Strategic Partnerships or Strategic Surrenders?

Keir Starmer and Hristijan Mickoski, May 16, 2025 -- Number 10, OGL 3, via Wikimedia Commons

By Biljana Vankovska

Macedonia’s state leadership seems to embody Hegel’s bitter wisdom: the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from it. Thus, the Macedonian state marches blindly from one strategic blunder to the next, without a compass, without knowledge, and without the slightest sense of what is happening right before its eyes.

This is not the place to reopen historical wounds, such as the use of napalm bombs by the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force on Macedonian civilians in northern Greece during the Greek Civil War. What was their crime? That they were Macedonians – therefore irrelevant to traditional British policy toward Greece – and that their men had joined the Democratic Army of Greece to fight for a communist future. Those bombs depopulated Macedonian villages and triggered a mass exodus, the trauma of which still lingers, especially among ethnic Macedonians who originate from Aegean Macedonia, that is, the northern part of present-day Greece. At the very least, this episode might instil empathy toward all those forcibly driven from their homes, turned into migrants against their will.

Macedonia got its first so-called ‘strategic partnership’ in 2008, after the NATO Summit in Bucharest. It was offered by U.S. President George W. Bush as a consolation prize because Greece had blocked Macedonia’s NATO entry, officially due to the name dispute. But that was just an excuse. According to the 1995 Interim Accord, Greece had agreed not to block Macedonia’s NATO or EU path. Still, Bush ended his presidency with a diplomatic setback caused by a small Balkan country – something he likely didn’t take lightly.

In return for this strategic partnership, Macedonia got nothing – except the Prespa Agreement in 2018/2019. This ‘name change’ deal was pushed through despite two referenda (in 1991 and 2018) that concluded that the citizens voted for a Macedonian statehood. So the result was a revision of the country’s constitution, the state name, and even parts of national history. During the 2018 summer campaign, British public relations firms were heavily involved in promoting the ‘yes’ vote.

And the reward? NATO membership in 2020 – just in time to be drawn into the Ukraine war effort. In the end, Macedonia gave up more than any other country would, and what it got in return was war.

Some may argue that all this was the doing of the previous government, led by the so-called Social Democrats (nominally leftists), and that they were punished in the 2024 elections Now, a new government is in place, promising fresh visions. But how new and how visionary are these perspectives really? The new Prime Minister, Hristijan Mickoski, made headlines at the last Munich Conference in February 2025 for applauding JD Vance, and soon after, visited Washington twice. At a major Republican gathering, he gave an interview in which he pledged allegiance to Trump. Many in the country were shocked – after all, they had been constantly fed rhetoric about European values and integration. As I wrote in March 2025, Macedonia – the land where the sun rises in the West – found itself in a state of confusion, only to ultimately choose the sun of Washington.

Meanwhile, the rifts within the West are deepening, particularly over the issue of Ukraine. Ukraine – a country at war with an uncertain future – has already opened EU accession talks. Meanwhile, Macedonia, long considered a peaceful oasis since the 1990s, has waited over two decades. The current obstacle is Bulgaria’s absurd veto, demanding that Macedonian Bulgarians be constitutionally recognised as a constituent people, despite barely 1,000 identifying as such in the latest census. If they were a ‘constituent people’, that would mean they had fought for independent Macedonia, which was not true. In the Second World War, Bulgaria was an ally of Hitler’s Germany and fought against the Macedonian partisans. But that’s not the focus here. The point is that Macedonia doesn’t even protest against such unprincipled and humiliating conditions. Instead, it bows in a kind of political masochism.

Mickoski came to power on the back of a mysterious Hungarian loan arranged before he even assumed office. That money is already being distributed along party lines, and it’s just a drop in the overflowing debt cup drowning the country. Just a year later, from Tirana at the European Political Summit, Mickoski announced another ‘good news’ story: Macedonia has a new strategic partner – the United Kingdom. A deal has been signed, and Keir Starmer himself has reportedly pledged £5 billion for Macedonia. The details remain unclear, but the wish list of the government (new hospitals, universities, social benefits, a fast railroad, etc.) resembles a child’s letter to Santa Claus. One might think Starmer is some rich Uncle Friedrich Engels promising a socialist utopia to Macedonia’s conservatives. Hospitals, student dormitories, roads – you name it. But the agreement also mentions defence, security, and migration policy!

One has to wonder: why would Britain, itself mired in economic and social crisis and playing a militaristic role in European geopolitics, invest in one of Europe’s poorest peripheral states? What connection is there between UK-bound migrants and Macedonia? Some immediately linked the news to Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s refusal of Starmer’s ‘Rwanda-style’ migrant deal. But Mickoski insists that the new strategic partnership is altruistic and has nothing to do with hosting rejected, ‘illegal’ migrants from the UK. He cites the British ambassador to Skopje as proof – as if the ambassador is a sworn truth-teller rather than a diplomat tasked with protecting his country’s interests.

The migration question – indeed, a modern-day Golgotha – deserves separate analysis, one infused with empathy for people whose homes and futures have been destroyed by the very West that now treats them as homo sacer, disposable lives. If they can consider relocating Palestinians to Libya and already send migrants to so-called ‘return hubs’, why wouldn’t they do the same in a country whose prime minister is so desperate and corrupt that he’d rent out the country just to stay afloat? But remember – this money is no grant. Strategic partners expect returns. The goal is not just to offload unwanted lives, but to profit from the loan. Macedonia no longer even knows how much it owes, or to whom. The ruling logic remains: ‘buy a day, sell a future’ – govern from today until tomorrow, or at least until the next election.

Yet the most absurd detail is how pro-government media glorify Mickoski’s strategic decision. One of the country’s oldest newspapers declared that the deal was based on ‘sovereignism’ and proof that Macedonia finally understands it lives in a multipolar world. It’s laughable to speak of sovereignty when the country’s name, history, and textbooks have already been rewritten – and when it imports everything, including dangerous waste from Western countries and people the West treats as waste. This reference to multipolarity stems either from ignorance or cynicism. Or perhaps they believe the West itself has become multipolar, and that Macedonia’s government is cleverly navigating the many poles within the Euro-Atlantic community. Shortly after a phone call between Trump and Putin, a respected former British diplomat wrote that Starmer had been ‘excommunicated’ by Trump – excluded from a joint video briefing in which Trump shared details with European partners. British analysts now mock what they call one of the UK’s worst prime ministers in recent memory (a competitive field), criticising both his domestic blunders and foreign policy gaffes.

The conclusion?

Macedonia is a twig in the wind – rudderless, clueless, senseless. But not the only one among its peers. As for the people… they will pay the bill at the end, as ever.

Biljana Vankovska is a professor of political science and international relations at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, a member of the Transnational Foundation of Peace and Future Research (TFF) in Lund, Sweden, and the most influential public intellectual in Macedonia. She is a member of the No Cold War collective.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.