On Macedonian Matters
An open letter to the internationals who work with or in and report or write on Macedonia
May 13, 2024
Dear internationals –
Most of you (but not all) obviously have a serious problem with those Macedonians who simply want to be acknowledged as Macedonians, as Europeans with a little bit of dignity and honor. This is obvious not just to me, but also to them, as evidenced by how you write and speak about them.
With a new president and soon-to-be government in Macedonia, one that is distinctly center-right and, since 1991, openly pro-European and pro-NATO in their statements and writings, you go out of your way to portray them as otherwise. Three examples:
From the media:
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on Macedonia’s newly elected President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova: “….and she is widely expected to pursue a more skeptical line on the country’s long-standing efforts to join the European Union.” Not true. Both the newly elected president and incoming government are pro-European; but they refuse to countenance Bulgaria’s childish demands that Macedonia, the first one being that Macedonia change its constitution to include Bulgarians. Far from being “skeptical” the new leaders of Macedonia have simply proposed alternatives, such as Macedonia’s constitution could change to reflect the above, but only once Macedonia finally joins the EU for the simple reason that they — and most Macedonians — believe that Bulgaria will continue to make more outlandish demands (Bulgaria believes that Macedonians are Bulgarians and that the Macedonian language is a dialect of Bulgaria). But for you internationals, “there is no alternative.”
From the think thanks:
The German Marshall Fund on President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova “….but her performance could boost the pro-Russia VMRO-DPMNE’s chances in the all-important contest for the legislature.” A complete lie. VMRO-DPMNE has championed Macedonia’s EU and NATO membership since 1991; they have never been “pro-Russia.” Fun fact: the article is written by two young Bulgarian members of the German Marshall Fund.
From the diplomatic corps:
The former Swedish Ambassador to Macedonia, Mats Staffansson, commenting on Siljanovska-Davkova’s refusal to use the “N” word during her inauguration, wrote on X: “Not the brightest move by the new president, I think. To re-open the “name issue” with Greece after five years will not exactly make the already far too long road of (Macedonian emoji flag) to the EU any shorter. But I guess (emoji flag of Russia) sees new opportunities.” Same old trope we have seen before: the right in Macedonia is “pro-Russia.”
I assume y’all do this for one of two reasons. First, most of you diplomats, bureaucrats, journalists, think tankers, academics, and politicians, have a worldview that can be described as progressive, broadly speaking. Your identity and citizenship is “citizen of the world.” An apparatchik working in the State Department in Washington, DC has more in common with the political reporter of the Financial Times in London than she does with a citizen of, say, Wichita Falls, Texas. Your god is your Self. Your history is your increasing rank, your titles, and your progression in the organizations in which you work, the fancy hotels you have stayed in, and all the trappings of your temporary power. At the same time you are condescending and smug towards those who believe in God, are proud of their own identity and citizenship, and have a history. These people (whether they are in your own country or in Macedonia), you believe to be bitter clingers, backwards, stupid, and country bumpkins who need your own enlightened benevolence. As Squealer told the animals in Animal Farm, “No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”
The second possible reason is that, by “piling on” so to speak, the Macedonians, you do want this to become a self-fulfilling prophecy: you want the Macedonians to run into the open arms of Uncle Vladimir so that you will finally have the evidence of what you claim today and can shout “A-ha! Pro-Russians!” If that is the case, you are vile, cretinous wretches and a pox upon you.
In any event, you make promises, and then break them. You twist words and hide behind old, tired statements. And you openly tell lies. But the Macedonians see right through your lies. They also know that you know that you are lying. This is why they don’t respect you or your program. You tell the Macedonians you have values, but what you lack are virtues, chief among the virtues, honesty. And you have no use for notions of basic fairness and decency, thinking such things are for suckers.
How did we get to this point? First, when Macedonia applied to join the UN, Greece objected to its membership based solely on the name of the country, an unprecedented moment. Macedonia had met all the criteria for joining but Greece said, “Oh, just one more thing.” Second, Macedonia and Greece then signed the Interim Accord which allowed Macedonia to join the UN and start moving toward EU and NATO membership. Along the way, Greece violated, on multiple occasions, the Interim Accord.
Third, we now find ourselves at this juncture in time because the-then Macedonian government didn’t just ignore but trampled over the Lockean “consent of the governed” in the referendum of September 30, 2018 which asked Macedonians if they were willing to change the name of their country to join the EU and NATO. The referendum famously failed but the Socialist government, partnered with a junior (that grew to become senior) ethnic Albanian party borne out of a terrorist operation that never cared (nor cares today) about the name of Macedonia and Macedonian identity, said the referendum was valid anyway and then used bribes, arrests, threats of arrests and more to convince a handful of members of parliament to vote with them to approve the so-called Prespa agreement and change Macedonia’s constitution.
In big issues — and changing the name of your own country should self-evidently be a “big issue” — you really should have buy-in from at least 51% of the citizens.
And the promise for this? Greece would drop its demands which would lead to the sunny uplands of NATO and EU membership. And true: Macedonia did achieve NATO membership. But then a funny thing happened on the way to the EU: Bulgaria saw that Greece got what it wanted and decided it wanted in the game of using bilateral issues, manufactured by them, to blackmail Macedonia. And here we are today.
Since Macedonia’s independence as a modern-day nation-state, you all have hidden behind your old, tired statements, my favorite being a version of “Well, Greece and Bulgaria are in the clubs and you are not, so you just have to suck it up and do what they say.” In repeating this line ad nauseum you have proven yourselves to be cowards and moral lepers.
And you will now exact your revenge because the Macedonians have dared to stand up for themselves. I’m going to address this issue in an open letter to the Macedonians explaining how you will do this, but one example is immediate: your increasingly liberal use of the adjective “North Macedonian” in describing everything that is and should simply be, Macedonian. You are deliberately doing this to create “North Macedonians” out of whole cloth, a people that have never existed, do not exist, and never will exist.
These are vitally important issues for Macedonians that go directly to the heart of the existence of Macedonia: its continuation as an independent nation-state. Consider this (which I wrote in September 2020):
Luke Coffey is a foreign policy expert at the Heritage Foundation* in Washington, DC, a conservative and influential think tank. Coffey, a friend of mine, has been to Macedonia on several occasions and is also a friend of Macedonia. Writing before the so-called “Prespa agreement” was even signed, he wrote that “It is in our [the United States] interest that there be political stability in Macedonia. Any name Macedonia negotiates with Greece must have a popular mandate of support or it risks instability in the country. Macedonians must feel like any agreement preserves their unique identity. Otherwise, failure to get domestic consensus on the agreement could lead to bigger problems and instability in the future.”
My point is this, which you can read here: The identity of Macedonians is a national security issue.
I know that the proverbial deck is stacked against Macedonia. I know that if you all disappeared today, a new group of folks — exactly like you — would come on the scene tomorrow because you have captured the institutions through your long march through those institutions and raised a new generation of diplomats, bureaucrats, journalists, think tankers, academics and politicians who think and believe just like you. Ultimately, you’ll lose; you just don’t understand how.
Sincerely,
Jason Miko
*Luke Coffey is now a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute
