By Denko Maleski
“The West and the EU, as we knew them, no longer exist,” declared Ursula von der Leyen.
What happened to the West?
The fate of our country may depend on the correct answer to this question.
Because the changed global geopolitics will have an impact on the Western Balkans, whose wars in the 1990s were labeled as “unfinished wars.” Namely, violently interrupted by the American military intervention that defeated Serbia, the intention was, as Clinton recently said, to give the peoples of the region time to see the benefits of peace and to opt for integration into the zone of European democracies, which, after all, do not wage war among themselves.
What followed was the costly American-European project of preserving Balkan multiethnicity within the administrative borders of the former federation, which were declared international.
But the “unipolar moment” in world politics has come to an end.
The dramatic changes in the relations among great powers that began in 2017 with Russia’s occupation of Crimea, and later in 2022 with the Russian invasion of independent Ukraine, along with the rise of China’s military and economic power and the announced withdrawal of America from the Ukrainian war, inevitably affect the Western Balkans.
We must be aware: the shift does not lead us forward from the past wars, but drags us back to the 1990s—perhaps, if we are not extremely careful, even toward the completion of the “unfinished wars.”
It would be enough for the centers of power such as Washington and Brussels to throw up their hands and abandon the Western Balkans under the justification that European methods don’t work here, only Balkan ones, and to turn to their new priorities.
America toward Asia, where it must counter the growing economic and military power of China; and Europe toward building its new security structure—with or without America.
That the West as we know it no longer exists is also shown by the fact that, for the first time in the history of American-European relations, Europe has lost its status as a priority in American foreign policy.
Russia’s resistance to economic sanctions and to Western weapons in the hands of brave Ukrainians, along with Russia’s nuclear blackmail, has melted the will of the world’s most powerful state, America, to continue the war in Ukraine.
Our greatest friend and protector has abandoned Europe.
It has abandoned Ukraine in the middle of a war that it itself provoked in order to weaken the rival nuclear power.
Now we understand what Kissinger meant: “To be America’s enemy is dangerous, but to be its friend can be fatal.”
Abandoned, Ukrainians and Europeans today flounder like fish out of water, seeking a way out without their main ally and initiator of the conflict.
Trump is determined to restore relations with Russia, regardless of the consequences for his former allies in the war against a rival great power.
And more than that: a division of Ukraine between America and Russia is underway.
The savior of humanity from a possible nuclear clash in a Third World War, Donald Trump, now seeks to collect payment for American support for a war in which a million young Ukrainians died, through a deal for “rare minerals.”
Russia has already been paid—by annexing four regions into the Russian Federation, and before that, Crimea. Brutally.
And what do I read on portals and hear on TV screens in Macedonia today?
A new generation in positions of decision-making and influence, as if they understand nothing of what’s been said above.
They seek the solution in strengthening Macedonian nationalism by declaring the past three decades as “decades of Macedonian humiliation.”
To win elections and preserve privileges, they diminish our own achievement—a state internationally recognized, a UN member, and 35 years of peaceful existence.
I get the impression that even if Goce Delchev himself, who fought for an independent state, had brought Macedonia into the UN, Macedonian nationalists wouldn’t have attended the celebration—because of “FYROM,” and later “North.”
Today, they claim that yes, Europe and the world have changed, but so have we: the era of “three decades of humiliation” of the Macedonian people is over, and as a state we will now “show our teeth” in defense of our dignity.
No more concessions—on anything.
They don’t have to believe all the words I’ve written or spoken—that the success of the Macedonian state should be celebrated in a world where, through the millennia, “the strong do what they can and the weak do what they must”—
but if they haven’t learned that basic lesson of international politics from the example of Ukraine, then there is no saving us from them.
I keep thinking: are they aware of the “unfinished Balkan wars” that could flare up again in a grim, every-man-for-himself world of violence and hatred?
And that the West might no longer be there to help us?
