Time for Athens to export stability

I spent a good part of yesterday on one of my least favorite topics:  the name of the country whose capital is Skopje.

I started it with yesterday’s post.  The NATOniks on Twitter then told me how out of it I was to think that the Alliance could spare the seconds needed to admit Skopje as a member.  After all, it has a hefty agenda:  Afghanistan, where it will decide what has already been decided, and smart defense, where it will decide something that will not be implemented.  Enlargement, they said, is just not part of the narrative.  They also suggested nothing, absolutely nothing, would change Greece’s veto of Macedonian membership.

What about a phone call from the President of the United States asking Athens to stand down in his hometown of Chicago at the NATO Summit there this weekend?  It would be The FYROM* entering NATO, not “Macedonia,” in accordance with a 1995 agreement the parties to this “name” dispute signed (and Greece violated, according to the International Court of Justice, when it blocked The FYROM’s entry to NATO at the last summit in Bucharest).  Athens, after all, might find it useful to build up some credits in Washington.

One of my Twitter friends suggested yesterday that Greece had won the ICJ case because the court declined to order Greece not to repeat what it had done in Bucharest.  Here I need only cite what the Court said, citing a previous decision:

“[a]s a general rule, there is no reason to suppose that a State whose act or conduct has been declared wrongful by the Court will repeat that act or conduct in the future, since its good faith must be presumed”

Misreading this as suggesting the ICJ did not find Greece in the wrong is beyond my ability.

By the end of the day, I was having a perfectly reasonable conversation with Greeks interested in resolving the issue, and seemingly willing to think about The FYROM membership in NATO, if only that does not entail postponing a solution to the name issue forever.  That is a reasonable concern, one that could be met by taking the issue to arbitration if it is not solved within a specified time frame.  I imagine there are half dozen other solutions that people brainier than I am will think up.  It is important also to note that Greece can block Macedonia’s process of gaining membership in the EU at any stage, so it will not have given up all its leverage if it allows The FYROM into NATO.

Greece today is in an uncomfortable position.  It is in clear violation of an ICJ decision and is exporting instability to its neighbors and friends.  It is going to be really hard to prevent the export of economic instability, since the electorate is rejecting austerity and causing real problems for the Euro and the European Union that will ripple far and wide.  Check out your 401k today to see what I mean.

But the export of political instability is avoidable.  Ethnic tension in Macedonia is on the increase, in part due to failure to get into NATO.  This is a treasured goal of its Albanian population, one of whose political leaders told me last summer that it was vital to his ability to contain and counter growing pan-Albanian sentiment.  Pan-Albanianism is also growing in Kosovo, where Belgrade makes no secret of its desire to partition the North, so that it can hold on to the largest single concentration of Serbs in Kosovo (even if most of them live farther south).

Partition in Macedonia and Kosovo would lead quickly and irrevocably to partition in Bosnia, and guess where else?  Cyprus.  Thus, Greece’s resistance to Macedonian membership in NATO and refusal to recognize Kosovo are politicies that risk undermining one of Athens’ most cherished goals:  reunification of Cyprus.

The first law of holes is to stop digging.  Athens has a real stake in the unity and territorial integrity of The FYROM, Kosovo, Bosnia and Cyprus.  Greece should quietly reverse its position and allow The FYROM into NATO at Chicago, provided it gets a firm commitment to resolve the name issue within a defined time frame.  That would clear one problem and gain Athens a good deal of credit. Then I’ll want to talk with Greek friends about recognizing Kosovo, which would remove still another issue that risks precipitating partition in Cyprus.

It is time for Athens to export stability.

*The FYROM, for the uninitiated, is “The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,” the name by which the country entered the United Nations and many other organizations soon after independence.

PS:  I thought you all would enjoy this reaction from one of my Twitter followers:  “Greece is and always was a lighthouse of stability in the region. NATO member, EC member, EU zone member and u claim instability?”