UKRAINE & Macedonia- After the Ukraine will the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania & Estonia) be next on Russia’s list of acquisitions? If Russian President Putin is not afraid to use force in the Ukraine he probably won’t be afraid to use it elsewhere. What does that mean for the US & EU if they don’t act with force? It tells Moscow that the West is weak and Eastern Europe & the Balkans region could also come into question and be up for grabs.
Professor John Schindler of the US Naval War College writes: (link)
For Macedonian governments, past & present, their approach with or obsession with following a particular foreign fashion to the exclusion of exploring their diplomatic options such as the obsession with Titoist Yugoslavism or now trying to desperately get into the EU tells you the inability of the “experts” in the capital city, Skopje, they are out of their league. They are unable to understand that the world is an unstable place and you need to think for yourself. Just look to the south and you see the economic basket case in Greece. You can’t put all your diplomatic eggs in one basket. You need to play the balancing act.
if Putin’s Russia can get away with it, assuming it does, then it may not be far-fetched for Macedonia to be in Moscow’s firing line for bowing to Western pressure and its own stupidity in turning a blind eye to ethnic Albanian terrorists from Macedonia who fight in Syria. All Macedonian governments since the 2001 War in the country have been either strongarmed by the West or have cynically pandered to the demands of ethnic Albanian extremists within Macedonia… It reminds you of the Suddeten German minority bullying the Czechoslovak majority in 1938 with Hitler pulling the strings and the West appeasing before it was too late.
A parody of Kevin Costner’s Western/cowboy film – Dances with Wolves. Skopje – dances with wolves, Ceca & Aziz ! Dancing diplomats & prancing politicians !
Years ago, The stupidity of Macedonian diplomacy culminated in recognising Kosovo’s independence without squeezing concessions from neighbouring Serbia of which Kosovo seceded from. Belgrade asked Skopje not to accord recognition. In response the Macedonian government should have pressed Serbia and it’s state funded Serbian Orthodox Church to recognise the independence of the Macedonian Orthodox Church in return for not recognising Kosovo. If Serbia refused then you could show rightly at how the Serbian government is still meddling via religion into Macedonia’s affairs. But Macedonia blindly following the West just recognised Kosovo without cutting any deals because it was too afraid to ask Belgrade over the church issue. Now we have the Serbian state using religion by supporting rebel bishops to destabilise Macedonia. Ironically it was a trick perfected by the Soviets.
When you can’t think for yourself others will do the thinking for you. If you are lazy with your language you will be lazy with the economy & foreign policy.
Bulgaria has seen this and it is no coincidence that the crazy historical theories hatched in a Sofia cafe are gaining currency in Skopje.
If your intellectual pursuit consists of jumping on cafe tables in Skopje, the Macedonian capital, dancing to the likes of Serb turbo-folk singer Ceca or Bulgarian gender-bender Aziz or effecting the chain smoking bohemian artist stereotype from Belgrade or Brussels or Sofia cafe society and thinking you’re cool, it will not help you in the long run.
COULD MACEDONIA BE A VICTIM OF THE NEW COLD WAR?
In 2013 we wrote of Russian President Vladimir “Fred” Putin issuing a warning to the Republic of Macedonia if it didn’t do something to stop sections of its ethnic Albanian minority from sending jihadist fighters to Syria in the war against the Assad regime. However, the warning wasn’t so much aimed at the majority Orthodox Macedonian population. This was before the Russian annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea… It would now not be far-fetched or even out of the realms of reality for Russia to take “action” in some form such as espionage, sabotage operations if the Macedonian government, because of US pressure, refused to clamp down hard on the Islamists…
Macedonia is now caught between a rock and a hard place…its foreign policy is in a shambles, run by a political class who jump on the latest fashion without proper independent and strategic thinking; this political class has lurched from Belgrade to Sofia to Brussels to Washington… It simply has failed to understand that it must stand on its own two feet. The answers are not in Belgrade, Sofia, Brussels, Washington or Moscow but to navigate an independent course through the stormy global political terrain.
Professor John Schindler ex-NSA writes:
For years, I studied Russia as a counterintelligence officer for the National Security Agency, and at times I feel like I’m seeing history in reverse. The Kremlin is a fiercely revisionist power, seeking to change the status quo by various forms of force. This will soon involve NATO members in the Baltics directly, as well as Poland and Romania indirectly. Longstanding Russian acumen in what I term Special War, an amalgam of espionage, subversion and terrorism by spies and special operatives, is already known to Russia’s neighbors and can be expected to increase.
In truth, Putin set Russia on a course for Cold War 2.0 as far back as 2007, and perhaps earlier; Western counterintelligence noted major upswings in aggressive Russian espionage and subversion against NATO members as far back as 2006.The brief Georgia war of August 2008, which made clear that the Kremlin was perfectly comfortable with using force in the post-Soviet space, ought to have served as a bigger wake-up call for the West.