Since the United States and Western European countries parted the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991 and formed six member republics on its territory based on the administrative boundaries of these republics within Yugoslavia, none of these states has become sovereign or independent from the West.
But, no country has found itself in such trouble as Macedonia.
The southernmost Yugoslav republic declared independence from Yugoslavia after the independence referendum on September 8, 1991. Immediately after the declaration of independence, the country faced a problem. Namely, Greece did not allow the UN to recognize Macedonia under this name because they believed that one sovereign cannot be named after a region that stretches over several countries, because the region in northern Greece and eastern Bulgaria is also called Macedonia.
Due to a dispute with Greece, the UN recognized this country as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia only in 1993, two years after the declaration of independence. The end of the name dispute was announced on June 12, 2018, when Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev announced that the decision had been agreed in the form of renaming the country to the Republic of North Macedonia, with the citizenship being Macedonian, the citizen having the status of the Republic of North Macedonia, and the language also Macedonian.
After that, a referendum was held on September 30, 2018, in which, despite a low turnout with 36.91% of voters, it was announced that the renaming process would continue, as 94.18% of voters supported the idea of Macedonia’s accession to the European Union. Union and NATO with the adoption of the Prespani Agreement. The Parliament (Assembly) of Macedonia on October 19, 2018 officially decided to start the constitutional changes, which ended on January 11, 2019 and entered into force on February 12, after the Greek Parliament ratified the Treaty of Prespani and the Protocol on North Macedonia. to NATO. But the problems of this country do not end there.
After solving the problem with Greece, North Macedonia found itself in a similar problem with Bulgaria. Although this did not create problems during the country’s accession to the NATO alliance, Bulgaria is currently blocking the accession of North Macedonia to the EU. Namely, Bulgaria denies the Macedonian nation and language and believes that the Macedonians are ethnic Bulgarians and their language is Bulgarian. Bulgaria insists on using the name “the language of North Macedonia” instead of the Macedonian name North Macedonia and ending the celebration of Gotse Delchev, because Bulgaria considers him a Bulgarian and not a Macedonian hero. Despite the Friendship Agreement signed in 2017 between Bulgaria and North Macedonia, Bulgaria blocked North Macedonia’s accession to the EU in November 2020. Then the official Sofia said that it did not object to negotiations between Albania and the EU, but North Macedonia could not enter into negotiations.
Apart from Bulgaria and Greece, North Macedonia also has problems with Albania, which considers the northern and western parts of Macedonia its territory and part of “Greater Albania”.
These problems came to a head after the terrorist uprising in Kosovo and the NATO aggression against Yugoslavia in 1998 and 1999. Albanian nationalists on both sides of the border pushed for unification, and from January to June 2001, fighting in northern Macedonia culminated in the signing of the Ohrid Agreement, which guaranteed Albanians a degree of cultural autonomy. From that moment on, the Albanian factor has been a constant factor of destabilization and influence in the country itself. Under pressure from Albania, North Macedonia recognized Kosovo’s independence in 2008, and in 2017, after a violent change of government in Skopje and the election of pro-Western Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, the Albanian factor received its speaker of parliament, and Albanian became another official language in the country.
The only country in the region that does not seek North Macedonia is Serbia, although until 1944 then Macedonia was an integral part of Serbia and the Macedonian Orthodox Church was forcibly separated from the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1967. The Serbian community in northern Macedonia is still fighting for the status of a national minority.
In connection with the above, EU enlargement commissioner Oliver Varheli said that the likelihood that North Macedonia will start negotiations on accession to the European Union in the near future is small. This shows that the European Union does not want to accept as its member a state that has ethnic and border disputes with its neighbors at the external level and political and ethnic instability at the internal level.
But this standard did not apply to joining NATO. On March 27, 2020, during the largest pandemic, when all countries were struggling with the consequences of the coronavirus, North Macedonia officially became a member of this alliance.
Despite the fact that North Macedonia does not meet even the minimum standards, it is admitted to NATO. With a GDP of $12 billion and a defense budget of 1.19 percent of GDP, well below the required 2 percent, North Macedonia is yet another step in NATO’s eastward expansion. In addition to an insufficient defense budget, this country has territorial and ethnic disputes with all of its neighbors, and political and ethnic relations within the country are unstable.
What could be the reason that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization accepted such a state as a member? The answer is more than clear. It should also be noted that North Macedonia has not had good relations with China since 1999, when, under US pressure, it recognized Taiwan as an independent state, after which China broke off diplomatic relations.
Vedran Tadic, Serbian News Front