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On Tue, 28 Apr 2009 04:06:44 -0700 (PDT), pavel <...@yahoo.com
How to Solve the Greek Dispute over Macedonia's Name
By Edward P. Joseph
(visiting fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies at
Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,557092,00.html
The 17-year conflict over Macedonia’s official state name has taken a
new turn. Greece’s successful effort to block Skopje’s entry into NATO
has fueled nationalist dynamics in both countries. But there is more
at stake here than a name: Macedonia’s stability -- and Kosovo’s --
rests on urgently finding a reasonable compromise with Greece.
Following a winter of discord over the question of Kosovo’s
independence, NATO heads of state convened in Bucharest in April,
largely unified on the Balkans. The alliance was poised to invite
three countries from the region to be new members: Albania, Croatia,
and Macedonia. Like its neighbors, Macedonia had fulfilled NATO’s
reform criteria. It had also met various political demands by Western
powers concerning the country’s peace agreement between the majority
ethnic Macedonians and minority Albanians. In addition, since 2003
Macedonia had continuously deployed troops to the US-led engagement in
Iraq as well as to the NATO mission in Afghanistan.
As the summit began, President Bush proclaimed the “strong support” of
the United States for Macedonia’s NATO bid. In contrast to the
contentiousness over Kosovo, virtually the entire alliance backed an
invitation for Macedonia. The lone exception was Greece because of its
long-standing objection to Macedonia’s name.1 But in the end,
Macedonia was denied an invitation.
In the aftermath of Bucharest, NATO’s Secretary General visited
Athens and Skopje, urging resolution of the problem by July so that
Macedonia can be admitted to the alliance on schedule with Albania and
Croatia. Unfortunately, the prospects for this are remote, in part
because NATO unwittingly strengthened the Greek position at Bucharest.
The truth is that few in Europe understand the seriousness of the
dispute. They scoff at the prospect of tiny Macedonia launching an
armed assault to recover the patrimony of Alexander the Great in
Greece’s adjacent province that is also called Macedonia.
Trivializing the matter this way distorts the problem and saps the
urgency required to deal with it. Identity clashes in Bosnia, Croatia,
and Kosovo were primary drivers of those conflicts. The identity
stress in Macedonia is no less pernicious. In other words, it is not
merely unfortunate that Macedonia did not get a bid to join NATO at
Bucharest; rather, it throws into question the entire basis for
Macedonia’s internal cohesion. By keeping the Macedonia question open,
Serbia, Russia, and other countries can advance their agenda to keep
other questions, including Kosovo’s final borders, open. Should
Macedonia again descend into conflict, it would almost certainly not
remain confined to its current borders.
The urgent task for Europe and the United States is to devise a
strategy to deal with the name dispute. This requires understanding
its dynamics. Both Macedonia and Greece see challenges to their
identities and both have behaved irresponsibly, with Athens resorting
to what the Greek scholar Anna Triandafyllidou calls “the strategic
manipulation of nationalist feelings by Greek politicians.”2 Clinging
to a narrow majority and warily eyeing the far right, the conservative
government led by Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis has been highly
vocal about the name issue. However, the record shows that no matter
which government is in power in Athens, its position is remarkably
constant. In Skopje, the center-right government of Nikola Gruevski
has blatantly exploited nationalist sentiment, taking the provocative
step of re-naming the airport after Alexander. But there is a
fundamental difference in approaches in the two countries: Greece
objects to the Macedonian claims to the legacy of Alexander the Great,
but Macedonia does not object to corresponding Greek claims.
This asymmetry yields great insight into the root causes of the
dispute -- and how to resolve it. Greece is bothered not just by the
name, but what the name represents -- an independent ethnic Macedonian
identity. The mere existence of the neighboring nation state founded
on national identity carries perceived existential risk for many
Greeks. This explains why no amount of written assurances by Skopje
can mollify Athens; it also helps explain why after 15 years of UN
mediation, the matter has defied compromise.
Endangered Stability
In 2001, Macedonia nearly produced the fourth major conflict since the
breakup of Yugoslavia. All the hallmarks of Balkan war were in place,
including ethnic flight. In a few short months of fighting, nearly ten
percent of the population was displaced. And as in neighboring
conflicts, identity was a major factor in the struggle. Leaders of the
substantial ethnic Albanian minority (about one-quarter of the
population) demanded and won painful concessions from the Macedonian
majority to use their language and fly the Albanian national flag. To
this day, the provisions of the Ohrid peace agreement that deal with
these issues are often contentious. To many Macedonians, the need to
change their constitution in order to affirm the Albanian identity was
an affront to their own national identity. It is axiomatic, then, that
the more threats mount to their own identity, the less inclined
Macedonians will be to continue to make concessions --not only on
identity related, but in other, equally painful spheres -- to their
Albanian partners.
No one knows this better than the ethnic Albanians of Macedonia
themselves, who have wisely backed the Macedonian position on the name
-- up until the Bucharest summit. According to a recent survey
conducted in the wake of the NATO summit, the number of citizens
opposed to changing the country’s name has dropped markedly. Analysts
believe that this reflects a dramatic change in opinion among
Albanians, almost all of whom now back concessions on the issue in
order to enter NATO. The failure to enter NATO was a special
disappointment for Albanians, for whom the American-led alliance holds
both a security and emotive attraction. Many now resent having to pay
the cost to protect symbols that mean nothing to them, but mean
everything to the country’s majority.
Snubbed at Bucharest, resentment is building among Macedonians as
well. Patriotic feeling among the majority Macedonians has hardened.
In part, this is the result of calculation by the governing
nationalist party, VMRO-DPMNE. Rather than work with the opposition to
forge a common front on the name issue after Bucharest, the prime
minister called snap elections to be held on June 1, leaving Macedonia
barely a month to meet the July NATO deadline to join the alliance in
concert with Albania and Croatia.
If the July deadline comes and goes without an invitation to join
NATO, then Macedonia’s EU prospects are also dim. After all, Greece
has an even more formidable position in the European Union than in
NATO, where Macedonia at least can count on the support of the
American superpower. This, too, has serious consequences for
Macedonian stability. Steadily improving prospects for entering NATO
and the European Union have been a primary motivating factor for the
majority Macedonian community to embrace both the painful Ohrid
concessions as well as the array of institutional reforms mandated by
Brussels. With NATO (and EU) entry now formally hostage to Greek
approval, the country is suddenly bereft of strategic orientation.
Not only Greek challenges, persistent Serbian challenges to the
Macedonian church, and Bulgarian challenges to the Macedonian language
and identity create anxiety about the permanence of the Macedonian
state. Serbia, with strong Russian support and the backing of some
European capitals, continues to mount stiff resistance to Kosovo’s
independence. Belgrade and its allies know that many Albanians link
Kosovo’s territorial integrity and that of Macedonia. Before
Bucharest, the anxiety in Skopje was that Serb-inspired partition of
Kosovo would prompt secessionist movement among ethnic Albanians in
Macedonia. After Bucharest, the reverse is true: The Serbian-Russian
agenda in Kosovo could be advanced by unrest in Macedonia for which
the potential remains substantial. In short, any trend toward
disintegration in Macedonia would have direct and unavoidable
consequences for Kosovo.
How to Solve the Greek Dispute over Macedonia's Name
By Edward P. Joseph
Part 2: The Greek Objection
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,557092-2,00.html
The place to begin to understand the name dispute is not ancient, but
rather recent history. In September 1995, just as the conclusive
negotiations over the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina were to begin in
Dayton, Ohio, American diplomats Richard Holbrooke and Christopher
Hill negotiated an “interim accord” to end a Greek embargo against its
neighbor, Macedonia. Among other things, the Macedonians pledged that
their constitution contains no territorial claims on Greece. Moreover,
they agreed to state that their constitution does not “constitute a
basis for interfering in the internal affairs of another state in
order to protect the status and rights of any persons in other states
who are not citizens of [Macedonia.]”
This dry passage reveals a key piece of the puzzle: palpable Greek
fear that the adjacent Macedonian state -- with an intact, distinct
Macedonian identity -- will become a platform for Greece’s minorities
to challenge the status quo. Under Greek law and practice, there are
no ethnic minorities. Human rights groups like Human Rights Watch have
documented systematic harassment and discrimination of those who
attempt to express group or cultural rights. Anyone who doubts that
such anxieties are the source of the problem need only read the words
of Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis on the eve of the Bucharest
summit:
Let me explain the problem as Greeks see it. When Marshal Tito of
Yugoslavia changed the name of his country’s southern province in 1944
from Vardar Banovina to the Social Republic of Macedonia, he did it to
stir up disorder in northern Greece in order to communize the area and
to gain an outlet to the Aegean Sea for his country.
This policy was also linked with the Greek civil war that at the time
claimed more than 100,000 Greek lives, brought untold destruction to
our country, and delayed our postwar reconstruction for a decade.
The name ‘Republic of Macedonia,’ therefore, is not a phantom fear for
us Greeks. It is linked with the deliberate plan to take over a part
of Greek territory that has had a Greek identity for more than three
millennia and is associated with immense pain and suffering by the
Greek people. 3
The problem is not that Bakoyannis is hyping Greek fears; it is that
she is conveying them frankly. The “deliberate plan” she describes is
not military; it is anticipated, inexorable pressure to acknowledge
the existence of the Macedonian minority in Greece.
The question is why does Greece find this so frightening? According to
Greek scholar Triandafyllidou, the answer is in the very construct of
the modern Greek nation state:
Since the achievement of national independence (1829-30), the Greek
state has engaged in a process of construction in which its ethnic
origins have been in remote antiquity. The historical trajectory of
the nation has been traced in a linear form and without ruptures or
discontinuities from antiquity to modernity. Thus, any changes which
have marked the past and the history of the national community have
been reconstructed in such a way that the nation is represented as a
homogeneous and compact unit. 4
In other words, ethnic minorities, particularly those with competing
claims to cultural totems, are incompatible with the Greek concept of
nation- and statehood. The Macedonian minority is especially neuralgic
for Greeks because it represents not only an imagined “outsider” or
“invader” of the nation, but a very real adversary with whom Greeks
clashed in living memory. As is clear from Bakoyannis’s article,
anxiety about identity and territory have become fused in Greek
consciousness, a legacy of the bitter Greek Civil War.
There are ample grounds for Macedonians to be bitter from that era as
well. As Human Rights Watch writes, “ethnic Macedonian political
refugees who fled northern Greece after the Greek Civil War of
1946-49, as well as their descendants who identify themselves as
Macedonians, are denied permission to regain their citizenship, to
resettle in, or even to visit northern Greece. By contrast, all of
these are possible for political refugees who define themselves as
Greeks.... Ultimately, the government is pursuing every avenue to deny
the Macedonians of Greece their ethnic identity.” 5
Ironically, the only minority recognized by Greece is the Muslim
(Turkish) minority in Western Thrace. The Lausanne Treaty of 1923 (and
the associated mass population transfers) established the reciprocal
rights of the Muslim minority in Greece and of the Greek minority in
Turkey. Despite mass displacement and mass loss of property, more than
half a century after the fighting there has been no corresponding
arrangement to address claims and regulate the affairs flowing from
Macedonian-Greek conflict during the Greek Civil War.
As for the Macedonians, their claim to identity is fundamentally
different. Slavs did not arrive into the Balkans until many centuries
after Alexander’s kingdom had expired. For Macedonians, the nexus to
Alexander is not linear, but based on geography, something inherently
shared with Greece and Bulgaria. While geography may indeed tempt some
extreme nationalists in Macedonia to maximalist territorial ambitions,
there is no serious claim to exclusivity of Alexander’s legacy.
Fixing the Mistakes of Bucharest
In sum, the name dispute is largely asymmetrical, with Greece laying
exclusive claim to the Macedonian identity. Exacerbating the problem
is another asymmetry: EU and NATO member Greece is substantially
richer and more powerful than Macedonia. In the run-up to Bucharest,
under US pressure to come to terms, Macedonia for the first time
agreed to a different name for international use. It accepted UN
mediator Matthew Nimetz’s “final proposal”: “Republic of Macedonia
(Skopje)” as its reference for international use. However, Greece
flatly rejected it.
To avert an outright Greek veto at Bucharest, allies inserted a
paragraph in the final communiqué that lauded Macedonia’s “hard work
and commitment” to NATO values and agreed to extend an invitation “as
soon as a mutually acceptable solution to the ‘name issue’ has been
reached.”6 To diplomats, the communiqué represented the best
alternative to a direct summit confrontation, tacitly acknowledging
that Macedonia has met the criteria for membership, and that --
following agreement with Greece over the name -- an invitation could
be extended by a simple meeting of the North Atlantic Council at the
level of ambassadors. In fact, by ignoring Greek undertakings, NATO
handed Greece a victory.7 In Washington, the Greek ambassador exulted:
“NATO endorsed our position at Bucharest....The requirement to solve
the name issue is no longer a Greek position, it is now a NATO
position and a multilateral matter,” he told an audience at Georgetown
University.8
Already there are signs that Greece is mounting pressure on Macedonia
to buckle and accept its position in advance of a European Commission
decision on whether to recommend a date for accession talks this fall.
And there are also signs that Athens’ position on the name has
hardened as well. Sources with knowledge of the negotiations say that
Greece is advancing its demands not only that the new name for
Macedonia contain a geographical reference (like “Upper Macedonia”),
but that this new name be used in all contexts. Athens’ position on
“scope of use” may grow to include bilateral relations with other
countries, and even Macedonia’s own internal use (for example,
stipulating the use of “Upper Macedonia” on the Macedonian passport).
Greece is also resisting Macedonia’s demands that its language and
nationality be formally recognized by the United Nations.
There are only three possible outcomes for the dispute: continued
stalemate; Macedonian capitulation; or Greek willingness to
compromise. Continued stalemate is the most likely outcome because
Greece faces no external cost to maintaining its position. Athens’
approach suggests that it sees little incompatibility with its
substantial private investment in Macedonia and that country’s
continued limbo status.
Macedonian capitulation to the Greek position would mean negating the
Macedonian identity. As described above, this would pose serious
complications to advancing the peace arrangement with Albanians. It
also would only encourage related Bulgarian and Serbian assaults on
the Macedonian identity, further straining the cohesion of the
country.
Only a fair compromise, one that minimally protects the Macedonian
identity while addressing the core Greek demand for a name change
serves the cause of European stability. Given the disparity in power
between Macedonia and Greece, UN mediation alone is unlikely to
achieve this. And given the unwillingness of European capitals to take
on the burden of confronting Athens, American leadership is once again
essential. That means that NATO, where American influence is greatest,
offers the best vehicle for success.
The solution, ironically, lies in embracing -- to the fullest extent
-- the Greek assertion that the name dispute is now a multilateral
matter. Rather than adopt a counterproductive tone of confrontation,
the United States must rhetorically step to the side of the Greeks.
Bringing along those allies aware of the risks for Kosovo and
Macedonia, the United States should move to convene the North Atlantic
Council (NAC) for an urgent session to accept the Greek interpretation
of the Bucharest communiqué. But it should not stop there. The NAC
must simultaneously ask the NATO Secretary General to provide a “full
and complete report on all dimensions of the name dispute” within 30
days. The NAC resolution should cite the requirement in NATO’s
founding document “for peaceful and friendly international relations”
and related obligations in the charter of the United Nations
(particularly on human rights). As a result, the NATO Secretary
General will have to turn to an array of organizations and
individuals, including the UN mediator, the OSCE High Commissioner on
National Minorities, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and
private organizations like Human Rights Watch.
In short, NATO would begin to move down the very road toward the
examination of Macedonian minority rights in Greece that sits at the
root of the Greek objection to Macedonia’s name in the first place.
The Greek government would pay a heavy political price for such an
outcome.
Of course, Athens will see through the ploy and either attempt to
block it or veto. This will be complicated. First, a veto would put
its interpretation of the summit communiqué in jeopardy. Second, as in
Bucharest, Athens will be forced to accept the unenviable role of
spoiler. Unlike in Bucharest, however, it will be deprived of the
political benefit of standing up to the US president. The NAC
ordinarily meets in obscurity, at the level of ambassadors.
Furthermore, the draft resolution will be written to embrace the Greek
position on the communiqué, not to humiliate or punish Athens. Third,
if it vetoes, Athens will have to rue the costs of having to carry
another permanent grievance within the alliance. Already it has the
annoyance of constant Turkish objections to alliance meetings with the
European Union in the presence of Greek-ally Cyprus. It will hardly
boost its case by obstructing a reasonable provision to address the
very dispute that it insists is an alliance matter.
In sum, the way out of the name dispute is to recognize both the
seriousness of the problem and its root causes, and urgently devise a
transatlantic strategy that addresses them. The problem is
asymmetrical, both in terms of the Greek objection to the Macedonian
identity, and Greece’s power relative to Macedonia. Only by
introducing the full dimension of the problem, including the question
of the Macedonian minority in Greece, will Athens have an incentive to
compromise -- and will more instability be averted.
Edward P. Joseph is a visiting fellow at the School of Advanced
International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.
1) France, which counts on Greece for consistent support on ESDP and
its bid for a “Mediterranean Union,” supported Greece in its
objections to Macedonia’s entry under its name.
2) A. Triandafyllidou, M. Calloni, and A. Mikrakis, “New Greek
Nationalism,” Sociological Research Online, vol. 2, no. 1 (1997).
3) Dora Bakoyannis, “The View from Greece,” International Herald
Tribune, April 1, 2008.
4) “New Greek Nationalism” (see fn. 2).
5) Ibid.
6) Bucharest Summit Declaration, issued by the Heads of State and
Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council
in Bucharest on April 3, 2008, paragraph 21.
7) In late April, Macedonian President Branko Crvenkovski wrote UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon alleging that the Greek veto at
Bucharest amounted to a “flagrant violation of Article 11 from the
Interim Accord, according to which, Greece has legally undertaken not
to object to Macedonia’s admission to international organizations.”
Crvenkovski also noted that Greece’s position “could have long-term
destabilizing consequences in the region of south-eastern Europe.”
Reported in various Macedonian print media on April 22, 2008.
8) Ambassador Alexandros Mallias speaking publicly at Georgetown
University, April 15, 2008.
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