After the Rain : how the West lost the East Part 18

Macedonia can - and will - easily be forgotten. Hence its refusal to allow ground warfare from its soil (a position shared by many, including, for instance, Hungary, a NATO member, with less to lose than Macedonia).

And this is where Macedonia made a mistake. It did not manage its public relations properly. It absorbed as many refugees as Albania (10% of the population - the equivalent of 25 million Mexican refugees in the USA) and treated its refugees with reasonable decency - under h.e.l.lishly impossible circ.u.mstances. The USA and the EU reneged on all their commitments: financial as well as humanitarian. It costs Macedonia (UNHCR figures) c. 300,000 US dollars a day in direct expenses to host the human outcome of the NATO blunder. That's 15,000,000 US dollars in direct costs since the war started - or almost 1% of the GDP. Add to this a drop of 50% in exports and 26% in industrial production and the costs are already at least 10-15% of the GDP. These are surreal, mind-boggling numbers. It is the equivalent of the Great Depression in the USA.

Macedonia received hitherto 3 million US dollars (2 from Taiwan and 1 from UNHCR after a LOT of pressure). Oh, I forgot: and a gigantic pile of promises - to reschedule debts by one year (not to write them off, which would have const.i.tuted real help). The West lies through its teeth and when exposed it wags a moral finger at this poor, crumbling, neophyte of a country. It is a disgrace of unprecedented proportions.

Albania behaved more slickly - perhaps because its government is more veteran and perhaps because it really empathized more heartily with its suffering kin. They made the right noises and posed to the camera using the right, complimentary, angles. It won much more help than Macedonia and is universally accoladed by the West.

This is what Macedonia SHOULD have done. Open its borders in a great display of camaraderie and human pa.s.sion. Wine and dine the bored, frustrated journalists on its turf, pose for the cameras, hair dishevelled, Tony Blair-like. Instead its leaders.h.i.+p went about the business of absorbing a human wave of unheard of proportions while, at the same time, trying to defuse tensions from within and from without.

No one informed them that in today's world it matters not what one does - as what one is SEEN to be doing. This is the vital lesson. Albania will rebuild its future on the back of the serendipitous refugees of Kosovo. Macedonia will pay the price of its lack of savvy.

(Article published July 26, 1999 in "Central Europe Review"

volume 1, issue 5)

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Black Magic, White Magic

Managing our Future

An address given to the Council of the VMRO-DPMNE, Macedonia's ruling party, chaired by Minister of Defence and Former Prime Minister of the Republic of Macedonia, Mr. Nikola Kljusev on July 16, 1999

Germany's economy collapsed following a reparations agreement, which sapped and consumed less than 10% of its GDP. America's economy collapsed, its unemployment soared, its stock exchange vanished and it entered a deflationary cycle, which necessitated the most pervasive federal intervention in its history - mainly because of multilateral trade restrictions.

Macedonia has endured trade embargoes, international isolation, wars, and an influx of refugees - and still survives as an intact, functioning economy. There is no civil war, no hyperinflation, a stable currency and no famine. It is nothing less than a miracle. No textbook economist would have predicted this outcome.

But Macedonia is trying to cope with its predicament in wrong ways. It is trying to change other countries, or to force or convince them to change their policies, or to engage in "Voodoo Economics". An economy cannot be run on the bases of promises, contingencies, gifts, aid and a Lotaria na Makedonija approach. Economic policy must not be based on the usual but rather on the normal. In politics, most magic is black and mostly bad things tend to happen. Macedonia is situated in an accident-p.r.o.ne area. It cannot and need not pretend (as Slovenia more successfully and Croatia with less success do) that it is part of Western Europe. This denial of the painful truth - that we are at the mercy of forces beyond our control in a region resembling a mental asylum - is at the root of our economic malaise. What if Montenegro erupts tomorrow?

Macedonia cannot change other countries, nor can it influence them to change their policies. It is too small and insignificant and it has no policy options. Will it really deny NATO next time around if it does not receive the compensation it requested from it? Will the nature of its relations.h.i.+p with the EU change if the EU will not honour its promises and obligations? Macedonia is constrained to a very limited set of diplomatic and economic choices.

Instead of changing others - we must change ourselves. We must force Macedonians to change and let ourselves be convinced to change our policies. We must, in other words, introduce magic - the magic of trust. Trust in our banks will encourage domestic savings and domestic investments. It will draw out 1-2 billion dollars from under mattresses and into deposits. This amount is equal to 5 years of aid or FDI (foreign direct investment). Trust in our courts will attract foreign investments. Trust in our government will end the current civil disobedience. Our citizens are rebellious. They don't pay their taxes, they do not collaborate with their own government. They don't trust it to do the good and the right thing.

Macedonia is not perceived by the Europeans to be European. It is too poor to become a member of the EU, public relations exercises (the stability and Growth Pact) notwithstanding. It is too needy and donor weariness is setting in. Money will be harder and harder to come by.

And our products compete head on with European products protected and promoted by the strongest lobbies in Brussels.

And with these FACTS we have to live. A sound, prosperous economy is the result of minute, mundane, routine and boring activities - not the result of rabbits pulled out of a hat. Even if the rabbits are European.

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The Friendly Club

Cyprus, that beacon of political stability and financial rect.i.tude, was invited to negotiate its members.h.i.+p. Bulgaria, the epitome of good governance and civil society as well as Malta the undisputed friend of the West (remember Qaddafi?) - were among the list of new candidates handed down in the Helsinki meet of the most desired economic club on earth: the EU. To these were added Romania and its collapsing economy.

Macedonia was relegated to the "West Balkan" group - a revolutionary re-definition of historical affiliations. In this a.s.semblage, it found itself rubbing shoulders with the disintegrating Albania and the pariah Yugoslavia. Croatia was ejected from this leper colony by virtue of the death of its megalomaniac autocrat and his replacement by ex-communists.

Things have been very different only a few months ago, when the EU and NATO needed the good and naive services of Macedonia. It was a honeyed courts.h.i.+p. Macedonia was then virtually besieged by a flood of world-cla.s.s politicians, all eager to make the acquaintance of the charming political cla.s.s of the Balkans. Promises were doled out with abandon. Blair promised tens of millions. Clinton topped this by pledging hundreds of millions. And the grateful West offered billions.

In the meantime, Macedonia's infrastructure was pulverized by heavy armour and light-footed refugees - a quarter of a million of them.

The people of the Balkans are the off spring of broken promises. Their village shrewdness (which is not to be confused with worldly sophistication) predisposed them not to trust the kindness of strangers. Their in-bred paranoia led them to attribute prophetic foresight, sharp planning and intricate conspiracy to what were mere stumbling and b.u.mbling on the part of the West and its mighty NATO. The disillusionment came fast and painlessly. To live in fantasy is often more rewarding than to have it fulfilled and many Macedonians were grateful for the intermission in their hundred years of solitude. The hangover, the bitter aftertaste, the sore muscles of the morning after - the Macedonians accepted all these with unusual grace.

But as insults were added to injuries, a sense of betrayal evolved.

They felt exploited and discarded, objectified and dehumanised by super-powers of mythical proportions. They felt abused and deceived.

Used to getting the short end of every stick - this time there was no stick at all. Having been thus manipulated and largely unable to direct their anger at the veritable sources of their frustration - they turned upon themselves in internecine squabbling, disgraced and flouted. This was further exacerbated by incessant preaching and hectoring of the representatives of those powers, which thus forsake them. By the very people who reneged on promises. By countries and politicians whose own domestic politics and personal conduct were an object and abject lesson not to be emulated. Countries imbued with corruption preached to the Macedonians about good governance. Countries which suppressed their minorities in b.l.o.o.d.y campaigns reprimanded Macedonia for its treatment of its own minorities. Countries, which sold weapons to every despicable dictator in every corner of the earth - prevented Macedonia from trading with its neighbours.

Of the money promised - very little materialized. The blazing trail of West European and American movie stars and presidents became a trickle of East European politicians and Brussels bureaucrats. Members.h.i.+p became a.s.sociation, a.s.sociation became new a.s.sociation and new a.s.sociation went nowhere as dates were postponed and dates kept were used as photo-opportunities by synthetic Western leaders.

If anyone should have been invited to join the EU it is poor Macedonia.

Poor - but not as poor as Romania, for instance. Any comparison of the two bespeaks volumes about the West's betrayal. Romania's official inflation is 40% - Macedonia's is around 1% and has been, on average, less than 3% in the last 3 years. Romania's depleted GDP is collapsing.

Macedonia has survived the Kosovo crisis with its GDP intact and is poised to grow by 4-6% in the year 2000 according to the IMF. Romania's average wage is less than 90 dollars a month - Macedonia's is 160 US dollars. The lei is as unstable as Yugoslavia's denar was prior to the Kosovo crisis - Macedonia's currency held stable throughout the external shock-ridden last three years and is trusted by its citizens.

Romania's governments change frequently and with little reason, often succ.u.mbing to the wishes of an ominously violent street. Macedonia's government has changed once in the last 5 years and that following a fair and democratic election. Admittedly, Romania's market is much bigger than Macedonia's and its location closer to the EU. But Macedonia is an important bridgehead to the Balkans and beyond (Turkey) and its web of trading agreements and arrangements makes it a virtual market of more than 110 million people.

But Macedonia is friendless in the EU. It has no patron saint, no Germany (Croatia, Czech Republic), no France (Romania), no Greece (Cyprus). It is too small to fear and small enough to ignore comfortably. It is a peaceful and docile nation. It is co-operative. It is trustworthy and has proven its devotion to the idea of the West in times good and bad, mainly the latter. Perhaps these qualities disqualified it. Perhaps being taken for granted does not grant being taken. Whatever the explanation, the people of this tiny country grieve this short romance, so fleeting, so sweet, so dreamy and, as they are finding now, so surreal.

(Article written on January 15, 2000 and published February 7, 2000

in "Central Europe Review" volume 2, issue 5)

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The Books of the d.a.m.ned