Republic of Macedonia, the 30th Member of NATO?

Abstract

This article is dealing with the possible NATO enlargement with the only country from the Adriatic group that is still not member of the alliances i.e. Republic of Macedonia. The historical overview is given through which the most important moments and problems can be percived. Furthermore, the paper uses representative research to determiner the perceptions of  Macedonian citizens towards the possible  overcoming problems  and the membership in NATO. The results show that there is consistent support for NATO membership  from the late 1990-es, but there is tendency of mild decreasing, especially from the disappointment from the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008, when Greece has imposed the right of veto and prevented Macedonia’s membership. But when we made cross tabulation between the questions “Republic of Macedonia should become member of NATO” and “Would you support constitutional name change as a condition for EU and NATO membership”, the support for NATO membership is lost. We can notice that the support for NATO membership is failing if this is related with the change of constitutional name as a condition. If this becomes the case we can expect stronger Russian influence, which can diminish NATO efforts for stabilization not only for Macedonia, but also and for the wider region.