Episode 51. North Macedonia: The Long Slog to NATO & the Role of the Vermont National Guard

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy: [00:00:13] From the American Academy of Diplomacy, this is the General and the Ambassador. Our podcast brings together senior US diplomats and senior US military leaders to talk about how they partnered in working a major international crisis or challenge affecting US national security. You can find our podcasts, information on our guests and much more on our website: generalambassadorpodcast.org. My name is Ambassador Deborah McCarthy and I'm the producer and host of the series. Today we will focus on US interests in the Balkans and specifically with the country of North Macedonia. We are joined by Ambassador Jess Baily, who was the US Ambassador to North Macedonia from 2015 to 2019, and Major Gene Enriquez, who served in the Office of Defense Cooperation at the US Embassy in Macedonia from 2017 to 2020. Ambassador Baily, Major Enriquez, welcome to the General and the Ambassador. The US has been deeply engaged in the Balkan region since the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 90 seconds. This led to a series of wars, including the Bosnian war, in which the US and NATO led airstrikes to prevent a genocide. That war ended after the US brokered a peace agreement in 1995. Since that time, the US has played a leadership role in integrating many of the countries in the region into the West and into NATO. In the case of North Macedonia, this effort took almost 30 years and you will hear part of this story today from two people who led the effort to the final success in 2018.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:01:51] I'm going to start with a very condensed history of North Macedonia in the region, because history has a profound effect until this day on the country. North Macedonia was the birthplace of Alexander the Great and was the seat of the Greek empire, which once stretched all the way to Asia. After being ruled by the Romans and then the Byzantines, Macedonia became part of the Ottoman Empire as that empire broke up. Macedonia was fought over by many after World War Two, it became one of the states of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia broke up in the early 90 seconds, and finally Macedonia peacefully gained independence and called itself the Republic of Macedonia. But that was not the end of the story, for the country of Greece would not recognize this new country, the Republic of Macedonia, with that name. Why? Precisely because it had been part of the Greek empire and not an independent entity. And so Greece went to the UN and succeeded in having the UN call the country, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. And for the next almost 30 years, both countries fought over what name should be used. Successive US administrations got involved to try to find a resolution to the problem, for we wanted Macedonia to integrate with the West.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:03:16] Special envoys were appointed, including a former secretary of State, as well as the amazing Matthew Nimetz, who worked on this issue for 25 years. I was in Greece in 2008 when the NATO summit took place in Romania. President George W Bush gave a major speech just before the summit in which he talked about the imminent decision to offer NATO membership to Macedonia and to other Balkan countries. Now, when a US President gives a speech like that, it usually means that the issue has been agreed upon by all NATO members. To the surprise of the President and his team at the last minute, Greece vetoed Macedonia's entry unless it changed its name. The US was not pleased at this last minute pullout, and it soured relations with Greece for several years and Macedonia's path to membership in NATO stalled. It was not until 2018 when Ambassador Baily and Major Enriquez were both posted to Macedonia that a solution was finally found, allowing the country to get its final name, the Republic of North Macedonia. And it became a member of NATO in 2020. And wanted to start with you, Ambassador. When you arrived in Skopje in 2015, what were your instructions in terms of US security interests in the country?

Amb. Baily: [00:04:37] First of all, thank you very much for having us and for looking into this issue. When I went out to North Macedonia in 2015, I, like my predecessors, had the instruction that we wanted to bring regional stability to the region. And for North Macedonia, that meant its integration into European security structures NATO, the European Union and other organizations. But that integration required a prosperous, stable, multi-ethnic democracy that could both be a factor for stability in the region and be a good partner for the United States elsewhere in the world. And indeed, during this time, before my arrival, Macedonia had proved itself as a partner for the United States, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. And in Afghanistan, I would note they contributed probably the fourth most per capita number of troops of any nation. Yes, it's a small nation, but it has capable forces and it played an important role. So we wanted to continue those trends to other security issues. I would like to mention, though, one is that that emphasis on multiethnic democracy is important because North Macedonia was able to weather the breakup of the former Yugoslavia without the genocidal conflict you had in Bosnia. They came close to breaking out into civil war in 2001, but it was intervention by the United States, by NATO and by the European Union that brokered an agreement that granted more rights to Macedonia's ethnic Albanian minority. That was an important factor of stability. And also there was another important factor coming up from Syria. Several dozen of Macedonia citizens had gone off to Syria to fight as jihadis in the Syrian conflict, and they were now coming back into the country. That was a very worrisome prospect of trained radicals coming back into the Balkans and perhaps destabilizing the region. This phenomenon happened in neighboring countries as well. So that was also a security concern that we had to tackle at that time.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:06:44] Major Enriquez, I understand that when you arrived in North Macedonia, you already had a relationship with the Macedonian military because you had deployed with them to Afghanistan. Can you tell us a little bit about how this relationship started and also the role of the Vermont National Guard in North Macedonia?

Maj. Enriquez: [00:07:02] Absolutely, Ambassador. And first of all, thank you for the invitation to participate in this podcast with my former esteemed ambassador who, you know, we all look up to and led us through some challenging times in North Macedonia and really for your interest in the National Guard and how a small state like Vermont can contribute to some of our nation's major foreign policy and security objectives. It's a very interesting and unique program how Vermont and North Macedonia are partnered. It's called the National Guard State Partnership Program. This was established in 1993. It was originally designed to assist former Soviet republics, Warsaw Pact countries, Eastern Bloc nations to develop their defense forces, ideally mirroring those of Western practices and values. Each country was assigned to a state's National Guard, and since then, the program has grown today to about 84 nations across the globe in what we call mutually beneficial partnerships because we learn from one another. Now, since Vermont is partnered with North Macedonia, the State Department afforded a position to the DOD, to the Department of Defense in the Security Cooperation Office, called the Office of Defense Cooperation at the embassy in Skopje, and that position has been manned since 1994, 26, moving on 27 years at this point. So thanks to this partnership, I had the opportunity to deploy with 79 of our counterparts to Afghanistan's volatile eastern provinces in 2010, and upon return, became the program's coordinator out of our state headquarters in Colchester, Vermont.

Maj. Enriquez: [00:08:32] Then a couple of years later, in 2012, I had the opportunity to lead a contingent of Vermont Guardsmen and women in 2012 to a large NATO exercise hosted in the Krivolak Training Area, a large training facility in the country. Most recently, I was assigned as the bilateral affairs officer, which is what the position is called at the embassy in Skopje under the leadership of Ambassador Baily, and remained there through 2020. To answer the second part of your question, I think the role is not insignificant. The state partnership with the partner country. Most of these partnerships are over 25 years old. Vermont's being one of those. They develop strong ties between military officers on both sides of the ocean, but not only military officers, governors with heads of state, and in some cases, private sector cooperation happens on both sides. So seasoned ambassadors and. On Saturdays. They tend to leverage these relationships to try to advance foreign policy objectives in addition to what the National Guard brings traditionally through training and education. And for several decades, I think the focus has been or had been and still is NATO and staying on the NATO path.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:09:41] When I was in Lithuania as the ambassador to Lithuania, the Pennsylvania National Guard came and am a huge fan of the National Guard station in our international security.

Amb. Baily: [00:09:50] The National Guard, Gene mentioned some of the continuity it provided to the relationship as commanders in Europe come and go. There was a steady influence of a known group of people from Vermont, and I think that was very reassuring. And the second thing is the Vermont National Guard has a force strength very similar to that of Macedonia. And so it has to concentrate its resources well, it trains for specific missions, and that's the kind of thing we want to seek out in smaller allies in NATO.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:10:18] The country plunged into a major crisis in 2015, which could have derailed the entire NATO membership. My understanding is that it started with a wiretapping scandal that exposed widespread corruption and tensions between ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians were also on the rise at that time. What was this crisis and what did it mean for US interests in the country?

Amb. Baily: [00:10:43] Well, the crisis sort of began, I would say, first with a disputed election in 2014. And the opposition, Social Democrats chose to not participate in parliament at that time. So you had that. And then at the beginning of 2015, there were leaks of about what turned out to be 600,000 wiretapped conversations that involved government officials, opposition politicians, journalists, activists, all kinds of people that indicated a massive illegal wiretapping operation, most likely by the internal security services. It really exposed a very serious breach of the law, but also suggested other aspects of corruption, electoral fraud, interference in the media and other activities that really questioned Macedonians commitment to the fundamental values of our NATO alliance, of the rule of law and democracy. Unfortunately, the government's response was pretty inadequate in the sense that it alleged that these were faked conversation, that they were taken out of context. Et cetera. Et cetera. And they actually pursued a case against the opposition leader for having exposed them. So there was real question about not just the name issue hindering Macedonia's entry into NATO, but its own commitment to the values underlying our Western alliance.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:12:10] And you took the unusual step of early on in the crisis of marching down the Prime Minister's office and reading a statement calling on the government to account for the wiretapping and to investigate. Why did you take that step and what other countries worked with you to pressure the government?

Amb. Baily: [00:12:28] That is something that is unusual. And certainly we brought our concerns about this along with our European allies the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Switzerland, it goes on. And the European Union. I spoke about it with the Prime Minister when I made my first call on him. So this was front and center of what needed to be done. Our message at the time was simple that you had to take this seriously and you had to develop a way of accountability, both for the wiretapping itself, but also for some of the allegations contained in the conversations of corruption and so forth. The government chose, unfortunately, to deny involvement in it, to float conspiracies that this was the work of, quote, foreign actors, unquote. So after a while of these quiet conversations, the four major European allies, Italy, France, the UK and Germany and along with the European Union, decided to make a joint call on the prime minister and then have a statement afterwards. And I read the statement on behalf of the group.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:13:38] Well, Gene, during this crisis, what was happening on the military side as you had relationships, how did they enable you to reinforce the actions the ambassador was taking to support democracy?

Maj. Enriquez: [00:13:51] The relationship with Macedonia's Ministry of Defense was probably one of the few mostly unaffected by the crisis in many ways. The minister of Defense at the time, Zoran Jolevski, he was previously the country's ambassador to the US. Many of our programs continued, but during the heightened period of unrest, a number of our activities and the frequency of these activities had to be reduced for security purposes of our personnel coming into the country. We still continued to engage with senior leader visits, generals from not only the US Army Air Force and the National Guard visited. To kind of maintain relations and continue to demonstrate that the defense sector, which is really considered one of the more trusted institutions in the country. You know, is a legitimate authority and works in accordance with their goals to join the NATO alliance down the road. You know, it was still a very uncertain period. But during that time, we did the best we could to continue to bring advisors from the United States and in coordination with other embassies to bring NATO advisors to work on projects that would eventually increase US troop presence in the country, but also help them continue on those reforms that were identified to improve the conditions in their country down the road.

Maj. Enriquez: [00:15:02] NATO had always been a bipartisan issue between the Social Democrats and the nationalist parties. You know, that was something we had on our side and allowed for a number of activities to continue that would probably not have in many other cases. And it was very clear from our ambassador and our State Department counterparts that it was the area we had to focus on and continue to apply pressure in this space. One of our programs, very unknown kind of program that's out there called the Humanitarian Assistance Program. You know, with receiving the guidance from our ambassador and our country team on areas to focus, One was ethnic integration and ethnic ease of tensions. And using this humanitarian assistance appropriation from Congress, we were able to work in coordination with USAID to develop a program called the Inter-ethnic Education Program, which later became the Youth Ethnic Integration Program, which was designed to improve the inter-ethnic and cooperative learning between the various ethnicities in Macedonian schools. Macedonian, Albanian, Turkish, Roma really looking at a grassroots way of achieving some of those inter-ethnic objectives put out by our country team.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:16:13] Well, in relation to the ethnic relationships in the country, that's something that I think is important for listeners to understand that the US, in pursuing its diplomatic and security objectives, has to work in nations where there are deep, deep tensions. And the program you just outlined was extremely important. Is the military composed of all ethnicities in North Macedonia, or is it primarily one group? And did that affect your work at all.

Maj. Enriquez: [00:16:41] Just like the country, it's a very multi-ethnic organization. I can't speak exactly to percentages, but the majority is ethnic Macedonian with just a little bit less of ethnic Albanians and ethnic Turks and ethnic Roma. That does play a significant role in the formation of the army. There was a period where some organizations were more ethnically aligned than others, but especially the last three years, there's significant work done to make them more ethnically balanced organization, particularly in the more elite units. It is an ever present issue that we must always keep in mind, like anywhere else.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:17:19] Just you outlined very clearly how this political upheaval and specifically the anti-democratic actions being taken by the then prime minister and his government threatened NATO membership, but it also threw a monkey wrench into the discussions with Greece on the name issue. So how did you balance out the work you were trying to do with your other ambassadors on the Democratic side, with the efforts being made on the name issue by the special envoy and our ambassador to Greece, Geoffrey Pyatt, to keep the ball rolling on the name issue.

Amb. Baily: [00:17:50] In truth, during the political crisis, there really wasn't much space to take on the name issue. There were occasional contacts. I would note that at this time in Greece, Greece was also going through a significant financial crisis, dealing with migration issues and other things, which also decreased its bandwidth to deal with this issue. I think interestingly, just on that note, the migration crisis of people coming from Syria in the Middle East and North Africa through the Balkans on the way to Western Europe, underscored for both North Macedonia and Greece the value in increasing their partnership because at their border was a point of tension and the lack of communication and cooperation affected both countries. It was only really with the new government coming in with the promise, the explicit goal of securing North Macedonia's membership in NATO, that they began to really take this on and after they went through local elections in 2017. So they got elected and then had to deal with another set of elections which were very fraught and then had won those more decisively. They had the political capital to begin these discussions. And about the same time you saw Greece pulling out of its financial crisis and looking to reestablish, to some degree its economic role in the Balkans, which had been affected by its own financial crisis. I think there was a convergence of interests that came there and you had foreign ministers in. Prime ministers most importantly, willing to take this on an issue which was not particularly popular in either country, but was vital to both countries long term interests.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:19:35] And when they finally came to an agreement, the agreement had to be ratified in both countries. And I gather that was a fraught process. How did you know it was? How did you manage this in North Macedonia?

Amb. Baily: [00:19:50] Well, as you say, it was a fraught process. This is a very deeply emotional issue on both sides of the border for understandable reasons, on both sides of the border. And it gets deep not only into just the name. People think, well, what's the name? Why is that so important? Well, if somebody started saying we couldn't use United States because Mexico is also the United States of Mexico, we might have a problem with that. It gets deeply into identity. And ethnic Macedonians sense that their neighbors are around them to carve them up. And Greece denied its name. Bulgaria denied its independent language, Serbia denied its independent church. And there was always this sort of threat of separatism with Albanians. So they felt surrounded and embattled. And so it was very important for them through this process to be able to reaffirm their identity as ethnic Macedonians, speaking a Slavic language and comfortable in their country. And that was really what the issue was about almost more than anything else in North Macedonia. It was also about being able to move beyond and not being stuck in this sort of limbo, kind of wanting to join NATO, wanting to join the EU, but remaining on the outside and insecure. Always this fear the neighbors might try to deny their existence. So I think that's what it was about for Macedonia and it was providing people I guess getting it through this process was making two points. One, very importantly, this was a sovereign decision by the government and the citizens of North Macedonia. The United States could support it, could not support it, but it was their future and they had to make the decision. Corollary to that was also that it was unlikely, given the dynamics over the last 30 years, as you said, that this opportunity for agreement was going to arrive any time soon if they rejected it.

Amb. Baily: [00:21:44] And that's a hard message to give. But it was just the reality of the situation. And as a friend and I'd been there at this point for four years, I think it was important to convey that in a way that also respected the difficulty of the decision. Then Secretary of Defense Mattis flew out one Sunday to Macedonia because he had promised to come and reassure people that this really was real, that NATO membership would be real, that it would be forthcoming if they did this. And that was a very important visit. That was the first cabinet visit by a member of the US Cabinet in 15 years, Angela merkel. Others came. So this was a joint effort by the United States and its European partners. We were not in this alone. We had to get all our partners in NATO on board with being able to deliver on this process. Finally, and most difficult thing was they had to change their constitution and that was not only difficult, but it required getting some opposition votes. Fortunately, there were enough members of the opposition who saw what this opportunity represented. And while they didn't particularly want to change the name, they realized that that's what they were going to have to do if they wanted the country to move forward. And so they did and they voted on it. But it was a very close vote. As I recall. It happened on Halloween in 2018. They were accusing me of holding opposition parliamentary members hostage somewhere in the parliament to get them to vote the right way. When actually I was at an embassy Halloween party.

Maj. Enriquez: [00:23:17] Just to add to that, you know, one of the more effective tools that we leveraged during that period was our military and defense senior leaders, as the ambassador alluded to, our first general to visit after the new government was formed was actually the adjutant general of the Vermont National Guard, Major General Steven Cray. It was not insignificant in the sense that it really opened the door for a number of senior leaders to come visit. I think I counted 24 or more generals and senior DOD officials coming in. Cooper In addition to the SecDef General Cavoli, a number of commanding generals in Europe, the SACEUR, the supreme allied commander of Europe, General Curtis Scaparrotti.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:23:57] There was a country that was not working quite in sync with the rest, and that is Russia, which has some interests in the region. Can you tell us a little bit more what methods were used and how effective they were?

Amb. Baily: [00:24:11] First of all, at a senior level, Russia had never really expressed much interest in North Macedonia. Their biggest relationship in the region is with Serbia. And they were very interested in keeping Serbia out of NATO and maybe even out of the European Union. They grew increasingly concerned about the course of the Balkans, which some in Russia viewed as sort of somehow in Russian sphere of influence. You know, historically, from the time of the czars and the Ottoman Empire and all. But with Montenegro to the north of North Macedonia, another former Yugoslav republic and. Entering NATO in 2016, the Russians became very, very concerned. And indeed there was an attack on Montenegro's parliament that had Russian fingerprints on it that failed and it failed to derail Montenegro's entry into NATO. But they weren't going to sit idly by in North Macedonia as well. They didn't resort to that kind of thing. They certainly upped their game in terms of soft power. They amplified a lot of conspiracy theories and sort of messages of fear about this, that the name agreement was going to destroy the Macedonian identity, that it was going to end with the domination of Macedonia by ethnic Albanians, all sorts of things to raise people's fear. And so that's why we had to have a strong message of reassurance that we had to work with North Macedonian authorities to make sure they were getting their message out and that the agreement, the Prespa agreement, was not being misrepresented in what it would cause. And then there was something that was very strange. I think perhaps the Russians sort of saw the writing on the wall and the name agreement and they decided that they would suddenly that they didn't have a problem with it. But they did have a problem with Macedonia's entry into NATO. So that began really as I was leaving North Macedonia in the spring of 2019. And that process took another roughly a year, each country having its own ratification process. So it wasn't really until 2020, right as the pandemic was beginning, that North Macedonia became the 30th member of NATO.

Maj. Enriquez: [00:26:29] Yeah. And on the defense side of the House, you know, Russia's physical presence is relatively small. Their presence, like Ambassador Baily said, was more visible in the information spectrum. From our perspective, any military exercise or any social media posting related to military cooperation was routinely and heavily commented on by what appeared to be bots and trolls that are really just designed to derail any of the activities we were trying to achieve out there. And Ambassador Baily would remember really the US Embassy website and Facebook page. The comments on that page were 85%, you know, at the height of the crisis and referendum control messages against the ambassador, against our activities, against any of our VIPs coming in. And in the media side, these exercises tended to be focuses of outlets such as Sputnik and the local affiliates in the country, really with the intent of derailing any of the progress that was being made from 2016 and onward. You might remember Ambassador Baily, the first KFOR exercise, we invited soldiers from KFOR, about 200 of them to do a training exercise in the country on the Krivolak range. For what it was worth, we thought we were achieving some great milestones and it was a very simple photograph or two of the Minister of Defense around some of our equipment that was doctored, Photoshopped by some malign influencers and rereleased to the public that the United States was using depleted uranium ammunition in the country and thus endangering the lives of the citizens of then Macedonia. And why do we want NATO in our country if they're only going to be disruptive to our health and our lives out here? So it really took, you know, several engagements with our public diplomacy team, our ambassador putting together messages that could overcome that. One incident took several weeks.

Amb. Baily: [00:28:19] Gene mentioned our public affairs officer who really led a terrific effort to really keep our messages both clear and also push back where appropriate, on these kinds of other messages. It's sort of a never ending game, unfortunately.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:28:34] Speaking of military exercise, I want to dive a little bit deeper into that for North Macedonia has offered the United States opportunities for training that are rather unique. What's the advantage for the US and allied troops to train in North Macedonia?

Maj. Enriquez: [00:28:50] Can I give a little bit of background first and move back to one of the topics that I meant to mention earlier, but didn't Ambassador Baily would remember our defense attache, Colonel Tim Buchan, and our security cooperation Chief Lieutenant Colonel Chris Mitchell, who were key players in really driving the momentum going. And I was really just there to help them along. We had direct access to the new minister of defense at the time, Radmila Sekerinska really her keen interest on expanding US cooperation is what really opened the door for a number of our projects and significant projects to advance that same narrative about what does NATO bring to the country and what can the country bring to NATO? Our post concurred on a revived program to bring in experts from Rand to help facilitate a strategic defence review and this SDR. It's a massive effort amongst various offices in the defense sector, as well as other areas in government to plan out the next 5 to 8 years of defense reforms and spending, and we, The United States, did this in tandem with our counterparts in the British Embassy. We brought in military and civilian academics from the George C Marshall Center and the NATO school in Oberammergau, Germany. Naval Postgraduate School in Newport, Rhode Island. These experts would come in. They would host seminars on what is NATO, what is NATO in the 21st century? What are these NATO related reforms and values that you must make in order to accede into the alliance? And these seminars in many cases were targeted towards parliamentarians, and it would essentially educate them on these reforms and what they would eventually vote in favor of areas like procurement laws, anti-corruption, nepotism, intelligence oversight, cyber emergency management, you name it.

Amb. Baily: [00:30:29] If I could offer a perspective on one thing that Gene just mentioned, he talked about intelligence reform issues regarding rule of law and corruption. Those are issues, of course, of good governance, But there are also security issues. We know all too well that Russia, to name one, but others can use corruption to exploit weaknesses in a country. And that's a security issue. If you think about it. Then if bleeding over into the military sector or the intelligence, those are real security issues. And when a country joins the NATO alliance, those aren't just security issues for that country. They become security issues for the alliance. So we had a real interest in ensuring that some of these issues, including on corruption and the rule of law, but also cyber security, are strengthened because at the end of the day, it was also our own strength that could be compromised.

Maj. Enriquez: [00:31:23] We had the great opportunity to use a facility in North Macedonia called Krivolak, the Krivolak Training Area. It was a veritable gold mine for the country. And in my first month in North Macedonia, remember we brought Ambassador Baily to the range to highlight the first large American military presence in an engineer exercise called Dragoon Guardian, Second Cavalry Regiment, headquartered in Germany, brought 300 soldiers down to North Macedonia at the very beginning of the new government's tenure in incumbency. And since then we've surge activities on Krivolak, opening it up to NATO missions like KFOR, Americans, later Poles and Turks from the KFOR mission, which we're trying to join as well, to conduct training on this massive training area. We peaked, I think, in 2019 with an exercise called Decisive Strike. We brought 1500 soldiers from the United States, Pennsylvania National Guard, specifically with 700 or so vehicles, mainly Strykers, shipped them from the Port of Philadelphia to Thessaloniki, Greece, who still hadn't voted on North Macedonia's accession to the alliance yet. At the time, that was a little bit tricky. That was imagine the equipment was all hauled into North Macedonia, where another 1000 troops from the Republic of North Macedonia, who was not yet an ally. We had five other allies, Lithuania, Albania, Bulgaria and Montenegro, participating in this massive exercise. Many would argue this exercise helped seal the deal with many of the allies that were voting within this time period.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:32:54] Well, to wrap up, I wanted to ask you, what were the critical skills that you had to use as diplomats and defense representatives in order to finally achieve a resolution to the entry of North Macedonia into NATO after so many years?

Amb. Baily: [00:33:12] I would say a couple of things. One is a very consistent message and a clear goal. We were abundantly clear at the beginning of the crisis of where we wanted to see Macedonia go. It happened to be where most citizens of Macedonia wanted to go. We stuck with that. It really, really never wavered. It didn't waver with the change of administration much. There were some changes of words here and there, but the goal was still the same. The second thing is we did this in concert with allies. Two other final points. The long standing relationships that we had were really critical. And as we've mentioned with the Vermont National Guard, that we were a reassuring voice. That was important. I think finally a sense that realistically, clearly, the United States wanted to see this go forward. But at the end of the day, this was a sovereign choice by North Macedonia and its citizens. And you have to understand the difficulty of that choice. It's very difficult. One, of course, it was a difficult decision in Greece as well on the name issue. But you have to approach that with some humility and understanding. And not many people would dismiss the name issue as sort of a trivial thing. It was far from trivial. I think you have to approach that with understanding and a certain degree of compassion about the difficult situation they were in.

Maj. Enriquez: [00:34:39] I think what really helped from my perspective was knowing and understanding the environment we were in and applying more of a cooperative effort than dictating what to be done. We were here to work in concert with a struggling new democracy and trying to achieve some significant political objectives. I would be remiss if I didn't highlight that the US faces are really the ones we see and really the most senior faces are the ones we see the most. But there are a lot of unsung heroes out there. Local citizens of North Macedonia that work for our embassy and other international missions out there who have a deep passion for their country, for our country and leveraging their skills. You know, I know in my Office of Defense Cooperation, the big word was commitment. And we were all very committed. In many cases, our partners felt most comfortable to communicate with us under cover of darkness when they weren't in their offices or not in large fora or receptions. And a lot of that diplomatic work and military work was done outside of the office. The climate in our embassy was that we put in everything we could to help the country achieve NATO accession. And everyone that had their fingerprints in that journey, going back from several ambassadors, you know, we'd never mentioned an ambassador, Phillip Reeker, who continued to play a recurring role on this journey. You know, in our past Adjutants general in Vermont and Sakura's, it was really that know the environment, cooperate, don't dictate and that's how we achieve what we achieved.

Amb. Baily: [00:36:09] All that prep work that had been consistent over the years is what enabled us to seize opportunity when the political stars aligned. You don't necessarily know when that's going to happen. You don't know when opportunity is going to happen. In this case, the political stars aligned in both countries and we had to recognize that that was potentially a very fleeting moment. It's changed the region, and I think it had a big impact in Europe more broadly, where there weren't a lot of good news stories. This was one good news story.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:36:41] Well, Ambassador Baily, Major Enriquez, I want to thank you for sharing your time, your experiences, senior diplomatic and military leaders in advancing US interests in an important part of the globe. Thank you. Really appreciate it.

Amb. Baily: [00:36:58] Thank you so much for having us.

Maj. Enriquez: [00:37:00] Thank you so much.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:37:02] This has been a new episode in the series, The General and the Ambassador. Thank you for listening. The series is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy with the generous support of the Una Chapman Cox Foundation. You can find our podcasts on all major podcast sites. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook as well as visit our website: GeneralAmbassadorPodcast.Org. We very much welcome input and suggestions in this series. You can contact us at General.Ambassador.podcast@gmail.com.