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Please, Athens, prove me wrong

Is Greece in the Balkans?  Of course the answer geographically is yes.  But its leaders now have to decide whether it is still culturally part of the Balkans–where many games are zero sum, with one side’s loss being the other’s gain.  Or whether Greece has really become part of Europe, where at least in good times a rising tide is expected to lift all boats.

The occasion is today’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision that Athens violated a 1995 “interim accord” when it blocked Skopje’s entry into NATO at the Bucharest summit in 2008 under the awkward name “The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.”  The court went on to decline to order Athens not to do it again, saying:

As the Court previously explained, “[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”

How I wish that such presumption were justified!

These are not good times for Europe in general, but especially not for Greece.  It is paying a high price for fiscal profligacy.  Many in Europe are still expecting a formal default on its sovereign debt, followed by who knows what:  exit from the euro?  German receivership? Greeks are furious at their government for the austerity it has been forced to impose and what many regard as the unfair distribution of the burdens of fiscal adjustment. The kind of growth that might lift Greece out of its debt trap seems nowhere in the forecasts.

I’m afraid this will not put Athens in a mood to do the right thing by Macedonia:  accept it for NATO membership as The FYROM and go back to the negotiating table with renewed determination to find a more permanent solution.  We have the unfortunate and recent precedent of Serbia, which also recently lost its case when the ICJ advised that Kosovo’s declaration of independence breached no international prohibition.  Did Serbia change its tune?  No.  It simply said the ICJ had answered the wrong question (a question posed, yes, by Belgrade).

Please, Athens, prove me wrong:  show us all that you have left behind the beggar-thy-neighbor politics of the Balkans and instead want to demonstrate truly European credentials by unblocking membership in NATO for The FYROM.  That in turn would allow Montenegro an invitation to enter as well, giving renewed vitality to the Alliance and reenergizing the Balkans to proceed with the many reforms the Euro-Atlantic institutions require.