By Denko Maleski
As someone involved in shaping and implementing Macedonian foreign policy, I have no objection to the Prime Minister, as he recently did at the EU-Balkan Summit, invoking the achievements of the state and the sacrifices we’ve made to move closer to the EU over the past decades of our independence. In other words, I have no issue with him referencing all that other parties and individuals have carried on their shoulders in support of the country’s Euro-Atlantic orientation.
Admittedly, it strikes me as a bit hypocritical, knowing that the current government often labels as “betrayal” at home the very accomplishments they boast about abroad. But this only proves that even the party of Macedonian nationalists is adapting to the realities of international politics. After all, every one of our successes has come in the form of bitter compromises—compromises that our small, landlocked, multiethnic state had to make just to survive. Moreover, these were compromises that might have been more favorable had they not been obstructed by the predecessors in the leadership of his own party.
It’s not as though people have suddenly reached their limit with “concessions” and that we will now refuse to yield “even a millimeter,” as the Prime Minister once proclaimed. On the contrary, I believe that today, in the era of the internet, far more people understand international politics and are willing to listen to reasonable, compromise-based solutions. But these solutions must come from the minds of politicians, from the state’s political leadership. Just as in the days of radicalized nationalisms within the Yugoslav federation, when Macedonia, swimming against the tide, pursued a policy of peaceful self-determination.
The irony of history (and a stroke of luck for Macedonia) was that instead of the nationalists—who were the loudest advocates for a rapid break from the union and for resistance to all forms of external pressure—it was the “pro-Yugoslav” politicians, like our first President Kiro Gligorov, who paved the way for international recognition. Such individuals were willing to engage in dialogue and find compromise solutions to protect the state from the fires of ethnic wars at home and to avoid provoking military interventions from abroad. At no point during those harrowing 1990s did they have the luxury of claiming they would not concede “even a millimeter more.”
Today, those leading an internationally recognized state and NATO member might feel that they have that luxury. But only in the minds of the new authorities, who lack experience on the global stage. In the realm of real international politics—that luxury does not exist. This is a lesson already embedded in the final document of the EU-Balkan Summit: strict adherence to the Prespa Agreement, which the ruling party disputes, and the Treaty with Bulgaria, which it outright rejects.
This is the lesson the new government will inevitably learn. The price will be paid in wasted time on the path to full EU membership. If we strip away the comforting diplomatic messages and hopes for lifting the veto, the message from Brussels to our government is clear: the EU “will not budge even a millimeter.”
Source: Libertas.mk
