GIVEN that the Serbo-Croat war is not going to stop, most observers belleve that It will tend to spread, firstly inside Yugoslavia and then beyond Its frontiers In our view this is quite Ilkely. In fact one can already percelve the signs, above all to the south east, that is, In the very heart of the Balkans, As was the case 80 years ago, the Macedonian question may well be the detonator, holding out the threat of provoking conflicts, even armed conflicts, that could throw us a century backwards N. CHAMPI
N THE LAST ANALYSIS, a lot will depend on the evolution of Belgrade's war of aggression against
Croatia. If the Serb troops are able to break Croat resistance and incorporate the regions of Krajina, Bajina and Slavonia in the "Serbia of all the Serbs", then there will be no end to Great Serb appe. tites. Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Vojvodina, Montenegro and Macedonia will follow and will be incorporated in one way or another into the new "Yugoslavia" which will be in fact a Serb mini-empire.
However, even if Belgrade's armed forces fail to realize their strategic project, it will be very difficult to avoid an escalation and extension of the war. In fact both the Muslims of Bosnia and the Kosovo Albanians are not going to let the Serb military machine walk over them.
The majority of the threatened populations have already expressed in referenda (clandestinely in the case of the Kosovo Albanians) their support for independence, and local parliaments have
October 28, 1991 • #215 International Viewpoint enshrined this decision. Thus it is evident that Belgrade's plans will run up against fierce resistance. We may well see not one, but several wars in Yugoslavia.
The governments of the neighbouring countries are already behaving as if they take these possibilities seriously. After a period of indecision, the Greek government is now aiming to establish close links with Belgrade, with the aim of catching the fledgling Macedonian Republic in a pincer movement. It can by no means be ruled out that Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic has promised the Greeks "something" — for example the region of Monastir, if we are to believe some Athens newspapers. In return the Greeks will close their eyes to the Great Serb faits accomplis.
One is all the more disposed to believe in such trade-offs in that Milosevic has just signed a "protocol of understanding" With the secretary of the Italian neofascists (MSI) Mr. Fini, in which the issue of the secession of the Istrian Peninsula, currently divided between Croatia and Slovenia, is sympathetically examined.'
The threat of a Greater Macedonia
Athens continues to loudly proclaim that, not only does it not threaten the Macedonian regime, but on the contrary it is that regime that poses the threat to Greece.
Two months ago almost all the big parties in Greece, from the right through the Socialists of PASOK to the Communists, cried wolf every time the words "Macedonia" and "Macedonian" were used by the government in Skopje [the Macedonian capital]. And it does seem that some elements of the political class in Skopje - sometimes with encouragement from Belgrade — had stirred the pot with talk of a "Greater Macedonia" which would take in the neighbouring regions of Bulgaria, and above all Greek Macedonia, including Greece's second largest city,
Despite having repeated for decades that the "Slavs" had nothing else in their head than finally descending to the Aegean Sea, the Greek bourgeoisie took some time to take in what was really going on on the other side of the Yugoslav fron-
However when it finally grasped that the Belgrade regime had a real interest in coming to an agreement with Greece, rather than encouraging Macedonian territorial demands, hypothetical or otherwise, Athens' tone began to change.
This is a recent development and is at present restricted to the most "modern" and ambitious fringes of the governing interests discovered that the wolf in Skopje might be a good way of browbeating Greek public opinion, but geopolitical constraints forced them to be more "realistic"
This "realism" can take two forms: either to form a solid alliance with Belgrade with a view to the eventual dismemberment of Yugoslav Macedonia, or the acceptance of Macedonian independence with the aim of exploiting its wealth. In both cases, the accent is put on the fact that the small and poor Republic of Macedonia will be too weak to resist.
At any rate, this change in outlook has percolated through the political system and the official Greek position is becoming increasingly aggressive. Thus the government of Constantin Mitsotakis, supported for once by the entire opposition, tried a month ago to bring together a Balkan mini-summit in Athens to discuss, not the Serbo-Croat war, but the "Skopje regime"?. At the beginning this initiative amounted to inviting Serbia's Milosevic and the Bulgarian leader Zelev to Athens. This latter is something of an acolyte of Mr. Mitsotakis — the cadres of Mr. Zelev's party were trained in the offices of Nea Dimokratia and his electoral campaigns have been financed by secret funds from the same source.
However, as soon as this conference was announced, the other Balkan governments began to show an interest, or at least their alarm. Soon the Romanian prime minister was on the invitation list. From the point of view of the Macedonian regime this conference looked quite simply like a conspiracy against their young, in principle independent, repub-
Apart from the Bulgarian refusal to to the strong Macedonian sentiment in that country, which had been brought to life in the run-up to the general elections, it is clear that amount Thessaloniki Lompos GREECE
• Losboo s
La patras Samos, Athens a Petop Rhodes t Iraklion
GREECE the failure of this conference to take place was largely due to intense pressure from Bonn and Rome.
The final blow was delivered by the Italian foreign affairs minister, Gianni de Michelis, who, supported by his German colleague Hans Dietrich Genscher, first belaboured the Greeks for ignoring his warnings and then told them to leave Balkan manoeuvres to big powers such as Italy and Germany. To make things absolutely clear, de Michelis added that Yugoslav Macedonia should be considered an Italian protectorate.
Evidently, Mitsotakis knuckled under, even if the mass pro-government daily headlined across eight columns "de Michelis — the new Mussolini". Suddenly the Greek leaders had found that they had other enemies than the Turks; this time it was their dear allies and partners in NATO and the Common Market.
Spectre of international isolation
It would nonetheless be wrong to draw conclusion that all these ambitions of the Greek bourgeoisie have ended once and for all in utter humiliation. Perhaps the prime minister and his clan have taken fright at the spectre of moment in their political careers.
However, many leaders of the government party, allied with a substantial tendency in the leadership of PASOK, are continuing to work towards the creation of a sort of "cross-party party" which does not shrink before talk of "historic opportunities" of a kind "that a nation only has once or twice in a century". 1. Il Manifesto, September 17, 1991. 2. Just after the referendum on independence in Yugoslav Macedonia, the Greek prime minister was quick to declare that Greece would never recognize this state which had abusively usurped the name of Macedonia. Black Sea TURKEY
CYPRUS
Mediterranean Sea
New Democracy (Nea Dimokratia) and
Pan-Hellenic
Socialist the opposition
(PASOK).
Movement
Suddenly the spokespeople for big capital and US
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A house beset by
International Viewpoint #215 • October 28, 1991