Greater Surbiton

Happy sixtieth birthday, Israel ! It should not be necessary to explain why today, formally the sixtieth anniversary of Israel’s independence, is worth celebrating for those of us who are not Israelis. The survival of a nation that has been threatened with destruction is cause for celebration. The fact that nationally conscious Jews have been able to exercise their right to self-determination, and establish a homeland that has successfully provided a safe haven for members of the long-persecuted Jewish people, is cause for celebration. And the fact that an Israeli nation exists at all is cause for celebration. This is not to say that the process by which the Jewish state came into being, or its actions since its birth, are without their moral ambiguities - far from it. But these moral ambiguities are not reasons why Israeli independence should not be celebrated; merely why Israeli policy needs to change. One day, it should be possible to celebrate Israel’s anniversary in the knowledge that the moral ambiguities are all in the past.

Israel’s critics point out that the establishment of the State of Israel involved the dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians - for Palestinians, the ‘nakba’. This is true, but frequently taken out of context: Israel is no different from most of the world’s other nation-states, which are founded upon the oppression and ethnic cleansing of other peoples. Beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the emergence of a modern nation-state of England, Britain and the United Kingdom and their evolution over hundreds of years involved the colonisation, dispossession and forcible assimilation of the Irish, as well as an almost unrivalled programme of imperial aggression and expansion overseas. But there is no way that our English and British nationhood can be divorced from this heritage. The modern French nation-state was founded with the Great Revolution of 1789, an event that is widely viewed as marking the birth of modern politics, yet it quickly involved the genocidal or proto-genocidal persecution of the people of the Vendee, acts of massive territorial conquest and, under Napoleon, a failed genocidal project directed against the black population of Haiti. The US is founded upon the genocide of the Native Americans, without which it would not exist. Yet one could not expect the French not to celebrate the Revolution, or Americans not to celebrate Independence Day.

Israelis may feel it is unfair of me to compare them with great imperial powers. So it is - I cite these examples to dispense with the myth of ‘good’ Western nations vis-a-vis ‘bad’ others. In the moral ambiguities of its creation, Israel more closely resembles the nation-states of Central Europe and the Balkans - appropriately, since Israel is itself a post-Ottoman state many of whose citizens originated in Central Europe. Where these nation-states are concerned, who was the ethnic-cleanser and who was the victim largely depended upon who happened to win the war. This was the case with Israel and the Palestinians: had the Arabs won in the 1940s, the extermination and explusion of the Jewish population of Palestine would have resulted. Throughout the region of Greater Europe, the question of which nation was dispossessed was open to question; the fact that dispossession would take place was not.

Today’s relatively ethnically homogenous states of Poland and the Czech Republic are founded upon the massive ethnic-cleansing of ethnic Germans after World War II, involving millions of victims. The Balkan states - Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey - are all in their present forms, to varying degrees, products of ethnic cleansing. The Orthodox Christian states of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece were founded upon the slaughter and expulsion of a large part of their Ottoman Muslim inhabitants, and ideed upon the slaughter and expulsion of other Orthodox Christians. Romania had a large Jewish population and an exceptionally anti-Semitic political culture that culminated in massive Romanian participation in the Holocaust and the post-war emigration of Romanian Jews. The establishment of the Turkish nation-state involved the genocide of the Armenians, followed by the expulsion of at least one and a quarter million Greeks (or Turkish-speaking Christians) - which parallelled the Greek expulsion of a smaller number of largely Greek-speaking Muslims. Most recently, the establishment of independent Croatia involved the exodus of 150,000 Serb civilians from the ‘Krajina’ region and the slaughter of hundreds of them. I am leaving aside here the question of the respective rights and wrongs of these cases, or of how blame should be apportioned - that the formation of modern nation-states involves a process of ethnic homogenisation accompanied by real horrors should be indisputable.

There is no point pretending, therefore, that the establishment of modern nation-states - Israel included - is without its profound moral ambiguities. Yet it is the modern system of nation-states upon which our system of world politics is built - we can no more abolish nation-states than we can abolish modern politics. Indeed, nation-statehood is the prerequisite for liberal democracy: dynastic states such as the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires and multinational ’socialist’ federations such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia had to give way to sovereign nation-states for Europe to become a continent of democracies. Perhaps even more importantly, the people of the world love their nation-states, which they consider part of themselves. Asking the Israelis or anyone else to renounce their national identity is a violation of the most dearly felt feelings of ordinary people.

What is essential for the transition to full, post-nationalist democracy, however, is for members of every nation to face up to the moral ambiguities involved in the creation of their national state. This is not a question merely of assuaging liberal guilt. The crimes involved in the creation of a nation-state poison the functioning of its democracy and its relations with its neighbours. This poison can only be purged from its body politic by a recognition of its crimes. Turkey’s difficulty in functioning as a democracy is closely related to its unwillingness to face up to the Armenian Genocide or to the existence of a Kurdish people within its borders - hence it cannot fully permit freedom of speech, as this would result in open discussion of the Armenian Genocide and open expressions of Kurdish national politics. Greece’s imperialistic policy toward the Republic of Macedonia today is not based on any genuine national interest, but is a product of a nationalist ideology that guided a century of Greek colonisation, ethnic cleansing and forced assimilation in Greek Macedonia, of which the denial of the existence of a Macedonian nationality was a necessary part. The US’s record remains far from perfect, but in the US there is at least full freedom of speech - hence the possibility for films such as ‘Dances with Wolves’, that portray Native Americans sensitively and as victims of white oppression, to reach a mass audience. The American public still needs to face up to the genocide of the Native Americans, something that would produce a healthier American democracy and more politically aware citizenry. But we are still a long way off from the day when mass popular Turkish audiences will watch films of the ’Dances with Wolves’ variety about the Armenian Genocide, or Greek audiences about the colonisation of Greek Macedonia, or Israeli audiences about the nakba.

So far as Israel is concerned, its record of democracy and human rights concerning its own citizens compares very favourably with most other Middle Eastern countries, but very badly with just about any West European country, because its stage of national development more closely resembles Turkey or Greece than France or the Netherlands. The two deformations resulting from the nature of Israel’s birth are, firstly, a failure to embrace the concept of a multi-ethnic citizenry and accord equal rights to all its citizens regardless of ethnicity, resulting in suffering and injustice for Israeli Arabs; and, secondly, a continued policy of colonisation in the West Bank, resulting in massive suffering for the occupied Palestinians. These deformations are, of course, linked to the behaviour of the Arab states and the refusal of most of them to recognise Israel, as well as to the Palestinians’ own behaviour - but this is not ultimately a question of apportioning blame. Like every nation-state, Israel needs to develop a post-nationalist national ideology if it is to complete its national and democratic development. This means becoming a genuinely Israeli nation-state, i.e. a state of the Israeli nation; a state of the citizens of Israel - rather than simply a Jewish state in which non-Jews are second-class citizens. Jews would still form a comfortable majority in Israel, thereby guaranteeing Jewish national self-determination. But a Jewish ethnic majority can comfortably exist with a concept of citizenship blind to ethnicity - as all concepts of citizenship should be, from the US and France to Israel and the Arab states. And as the American and French models show, a concept of citizenship blind to ethnicity rests upon identification with the state’s legal borders - hence no colonisation projects directed against neighbouring peoples.

As a Croat, I am very pleased that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is forcing Croats to face up to the crimes carried out in the course of their War of Independence. All Croatian children should celebrate this War of Independence, but they should also learn about its moral ambiguities - the crimes against Serb civilians and the parallel attempt, which thankfully was defeated, to expand into Bosnia. They should learn about Croatian resistance to the Nazis in the form of the Partisan movement, of which they should rightfully feel proud, but also about the Croatian Ustasha genocide of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies - and, of course, about Partisan atrocities. Above all, they should be taught that theirs is a multiethnic nation that encompasses Serbs, Bosniaks and others, who do not cease thereby to be Serbs or Bosniaks. One should be able to be an ethnic Serb and at the same time belong to the Croatian nation as fully as an ethnic Croat, without abandoning one’s Serb identity, just as one should be able to be an ethnic Arab or Palestinian and belong to the Israeli nation as fully as an ethnic Jew, without abandoning one’s ethnic Arab or Palestinian identiy.

When this happens, a national anniversary becomes something that everyone, regardless of ethnic background, can celebrate without reservation.

Homer Simpson, star of the American animated TV comedy show ‘The Simpsons’, has been placed under police protection in his native Springfield after receiving death threats from an extremist Greek-nationalist organisation. The threats follow a formal demand from Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis last week that Mr Simpson change his first name, pointing out that ‘Homer’ was the name of Ancient Greece’s greatest poet, the author of The Iliad and The Odyssey. ‘Identity theft is an internationally recognised crime’, Ms Bakoyannis stated at a press conference in Athens on Friday; ‘millions of children, all over the world, are growing up believing that Homer was American. But the real Homer was Greek.’ She added: ‘And he was not yellow and did not have only eight fingers.’ She stressed, however, that Greece was willing to negotiate a compromise to the name dispute that would satisfy both parties, and suggested that ‘New Homer’ might be an appropriate and mutually acceptable name for the Simpsons star. Ms Bakoyannis’s move builds upon a Greek initiative to ban gay women worldwide from calling themselves ‘lesbians’, which is the name of the inhabitants of the Greek island of Lesbos, and upon a successful Greek action to force Dustin the Turkey, Ireland’s representative in the Eurovision Song Contest, to drop a reference to ‘Macedonia’ from the lyrics of his Eurovision entry.

Matt Groening, creator of ‘The Simpsons’, said he was distressed to learn of the Greek objection to the name of one of his most beloved characters, pointing out that he had named him after his own father, who was also called Homer. He also said that every effort had been made to ensure that his character was faithful to the spirit of the Greek original, and that, for example, the original Homer portrayed Odysseus as having said ‘D’oh !’ when half of his crew was eaten by the cyclops.

Diplomatic efforts to find a solution to the latest Greek-initiated name dispute are continuing.

(Greater Surbiton News Service)

This is a guest post by Martin Niemoeller

First they came for the Macedonians,

and I did not speak out, because I was not a Macedonian.

Then they came for Oliver Stone,

and I did not speak out, because I was not a Hollywood film director.

Now they’ve come for the lesbians… 

‘When Alexander saw the breadth of his domains, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.’ - Alan Rickman

Geography poses a very different problem for today’s Macedonians. It was reported last week that Greece’s transport ministry had rejected a request from Macedonia’s national airline, ‘MAT - Macedonian Airlines’, to fly into its territory, because it objects to the airline’s - and the country’s - use of the name ‘Macedonia’. Greece has spent the best part of the twentieth century trying to eradicate all traces of the Macedonian nationality and language from its territory, and since the early 1990s this has grown into a campaign to try to force the newly independent Republic of Macedonia, which emerged from the break-up of Yugoslavia, to change its name. So obsessive has Greece’s campaign to deny the Macedonian nation the right to exist become, that it not only vetoed Macedonia’s bid to join NATO, but even forced Dustin the Turkey, Ireland’s representative in the Eurovision Song Contest, to change the lyrics of its entry to the latter competition, because they referred to all the countries of Europe, including Macedonia.

Dustin the Turkey - the new threat to Greece and champion of Greater Macedonian irredentism.

Now Macedonia Airlines will be prevented from flying Macedonian holiday-makers to the Greek island of Corfu this summer.

This should not pose a problem for Macedonians, because there are pleny of other destinations for anyone wanting a Mediterranean beach holiday, many of them undoubtedly more lovely than Corfu. The most beautiful Mediterranean beaches and coastline are, of course, in Croatia. But after Croatia, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus may be an attractive destination, boasting beautiful, uncrowded, unspoilt beaches at a reasonable price combined with plenty of pretty towns, villages and places of historical interest for the more discerning tourist. Highlights include Kyrenia, described by the Rough Guide to Cyprus as ‘Cyprus’s most attractive coastal town’ with a ‘ruthlessly picturesque harbour’; St Hilarion castle; Nangomi, the ‘Golden Beach’, with its sea-turtles and birdlife; and the Gothic and Ottoman architectural treasures of North Nicosia.

Information about North Cyprus beach holidays can be found here, here, here and here.

An old joke goes, Q: What’s the first thing you learn in French military academy ? A: How to say ‘I surrender’ in German.

Now that France, Germany, Britain and the best part of Europe are united in the NATO alliance, however, it’s probably time we adopted a more uniform military system, and all learned how to say ‘I surrender’ in Russian simultaneously. At this week’s NATO summit in Bucharest, the leaders of France, Germany and other NATO countries rejected the US proposal to invite Ukraine and Georgia into the Membership Action Plan for NATO, in order to appease Russia. George W. Bush was virtually alone at the summit in arguing that welcoming new East European states into the alliance would both encourage them in the path of democratic reform and affirm support for their independence: ‘Welcoming them into the Membership Action Plan would send a signal to their citizens that if they continue on the path to democracy and reform they will be welcomed into the institutions of Europe. It would send a signal throughout the region that these two nations are, and will remain, sovereign and independent states.’ But this enlightened view was trumped by the grubby calculations of realpolitik. As French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has made clear, ‘We are opposed to the entry of Georgia and Ukraine because we think it is not the right response to the balance of power in Europe and between Europe and Russia, and we want to have a dialogue on this subject with Russia.’

It is not clear why the right of Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO should be held hostage to relations with Russia. Supposedly, they are independent states, not simply part of Russia’s imperial backyard - a backyard which, presumably, we no longer recognise in this enlightened, post-imperial, post-Cold-War age. If NATO is not directed against Russia, then Russia can have no possible objection to NATO expansion, and there is no point in recognising any such objection as legitimate. But if NATO really is directed against Russia, then it is a pretty puny alliance which allows the enemy a veto over its expansion. Ultimately, every sovereign state, from Russia to Ukraine and Georgia, has the right to form alliances with other sovereign states. To deny a smaller state this right in order to appease a larger, stronger state is shamefully disrespectful of the first state’s sovereignty.

If the NATO powers lack the will to stand up to Russia, it raises the question of what precise purpose NATO serves. The alliance has proved less than adequate in mobilising troops from member states to fight the Taliban. The very same states that wish to appease Russia in Europe - France and Germany - have been less than forthcoming when it is a question of providing troops to fight the enemies of humanity in Afghanistan. France has now belatedly agreed to provide the minimum additional number of troops to Afghanistan to avoid the threatened Canadian withdrawal from Kandahar. But even this move faces stiff domestic opposition in France.

Nor has the Bucharest summit upheld the noble principle that NATO should serve as a framework within which the states of ‘new Europe’, along with ‘old Europe’, can coexist and cooperate. Not only did the NATO states let down Ukraine and Georgia, but they could not even muster the will to pressurise Greece into allowing Macedonia to join the alliance without first having to change its name. Macedonia’s membership in NATO is crucial for the stability of South East Europe, and Greece’s policy of trying to crush the sovereignty and national identity of a European country has nothing to do with democratic values, and much more in common with fascist traditions - it was Greece’s 1930s fascist dictator Ioannis Metaxas who pioneered the most extreme measures to forcibly Hellenise the Macedonian national minority in Greek Macedonia.

This point was amply reaffirmed by recent Greek attempt to interfere with freedom of expression in Macedonia, by pressurising the latter over the appearance of billboards in the Macedonian capital of Skopje, showing a swastika superimposed on a Greek flag. The billboards were private advertisements for which the Macedonian government was not responsible; the Greek regime’s attempt to link Macedonia’s NATO bid to its removal of these billboards puts it on a par with the Muslim fundamentalists who rioted over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed. Greece has been a very poor member of NATO; it has only about 130 troops in Afghanistan - the same number as Macedonia, a non-member with one-fifth its population. Nevertheless, a senior NATO source apparently blamed Macedonia for Greece’s veto of its NATO bid.

The sad truth is that the widely reviled Bush has shown himself to be a much better European than France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy. Although Sarkozy is an improvement on the last two French presidents, is at least relatively pro-American, and has agreed to bring France back into the NATO integrated command structure, yet he has persistently shown himself ready to put considerations of narrow national interest above higher principles - and to justify it in the crudest terms. He argued against Turkey’s entry into the EU on the grounds that ‘Turkey is in Asia Minor’ and that ‘I won’t be able to explain to French school kids that Europe’s border neighbors are Iraq and Syria.’ (This from the president of a republic that includes territories in the Caribbean, South America and the Indian Ocean as its integral parts or ‘overseas departments’). He supports Greece against Macedonia in the ‘name dispute’ on similarly principled grounds: ‘I always stressed that we support the Greek position in the name issue. Greeks are our friends.’

The US has shown itself to be more principled and more pro-European than France. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has contradicted NATO’s source, and stated unambiguously that Macedonia was not to blame for the failure of its NATO bid. The US has now promised to boost assistance to, and bilateral relations with Macedonia; one source suggests that this may even take the form of a strategic partnership similar to the one that the US has with Israel. It is a sad day for NATO when the US must bypass it to support the more youthful and vulnerable members of the European family.

One of the sorriest aspects of this dismal NATO summit was the failure of our own Prime Minister Gordon Brown to support the US, either over Ukraine and Georgia or over Macedonia. The charitable explanation is that this was the inaction of a PM inexperienced in foreign affairs who still has not found his feet. The more worrying possibility is that Brown is reacting to Tony Blair’s controversial experience by attempting to be less pro-American and more ‘pro-European’ (i.e. anti-European but pro-Franco-German). This would be a mistake. If it is left to the US, alone of all the major NATO countries, to stand up for the East Europeans, this will not be good for European unity.

Greece’s Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis announced today that Greece would veto the US’s continued membership of NATO unless the US changed its name to ‘United States of Central North America’. ‘Greece is nothing if not consistent’, Ms Bakoyannis said at a press conference today, ‘Just as we object to FYROM [the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia] being the sole claimant to the name of the entire area of Macedonia, so we object to FBCOA [the Former British Colony of America] claiming sole use of the name of “America”.’ She pointed out that the territory of the FBCOA covers less than half of the continent of North America, which in turn is only one of two American continents: ‘We are concerned that the FBCOA’s use of the name “America” implies territorial claims on neighbouring states.’

My Bakoyannis added: ‘The leaders of this new country of 300 million insist on calling their homeland “America” even though that is a name that has been part of Native American history and culture for thousands of years.’ She then asked rhetorically, ‘Was Pocahontas an Anglo-Saxon ?’

UN mediators have been struggling to find a solution to the ‘name dispute’ acceptable to both sides, one that would allow the US to remain in NATO. UN envoy Matthew Nimetz has tabled several proposals, including ‘Democratic United States of America’, ‘New United States of America’ and ‘United States of America (Washington D.C.)’, but these have all been rejected by Athens.

President George W. Bush has accepted that at this week’s NATO summit in Bucharest, the US may have its membership of the alliance terminated at Greece’s demand. ‘We shall continue to seek a negotiated solution to this question’, President Bush said today.

Ms Bakoyannis has indicated that Athens is considering asking the United Kingdom to change its name as well, pointing out that ‘Britain’ is the name of a neighbouring French administrative region. There has been speculation that Greece may insist that the UK be renamed ‘United Kingdom of Northern Britain and Northern Ireland’ if it wishes to remain in NATO, although Athens has yet to issue a formal demand.

(Greater Surbiton News Service)

We were warned that recognising Kosova’s independence would open a Pandora’s box, triggering global chaos by encouraging innumerable other secessionist territories across the world to declare their own independence in the hope of recognition. The threatened consequence was always something of a non-sequitur, since the secessionist territories most frequently cited - Northern Cyprus, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria - had all already seceded from the countries to which they formally belong. How could recognition of Kosova’s independence spark the secession of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), when the TRNC had already declared independence from Cyprus back in 1983, twenty-five years before Kosova was recognised ? It’s a riddle to which President Vladimir Putin of Eurasia no doubt has the answer, one that he may reveal to us in the course of his current propaganda war against Oceania. Putin is himself fond of the supposed Kosova - TRNC parallel. It is therefore particularly poignant that the recognition of Kosova’s independence appears to be having the exact opposite result to the one that he and other prophets of doom predicted. Namely, on Friday, the Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat and Cyprus’s newly elected president Dimitris Christofias met and agreed to restart negotiations on reunifying the country.

There is reason to believe that this positive development is not unrelated to the independence of Kosova, as Professor Mehmet Ozcan of the International Strategic Research Organisation has persuasively suggested. Under Christofias’s hardline nationalist predecessor Tassos Papadopoulos, it was the Greek Cypriots, not the Turkish Cypriots, who were most to blame for obstructing Cypriot unity. In a referendum in 2004, the UN’s Annan Plan for Cyprus’s reunification was overwhelmingly approved by the Turkish Cypriot electorate but, on Papadopoulos’s urging, overwhelmingly rejected by the Greek Cypriot electorate. Papadopoulos believed that, with Cyprus entering the EU and able to veto Turkey’s entry, he would eventually be able to extract more favourable terms from the Turks than those represented by the Annan Plan. It is also entirely possible that he actually preferred a permanently divided Cyprus to one reunited on the basis of an Annan-style compromise; at the very least, he was prepared to postpone reunification for the forseeable future. From the perspective of most Greek Cypriots who would like in principle to see their country reunited, this strategy only made sense if it was indeed going to lead to unity on favourable terms in the long run. But the upcoming recognition of Kosova’s independence showed them that the international community could not be relied upon to uphold the principle of the inviolability of state borders indefinitely, particularly when it was a question of a country, such as Serbia or Cyprus, whose leaders were behaving consistently unreasonably. Hence the surprise electoral victory of the moderate Christofias last month. Symbolically, the first round of Cyprus’s presidential election, in which Papadopoulos came third and was therefore knocked out, took place on 17 February - Kosova’s independence day.

As leader of the Communist AKEL party, Christofias represented the non-nationalist option. AKEL has long upheld a cross-national ideology of brotherhood and unity between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and has a history of persecution at the hands of both Greek and Turkish extremists. When, prior to his meeting with Talat, Christofias was asked by a reporter whether they would be drinking Greek or Turkish coffee (they are the same drink), Christofias replied ‘Cypriot coffee, we will both be having Cypriot coffee’. Christofias and AKEL should not be viewed through rose-tinted spectacles; they opportunistically collaborated with Papadopoulos, helping to bring him to power and defeat the Annan Plan. Christofias continues to follow the Greek-nationalist line of insisting that Macedonia change its name. Nevertheless, under his leadership, Cyprus’s prospects for reunification seem incomparably better than they did barely more than a month ago.

The other element of the equation is that Talat did not respond to Kosova’s recognition by launching a new separatist drive, as the anti-Kosovar prophets of doom had predicted. Indeed, he explicitly rejected a parallel between Kosova and the TRNC: ‘We do not see a direct link between the situation in Kosovo and the Cyprus Problem. These problems have come up through different conditions.’ And he is right. Although it was the Greek side that was primarily responsible for provoking the crisis that culminated in the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, and although Turkey arguably had a legal basis for its invasion, nevertheless the form that this invasion took, involving as it did the dismemberment of the country and the ethnic-cleansing of the Greek population of the north, constituted an act of aggression and conquest. The Turkish Cypriot entity that became the TRNC in 1983 was therefore an artificial product of foreign invasion and ethnic cleansing - in contrast to Kosova, which was established as an autonomous region under the legitimate Yugoslav authorities, and whose Albanian demographic majority predated its conquest by Serbia in 1912.

Talat may or may not recognise this distinction between Kosova and the TRNC. But he is undoubtedly aware of something of which the prophets of doom are not, but which is blindingly obvious: the fact that Kosova is being recognised internationally does not mean that other secessionist territories will be recognised internationally. The ’Pandora’s box’ model would only hold true if a secessionist territory, encouraged by Kosova’s recognition, could translate this sense of encouragement into international recognition. As there is no way for a secessionist territory to do this, the model does not hold. The prospects of South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria for recognition by Russia may have improved, but this would be because of a conscious policy decision on Moscow’s part, not because the territories in question felt ‘inspired’ by Kosova’s recognition. Talat is no knee-jerk separatist but a rational, moderate politician who supported the Annan Plan; he has no reason to jeopardise the Turkish Cypriot community’s chance to enter the EU because of Kosova.

There is a final lesson to be learned from this. Although Cyprus has much more justice on its side vis-a-vis the TRNC than Serbia has vis-a-vis Kosova, yet it is Christofias who speaks the language of reconciliation and ‘Cypriot coffee’. Serbia’s leaders have never been able to speak in this way to the Kosova Albanians; they did not speak of Kosova and Serbia as lands that belonged alike to Serbs and Albanians, or speak of the fraternity of the two peoples. Christofias may understand something that Serbia’s Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and President Boris Tadic clearly do not: that if you want to keep your country united and prevent one of its peoples from seceding, you need to treat the latter as your fellow countrymen and women, not as the enemy.

This is a lesson that should be learned by all regimes around the world whose oppression drives subject peoples to secede: if you want to avoid losing part of your territory, it pays to be reasonable. Meanwhile, the leaders of the Western alliance may congratulate themselves on having, with their decision to recognise Kosova, helped to promote stability and reconciliation in South East Europe and the resolution of an old conflict in their ranks.

This article was published today on the website of the Henry Jackson Society.

The democratic choice is an easier one for progressives to make in the UK than it is in the US. Over here, the ruling Labour Party is more progressive than the Conservative opposition on both foreign and domestic issues. But in the US, things are not so simple. Were I an American citizen, I would be inclined to vote Democrat over domestic issues - abortion, taxation, etc. But I have no doubt that the interests of South East Europe would be better served by John McCain as president than by either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

Bill Clinton bears a very large share of responsibility for the problems faced by the Balkans and Caucasus today. These are, in particular, a dismembered, non-functioning Bosnia; an anti-Western, disruptive Serbia; and a dismembered Georgia. The problem was not that Clinton was a particularly reactionary president in world affairs, but that he simply was not very interested in them, something that resulted in a failure of leadership. The mess in Bosnia is above all the fault of the former British Conservative government of John Major and the former French Socialist regime of the late Francois Mitterand; they were the champions of appeasement and the architects, along with Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic and Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman, of Bosnia’s dismemberment. Clinton could and should have insisted upon a change in Western policy vis-a-vis Bosnia upon becoming president. Instead, he chose to defer to his pro-Belgrade European allies, Britain and France, not wishing to fall out with them over something trivial like genocide in the heart of Europe. This was not only a moral failing, but a betrayal of US interests; the disastrous Anglo-French policy and Clinton’s vacillating support for it greatly damaged both transatlantic relations and the Balkans. There are times when Europe needs American leadership; Bosnia was one of them.

After the initialling of the Dayton Peace Accords in November 1995, Clinton continued to neglect Bosnia, allowing the indicted war-criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic to escape arrest - primarily because he did not want to risk American casualties in arrest operations. Nor does Clinton deserve particular credit over Kosova; it is highly questionable whether the US would have acted to prevent the genocide there in 1999 had not Major and Mitterand been replaced in the meantime by Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac. NATO’s liberation of Kosova should have been followed up by the prompt recognition of its independence, while the Russians were in no position to cause such trouble for us as they are today. We could have ’punished’ the Serbia of Milosevic with Kosova’s independence, instead of the Serbia of today, led as it is by the relatively pro-Western President Boris Tadic. But that problem, too, was allowed to fester; its resolution today is proving much more difficult than it need have been.

Over Russia and the Caucasus, too, Clinton, like George Bush Snr before him, showed a disastrous failure of leadership. With Russian politics in a state of flux, with the pro-Western Boris Yeltsin in power in Moscow and financially dependent on the West, a golden opportunity existed to push Russian policy in the Caucasus in a less imperialistic direction. The Western powers should have acted decisively to halt the dismemberment of Georgia in the early 1990s and prevent the break-away regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from falling under Russia’s exclusive control. We should have recognised the independence of Chechnya, preempting Yeltsin’s violent assault on the country in 1994. But as is so often the case, the dovish policy is the one most likely to lead to confrontation in the long-run - think of Neville Chamberlain and Munich. Our failure to engage in the Caucasus, and Blair’s shameful support for Vladimir Putin over Chechnya in 1999, have been richly rewarded: Georgia, an aspiring NATO member, faces perpetual dismemberment, while an aggressive, ungrateful Putin has reentered the Balkans with a vengeance with the deliberate aim of derailing the region’s Euro-Atlantic integration. Chechnya proved to be the poison of Russian democracy and Russian-Western friendship; a Russian president willing and able to use weapons of mass destruction against his Chechen citizens is unlikely to respect democratic freedoms in Russia proper, and an undemocratic, authoritarian Russian regime is more likely to be hostile to the West.

In fairness, Russia is not solely responsible for the mess in the Caucasus; Georgia’s brutally chauvinistic former president Zviad Gamsakhurdia was one of the architects of his country’s dismemberment, as was the Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev, who supported the Abkhazians. The people of Abkhazia and South Ossetia had legitimate grievances against Gamsakhurdia’s regime and its successors in Tbilisi. These are all issues that a more forward-looking US policy could have helped to resolve, but did not. 

I fear, therefore, the consequences for South East Europe of a US president who is dovish, uninterested in or unserious about foreign policy. Hillary Clinton has always worked hand-in-glove with Bill in the political sphere, and should share responsibility with him for his disastrous Bosnia policy. Indeed, the story is that her influence made it worse; that she read Robert Kaplan’s truly dreadful book ‘Balkan Ghosts’ and passed it on to her husband; this book, filled as it was with crude stereotypes about the Balkans (along the lines of ‘ancient ethnic hatreds’), encouraged the perception of the Bosnian war as an expression of intractable ethnic conflict in which no moral issues were at stake, militating against any intention Bill might have had to resist Serbian aggression. Be that as it may, Hillary was more frank in welcoming Kosovo’s independence than Obama, who appears to see Balkan politics largely through the prism of his need to win the goodwill of the Serbian and Greek lobbies in the US. Hence his letter to the Serbian Unity Congress, in which he stated: ‘I support and shall help in every possible way development of the dialog between all sides in Kosova because I believe that peace and stability can be reached only by solutions acceptable for all sides’ - not far from an endorsement of the Serbo-Russian position on Kosova, which insists on a Serbian veto on any settlement. Hence also Obama’s endorsement of the Greek-nationalist position on Macedonia. These acts may be motivated by simple electoral opportunism, but they do not bode well for a principled and forward-looking US policy toward the Balkans should Obama become president. In flirting with the US’s Serbian and Greek lobbies, Obama is flirting with groups that encompass ultra-right-wing, Christian-fundamentalist, Muslim-hating bigots.

There are several reasons to believe that McCain would follow a more serious and principled policy toward South East Europe than either Clinton or Obama. He is aware of the importance of what he calls a ‘progressive Turkey’ as a strategic partner of the US and a beacon of Muslim democracy, and of the mutual inter-relatedness of democracy and stability in Turkey and Iraq. Turkey is both the most important Balkan country in world affairs and a state that borders on Iraq; the Balkans and the Middle East are adjacent, interlocking regions; McCain’s commitment to staying the course in Iraq is therefore most likely to promote stability in the Balkans.

McCain was correct to oppose Congressional recognition of the Armenian Genocide (here I break ranks with Norman Geras). The Ottoman Empire in 1915 was undoubtedly guilty of genocide against the Armenians, and Turkey should recognise this genocide. But it is not for an outside power like the US to single out this historic crime as uniquely totemic and worthy of recognition, particularly given that the US Congress has taken no parallel steps to recognise the genocidal crimes carried out by Russia and the Balkan Christian states against Ottoman and Caucasian Muslims during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Why should the US recognise the Ottoman genocide of one million Armenians, but not the Balkan Christian genocide of over six-hundred thousand Ottoman Muslims in 1912-13, when the latter crime was an immediate catalyst of the former ? The Turks would be entirely justified in taking offence at such double standards, and McCain is entirely correct that the US should be developing its relationship with Ankara, not creating new barriers to it - though he is also far from uncritical in his support for Turkey.

McCain was an early supporter of Kosova’s independence. He stood by the oppressed Kosova Albanians before it became fashionable in Washington to do so, and continued to do so despite the support given by many right-wing Republicans - largely for anti-Clinton and anti-Islamic reasons - to the anti-Albanian policies of Milosevic and subsequent Serb-nationalist politicians. A Republican president who is ready to put a combination of US strategic interests and morality above petty sectarian domestic feuds and religious hatred is more likely to act in South East Europe’s best interests.

Finally, McCain led a delegation of US senators to Tbilisi in August 2006, to express unconditional support for Georgia’s territorial integrity and to challenge the presence of Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, suggesting they be replaced by a UN or OSCE force. Although Moscow likes to draw a false parallel between Kosova and South Ossetia, in reality, secessionist South Ossetia is more like the Serb-controlled enclave in northern Kosova - an expression of the imperialism of a larger neighbour that seeks to punish a former colony for seeking independence by dismembering it. Georgia is not Russia’s backyard, and any policy that treats it as being so will only bolster the anti-Western Russian neo-empire that has arisen under Putin to become a dangerous enemy of the West. McCain is entirely correct in his belief that in defending Georgia, the West will be defending itself. His suggestion that Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia be replaced by a UN force should be welcomed by all multilateralist opponents of unilateral intervention by great powers in the internal affairs of other countries. But don’t hold your breath.

Macedonia hopes to be invited to join NATO at the alliance’s summit, which is to be held in Bucharest, Romania in early April. However, Greece has threatened to veto Macedonia’s accession, on the grounds that it objects to Macedonia’s name. Based on its own blinkered, nationalistic and pre-democratic interpretation of history, Greece claims exclusive right to use the term ‘Macedonia’, and is entirely prepared to bully this much smaller and more vulnerable nation until the latter gives up its name, regardless of the cost to regional stability and to NATO. It is difficult to express the degree of disgust and contempt that such behaviour makes one feel.

Greece argues that it has a province of its own called ‘Macedonia’, and the existence of a ‘Republic of Macedonia’ implies a territorial claim on this Greek province. This is belied by the fact that the Republic of Macedonia has existed since the 1940s, initially as a member of the Yugoslav Federation, while Greece only named the province in question ‘Macedonia’ as recently as 1989, presumably with the deliberate, cold-blooded intention of having an excuse to provoke the current dispute when Macedonia declared independence from Yugoslavia. Having spent the best part of the twentieth century forcibly assimilating or dispossessing its own Slavic Macedonian minority, it was also presumably only in 1989 that Greece felt it was safe to do this, without undermining this same policy of national homogenisation.

The second Greek argument is that Macedonia is allegedly trying to ’steal’ Greek history; supposedly, as the Macedonians are a Slavic people, they have no right to use the name of the country of Alexander the Great, whom the Greeks claim as ‘theirs’. This, of course, involves a selective view of history; as the Macedonians are fond of pointing out, the Ancient Greeks are widely on record as having viewed the Macedonians as non-Greek barbarians. In the fourth century BC, the Athenian Greek orator Demosthenes, a prominent opponent of the Macedonians, said of Alexander the Great’s father, Macedonian King Philip II, that he was ‘not only no Greek, nor related to the Greeks, but not even a barbarian from any place that can be named with honours, but a pestilent knave from Macedonia, whence it was never yet possible to buy a decent slave’. But even to make this point is to descend to the level of the Greek nationalists, who try to hijack ancient history, imposing their contemporary nationalist stereotypes upon it in order to use it as propaganda.

I appreciate that it may be difficult for a sane person to understand what is happening here: try to imagine the English fighting with the Welsh over whether Boadicea was ‘English’ or ‘Welsh’, or with the French over whether Richard the Lionheart was ‘English’ or ‘French’. Try to imagine the French fighting with the Germans over whether Charlemagne was ‘French’ or ‘German’. This is something that no mature, democratic nation would do. Yet in the twenty-first century, it is apparently possible for NATO expansion and Balkan stability to be jeopardised over something like this. In fact, the implications are even more dangerous: if Slavs are not allowed to share in the heritage of Alexander the Great, are British citizens of West Indian or Asian origin allowed to share in the heritage of Boadicea or Richard the Lionheart ? Are German Jews allowed to share in the heritage of Frederick Barbarossa, or Italian Jews in the heritage of Julius Caesar ? If we permit Greece to impose racial homogeneity on ancient history, what is left of Western values ?

Macedonia should under no circumstances back down on this question. The whole point of joining NATO is to acquire security. But what meaning does ’security’ have if one is not even allowed to use one’s own name ? NATO will be discrediting itself if it allows Greek national chauvinism to veto its expansion.

Macedonia’s position is not so weak. The Western powers will never allow Macedonia to collapse; the country’s strategic position; the possibility of its break-up leading to conflict between Greece and Turkey; the growing Russian encroachment in neighbouring Serbia and in Bosnia’s Serb Republic - all these are reasons why Macedonia can feel confident that the West cannot afford to abandon it. Furthermore, Greece’s own position is not so strong; northern Cyprus is under Turkish occupation, and Greece and Cyprus ultimately need US and European goodwill if this issue is ever to be resolved. Some of us may feel that, if Greece continues with its current policy over Macedonia, and if Cyprus continues to follow the Greek line, then these two nations have forfeited any right to Western support for Cyprus’s reunification. Macedonia may have to wait a while longer to join NATO, but it will survive, while Greece may end up paying a heavy price.

In resisting this aggression, Macedonia is upholding not only its own honour, but NATO’s and the West’s. Macedonia must stand up for itself, for in doing so, it is standing up for Europe, for democracy and for the dignity of small nations. If the Macedonians under Alexander the Great could conquer Persia and go as far as India with their armies, I am sure today’s Macedonians can face off a tin-pot neighbourhood bully.

Last August, three US senators including presidential candidate Barack Obama introduced a resolution to the US Senate (S. Res. 300), endorsing the Greek-nationalist bullying of the Republic of Macedonia. This resolution raises serious concerns about whether an Obama presidency would pursue a responsible policy vis-a-vis the Balkans.

S. Res. 300 accuses Macedonia of a policy that ‘instills hostility and a rationale for irredentism in portions of the population of FYROM toward Greece and the history of Greece’, on the grounds: 1) that ’a television report in recent years showed students in a state-run school in FYROM [the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia] still being taught that parts of Greece, including Greek Macedonia, are rightfully part of FYROM’; 2) that ’some textbooks, including the Military Academy textbook published in 2004 by the Military Academy “General Mihailo Apostolski” in the FYROM capital city, contain maps showing that a “Greater Macedonia” extends many miles south into Greece to Mount Olympus and miles east to Mount Pirin in Bulgaria’; and 3) that ‘the Government of FYROM recently renamed the capital city’s international airport “Alexander the Great Airport”.’

The resolution, which has been endorsed by at least 75 Members of Congress and is advertised on the website of the Greek Embassy in Washingon D.C., is evidence that Obama and other senior US politicians are pandering to the peculiarly hysterical, nationalistic and ill-informed Greek lobby in the US. That the resolution justifies itself on the basis of something as insubstantial and ill-defined as ‘a television report in recent years’ is evidence of the unseriousness of its allegations. The television report in question appears to be a YouTube clip that briefly shows a school textbook illustrating the historical territory of Macedonia, which was partitioned between Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria in 1912-13 (you have to watch the clip quite carefully to catch it). The fact that the YouTube clip was undated may be why the resolution referred vaguely to a ‘television report in recent years’. Likewise, the military textbook mentioned by the resolution appears merely to have displayed historical maps of Macedonia. The Greek-nationalist lobbyists appear to have interpreted this as evidence of a contemporary Macedonian territorial claim on parts of Greece - evidence of a Greek-nationalist sense of insecurity over the Macedonian question that peaked in the early 1990s at the time of Macedonia’s secession from Yugoslavia and that, however baseless, has not gone away. The Skopje airport is indeed named after Alexander the Great, though why this should be in any way objectionable, let alone the object of a senatorial resolution, is really beyond comprehension to anyone who is not a Greek nationalist, and I shall not insult the reader’s intelligence by labouring the point.

S. Res. 300 ends by urging Macedonia (’FYROM’) to 1) ‘observe its obligations under Article 7 of the 1995 United Nations-brokered Interim Accord, which directs the parties to “promptly take effective measures to prohibit hostile activities or propaganda by state-controlled agencies and to discourage acts by private entities likely to incite violence, hatred or hostility” and review the contents of textbooks, maps, and teaching aids to ensure that such tools are stating accurate information’; and 2) to ‘to work with Greece within the framework of the United Nations process to achieve longstanding United States and United Nations policy goals by reaching a mutually-acceptable official name for FYROM’.

It is unclear why people who get their information from random YouTube clips should feel they have the right to lecture sovereign states about what they put in their school or military textbooks. Yet it is the second demand that is the most worrying: the US has already recognised Macedonia under its official and rightful name, the ‘Republic of Macedonia’; Obama and his fellow senators appear to be trying to turn the clock back and destabilise this fragile state in a sensitive part of the Balkans, in order to pander to the nationalist hysteria of the Greek American lobby, thus giving their own domestic political careers priority over the US’s foreign-policy interests.

Let us hope that Obama’s sponsorship of this resolution is simply a cynical ploy to win the Greek-American vote, and will not translate into a genuinely anti-Macedonian policy in the event that he becomes president. For if it does, the consequences for the peace and stability of South East Europe could be catastrophic.

Hat tip: David Edenden, The Macedonian Tendency.