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Updates: NATO to Pull Out of Macedonia, Castro Brothers' Feud

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 12/19/2010

UPDATE:

I wrote and published the article below (titled "NATO Shuns Macedonia") on December 19 in globalpolitician.com and the Chronicle Media Group.

Nine days later, on December 28, 2010, Brigadier-General David Humar, Chief of Mission of NATO in Skopje, announced that he is leaving his post next month (6-12 months earlier than envisioned). NATO's Camp Able in charge of logistical support for KFOR in Kosovo has been transferred to ARM (Macedonia's army units based in and around Skopje's Alexander the Great airport) and all its staff are slated to leave Macedonia; NATO HQ personnel to be downsized from 180 to fewer than 30 in stages. The HQ will close down entirely and all the remaining personnel will move into Macedonia's Ministry of Defense. The new NATO Head of Mission will bear the rank of colonel only - while the current Head of Mission, Humar, is a Brigadier General.

Effectively, NATO is gone. Humar expressed his hopes that Macedonia will be able to resolve the name issue and join NATO next year (2011).

1. NATO to Pull Out of Macedonia

In view of the interminable name dispute (the Greeks demand that the Republic of Macedonia changes its name), NATO decided to effectively abandon Macedonia and withdraw most of its personnel from the country. Administrative, logistical, and military capacities and assets will be gradually transferred, over the next few weeks, to neighboring countries, including Bulgaria, Albania, and even Serbia. This would be a serious blow, as inter-ethnic tranquility and the long-term cohesion of Macedonia depend on its ultimate membership in the Alliance.

At the same time, the US State Department is "very concerned" with Macedonian overtures towards unsavory regimes - some of which are still on America's Terrorism Watch List or are considered foes and adversaries of the USA: Syria, Iran, Libya, Cuba, China, Belarus, and Russia among them. High-level state visits, economic and cultural exchanges, and other gestures of goodwill and amity between Gruevski and leaders of these pariah states and contestants for global power have not gone unnoticed in Washington's corridors of power.

The West believes that - disappointed with the EU and USA reluctance to pressure Greece into a reasonable compromise - the Macedonian government has opted for an anti-Western orientation in a multipolar world. "Spontaneous" hunger strikes calling on the Macedonian government to withdraw from the name negotiations are believed to be orchestrated by the ruling party, VMRO-DPMNE.
The EU is in the throes of a life-threatening crisis and the entire enlargement project is in ever-growing doubt. Even if the EU were to emerge unscathed from this predicament, its harried officials still regard the Western Balkans as a cesspit, an Ottoman-Byzantine-Oriental Muslim-infested relic in the heart of an otherwise civilized, genteel, and Christian Europe (read: West). The more bigoted of the EU members are going to drag the negotiations with the likes of Macedonia as they have been doing with Turkey for decades now.

Macedonia currently enjoys all the benefits of EU membership without incurring any of its costs: it has free trade, visa-free travel, and access to regional development funds and EU tenders. The costs of accession are bound to be crippling: Macedonia’s sheltered and inefficient industries will crumble in the face of European competition; its judiciary and legislature will be buried under the 84,000 pages of the acquis communautaire; environmental, sanitation, and labour rules will render the private sector, such as it is in this benighted place, all but dysfunctional and insolvent; brain drain will likely reach epic proportions. Macedonia is not ready for EU accession. For the time being, it is better off as it is.

In the long-term, accession will bring with it sizable benefits in the transfer of technological knowledge and management skills and in encouraging foreign direct investment. But these welcome side-effects and by-products of EU membership depend crucially on an all-pervading internal transformation. Macedonains lack the skills, the knowledge, the emotional maturity, and the cultural background to have a state of their own, let alone a democracy. They have yet to develop a sense of being part of a cohesive collective. Their rampant individualism is malignant and they all perceive the state and any form of authority as potential and actual enemies.

So, why are Macedonians so keen on joining the EU?

Some of them hope to turn a quick profit as asset prices (shares, real-estate) react to the good news. Others can’t wait to abandon ship and join the throngs of economic immigrants from Bulgaria and Poland. Recent polls show that more half the youth will emigrate given the first opportunity. Not one Macedonian I have met realizes the full implications of EU accession and not one of them gives a fig. They all perceive the EU as a “get-rich-quick” scheme.

2. Castro Brothers Feud

Fidel Castro is furious with his brother's "reforms" and with the ousting of most of his loyalists from Cuba's structures of power. He bitterly resents the backdoor, China-like introduction of minor "capitalist" tweaks to long-established doctrines of socialism and self-sufficiency. Fidel is planning a major policy speech in which he will call upon his brother to step down. Aware of these plans, Raul's counter-attack is ready. Following the "disloyal and traitorous" address by Fidel, he will be placed under house arrest. If this won't do the trick, more "drastic measures" will be adopted. What are these is anyone's guess.