Since 1990, there have been some sixty referenda by regions or territories wishing to become independent or autonomous from their parent nation. Of these, only about twenty have been successful in a change of status. Forty have either failed to pass, some in dubiously close votes amid charges of election fraudor were not recognized by the governing authority.

Successful independence or autonomy referenda have only been successful if a combination of the neo-colonial foreign affairs infrastructures of Foggy Bottom in Washington, Whitehall in London, and the Quai d’Orsay in Paris gave them their blessings or arranged for predetermined outcomes.

From 1990 to 1991, particularly with the collapse of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, there was a rash of independence referenda held in Slovenia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Estonia, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia (now North Macedonia), Nagorno-Karabakh, Ukraine, Transnistria, Gagauzia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. All of the plebiscites resulted in independence, except for Kosovo, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, and Gagauzia.

On September 7, 1990, the ethnic Albanian members of the dissolved Kosovo Assembly in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo met in secret in Kačanik and declared the “Republic of Kosova.” The independence was rejected by Yugoslavia, but, more importantly, by the United States, Britain, France, and Germany. “Kosova” was only recognized by Albania. The neo-colonialists in Washington, London, and Paris, as well as the recently unified Germany, had plans for an independent Kosovo but 1990 was too early. The West had to demolish Yugoslavia completely before Kosovo was recognized as independent. That time would come in 2008, when the Kosovo Assembly, backed up by NATO and the European Union, declared the independence of the Republic of Kosovo.

The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), once deemed a terrorist group by NATO and the EU, was welcomed in Washington, London, Brussels, Paris, Berlin, and the International Court of Justice as the new government of the ethnic Albanian-ruled nation. For the ethnic Serbs of the former Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija, as well as Serbia, the move was rejected outright. Hypocritically, neither NATO nor the EU required an independence referendum. The 1990 referendum, which was never recognized by the West as legitimate, was, all of a sudden, seen as representing the will of the people of Kosovo. That is, of course, except for the Serbs of North Kosovo. Kosovo’s membership applicationwas rejected for United Nations. Russia, China, Spain, Hungary, and other nations rejected the former province’s declaration of independence.

It is noteworthy that the thorny issue of Macedonia, the name of which Greece rejected because Athens felt it represented territorial designs on parts of northern Greece, was settled when Macedonia became “North Macedonia.” However, when there was a vote by the Assembly of the Community of Municipalities of the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohijain Kosovska Mitrovica in northern Kosovo that called for the Serbs, Gorani, Bosniaks, and Romani of North Kosovo to be recognized as autonomous under the name of North Kosovo, the idea was rejected without consideration by the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and Brussels. Some democratic votes carry more weight than others among the status quo enthusiasts of Foggy Bottom, Whitehall, and the Q’uai d’Orsay.

A February/March 1992 referendum on independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, boycotted by Bosnian Serbs, resulted in 99 percent for independence. Bosnia-Herzegovina, which began its existence as a nearly-failed state, was recognized by the EU, NATO, and UN.

On the other hand, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, South Ossetia, Gagauzia, and Abkhazia all held referenda on their respective status. None of the referenda results were accepted by the EU and the UN. In the March 17, 1990 All-Union referendum designed by President Mikhail Gorbachev to continue the Soviet Union in some semblance, 52.3 percent of Abkhazia, an autonomous republic in Georgia, voted to retain their union with the Soviet Union, while Georgia boycotted the referendum.

Abkhazia’s vote resulted in a de facto separation from Georgia. Two successive referenda on independence held in 1992 and 2006 in South Ossetia, formerly a part of Georgia, were rejected by the UN, NATO, EU, and Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE). Transnistria’s referendum on independence from Moldova was 97.2 in favor of statehood. In 1991, the “Congress of People’s Deputies of the Steppe South of the Moldavian SSR” declared the Gagauz Republic. Although a majority of the people in the autonomous republic favored independence, it was rejected by Moldova and EU and NATO. 1991 and 2006 referenda on the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh as the Republic of Artsakh passed overwhelmingly but were rejected by the EU, OSCE, and UN. Rejected by the status quo enthusiasts of the UN and EU, Artsakh, Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia have formed their own international organization, the Commonwealth of Unrecognized States.

The 1990s were turbulent times for would-be nation states. An April 1993 referendum on Eritrea’s independence from Ethiopia passed with 99.83 percent in favor of statehood. Unlike some of the aspirant nations of the former USSR and Yugoslavia, Eritrea was warmly accepted into the international community of nations. In some territories, attempts to change official status were met with chicanery on the part of territorial and metropolitan governments. That was the case in 1993 with a status referendum in the U.S. Virgin Islands. A mere 31.4 percent turnout in the referendum, which opted for the status quo in any event, saw the referendum rejected as null and void. The manipulation of the referendum ensured a mere 4.96 favoring independence. Similar manipulative contrivances in political status referenda in Puerto Rico in 1993, 1998,2012, and 2017resulted in the independence option receiving paltry 4.4 percent, 2.2 percent, 5.5 percent, and 1.5 percent, respectively. President Donald Trump has repeatedly shown his racist and xenophobic disdain for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, often failing to recognize either territory as part of the United States or their residents as U.S. citizens.

The Netherlands has also cleverly manipulated status referenda in its Caribbean colonies of Curacao, Aruba, Bonaire, Sint Maarten, Saba, and Saint Eustatius to maintain its colonial foothold in the region. A 1995 independence referendum in the British territory of Bermuda required independence to be approved by 40 percent of those eligible to vote and at least 50 percent of those who voted. The independence option failed with only 25.88 percent supporting nationhood. The Caribbean island of Nevis saw independence stymied in a 1998 referendum. Although 62 percent of voters opted for independence, it was rejected because a two-thirds majority was not achieved. The same machination was used by colonial power New Zealand in back-to-back referenda for the Tokelau islands to become an associated state, with de facto independence, in 2006 and 2007. Both times, 60 percent voted for associated state status, but a two-thirds majority wasrequired. In the world of aspirant nations, the game is changed and the math is negotiable in order to suit the desires of the neo-colonialists and transnational interests.

Quebec independence failed by less than 1 percent of the vote in a 1995 referendum. Turnout was massive, over 93 percent. There was evidence that the 1995 independence referendum, like that of 1980, was manipulated by outside forces, including the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

In 1997, Anjouan, an island of the Comoros, voted 99 percent for independence in a referendum. Anjouan separatism was ultimately quelled by an African Union military invasion in 2008. The AU has a policy of not accepting any changes to colonial borders imposed by European colonial powers. Only Eritrea and South Sudan, the latter voting for independence with 98.83 percent in a 2011 referendum, were exceptions.

A 2014 independence referendum in Scotland received 44.7 percent in favor and 55.3 percent opposed. There were later indications of social media manipulation affecting the outcome. U.S. President Barack Obama also took the unusual step of interfering in the vote by calling for a rejectionof independence. That same year, Catalonia’s independence referendum, which received 80.76 percent of the vote. It was rejected by Spain. A 2017 independence referendum received 92.01 percent in favor of nationhood. In reaction, Spain ordered the arrest and imprisonment of the Catalonian government, the suspension of the regional government, and the imposition of direct rule by Madrid.

Kurdistan held a non-binding independence referendum in 2017. Independence from Iraq was favored by 92.73 percent of voters with a 72.12 percent turnout in a region marked by a jihadist insurgency and open warfare. However, the referendum was rejected by Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Syria, the United States, and Britain.

A 2018 independence vote in New Caledonia resulted in 43.3 percent in favor, with 56.67 percent opposed. On September 6, 2020, New Caledonia will hold another referendum. Independence for the French territory in the Pacific is prejudiced by the number of wealthy French Europeans who reside in the territory and outside political and intelligence influence by Australia. A similar independence referendum for the island chain of Chuuk in Micronesia is scheduled for March 2020. In August 2019, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the first visit by a Secretary of State to Micronesia, a former U.S. Trust Territory. On the agenda was U.S. militarization of the region, as well as firm opposition to the impending Chuukese independence referendum. That same bellicose attitude by the Pompeo State Department has resulted in postponed status referenda in the Danish territories of the Faroes and Greenland, where U.S. militarization of the Arctic is high on the Trump administration’s agenda.

Breaking up is hard to do, especially if the political divorce is not sanctioned by the marriage counselors of Washington, London, Paris, and Brussels.

“I told him we were accused of meddling not only in the US, but also in Spain, in Brexit and now also in anything that happens in the Western Balkans… We said we kept silent on Macedonia’s referendum, while its capital of Skopje was visited by NATO chief Stoltenberg, defense minister Mattis, German chancellor Merkel… who publicly and bluntly demanded that Macedonians ‘vote for their future’ and say ‘yes’ in a referendum on their membership in the EU and NATO by ‘only’ changing their country’s name,” recalled Lavrov, further reminding that the referendum had flopped but that, nevertheless, the Macedonian parliament went ahead with a vote to amend the country’s constitution, and secured the necessary two-thirds vote “through bribes and promises not to start criminal persecution,” overseen by the US Ambassador to Macedonia, who was present during the proceedings and “who did not merely sit there.”

Bolton’s response? According to Lavrov, he simply smiled and replied that Macedonia was a “quite complex country.”

So, there you have it. It’s officially open season on all the world’s “complex” countries – and guess who gets to define “complex” – should they ever even contemplate voting the “wrong way,” as interpreted by the West’s arbiters of democracy, even the avowed “non-interventionists” in the White House.

If anything, Lavrov was understating what some observers literally described as a “rape” of Macedonia’s democratic [sic] institutions on the part of the Western deep state establishment hell-bent on dragging the tiny country into NATO (with the highly unrealistic prospect of EU membership merely being used as a carrot to placate domestic and international public opinion), in order to completely encircle the last staunch anti-NATO holdouts in Europe outside of Russia and Belarus – Serbia and the Serbs in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina.

It was bad enough that Western officialdom simply ignored the popular will of the Macedonians and collectively pretended that a 36.91% referendum turnout in fact expressed the “will of the majority,” and that it was sufficiently legitimate to move the matter to Parliament, where a two-thirds vote was required to move forward with the process of amending the constitution. This despite the fact that the West’s hand-picked prime minister, Zoran Zaev, had given assurances before the referendum that “citizens will make the decision,” and that Parliament would vote on the necessary constitutional changes only if the referendum was successful (meaning a 50% + 1 turnout and a majority “yes” vote).

Then, five days before the parliamentary vote, US Vice-President Mike Pence sent a “letter of support” to Zaev, ascertaining that Macedonians had, in fact, approved the name change agreement with Greece after all, because, you see, “90% (or less than a third of all the Macedonian voters – author’s note) of those that voted approved the Prespa Agreement.” Two days later, US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Wess Mitchell, fired off a letter to Hristijan Mickoski, the leader of Macedonia’s main opposition party (which opposes the name change agreement with Greece), VMRO-DPMNE, expressing “disappointment” with his party’s negative position vis-à-vis the referendum and the upcoming parliamentary vote and urging him to “create space” for his party’s MPs to vote “free from threats of violence, retribution, or other forms of coercion.”

As it turned out, Mitchell’s just wanted to make sure that “threats of violence, retribution or other forms of coercion” would remain the exclusive domain of Zaev’s puppet government and the US Embassy. And, thus, four days before the parliamentary vote, Zaev put forth an “indecent proposal” for the opposition, i.e. “amnesty for their members who are on trial for unrest at the Assembly that took place on April 27 of last year," when a former Albanian terrorist guerilla commander was elected as Parliament Speaker under strong US and EU pressure. Or, as Zaev pithily put it: “I know that everything has a price. I am ready to pay it.”

On voting day, October 19, the vote was delayed three times until the necessary two-thirds majority was secured. As to how it was secured was best summarized by a Russian Foreign Ministry statement:

“We consider what happened as a flagrant violation of all norms – both from the point of view of the law and in the moral sense… Eight votes that were necessary to secure a qualified majority were ensured by the means of blackmailing, threats and bribing opposition parliament members. Three of them, purely by chance, were released from arrest on that same day. Two others, who had open cases investigated by special prosecutors, were promised freedom. Others received corrupt financial offers in exchange for 'the right vote'. Parliament members were locked in their rooms, their cell phones were seized – this is very much in line with the spirit of European democratic practice… The American ambassador was present in the Parliament building until the end of the session, leaving no doubt as to who was leading the process… Such dirty manipulations cannot be considered the expression of will of parliament members….”

That the Russians were not exaggerating was confirmed by, among others, a tweet from Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos: “Who would have thought that in Europe of values and democracy those who do not vote according to instructions are jailed, and those who comply get a 2 million euro bonus in black money.”

Opposition leader Mickoski denounced the parliamentary circus as Macedonia’s “Black Friday” and a case of “classic rape,” and proceeded to expel from the party the seven MPs who changed sides and helped secure the necessary two-thirds vote. Bulgarian daily “Sliven Now” accused the CIA and Greece’s Soros funds of bribing the renegade Macedonian MPs. (Links between US diplomats – specifically the present US Ambassador to Macedonia, Jess Baily – and billionaire interventionist George Soros and their joint work on destabilizing Macedonia using US taxpayer money have been public knowledge for a couple of years.) According to a former adviser to the Macedonian President, Cvetin Chilimanov, the Parliament building was “under siege” on the day of the voting, teeming with politicians, police and officials from the public prosecutor’s office, and opposition leaders claimed that their MPs were offered anywhere from 250.000 to 2 million euros to change their vote.

Naturally, as was the failed referendum, the parliamentary charade was hailed by the usual EU/NATO suspects. EU Commissioner for European Neighborhood and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn gushed that it was “a great day for democracy in Skopje,” adding for good measure his expectation that “the free choice of all MPs is fully respected.” Hahn also issued a supportive joint statement with Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the EU Commission. And NATO’s Gensec Jens Stoltenberg unflinchingly “welcomed” the outcome of the Macedonian parliamentary shenanigans and urged the MPs to “seize this historic opportunity.”

The process is not finished, as two more votes (or “votes”) are pending in what’s left of the Macedonian Parliament – on a draft proposal of the necessary constitutional amendments (needing a simple majority), and on the adoption of the final amendments, for which a two-thirds majority will once again be needed, along with the signature of Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov, who himself boycotted the referendum. If everything goes as planned and/or paid, the scene will then move to the Greek Parliament, which must also vote on the changes. According to the Prespa Agreement, the Macedonian side needs to finish its business by the end of 2018, and it is expected that the Greek Parliament will do its part in early 2019. With a little help from their Western friends, no doubt. 

The US State Department was firmly in denial, releasing the following statement: “The United States welcomes the results of the Republic of Macedonia’s September 30 referendum, in which citizens expressed their support for NATO and European Union (EU) membership by accepting the Prespa Agreement between Macedonia and Greece. The United States strongly supports the Agreement’s full implementation, which will allow Macedonia to take its rightful place in NATO and the EU, contributing to regional stability, security, and prosperity. As Macedonia’s parliament now begins deliberation on constitutional changes, we urge leaders to rise above partisan politics and seize this historic opportunity to secure a brighter future for the country as a full participant in Western institutions.”

EU Commissioner for European Neighborhood and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn wasn’t to be outdone in his contempt for the 63% of the Macedonian “deplorables” who stayed home in order to voice their disagreement with renouncing their perceived national identity and country name (it was to become “Northern Macedonia”) in exchange for the double joy of a) becoming NATO’s cannon-fodder in its increasingly hazardous game of chicken with Russia and b) the EU’s newest debt-serfs: “Referendum in Macedonia: I congratulate those citizens who voted in today's consultative referendum and made use of their democratic freedoms. With the very significant "yes" vote, there is broad support to the #Prespa Agreement + to the country's #Euroatlantic path. I now expect all political leaders to respect this decision and take it forward with utmost responsibility and unity across party lines, in the interest of the country.” He was seconded the following day, in a joint statement, by Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the EU Commission.

Understandably, as the most direct public stakeholder, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was particularly (hyper)active. As the disappointing results began to roll in, Stoltenberg went into immediate damage control, tweeting: “I welcome the yes vote in Macedonia referendum. I urge all political leaders & parties to engage constructively & responsibly to seize this historic opportunity. #NATO’s door is open, but all national procedures have to be completed.” He reinforced his delusional missive the next day, releasing a similar statement co-signed by EU President Donald Tusk. And the day after, during a news conference, Stoltenberg even offered lightning-quick NATO accession to the unwilling Macedonians – January 2019, to be exact – if they would just be so kind as to urgently implement the very agreement that they had just so emphatically rejected. When NATO says it promotes democratic values – it means it!

But that wasn’t the end of the “democracy mongering” surrounding what may well prove to be NATO’s, the EU’s and the rest of the end-of-history West’s Balkan Waterloo. For example, the EU Parliament’s Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, although “regretting that the turnout was less than 50%,” nevertheless hailed the referendum’s results and “call(ed) on the opposition to respect the expressed will of the majority [sic] of voters.” The Group’s leader, Udo Bullmann, while also maintaining that, somehow, a voter turnout of under 37% still represented a “majority,” additionally used the occasion to chastise Macedonia’s President for having the nerve to call for a boycott of the referendum (he committed the crimethink of referring to it as “historical suicide” during his UN General Assembly address), as well as to decry – what else? – “reports about Russian interference in the electoral process.” It goes without saying that Bullmann offered absolutely zero proof for his assertion. On the other hand, according to numerous media reports, as September 30 approached, while no high Russian official was to be seen anywhere in the vicinity, a veritable procession of Western political bigwigs made the pilgrimage to Skopje in order to reveal to the natives their “true” best interests: Sebastian Kurz, “Mad Dog” Mattis, the indefatigable Stoltenberg, Federica Mogherini, Johannes Hahn, Angela Merkel. No meddling there, obviously…

Speaking of Angela Merkel, she also joined her fellow Western democrats’ show of unanimous disdain for the Macedonian voters’ majority opinion, urging the country to “push ahead” with the implementation of the majority-rejected accord, citing voters’ “overwhelming support” [sic], and arguing through the mouth of her spokesman that the required 50% + 1 turnout was actually “very high,” as voter registers purportedly included many people who had long since left the country.

Coincidentally (?), the same argument was used by Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias, who opined that the “yes” votes cast in the referendum do, in fact, “represent the majority despite the low turnout because Macedonia does not have the 1.8 million voters entered into its electoral rolls but just 1.2 million since 300,000 people have left the country since the voter lists were last updated 20 years ago.” The fallacy of his reality-challenged claim is easily exposed if we just take a glance at the results of Macedonia’s last parliamentary elections (December 2016), in which voter turnout was just under 1.2 million (1,191,832 to be exact) or, officially, 66.79%. If we were to believe Kotzias and Merkel (who lodged no objections at the time), that would have meant that the turnout for the 2016 elections had been 99% – a figure that would make any totalitarian dictator blush with envy. On the other hand, since those elections did produce the “desired result,” enabling the current heavily pro-NATO/EU government led by Zoran Zaev to be formed, that automatically made them “valid” in the eyes of the high priests of democracy in Brussels, Berlin, London and Washington.

Needless to say, Zaev joined his Western patrons’ charade, hailing the referendum as a “democratic success,” and announcing that he would seek the Macedonian Parliament's support to amend the constitution and get the agreement with Greece ratified (according to the so-called Prespa Agreement, the Macedonian Parliament must adopt the necessary constitutional amendments by the end of 2018) so that the Greek Parliament can do the same, which would seal the deal. However, Zaev and his Albanian political partners are currently well short of the necessary two-thirds majority (reportedly, they can count on 71 deputies, or 9 short of the needed 80), and will have to call early elections if they don’t soon succeed in securing it.

Yet, let it not go unsaid that Zaev was singing a rather different tune prior to the referendum, assuring that “citizens will make the decision,” and that Parliament would vote on the necessary constitutional changes only if the referendum is successful. But that was then, when confidence was still high that the usual combination of Western pressure, money and overwhelming domination of the media spectrum would get the job done. And then reality struck on September 30…

Still, amidst all the faux cheer and public displays of confidence of the pro-NATO/EU crowd, a palpable sense of unease hangs in the air. As a Deutsche Welle opinion piece put it, the “low voter turnout for Macedonia's referendum is a bad starting point for the country's future development.” And, according to DW in Serbian, a Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung commentary warned that “politicians who otherwise ceaselessly talk of democracy as a ‘special value’ should not call on the parliament in Skopje to accept the voting results.” In other words, Macedonia’s people (read – a large majority of the majority Slavic population) have “voted with their feet” and rejected the agreement, and no new parliamentary election, no matter the results, can change that unpleasant-but-immutable fact. That alone will delegitimize any Western-led effort to “manufacture consent” by ramming the agreement through the present or future Parliament – although, as we know, NATO doesn’t put too much stock in referenda anyway, while the EU is not averse to making citizens vote as many times as needed to obtain the “right” result.

But the West has lost more than just legitimacy in Macedonia – it has damaged its reputation, perhaps irretrievably. In the words of former presidential advisor Cvetin Chilimanov, “The West has humiliated us… Macedonians have rejected this media, psychological, political and propaganda aggression against the people, and that’s the tragedy of these days, that a large percentage of a people that had been genuinely oriented towards the West has changed its mind and stopped looking at the West as something democratic, something progressive and successful… That is the reason for the boycott. Pressure was applied against Macedonia, a country that had always been open to ties with the West, but which did not want to make this disgusting compromise and humiliate itself before the neighboring countries, before Western countries. We did not understand why that humiliation was needed so that we might become a member of Europe. What’s worst, perhaps that is now the thinking of a silent majority of the people, that they won’t forget this insult and this attack on Macedonia.” 

Photo: Twitter

His observations were made in the run-up to the referendum to be held on September 30 in which Macedonians will vote on a deal reached in June with Greece that would change the country’s name to the Republic of Northern Macedonia. The referendum question is “Do you support EU and NATO membership by accepting the agreement between Macedonia and Greece?” and the outcome will be interesting, but Mattis failed to see the supreme irony in the fact that his visit to Macedonia was specifically to conduct a “broader influence campaign” by standing next to its prime minister Zoran Zaev as he announced that “There is no alternative for the Republic of Macedonia than integration into NATO and EU.”

Influence, anyone?

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis (left), Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev (right), and Macedonian Defense Minister Radmila Sekerinska shake hands after their meeting in Skopje on September 17.

Although Macedonia (population two million) is not a member of NATO it has 244 soldiers in Afghanistan as part of the futile US-NATO-“coalition” mission and Washington wants the military bonds to be closer. It isn’t exactly a great military power, with an army of about 8,000, and it isn’t close to the border with Russia, along which there is an increasingly confrontational US-NATO military presence, but the Pentagon and its sub-office in Brussels always welcome more members to their alliance. And who better than General Mattis to exercise “broader influence” on Macedonia to encourage it to join the team confronting Russia.

While in Macedonia Mattis declared the vote to be the “most important” in Macedonia’s history, and assured everyone that a pro-NATO result would result in “economic prosperity and increased foreign investment.” It would “unlock the Nato accession process and allow you . . . to determine your own future in institutions made up of like-minded countries.”

Predictably, Mattis was in line with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who also visited Macedonia in September and announced that “We are ready to welcome your country as NATO’s 30th member,” telling its people that the referendum “is a once in a lifetime opportunity to join the international community . . .” Was he trying to influence anyone?

General Mattis is rabidly anti-Russian and hostile to a great many other countries, people and organisations. It is now almost forgotten that he is the man who replied to a question in 2005 about the US war in Afghanistan by uttering the psychotic pronouncement that “Actually it's quite fun to fight them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up there with you. I like brawling.” He is obviously a person who can bring balance and sympathetic understanding to international affairs.

As recorded in the New Yorker, “on January 22nd, two days after President Trump was inaugurated, he received a memo from his new Secretary of Defence, James Mattis, recommending that the United States launch a military strike in Yemen.”

Yemen was then and still is in a state of civil war. The country has nothing to do with the United States, but in 2017 the intelligence community in the US said they had discovered that a group of alleged anti-American terrorists were in a small village called al-Ghayil and it was decided by the Best and the Brightest in Washington to attack the place.

The operation Mattis wanted the president to authorise was intended to kill people, of course, and specifically a supposed leader of Al Qaeda; so Mattis and the National Security Adviser, General Michael Flynn, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joe Dunford had dinner with President Trump, who then decided to go ahead with what turned out to be a totally disastrous military operation.

It was a tragic farce. As reported in the Washington Post, instead of a clean quick special forces’ attack on the village, “a massive firefight ensued, claiming the life of an American sailor and at least one Yemeni child, and serving as an early lesson for President Trump’s national security team about the perils of overseas ground operations.”

8-year-old Nora Anwar Al-Awlaki, who was killed in the US raid. Her father, a US citizen and alleged al-Qaeda operative, was killed in a US drone strike in 2011. During his Presidential campaign, Donald Trump told Fox News that “when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families.”

“An elite Special Operations air regiment was then sent in to pull the team and its casualties out of the fray, banking into the night under heavy fire to link up with a Marine quick-reaction force that had taken off in MV-22 Ospreys from the US ship Makin Island floating offshore.” In the course of the operation, Chief Petty Officer Ryan Owens, a navy commando, was killed, and one of the $75 million Ospreys was destroyed.

In other words, the whole thing was an utter shambles.

But the spin doctors in Washington couldn’t admit that their operation had failed, and Trump announced that Mattis had told him it had been a “highly successful raid that generated large amounts of vital intelligence that will lead to many more victories in the future against our enemies.” The brawl had been a ball.

Thank you, General Mattis, the man who declared “It’s fun to shoot some people” and alleges that Russia carries out “broader influence campaigns” and then does his best to influence Macedonia by declaring to its citizens that “You would join an alliance in which countries large and small work together to uphold shared principles of national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and freedom from coercion, while others seek to diminish these very values, sowing discord from Syria to the Ukraine.” This is from the defence secretary of a nation that has sowed catastrophic discord in Afghanistan, then in Iraq and through the whole Middle East, to Libya which the Pentagon and NATO bombed and blitzed to a state of utter chaos in what General Mattis might call a “broader influence campaign.”

Macedonia will probably become a member of the US-NATO anti-Russia military alliance, along with Ukraine, and the confrontation with Russia will continue to escalate in the new US-NATO Cold War. And who knows what else might be planned by those attending a future military dinner with Trump. After all, “It’s fun to shoot some people.”

When Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked Donald Trump last month why he should send his son to die defending Montenegro, NATO’s newest member, the president seemed to repudiate his own administration’s policy. He indicated that Americans shouldn’t be willing to sacrifice their lives for such a trivial ally. Furthermore, he warned that Montenegro “has very aggressive people. They may get aggressive, and congratulations, you’re in World War III.” As Cato Institute senior fellow Doug Bandow pointed out, Trump’s comment was odd on two counts. First, the Senate approved the admission of Montenegro on his watch in March 2017. If he thought that latest episode of adding a useless microstate to the Alliance was unwise, he could have withdrawn the treaty from consideration before the Senate vote. Second, as Bandow notes archly, that while “it is theoretically possible that the vast, aggressive, powerful Montenegrin legions might launch themselves towards Moscow,” it isn’t too likely, because Montenegrin leaders “do not appear to have entirely lost their minds.”

Indeed, the scenario that a small Balkan NATO partner might trigger a war that entangles the United States is unlikely to entail a direct provocation of Russia. That reality has made it easy for Trump’s critics, here and abroad, to mock his comment about Montenegro triggering a world war. A far greater risk is that the tripwire would be a conflict in which an alliance member became embroiled with one of its regional neighbors. Montenegro actually is less of a danger in that respect than NATO’s latest invitee, Macedonia. Montenegro seems on relatively good terms with neighboring states, although it has been involved in an extended border dispute with Kosovo that was resolved just recently when the Kosovo parliament passed bitterly resisted legislation approving a settlement of the controversy.

Macedonia is on much worse terms with Kosovo and that country’s ethnic brethren in Albania. Officials and the populations of both countries have long pursued a “Greater Albania” agenda that lays claim to swaths of territory in Serbia, Montenegro, and especially Macedonia. The NATO-assisted severing of Kosovo from Serbia in 1999 was the first major triumph for that agenda, and Greater Albanian expansionists wasted no time in trying to follow up on their victory. Within months, portions of Macedonia in which ethnic Albanians constituted a majority (or in some cases, just a plurality) of the population sought to destabilize that country, demanding extensive autonomy for those provinces. Both the United States and its NATO allies put intense pressure on Macedonia’s government to grant the demanded concessions, and Skopje reluctantly complied.

Tensions then subsided for a while, but Albanian separatist sentiments continued to fester and grow. In the past few years, a new crisis has emerged, with Albanian activistsleading large anti-government demonstrations. Skopje’s relations with both Albania and Kosovo are deteriorating markedly. In April 2017, Macedonia’s foreign ministry formally accused Albania of interfering in the country’s internal political affairs. A month earlier Macedonia’s president charged that the demands of the Albanian minority was the biggest threat to his nation’s sovereignty and unity.

Washington and other Western capitals continue to press the Macedonian government to make concessions to the country’s Albanian minority beyond those granted under outside pressure during the 2001 crisis. That pressure is creating major splits within the Macedonian ethnic majority. An especially ugly confrontation between Macedonian nationalists and more accommodating elements erupted in the spring of 2017. Pieter Feith, a former European Union envoy to Skopje, warned the nationalists that they were “playing with fire” if they continued to resist relinquishing power to a moderate successor government. Soon thereafter, the nationalists gave way.

Divisive issues continue to roil the country, however. The demands of the Albanian faction for ever-greater autonomy keep escalating, and that has caused the president and other officials to balk at making further concessions. President Gjorge Ivanov has dug in his heels on one key issue, repeatedly refusing to sign a language law that would formally recognize Albanian as the primary language in certain regions of the country. He and his supporters fear that such a new concession would simply whet the appetite of Albanian secessionists

The drive for a Greater Albania is gaining new momentum, and that creates major problems for a prospective NATO member. The parallels to events leading up to Kosovo’s secessionist war against Serbia in the 1990s and NATO’s military intervention are more than a little unsettling. What happens once Macedonia joins NATO, if the Albanian secessionist drive does not ease but accelerates and Skopje takes action against Albania and/or Kosovo to prevent outside assistance to the rebellion, claiming that those countries have committed aggression? It is hardly a remote possibility that the United States as NATO’s leader could be drawn into such a nasty conflict.

That possibility underscores the folly of America pushing to add strategically and economically irrelevant microstates to the alliance. They are not strategic assets in any reasonable definition of the term. Instead, they are strategic liabilities and potential snares. Granted, members like Macedonia and Montenegro are not likely to involve the United States in a world war—unlike the three Baltic republics, which could certainly do so, given their frosty relations with Russia. The situation in the Balkans is not akin to the one that existed on the eve of World War I and plunged Europe (and ultimately America) into that catastrophe. But a needless entanglement even in a petty, limited armed conflict is one entanglement too many. President Trump should act on the instincts he displayed during his interview with Tucker Carlson and make it clear that the United States will not approve NATO membership for Macedonia or any other applicant.

nationalinterest.org

Ever since Macedonia declared independence from Yugoslavia 25 years ago, Greece insisted that the United Nations call the country the “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,” which became an acronym known as FYROM. Some nations recognized the country as the Republic of Macedonia, while others opted for FYROM.

The Macedonians also claimed Alexander the Great, a Greek national hero, as one of their own and named their international airport after the ancient conqueror. As part of Macedonia’s name change, Alexander the Great International Airport has been changed to Skopje International Airport. Macedonian history books are to be altered to reflect that Northern Macedonians are not ancient Macedonians. Actual Macedonians, claims Athens, are northern Greeks or “Aegean Macedonians.”

Macedonians, who are now governed by a George Soros implant named Zoran Zaev, are undergoing the type of cultural change that was externally visited upon the nation of Rwanda after General Paul Kagame, a Rwandan expatriate from Uganda, seized power after a very bloody genocide in 1994. Rwanda forced Rwandans to scrap their native French for English, the French-like national tricolor was replaced with a new flag, and Rwanda joined the Commonwealth of Nations, which is led by the British queen. The only thing that did not change in Rwanda was the name of the country, although one could not put it past Kagame to revert back to the colonial name of “Ruanda.”

Northern Macedonia was agreed upon by Macedonia and Greece after several other options were discussed. The Greeks favored the name “Republic of Vardar Macedonia,” but that was rejected by the Macedonians, who preferred “Republic of New Macedonia.” The United Nations mediator said there were other candidates for the name, including the Republic of Upper Macedonia and Republic of Macedonia (Skopje).

Greece suggested many other names for their northern neighbor, including “Dardania and Paeonia,” the ancient names for the region; South Slavia, the Vardar Republic, the Central Balkan Republic, and the Republic of Skopje. The Macedonians offered up the Constitutional Republic of Macedonia, the Democratic Republic of Macedonia, the Independent Republic of Macedonia, and the New Republic of Macedonia.

Names now mean everything in an era of “new nationalism.” The U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, a former hack attorney for Donald Trump, has referred to the illegally-occupied West Bank as “Judea and Samaria,” a hat-tip to the Jewish illegal settlers who want Israel to annex the West Bank and have Israel become a full-blown apartheid state, with Palestinians treated as inferior “untermenschen.” There are reports that after having moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the Trump administration is a hair-trigger away from recognizing all of Jerusalem, including illegally-occupied East Jerusalem, as the capital of Israel and recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights from Syria. That would leave the open-air Palestinians ghetto of Gaza as a target for Israeli re-annexation. Menacingly, the Trump administration is already calling Gaza “southern Israel.”

There are other proposals afoot for name changes. In 2017, South African Minister of Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa sparked a fierce debate when he suggested that South Africa should become "Azania," a name with Greek origins. That proposal was tabled quickly by a government that did not want self-engineered headaches to be piled on all of its other problems. Likewise, there is little interest in the Central African Republic to revert to the country's French colonial name of Ubangi-Shari, two rivers that converge in the country.

The South Africans may want to think twice about Azania. South Sudan considered using that same name upon independence from Sudan in 2011. Could the world survive with two Azanias? Why not? There have been two independent Congos since the 1960s — the former French Republic of Congo and the former Belgian Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The DRC did change its name to Zaire during the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko, but changed it back again after his ouster in a popular rebellion. The South Sudanese apparently liked the name South Sudan, after rejecting, along with Azania, the names Nile Republic, Kush Republic, and Juwama. Some South Sudanese still want a name change, favoring Tochland or Savannah.

If pro-independence activists get their way in civil war-ravaged Yemen, South Yemen will re-emerge as an independent nation and that might provide some solace to South Sudan and South Africa, but not South Korea, which, after Trump's recognition of the north as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK, will now insist on being called the Republic of Korea or "ROK."

On the occasion of his 50th birthday, Swaziland's King Mswati III — who has 15 wives, 12 less than Trump's known number of ex-wives — proclaimed that the name of his country would henceforth be known as eSwatini.

Kazakhstan is no longer Kazakhstan. The nation's president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has decreed that the Kazakh language will no longer be written in the Cyrillic alphabet but Latin. "Qazaqstan" will now be joining Qatar as the only two countries in the UN General Assembly's "Q" section. Nazarbayev also dislikes the appendage "stan" on the name of his country, He is on record in favor of dropping "stan" and calling his country Qazaq Yeli, or "Land of the Kazakhs."

Some politicians in Kyrgyzstan also want to drop the "stan" part of their country's name and have it officially be known as Kyrgyz Land or Kyrgyz Zher, the name in the Kyrgyz language. These politicians bemoan the fact that their nation is often confused with Kurdistan, which, thanks to Turkish and Iraqi pressure, is not an independent country represented at the UN. The Kyrgyz have a point. The Czechs, in pushing the name Czechia, did not seem to mind that some people confused the name with Chechnia, a Russian autonomous republic.

In 2013, the small half-island nation of East Timor announced it was changing its name to Timor-Leste, a hat-tip to its history as a Portuguese colony. Not to be left out of the Portuguese nostalgia, Cape Verde changed its name to Cabo Verde that same year.

The President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte has entertained the possibility of changing the name of the country to something that no longer honors Spanish colonialists and their colonizing monarch, King Philip II. There have been moves in the Philippines Congress to establish a geographical renaming commission to come up with a new name. One idea floated is the Tagalog name, Haring Bayan.

Country name changes are tough on some merchandise retailers. In 1997, the American Safety Razor Company reintroduced the Burma-Shave brand of shaving soap. But Burma had become Myanmar nine years earlier and "Myanmar-Shave" lacked a certain appeal. All the marketers of Ceylon tea were aghast in 1971 when the island nation changed its name to Sri Lanka.

If the independence referendum in New Caledonia in November of this year results in a majority vote for breaking colonial ties with France and going it alone, the country's name will be Kanaky. The name is an homage to the native Kanak people. If Greenland opts for independence from Denmark, it's goodbye Greenland and hello Kalaallit Nunaat, the Inuit name for the country.

Resurgent nationalism across the globe are keeping mapmakers and diplomats busy. Country name changing is the current vogue and there are no signs that it will end anytime soon.

Photo: Pinterest

Actually, the North Atlantic Alliance was ready to back the idea of initiating the membership procedures at its summit in 2008, but the name dispute with Greece obstructed the process. NATO can extend a membership invitation at its July 11-12 summit. Macedonia was given its Membership Action Plan (MAP) in 1999. The EU summit, which is scheduled for June 28-29, will decide whether to offer a green light for the membership talks to begin. Moscow is an important trade partner for Skopje. EU membership means joining the anti-Russian sanctions and suffering the inevitable financial losses.

NATO evidently wants to speed the process up. Its top leaders, including the Secretary General, exerted pressure on Macedonia and Greece to encourage them to remove the main obstacle to that membership as quickly as possible. US officials openly admit that Washington played a silent role in the process of resolving the name dispute between Macedonia and Greece. Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia Wess Mitchell believes that NATO should be more active in the Western Balkans in order to counter Russia’s influence. “Greece and the United States share strongly a vision of deeper integration of the Western Balkans into European and Euro Atlantic Institutions,” said US Ambassador to Greece Jeffrey Pyatt just a few days before the agreement was reached.

According to Richard Hooker, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Europe and Russia with the National Security Council, the Trump administration would welcome Macedonia’s entry into NATO. Kay Bailey Hutchison, America’s ambassador to NATO, explained that the US and the allies are in favor of expansion as a way to keep those countries out of what she called “the Russian sphere.” She thinks Macedonia meets the standards and is genuinely close to membership. The ambassador complacently avoids any discussion of Macedonia’s rampant corruption and lingering ethnic tensions.

So, it’s not about making a contribution to NATO or meeting certain standards, the real goal is to keep Moscow at a distance. Croatia and Albania joined the bloc in 2009. Montenegro entered in 2017. New members are needed now so as to make the process unstoppable. Besides, the Vardar River links Central Europe and the Aegean Sea. The plans for the expansion of the Turkish Stream gas project include passage through Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, and Hungary to reach Central Europe. Skopje will benefit as a transit country. It is in the Americans’ best interests to deny Russia and Turkey this route, as it wants no rivals able to challenge American shale gas exports to Europe.

The landlocked country of Macedonia cannot offer any serious contribution to the bloc’s military might, with an army of 8,000 and no navy or air force. Its weapons systems and equipment are obsolete. The inadequate standards there pose a very serious problem. This means that militarily, Macedonia is more of a burden that must be shouldered than an asset. And at the current time NATO is facing an ongoing rift, as the majority of its member states are reluctant to give in to US pressure and raise their military expenditures to 2% of their GDP.

And that’s not all. The interethnic conflicts in Macedonia will become NATO’s headache. Skopje has a problem with its ethnic Albanian community that makes up a quarter of the country’s population. The North Atlantic Alliance has severed Kosovo from Serbia. This means that one potential scenario would see Macedonia losing some of its northwestern regions that have a predominantly ethnic Albanian population. Why not? They did it once — they’ll do it again. It’ll be a great tragedy and a serious problem for Macedonia but not for America, which is obsessed with driving Russia out of that region at any cost.

The hope is that Serbia can be made more pro-Western and vulnerable to pressure if it is surrounded by NATO members. Macedonia’s accession will serve that goal. It’ll be used.

But membership will complicate NATO’s decision-making process even more. Skopje’s accession was blocked by only one member — Greece. A single government holds veto power over the alliance. Their interests do not always coincide. Just remember 2003, when the US invasion of Iraq was opposed by France and Germany, thus preventing it from becoming a NATO operation. What if a small country like Macedonia were to block a decision that was important for the US? An increased number of members means an increased risk of gridlock.

What the people of that country will gain is unclear. Their national interests will be eclipsed by the foreign-policy goals of other major players.

So, expansion for the sake of expansion is a very dubious policy that is of benefit to neither NATO nor Macedonia. The constantly growing number of member states does not make NATO stronger, quite the opposite. Skopje hardly needs the protection offered under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty. Who could invade it? And everything else could can be achieved just with special status in the organization, thus leaving more wiggle room for independent foreign-policy decisions. Membership has its downsides, which are being ignored by both NATO and Macedonia. In the end, Skopje’s integration into NATO does not look like a win-win decision.

Just last summer, Montenegro was expressly absorbed into NATO, on the wings of a contrived, supposedly Russian-backed “attempted coup” (the “evidence” of which is on par with that so far offered to back claims of the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russians during the 2016 US presidential campaign) and the associated intimidation and scare-mongering used to justify pushing the country into the Alliance without allowing something as cumbersome as a referendum to get in the way. This special op might have, at first glance, seemed rather trivial, considering Montenegro’s tiny size and population of about 600,000. Until, that is, one looks at a map and realizes that the traditionally Russian-allied country was the last non-NATO holdout in the northern Mediterranean.

Next, it was Macedonia’s turn. First, its nationalist government, which had the temerity to actively court Chinese investment and good relations with Russia had to be jettisoned. This was accomplished through a destabilizing George Soros and US-backed campaign, the inevitable evidence-free claims of “Russian meddling” and the installing of a new pro-Western government in May 2017, brokered by the EU and US, after some major arm-twisting by US diplomat Hoyt Brian Yee (the deputy of Victoria Nuland of the Ukrainian coup and “F*ck the EU” fame), with the crucial aid of Macedonia’s Albanian minority – the Atlanticists’ most reliable trump card in the Balkans over the past three decades. In addition to promising the Albanians equal status with that of the majority Macedonians (who are South Slavs and make up about 65% of the population, as opposed to the Albanians’ 25%), new prime minister Zoran Zaev’s main task is to make way for Macedonia’s EU accession and express admission to – you guessed it – NATO. Toward that end, hurried negotiations are now being conducted with Greece, which has been blocking Macedonia’s NATO aspirations for the better part of two decades until the country changes its name, i.e., gives up claims to being the historic Macedonia of Alexander the Great and, potentially, to Greece’s own Macedonia region. Since the start of 2018, Macedonia’s new government has taken steps toward that end, renaming its capital city Skopje’s airport (from “Alexander the Great” to “Skopje International Airport”) as well as its main highway to Greece (from “Alexander the Great” to “Friendship Highway”). That still hasn’t fully satisfied Greece, but Macedonian diplomacy is doing its utmost to speed the process along in time for the next NATO summit in July 2018. By securing Macedonia, NATO not only adds another piece of jewelry but also gains firm control of a key communication along the Balkan branch of both China’s New Silk Road and the Russian Turkish Stream gas pipeline.

That leaves Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (B-H) as the last former Yugoslav non-NATO holdouts. Serbia is still a hard nut to crack, due to its relative size, traditional stubborn independence and military tradition – although it is being subjected to increasing pressure, as witnessed by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov’s recent warning that the West was pushing Serbia towards a Ukrainian scenario by forcing it to choose between the EU and Russia.

That leaves B-H as the weakest remaining link to break. The political parties representing the majority Muslims are not an obstacle, nor are the Croats (roughly 17% of the population). However, Bosnia’s Serbs, making up about a third of the population, but controlling 49% of the territory as a result of the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995 (according to which B-H is made up of two entities: the Serbian majority Republika Srpska, and the Muslim and Croat majority B-H Federation, comprising 51% of the country), are resolutely opposed to NATO membership, for three main reasons: a) memories of NATO powers’ demonization of the Serbs and siding with Sarajevo’s Islamic fundamentalist leadership during the bloody civil war of 1992-95, as well as today, b) refusal to be at odds with neighboring Serbia, which has declared military neutrality and refusal to join any military bloc, c) desire to retain friendship with Russia and other non-NATO countries.

As a result, since adopting its own Resolution on military neutrality last fall, making it impossible for B-H to be officially invited to join NATO, the Serbian leadership in B-H has been subjected to various fake news campaigns and provocations concocted in various Anglo-American media, military and diplomatic kitchens.

First came allegations that – what else? – a “Russian-trained” group under the name “Serbian Honor” (or “Srbska čast” in the original Serbian) took part in a parade marking the anniversary of Republika Srpska on January 9. The Washington Post and the Guardian quickly put out the distress calls, with appropriately alarmist headlines: “Russia finds young men who love guns — and grooms them” and “Russian-trained mercenaries back Bosnia's Serb separatists.” But, as has become the custom of late with what Donald Trump has christened the fake news media, the claims have proven to be evidence-free.

For one, while a group called “Serbian Honor” does exist, Republika Srpska Police Minister Dragan Lukac has denied that it took part in the parade. For two, absolutely no evidence has been offered that its members are “Russian-trained,” except for empty claims of supposed ties between this obscure group and the Russian-Serbian Humanitarian Center established in the Serbian city of Nish in 2012. The irony here is especially rich, as the Center’s main activity since its inception has been to provide personnel and resources to help clear the thousands of illegal cluster munitions and aerial bombs left behind by NATO’s illegal bombing of Serbia in 1999. That’s right: Russian resources are being used to clean up NATO’s crime scene. And, yet, the lead NATO country is accusing Russia of exercising “malign influence” in the region.

The Center also provided vital aid during the catastrophic floods that beset Serbia in 2014. Yet, again, the main NATO countries have persistently tried to portray this small outpost – hosting, as Serbia’s foreign minister has put it, a grand total of “five Serbs, four Russians and one dog” – as some sort of sinister spy, or even military base. All that has been lacking is – you guessed it – evidence to back up these ludicrous claims. Even Reuters admitted as much, reporting that no sources were cited in the original story to back up the claim that “mercenaries” were being trained there. But, as we’ve learned, especially over the past several years, a minor inconvenience such as the truth must not stand in the way of the “greater good” of restarting the Cold War, even at the risk of making it substantially “warmer” than its previous incarnation.

Then, in early February, came another (alleged) scandal: the dastardly Bosnian Serb police were now – egads! – arming themselves. “Arms shipment to Bosnian Serbs stokes EU fears,” warned the trusty Guardian, with accompanying echoes in the Bosnian Muslim press. Except, it turned out that the Republika Srpska police had finally decided to buy its first batch of guns in 20 years. And that it had all been cleared with the B-H central authorities. And that, as clarified by the well respected Croatian journalist, Darko Hudelist, other police units in Bosnia’s Muslim-majority cantons had also recently purchased new weapons. Of course, there was no accompanying screaming Guardian headline to set the record straight.

Finally, in mid February, a Bosnian news site uncovered plans to hold a NATO military exercise in B-H in 2019. Naturally, this was to take part in the resolutely anti-NATO Serbian majority part of the country, near its capital of Banja Luka. However, the real news was the planned use of American A-10 Warthog close air support warplanes, and their possible use of depleted uranium munitions. As was to be expected, the response from Republika Srpska was that of outrage. NATO had twice bombed Serbian army positions during the B-H civil war, in 1994 and 1995, and the population living in the areas where DU ammunition was used saw an alarming rise in cancer rates in the subsequent years, as has been the case in neighboring Serbia, where DU munitions were much more heavily used during NATO’s illegal air war of 1999.

The US Embassy in Sarajevo issued denials, but the published documents did indeed show that the use of A-10 and DU ammunition was being considered. Milorad Dodik, the president of Republika Srpska, flatly warned NATO “not to dare” use DU ammo, while the inhabitants of the villages near the proposed military exercise site vowed to block the event from taking place.

This is classic psychological warfare, and it’s bound to intensify. For, in its steady buildup along Russia’s western borders, NATO seems to be seeking to eliminate all potential loose ends in its rear. And Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina are precisely that. In the war-weary Balkans, especially in the Serbian majority parts, that kind of calculus has an eerily familiar ring. It was the Serbs that rose to reject the Royal Yugoslav government’s attempt to appease Nazi Germany by signing a pact with it on March 25, 1941. As a result, Hitler had to postpone his attack on the USSR for several crucial weeks until the Serbian-led rebellion could be pacified (it was, but only briefly, as two majority Serb guerilla movements arose during summer of 1941, and fought on until the country’s liberation). Some think that this at least partly contributed to the Nazi war machine’s failure to break Stalin before the Russian winter set in, which ultimately cost it the war.

Some might find the analogy surprising. But actions speak louder than words. As in the US, it’s now practically all “Russia! Russia! Russia!” in the Balkans, and the traditionally pro-Russian Serbs are under rapidly increasing political, propaganda and military pressure to join the “new order,” finally give up their historic and spiritual Kosovo heartland, and turn their backs on their traditional Russian ally and Orthodox Christian co-religionists. The West’s quarter century long anti-Serbian and, by extension, anti-Russian crusade is intensifying, and things may well be coming to a head in the near future.

And we know what it might mean when things are coming to a head in the Balkans…

“I expect for Macedonia to finally join NATO at the upcoming summit of the alliance,” reads the statement made by Macedonia’s President Gjorge Ivanov on Jan. 1, 2018. He also expects to finalize a date for EU accession talks – another issue being discussed with Brussels.

A NATO summit is scheduled to take place July 11-12, 2018. The alliance’s foreign ministers will decide by April 2018 which candidates have made enough progress to begin the procedures for bringing them on board. Macedonia was given its Membership Action Plan (MAP) in 1999.

The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) is negotiating with Greece to solve a name dispute, which is holding back its NATO membership efforts. Athens claims Macedonia has no right to the name, which has its historical roots in Greece. A region of northern Greece is also called Macedonia. Delegations from the two states met with UN mediator Matthew Nimetz in New York on Jan. 17 to resume talks over Macedonia's official name. Optimism is in the air about the outcome of the US-sponsored diplomatic effort. A provisional name might be one option. According to a survey held in Macedonia last May, 71% of respondents voiced their support for NATO.

Otto von Bismarck, the legendary chancellor of Germany, dismissed the Balkan region as “not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.” The US sees things differently. Last April, Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called for a far more robust US commitment to the region. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the US Permanent Representative to NATO, believes that the country is fully up to NATO’s standards and is very close to membership even though the Balkan nation struggles with rampant corruption and lingering ethnic tensions.

The eight-thousand-strong Macedonian military has a long way to go to meet anyone’s standards. The country has no navy or air force to contribute to the alliance. NATO will have to shoulder the burden of bringing the Macedonian military up to its requirements.

Once FYROM has been incorporated, the alliance will extend its security umbrella over a country that has nothing to contribute toward a common defense or out-of-area operations. In addition NATO would then be responsible for the interethnic conflicts and plethora of problems Macedonia faces. With Skopje in, NATO will become weaker, not stronger. An alliance of member states that is divided by greatly divergent levels of economic development and foreign-policy goals is a weak partnership. It’s doomed to become what President Trump called an “obsolete alliance.”

As a full-fledged member, Skopje will further complicate the decision-making-process for reaching a consensus. The country will pursue its own interests, which may not align with the interests of NATO’s leaders, including the United States.

There can be no question that joining NATO would damage its relationship with Moscow, which is opposed to the alliance’s expansion. Its membership would help weaken European security. And Macedonia would have to pay a price, in the form of significant limitations on its freedom of action in foreign policy.

Russia is one of Macedonia’s biggest trade partners. If Skopje joins the EU, it will be forced to take part in the ongoing war of sanctions, which will cost the country dearly. In turn, NATO membership entails involvement in distant armed conflicts in which Skopje has no interest. There will be casualties.

So the US is clearly revving up its efforts to eliminate the problem of the country’s name so it can join as quickly as possible. The valley of the Vardar River is an important transportation route linking Central Europe and the Aegean Sea. If the Turkish Stream gas project is ever to be expanded, the best direction would be toward Macedonia. The pipeline will have to cross Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, and Hungary to reach Central Europe. The US wants to deny Russia this route while promoting its own shale gas exports. The two countries are on a collision course as they vie for the European energy market.

The alliance wants no “grey zones” in the region, as it pursues its goal of pushing Russia out in order to bring NATO in. Serbia is a hard nut to crack, since it sticks to neutral policies that include friendly relations with its historical ally. Skopje is more pliant. It would be much easier to exert pressure on Belgrade if it were surrounded by NATO states.

NATO is using the “Albanian factor” to further its own goals. It would be overly naïve to believe that the activities of Kosovo separatists, the interethnic violence in Macedonia involving ethnic Macedonians and Albanians, and the efforts of Albanians in Serbia’s Preševo Valley to seek union with Albania and Kosovo are isolated events. The idea of creating Great Albania is not dead. And Albania is a NATO member.

So, neither Macedonia nor NATO would have anything to gain if the alliance grew to 30 members. The country would become a pawn in a US game aimed at squeezing Russia out of the region. Like Serbia, Macedonia has a problem with its ethnic Albanian community, which makes up a quarter of Macedonia’s population. It’s a fragile state. NATO took Kosovo away from Serbia. In the same way, Macedonia may one day lose some predominantly Albanian areas in the northwestern part of its country. In the end, will dancing to Washington’s tune advance the country’s security? Will it benefit the nation in any way at all? Look before you leap, they say. Indeed, it’s better to look at all the pros, if any, and cons before making a final decision. 

Prior to this, a state of emergency had been imposed in the border region. For three days, Macedonian police and military had cordoned off the border with Greece using barbed wire fences, employing stun grenades and rubber bullets against the refugees assembled there. The police also deployed tear gas and used their batons against the crowds.

According to eyewitnesses, several people were injured, including children. Thousands were forced to spend their nights alongside the border without food in open fields.

On Saturday night, the refugees then succeeded in overcoming the police barricades at the border and were able to walk to the railway station in the border town of Gevgelija. According to the Macedonian online news siteTelegraf.mk, it was not possible for the police to keep back the onrush of refugees. The situation only calmed down once the border was reopened.

Emina, a Syrian refugee described the brutal actions of the Macedonian security forces: “It was very hard in Macedonia,” she told WirtschaftsWoche. “I have not slept for three days and did not eat. Just as we arrived at the border, they closed it. It was horrible.”

Serbian state television reported that many refugees were ill or had been injured by the police at the weekend. One woman gave birth under appalling conditions.

Macedonia is a transit country for most of the refugees from the Middle East, who travel on by way of Serbia to Hungary and thus into the European Union (EU). Most of them are fleeing from the consequences of the destructive policies of the US and the European powers in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, and arrive in Greece via Turkey. More than 160,000 refugees have arrived via this route this year. In the past two months, about 45,000 refugees have crossed into Macedonia.

The brutality of the right-wing government in Skopje is a sharp expression of the inhumane policy that all European governments follow against refugees. A veritable competition has opened up between the various governments in dealing with refugees as abhorrently as possible so that they move on to other countries. The refugee crisis is also deliberately exploited to mobilize right-wing forces and distract attention from domestic and foreign policy crises.

This assumes particularly repulsive forms in the Balkans, where the governments operate as stooges of the EU. The Macedonian government of Prime Minister Nicola Gruevski and his right-wing VMRO-DPMNE are in a deep political crisis. Like many parties in the former Yugoslavia, VMRO-DPMNE is deeply involved in criminal activities, has no social base in the population and ingratiates themselves with the EU in order to benefit economically.

The analyst Fejzi Hajdari from Skopje located the motivation for the border closure in both domestic and foreign policy interests. On the one hand, the government is trying to force more resources and help from the EU through the closure of borders to refugees. On the other hand, Premier Gruevski is “a master” in the art of diverting public attention at home and abroad from his own problems with surprising manoeuvres. “The EU’s pressure is great, so that the agreement achieved in June by the government with the opposition to prepare new elections is also implemented,” Hajdari said.

In other Eastern European countries too, the measures against refugees are particularly dramatic. The Slovakian government recently announced it would not accept Muslim refugees.

Ivan Metik, spokesman for the Slovak Interior Ministry, justified this with the fact that there were no mosques in the country. “How can they be integrated with us, if they don’t feel good here?” he asked cynically. One day later, the government backtracked and said that migrants from Muslim countries could apply for asylum in Slovakia, but the government’s rejection is clear.

The situation is similar in other Eastern European countries. Government officials in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Estonia speak out publicly against the admission of refugees. The ruling politicians, whether Conservative or Social Democrats, reject a quota system and refuse to accept the distribution of refugees across the various EU countries.

The Hungarian government is acting particularly harshly in undertaking the “management of external borders” in the EU’s interest. The government in Budapest is currently building a four-metre high border fence, which is designed to prevent refugees from Serbia entering into the EU. This is being done with the tacit consent of the EU. “The European Commission is against the construction of border fences in Europe as a matter of principle,” said EU Commission spokesman Christian Wigand, but would not interfere with Budapest’s decision.

Manfred Weber, Christian Social Union politician and leader of the European Peoples Party group in the European Parliament, called on his parliamentary colleagues to declare all the EU candidate states collectively as “safe third countries”, and therefore anyone arriving from these countries into the EU could be denied a claim to asylum and be deported as quickly as possible.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius warned on Sunday of the need for a quick fix in the refugee crisis on the Greek-Macedonian border. The Czech foreign minister Lubomir Zaoralek spoke of an “extraordinary burden” for the government in Skopje, and expressed understanding for the brutal repression against the refugees.

The refugee issue will also be a topic at the Western Balkans conference on Thursday in Vienna. Thirty government leaders are meeting in the Austrian capital to discuss the large surge of asylum seekers from the region to Germany, Austria and other EU states. Among others, government heads from Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo will participate.

The Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz (Austrian Peoples Party, ÖVP) travelled to Macedonia on Monday in order to obtain a picture of the situation in advance of the conference. In addition to meeting with his counterpart Nikola Poposki, a site inspection at the border with Greece was also planned. Kurz said that “more activity by the EU [was] needed” because of “huge challenges.”

What the government in Vienna means by “activity” was made clear just a few months ago, when the Foreign Ministry initiated a large-scale campaign in Kosovo to deter potential asylum seekers already there from entering Austria.

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