To the Western eye, Macedonia can seem to be a mass of contrasts and contradictions. It is sparsely populated and has little strategic or geopolitical importance, yet forces in neighboring countries hold that its statehood and national identity pose grave threats to their security. Its Macedonian population and Albanian minority coexist in cities and towns across the country, yet, in many cases, lead totally separate lives. Above Lake Ohrid, its glaciers, mountains and waterfalls form a landscape with the seemingly impossible beauty of an amateurish oil painting, yet only miles away impoverished families crowd into single rooms in primitive houses. In Skopje, the capital, the peal of bells from the Orthodox cathedral mingles with Muslim prayer calls and, of all things, the familiar melodies of Wesley hymns from the local Methodist church.
For the past year, the local scene has been even more incongruous: as Macedonian and ethnic Albanian citizens have gone about the business of their daily lives, Serbian forces across the border in Kosovo have been killing hundreds of Albanian men, women and children, driving hundreds of thousands into the wilderness, and razing villages to the ground.
A key objective of current U.S. foreign policy is to halt this violence and prevent it from spreading into Macedonia and elsewhere beyond Kosovo. As in Bosnia, the United States is trying to do this by imposing an expedient, Dayton-style settlement that meets with the approval of the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milosevic and that sacrifices the rights of the Kosovar Albanians. To justify its expediency, the U.S. administration invokes a domino theory: if Kosovo again dissolves into war, Macedonia and Albania will be drawn inexorably into the conflict. Then Greece and Turkey, two U.S. allies and NATO members, will be pulled into a full-blown Balkan war that, in turn, could spread still farther or tear the Atlantic Alliance apart.
