FYROM: A Source of Balkan Instability

In the post–Cold War reality, stability in the Balkans must be of great importance. It is therefore imperative to examine the nature of the region’s instabilities as well as their sources and their implications. The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) has been praised by the West as a good example of stability. However, because of several systemic weaknesses—past habits acquired during fifty years of communism—FYROM has become and will always be a destabilizing force, especially if it continues to pursue the expropriation of the Hellenic Macedonian name and ethnicity, the intensification of its illiberal history revisionism, the expropriation of the Bulgarian language and parts of Bulgarian history, and the mistreatment of minorities.