prespa accord (13. 170)

The short form of the United Nations sponsored treaty named for the lake at the tripoint of the borders of Greece, the then Republic of Macedonia (referred to by the exonym FYROM, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to avoid controversy of the appearance of endorsement or sometimes heavy-handedly as the Republic of Skopje) and Albania, Final Agreement for the settlement of differences as described in the UN Security Council resolutions 817 (1993) and 845 (1993), the termination of the Interim Accord of 1995 and the establishment of a strategic partnership between the Parties came into effect on this day in 2019, resolving a long-standing dispute beginning in 1991 following the dissolution of Yugoslavia into its constituent nations. Stemming from the ambiguity of the neighbouring Greek Balkan region and the ancient kingdom of Macedon, Greece insisted upon a geographic qualifier to be used erga omnes (by all…and for all purposes, internal and external), citing concerns of border disputes and the cultural appropriation, symbols like the Vergina Sun (now the icon of the parliament of the Hellenes) and the legacy of Alexander the Great, to stoke sentiments of irredentism (ирреденти́зм, αλυτρωτισμός—coined from the Italian, unredeemed, for territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that they felt belonged to “Greater Italy” and should be rightfully annexed on the basis of ethnic continuity). Contingent on the terms of the agreement, Northern Macedonia entered NATO.

vilnius group

Constituted in May 2000, member countries Slovenia, Slovakia (having already undergone its Velvet Divorce in 1993, the date falls on the anniversary of the 1990 compromise that ended the so called Hyphen War, Pomlčková vojna, started in 1989 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union on what to call themselves and how to share a territory with two identities) Romania, North Macedonia, Lithuania (its capital the namesake), Latvia, Estonia, Croatia, Bulgaria and Albania to lobby as a group for NATO inclusion, all aspirants acceded to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation on this day in 2004 with the exception of Albania, Croatia and North Macedonia (under the Adriatic Charter) joining in 2009 and 2020. The former association closely maps with the composition of the Visegrád Group, another former pooled campaign for European Union membership and presently a regional economic cooperative.

alfabeti shqip

With the conclusion of the Congress of Manastir—now called Bitola, on this day in 1908 academicians from around the country met and achieved their goal of standardising the national language and script for the native population and the diaspora aboard and in neighbouring Kosovo and North Macedonia—who commemorate this Dita e Alfabetit—whereas prior to the democratic, deliberative and well-considered process the language was expressed in no fewer than six distinct scripts that drew from Greek, Cyrillic, Ottoman and Arabic. There was great potential for confusion between rho and pi, aitch and kha. The outcome was a variant of the Latin alphabet (see also) with thirty-six letters to best represent the phonology of Albanian with diagraphs including dh, gj and nj.

digital hinterland or postcards from veles

Reporting for the Calvert Journal, Lalage Harris and Duncan Harvey present a portrait of one Macedonian town that became rather infamous as an exporter of disinformation that helped change the course of the US presidential election.
Once a booming factory town in Tito’s Yugoslavia, the place became rather bleak once industry went away with most everything that fills the economic void being one of king-making. While it does seem to be highly dissonant that we’re so easily persuaded and perhaps the social-engineering potential was incidental (both campaigns were explored but Dear Leader’s caucus proved to be more profitable), we are the dog and not just subject to the caprices of the tail. Influential agents exist and enjoy the level of power they do because we deny it, but choice and responsibility still have truck in our behaviours and decisions and attention naturally leads to actions, as little as we’d like to think what we regard is what is issuing the marching-orders.

it happened on the way to the forum: the late republican period or overseas contingency operations

When last we left our seemingly indefatigable and inexhaustible Romans, they were engaged in a war with Carthage under Hannibal's leadership that spanned a generation and spilled into grandsons as well. The careful and prudent strategy of that Fabius had first instituted kept the armies shadowing each other with a sort of sense of roving reciprocity and balance—though Hannibal, having sworn to ever be an enemy of Rome would never give up. With the nemesis threatening to cut off supply-lines at any moment and with the once apparently unlimited manpower for the legions dwindling, for the first time, the Romans began courting mercenaries to supplement its regular forces, through both foreign alliances in kingdoms neighbouring Carthage and actively recruiting fighters disillusioned with the Carthaginians for not being timely with their payments or progress on Rome. The second break with tradition was in the Senate, with a paucity of options, electing to put the legions under the control of one young and charismatic general, called Scipio Africanus, who rejected the cautious former rules of engagement and attacked Hannibal directly. These exceptions seem minor—and even positive shifts for the Republic's fortune as Carthage met a decisive defeat at the Battle of Zama in present-day Tunisia, giving Rome total control of the Western Mediterranean and allowed for expansion—though without a satisfactory explanation—eastward, beyond the Adriatic. Old rivalries and suddenly finding oneself without an enemy to fight notwithstanding, Rome had always respected Greece as its elder, the preeminent naval power that ruled the Orient and had no designs on the Occident. Whatever the reason—possibly a break unspoken with the convention of only fighting a just war even though that standard had been stretched greatly on several occasions in the past, Rome baited a scuffles enough to declare war on Macedon, the kingdom portrayed as a direct threat to Greece's liberty and security. Once the regional power had been subdued and eviscerated, as it had done with Carthage, Rome declared Greece a sovereign mandate, finally free from the spectre of foreign rule (Macedon) and pledged to protect these lands from invaders. Like the Carthaginians, the Greeks did not feel abundantly free, what with Roman patrols and incursions to break-up any possible unsanctioned allegiances or trade deals.  Formal declaration of Greece, Carthage and the Iberian peninsula as Roman provinces did not happen until many years later, after the destruction of several of the great cities of antiquity in order to staunch any future thought of rebellion. This offensive was not about preservation—though all empires make such forays and create enemies if one is not conveniently available—and I think that compromise came all too easily and quickly for Rome after cosmopolitan success.
There likely never was a golden age of equality in the young Republic, but the ideals it was founded on erode at an avalanche's pace with the infusion of outrageous wealth that's too lightly concentrated. Spoils came of these conquests in the form of treasure, land and slave-labour, which although always a part of the Roman economy, was now supplanting the Plebeian class' chance to earn a livelihood. Large estate-holders were the beneficiaries of the years of war and accrued ever greater wealth, as the squadrons and companies they provisioned returned their plunder to their patrons. Before slaves were brought in from conquered lands—more than Rome had the ability to employee meaningfully—Plebeians without means could at least to expect to eke-out a modest and unglamourous living by tilling the fields of the great plantations. Now, however, their services became redundant and more and more families came into crushing debt and those that did own small parcels of their own were forced to sell to a few rich families. Another break with tradition followed in order to find a solution to this resulting vagrancy and general loitering that took hold of the underclass, which was probably responsible for the collapse of the republican government and any pretensions of nobility and democracy: the relaxing of the standards for legionnaires. Since the raising of Rome's first militia, there was the requirement that a soldier must be able to equip himself. Considering the new economic realities, however, only a handful of the sons of the wealthy landowners could serve, so the prerequisite to outfit oneself was dropped altogether. There was no stipend, per se, for service as patrons—landowners who now were surfeited with cheap-labour, had in the past acted as paymasters and addressed pensions and survivor-benefits, etc. Now earning anything for one's tour was contingent on what war trophies each soldier could secure for his commander. This system caused matters to escalate rather quickly on campaigns, not complimenting Rome's image as a righteous overlord nor benefiting unit-cohesion, and eventual led to revolt and civil-war on the domestic front.

balkanization

 A US politician, not a contending mouth-piece fortunately but despicable all the same, made the hateful comment some months ago that the Palestinians were a made-up people and proposed to exclude them with prejudice from all future negotiations. While this was not the words of a gadfly and hopefully the statement’s reverberations went no further than a few pandering sound-bites, the conferring of the Nobel Peace Prize on the European Union, and a lunch-time quiz to name the twenty-seven member states of the EU, a tricky task sometimes with some distinctions lying in semantics and treaties and not just geography, made me wonder if the same arrogance and dismissiveness are not also at work in the halls of this organization. I want to say this carefully, and I hope that I am not so naïve as to gloss over real—though cryptic—bigotries or the rules and reforms contingent on ascension, but I was not fit for the challenge and could not name two members on the periphery of the glaring hole at the nexus of the Balkans.  The region that gives its name to allegorical device was created by the successive collapse of empires, first the Ottoman, then Austro-Hungarian and the Russian Imperia and the finally the Soviet Union, and the fast breaks with feudalism revived sectarian fighting, parallel to the wars and de-colonization of the European powers in Africa and Asia that redrew the lines in the sand, creating new national entities with borders that did not necessarily match historical and culture contexts.

The region has made a lot of progress since being defeoffed and may not be looking to reinstate being lorded over in any measure nor want to join, necessarily, at this juncture—quite a few of the current members I think are grumbling over their association and it is not as if all the current upstanding, founding membership was completely forthcoming and honest about their own conditions and by-laws in the first place. While I am sure there are good reasons for doing so, there is even one country there named, in English, anyway with the unspeakably sad moniker of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), and I could not guess what the endonym might be and it seems to make it seem more like a place where Europeans do not live.  The EU is not Europe and forced, coerced inclusion is never a good thing, but it is a distressing thought that accomplishment and self-determination would be belittled for the sake of making the disparager’s case look more secure.