia’s sovereignty when it was invaded by Italy, and his warning in Geneva that failing to protect Ethiopia would ultimately lead to a similar fate for others—a warning tragically realized with the onset of World War II.
In 1995, we had been UN members for two years, and times were favorable for small, weak states. Not so for Russia. Sergei Lavrov, then Russia’s UN representative and now its Foreign Minister, was “just one of us” in the Eastern European group. Russia had lost its status as a great power, and the West deemed its attempts to regain that status an impossible mission. A Dutch ambassador and later NATO representative in Macedonia, Nick Biegman, described Russia as “a nuclear Kuwait”—a country possessing only nuclear weapons and little else. But even then, no one imagined that someone rational would threaten nuclear war to reclaim a seat among the great powers. After all, nuclear war is inherently suicidal.
Yet, after repeated warnings to the U.S. not to meddle in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin did just that—threatened a suicidal war. The lesson, as old as Thucydides, is clear: when a great power parks its military truck on another great power’s doorstep, as the U.S. did in Ukraine by expanding NATO, the threatened power will try to remove it, even with nuclear threats. Whether these threats are a bluff or genuine is something no rational actor wants to test.
It appears this reality has been grasped by Trump’s new administration, which seems intent on moving the misplaced military truck in Ukraine away from Russia’s gates, avoiding the risk of nuclear war. However, the consequences for international relations will be significant.
Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has already set a precedent, violating international law and the UN Charter’s core principle of inviolable borders. This shift emboldens others to consider territorial grabs when deemed a “vital national economic or security interest” of a major power. Few are scandalized when Trump, for instance, floats the idea of military intervention in Panama to reclaim the Panama Canal—built by the U.S. and returned to Panama through agreements under President Carter. Trump resents the high transit tariffs and China’s influence over the canal, likening it to a Chinese military truck wrongly parked at America’s gates. Similarly, Greenland is on Trump’s wishlist as a resource-rich territory, while Canada is urged to become the U.S.’s 51st state to reduce the costs of bilateral economic and security arrangements.
The world is entering a new era—a power-balancing era among major states that shatters the legal facade concealing the perennial struggle for power. International law is expected to adapt to this new reality, as the reverse is impossible. The contours of this new order remain uncertain, but one thing is clear: it will not favor small states like North Macedonia.
The best our politicians can do to ensure the country’s security and prosperity is to resolve disputes with neighbors where their voices can still be heard. When it comes to the policies of great powers, they have no influence whatsoever. And one more thing: they should stop citing principles and legal clauses as excuses for inaction.