Cause to celebrate
Why should you be pleased that NATO has invited Macedonia to join the Alliance? It’s a small country (2 million people) tucked away and landlocked on the Balkan peninsula without even much of a highway running through it. One quarter of its population is Albanian and 10% are all sorts of other things: Serbs, Croats, Vlachs and who knows what. It only declared independence in 1991 and has spent most of its existence squabbling with Greece, which claims Macedonia’s name exclusively for one of its provinces.
First and foremost, the NATO invitation will, one hopes, give both Macedonia and Greece the courage to end the squabbling. Skopje and Athens have negotiated an elaborate agreement that changes the official name (for all uses) to Republic of Northern Macedonia and resolves a host of contentious details concerning the country’s language, cultural history, textbooks, minorities, irredentist claims, economic cooperation….All that is needed is final approval in the two countries’ parliaments and in a referendum in Macedonia. That is a high water mark in a 25-year effort to resolve the issue.
Second, the invitation sends a strong signal in two directions:
- to the other countries in the Balkans who are not yet members of either NATO or the EU.
- to the Russians, who have been determined to slow if not block NATO expansion.
The signal to the rest of the Balkans is just this: if you have the political courage to take on and resolve tough issues, the trans-Atlantic institutions will hold their doors open to you. First NATO, then the EU. Solve your inter-ethnic issues and problems with your neighbors, reform your economies and political systems to reduce corruption and prevent state capture, and you will get a place at the table in the two most important alliances ever created.
To the Russians, the signal is just as clear: you may try to block NATO expansion and try to drive a wedge between Europe and the US, but you will not succeed. Even the relatively weak states in the Balkans will stand up to you. Macedonia has already expelled some of your intelligence agents trying to sow dissension from the “name” agreement. Montenegro last year, Macedonia this year. Maybe Kosovo the year after. Then only Serbia and Republika Srpska will stand between the Alliance and a Balkans whole and free. You can try to shore up your proxies, but they stand to gain more joining the West than continuing to bet on Vladimir Putin.
Third, NATO membership will add Macedonia’s small army and military capabilities to an Alliance that needs them. The Macedonians have already served years embedded in the Vermont National Guard in Afghanistan, where their commanding general thought they performed as well as US troops in combat. Who knows where they will be needed next, whether by NATO or the EU military structure? They are still short of the 2% of GDP goal NATO set for 2024, but their invitation gives Macedonia every incentive to reach it, sooner rather than later.
Of course in the scheme of things, “Northern Macedonia” in NATO is a small victory. It isn’t nearly as earthshaking as an American president who can’t find anything good to say about the Alliance while praising the Russian president who attacked the American electoral system. But it’s a good thing and something to celebrate.
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