US President Donald Trump (left) and Macedonia’s Prime Minister Hristjan Mickovski. PM Mickovski attended US Presidential inauguration. Was it showboating and spin or substantive?

Analysis/Opinion – Sasha Uzunov, Editor of Alternate Comms

US President Donald Trump has declared his interest in taking over the strategic Danish territory of Greenland near the Arctic north, central America’s the Panama Canal and even northern neighbour Canada. This territorial expansion of the US, should it come to pass, will probably have an impact on other parts of the world, such as the south European region of the Balkans, namely Kosovo and Macedonia.

For all we know this could be deliberate bombastic rhetoric from President Trump and nothing more, designed to place him in a better negotiating position when he ends, if he ends, US support for the Ukrainian side in the Russia-Ukraine War which began in 2022. It could simply be bluff and bluster in the diplomatic poker game yet to be played with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Let us assume that it is not hyperbole and US President Trump is serious in expanding his country’s borders at the expense of others. What does this mean for the Balkans, for Kosovo and Macedonia?

President Trump has made no bones about wanting to get the US out of Europe, and concentrate on domestic affairs. He could withdraw from Kosovo, a US protectorate carved out of Serbia in 1999 and the host of the largest US military base in Europe, Camp Bondsteel. Or he could maintain the status quo. 

If he were to potentially leave Kosovo, he would have to give the Kosovar Albanians a sweetener and leave their protection in the hands of the Europeans.. This sweetener could be the partition of Macedonia and the creation of a Greater Albania. Such a plan does actually exist. It was offered as a “worst case scenario” by a US expert Professor Daniel Serwer before a US Congressional hearing in 2017. 

The Serwer Scenario envisages US or European military forces occupying Macedonia for decades and partitioning the country between a Greater Albania and, by inference, Bulgaria, a US ally. If Trump were to use the Serwer Scenario obviously he would modify it and leave it to European states in occupying Macedonia. But to emphasise this is only wild speculation on my part and nothing more.

This brings me to Macedonian Prime Minister Hristjan Mickovski’s much publicised attendance of US President Trump’s inauguration on 20 January. Some have accused him of showboating and spin.

We have no idea if Prime Minister Mickovski met President Trump or his closest advisors in private to discuss Macedonia; we do not even know if the Macedonian leader asked for President Trump to change US’s unfair foreign policy towards Macedonia which forced the country to change its name and erase its identity by affixing “North.” Greece then removed its long standing veto on Macedonia joining both NATO and the European Union.

Greece, Denmark, Canada and Macedonia are all NATO members. The US created the  military alliance NATO in 1949 during the Cold War. Macedonia is a newer member, joining in 2018 via US machinations. President Trump has made rumblings about closing down NATO and saving the US taxpayer billions in subsiding the defence budgets of other alliance members, who the vast majority are European states. Now that remains to be seen.