The Greek ambassador’s response to my article left me neither surprised nor amazed. In the spirit of peaceful and good neighborly relations that he invokes, and that I also sincerely desire, I would urge him, his government, and all those who endorse this goal — including my country, the United States — to seriously question whether forcing the Macedonian people to renounce their name and ethnic identity can be a means to achieve that end.
Safeguarding the right to nationality and to identity is a fundamental principle of international law, a central tenet of the international order. The demand on Macedonia to negate itself, in effect, is without precedent and any justifiable cause. None of Greece’s welcome investments in Macedonia can compensate for a corresponding lack of respect for what Macedonia is — a sovereign country.
True, because it was under the gun from Greece, the previous Macedonian government did commit to adhere to a UN process to discuss a possible solution to the “name dispute.” But the solution that Greece demands is devoid of any dignity, and it is practically undoable. Submitting to it will very likely (and quite appropriately) result in charges of treason in Macedonia and will potentially instigate violent outcomes and instability — the very results the ambassador claims that Greece wishes to prevent.
Although the ambassador characterizes my article as Macedonian government “hostile propaganda” directed against Greece, in fact I am expressing my own personal opinion and have no connection to the Macedonian government. To provide readers with some context for his charge, a 1995 Interim Accord between Macedonia and Greece prohibits hostile propaganda directed from one state to the other, yet it does not define what constitutes such propaganda. Greece thus has been able to qualify facts as it pleases, and to engage in propaganda itself with impunity — the effects of which practice the ambassador points out as successes in swaying the U.S. Congress, in threatening to veto Macedonia’s entry in NATO, and elsewhere.
If discussing the terror of the Pinochet era, for example, does not constitute “conducting hostile propaganda activities” against Chile, but rather revealing unpleasant truths that need to be confronted, I would offer a brief historical account of recent Greek policies towards Macedonia and Macedonians. In the past century and a half, Greek governments could and did terrorize, expel, or assimilate Macedonians — without, it pains me to add, incurring sanctions from the international community. In 1912-13, during the Balkan Wars, Greece’s wholesale destruction of Macedonian ethno-cultural space was documented by the Carnegie Commission Report on the Causes and Conduct of War. In 1923, after the Greco-Turkish war, an “exchange of populations” between Greece and Turkey expelled Macedonians and imported 640.000 Greeks from Asia Minor to Macedonia. During the Greek Civil War, under the guise of fighting communism, the West turned a blind eye to Greek labor camps and to another wave of ethnic cleansing of 300.000 Macedonians. Even the Greek law for national reconciliation between Nazi collaborators and anti-Fascists was marred by chauvinism, allowing only expelled partisans who were “Greeks by blood” to return to the country, but prohibiting Macedonians from doing so. Even today, the European Union (EU) turns a blind eye to Greece’s (false) claim that it is the only EU member with no ethnic minorities.
There is no myth (classical Greek civilization fending off wild “Slavic” tribes), international law, or historical precedent to justify the current demands being made on Macedonia. One can hardly reconcile the above-mentioned discriminatory practices with the philosophy of Plato and Xenon. As for Jorge Luis Borges, whom the ambassador cites, this cosmopolitan citizen of the world was an archenemy of virulent nationalism. Argentine culture, he claimed, is not limited to one tradition but open to all; would that Greeks shared that same sense of inclusiveness and humanity.
In the end, there are greater principles and interests at stake here than Greece’s claim to sole ownership and use of “Macedonia.” The Republic of Macedonia has made maximum accommodations to join the international community and specifically address Greek perceived concerns i.e., changing its flag, foreswearing territorial aggrandizement in its Constitution, etc., — and has also met all NATO membership criteria. Along with the privileges of power enjoyed by the EU and the United States come obligations: noblesse oblige. Today, peace and stability cannot be achieved by negating others, by humiliation, and by a denial of basic human rights. One should strive not by the maxim the “might is right,” because, as history shows, it ultimately leads to outcomes to one’s own detriment.