1April 2019, Vol. 39, No. 3 RUSI Newsbrief

North Macedonia and NATO

As NATO celebrates its 70th anniversary this year, it is facing yet another enlargement. North Macedonia is on the cusp of becoming a member, bringing the number of Allies to 30. Accession is long overdue.

The post-Yugoslav republic was a NATO frontrunner in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It should have joined in April 2009, along with Croatia and Albania. Unfortunately, North Macedonia had to wait an extra decade, as its entry fell prey to the so-called name dispute with Greece. Only the Prespa Agreement, reached in the summer of 2018 by Prime Ministers Zoran Zaev and Alexis Tsipras, unblocked the process. With its name changed from the Republic of Macedonia to the Republic of North Macedonia, now enshrined in the country’s constitution, and given the ratification of Prespa by the Greek parliament at the end of January, NATO membership is within reach. On 4 April, Slovakia became the 11th member state to ratify the accession protocol signed in early February. Though the US Senate has not yet held a formal vote, it is telling that North Macedonia’s Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov took part in NATO’s anniversary ministerial held in Washington, DC on 3 April. Remarkably enough, long-time veto player Greece is now its neighbour’s staunchest advocates in both the Atlantic Alliance and the EU. Even the main opposition party, New Democracy, whose MPs voted against the Prespa Agreement, sided with Tsipras in the subsequent ratification of North Macedonia’s NATO protocol. At this year’s Munich Security Conference, Zaev and Tsipras were feted by senior figures from both sides of the Atlantic, notably German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as demonstrating an outstanding example of forward-looking diplomacy.

Why NATO Matters for North Macedonia Unlike other countries in former Yugoslavia, such as its immediate neighbour Serbia or even Montenegro, North Macedonia has always been characterised by its pro-NATO consensus. A nationwide poll conducted by the International Republic Institute in August 2018 found that 83% of citizens supported membership in the Alliance. Another 62% indicate they trust NATO, double the percentage of those who have trust in the domestic judicial system. It is worth noting that in

the 2000s, prior to the 2008 Bucharest Summit when Greece originally blocked then Republic of Macedonia’s membership, support ran at a whopping 90%.

Why do North Macedonians value the country’s accession to NATO? The explanation has to do, first and foremost, with the difficult path to statehood. Ethnic Macedonians see joining Western clubs such as NATO and the EU as the ultimate guarantee for the survival of their state. When it seceded from the former Yugoslavia peacefully in 1991, it faced uncertainty. Back then, many feared spill over of violence from other parts of the erstwhile federation. Bosnia was in flames and tensions in Kosovo were simmering. Once conflict broke out there in 1998–99, North Macedonia suffered the consequences by way of a mass influx of Albanian refugees which put to the test uneasy inter-ethnic relations in the country. The regional environment was not hospitable either. The name issue with Greece, a dispute over the new country’s use of the name ‘Macedonia’ and historical symbols going back to times of Alexander the Great, resulted in the imposition of a trade embargo by Athens in 1993. The so-called Interim Agreement of 1995 signed by the two countries lifted the embargo. Yet it came short of resolving the underlying dispute which lingered all the way to 2018. Macedonia was furthermore at odds with its neighbour Bulgaria with regard to the ethnolinguistic identity and history of the Slav Macedonian majority. Even though the prospects of North Macedonia’s partition by its neighbours (debated at length by many an expert in the mid-1990s) were far-fetched, quarrels with Greece, Bulgaria and the uncertain commitment by Milošević’s Serbia to its southern border fuelled insecurity.

That is why integration into the West provided an anchor for stability. For all its failings in ex-Yugoslavia, the West was committed to the inviolability of North Macedonia’s borders. It was also prepared to help. Defence links to the US, via bilateral military cooperation dating back to 1993 and the UN Preventative Deployment Force (UNPREDEP), a mission aimed at countering cross-border conflict spill over, thrived from early on. The 1,049-strong UNPREDEP included a US contingent of 350 troops. If Milošević or anyone else was to attack North Macedonia they would have to fight the US military. NATO has been popular with both ethnic

The Impact of North Macedonia’s Accession to NATO Dimitar Bechev

The road to NATO accession for the small Western Balkan country of North Macedonia has finally been opened following the settlement of a dispute with Greece concerning the country’s name. But what will North Macedonia be able to offer the Alliance, and why does NATO want to let in the newly renamed country?

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Macedonians and Albanians, who traditionally are the most pro-Western group in the region.

Over time, North Macedonia graduated from being a target of NATO’s stabilisation efforts to a full-fledged candidate for membership. During the Kosovo war of 1999, NATO set up its operational headquarters and deployed ground forces in the country. Subsequently, these troops entered Kosovo and transformed into Kosovo Force (KFOR), the NATO peacekeeping mission that remains active today. They did so after Sir General Mike Jackson, KFOR’s commander, signed a technical agreement with General Nebojša Pavković, chief of staff of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s armed forces, at the city of Kumanovo in North Macedonia, a stone’s throw from the border with Kosovo. The Kumanovo agreement preceded the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 of 10 June 1999, which gave KFOR a legal mandate. In the immediate aftermath of a brief armed conflict between the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) and the Skopje government in 2001, NATO underwrote the implementation of the Ohrid Framework Agreement. Weeks before Ohrid was signed, NATO had formally approved a request by then President Boris Trajkovski to assist in the disarmament of the NLA and take charge of peacekeeping. Its presence on the ground facilitated the constitutional reforms to enhance the status of the Albanian community. But by 2003, North Macedonia – the first Western Balkan country to sign a membership action plan (MAP) with NATO and an early joiner in Partnership for Peace, the Alliance’s platform for cooperation with post-communist countries, was back on the accession track. From late 2002 onwards, Skopje contributed to the NATO mission in Afghanistan. From June 2003 until December 2008, 490 troops from the Army of Republic of

Macedonia (ARM) served in Iraq. They deployed after the US-led invasion and the toppling of Saddam Hussein as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The country spearheaded regional cooperation in the Adriatic Charter, a grouping involving the other two NATO candidates at the time: Croatia and Albania. Defence sector reform moved forward too. For instance, after conscription was abolished in 2005, ARM became fully professional. As a result, the administration of US President George W Bush – which in 2004 recognised the then Republic of Macedonia under its constitutional name, rather than as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – wholeheartedly supported its membership in the Alliance. Had it not been for Greek Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis’ ‘no’ at the Bucharest Summit, a move backed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the former Yugoslav republic would have joined NATO in the spring of 2009.

Membership into the Atlantic Alliance has domestic political ramifications. What followed Bucharest was a lost decade where the government led by Nikola Gruevski paid lip service to the goal of NATO and EU accession but eschewed compromise with Greece. At the same time, the prevailing view in the Alliance remained that North Macedonia deserved a place in the club. Ultimately however, it was a U-turn in Skopje which changed the dynamics. The prospect of speedy accession to NATO empowered Zaev, who assumed office in May 2017 on the heels of a prolonged domestic political crisis, to seek a compromise with Athens linked to a relaunch of Euro-Atlantic integration. First, he finalised a good neighbourliness treaty with Bulgaria, whose government was at odds with Gruevski’s nationalist course. Second, Zaev and Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov

US Army soldiers from the KFOR peacekeeping force in Kosovo fire a 120mm mortar system at the Krivolak Training Area in North Macedonia, 2 August 2018. Use of the former Yugoslav military training site for large Allied exercises is one of several assets the country offers to NATO. Courtesy of Sgt. Casey Hustin/US Army

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engaged the Greek government which, in turn, paved the way to the Prespa Agreement.

It is fair to say that for the bulk of the citizenry of North Macedonia, integration into NATO and the EU are two sides of the same coin. As polarised opinions on Prespa might be, no major party has cast doubt over that proposition. But while EU membership, even under the best of circumstances, is far on the horizon, NATO has always been within reach. Accession to the Alliance is the immediate payoff for the concessions offered to Greece. As suggested by the success of the campaign to boycott a consultative referendum on the Prespa Agreement in September 2018, large numbers of ethnic Macedonians resent the name change. In other words, success in foreign policy is needed to offset political costs at home.

North Macedonia’s Contribution to NATO For NATO as a whole, and for the US as the largest stakeholder, enlargement to the Balkans has once again become a priority. The standoff with Russia and the growing sense that former Yugoslavia is vulnerable to hostile infiltration has strengthened the resolve to carry forward the expansion. In 2015–17, there was broad-based support among member states for bringing in Montenegro, for instance, despite the split in public opinion within the country itself. Similarly, policymakers favour activating the MAP with Bosnia and Herzegovina and deepening security and defence cooperation with Serbia, which is formally committed to a policy of neutrality. North Macedonia falls into the same rubric. Both the US and European Allies view its accession as a step towards bolstering Western influence and countering malign external influence in the region. In the run-up to the September 2018 referendum, Skopje welcomed a host of high-profile figures including Angela Merkel, then US Secretary of Defence James Mattis, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and the EU’s High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy Federica Mogherini. ‘We do not want to see Russia doing there (in Macedonia) what they have tried to do in so many other countries’, warned Mattis ahead of his visit. At a time when disagreements between the administration of US President Donald Trump and European allies are running deep, such unity of purpose is nothing short of remarkable.

Indeed, Russia largely sided with the opposition against the Prespa Agreement in both Greece and North Macedonia. So much so that its actions triggered a brief confrontation with the Greek authorities, resulting in the expulsion of two Russian diplomats in the summer of 2018. Similarly, Zaev blamed the Russian–Greek oligarch Ivan Savvidi for funding nationalists in Skopje. In January 2019, Vladimir Putin openly criticised the Prespa Agreement as a Western imposition, contrasting it with the locally-driven negotiations between Kosovo’s president Hashim Thaçi and Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić.

North Macedonia, a country of some two million inhabitants with an estimated GDP per capita of $15,290 in 2017 (at purchasing power parity, according to the World Bank), cannot be expected to make a substantial contribution to the Alliance in absolute terms. Its defence budget grew from $111.8 million in 2017 to $153 million in 2019, but this is still

only 1.19% of GDP. The government is committed to reach the 2% target mandated by NATO towards 2024. Much of the spending increase has gone towards raising salaries rather than overhauling capabilities in line with the country’s 2018 Strategic Defence Review. At the same time, the number of active military personnel is set to decrease from 8,167 to around 6,800 and civil servants at the Ministry of Defence from 1,000 to 650–700. These freed-up budgetary resources should allow for the acquisition of advanced capabilities which would enable North Macedonia to contribute to NATO missions.

Figure 1: North Macedonia’s Declared Contribution to NATO

• One Light Infantry Battalion Group (LIBG) (1,000 personnel);

• Two transport/utility helicopters Mi-8/17 (22 personnel); • One Ranger (light infantry) company (90 personnel); • Two Special Operations Force teams (12 personnel in each); • One Engineer platoon (25 personnel, part of the LIBG); • One De-mining team (10 civilian personnel, who are

drawn from the Protection and Rescue Directorate); • One Military Police company (110 personnel); and • One Role 2 Basic Land Medical Treatment Facility

(50 personnel)

Source: Ministry of Defence Republic of Macedonia, ‘Strategic Defence Review 2018 of the Republic of Macedonia: Towards NATO Membership and Future Force 2028’, June 2018, p. 38, <http://morm.gov.mk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/SDR-Paper-dated-05-July-2018.pdf>, accessed 23 April 2019.

North Macedonia is also providing some of its material assets. Covering 22,546 hectares, the Military Training Centre at Krivolak near the town of Negotino developed by the Yugoslav People’s Army in the 1970s is one of the biggest in Southeast Europe. In July/August 2018, 200 US troops serving in KFOR completed an exercise there. According to Defence Minister Radmila Šekerinska and North Macedonia’s army chiefs, Krivolak can host larger-scale wargames such as Decisive Strike, planned for June 2019. Once restored, according to the US military, the training centre can accommodate a mechanised brigade of several thousand soldiers.

North Macedonia’s accession to NATO is a geopolitical coup for the West. It demonstrates the enduring attraction of Western institutions in the Balkans. It helps consolidate North Macedonia’s statehood and tones down deeply entrenched insecurity. However, joining NATO is only a step in the political transformation of the country. The launch of membership negotiations with the EU is an equally significant step and potentially more important over the long term given the potential of European integration to affect domestic society and institutions.

Dimitar BechevDimitar is a research fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He is the author of Rival Power: Russia in Southeast Europe (Yale University Press, 2017).

The views expressed in this article are the author’s, and do not represent those of RUSI or any other organisation.

North Macedonia and NATO