The Albanian National Question and the Myth of Greater Albania

In order to know what the Albanian National Question (ANQ) is, one should learn it not from what its neighbors, namely Serbia and Greece, have to say, but from a more direct and reliable source, the voice of the Albanians themselves. No nation is in a position in which it can express in a realistic way the needs, the rights and aspirations of a different nation in the same way as an individual cannot be an exact representative for someone but himself. For many years the Western countries used to rely on either Serbian or Greek lenses for the ANQ. In the late 1990s the U.S.-led intervention against Serbia over Kosova on humanitarian grounds and the Albanian insurgency in Macedonia has contributed to an altered power balance in the region. The neighbors frightened by the power shift in the Southern Balkans use their propaganda machinery to express the danger posed by the alleged Greater Albania scheme in order to demonize and morally downgrade the ANQ. However, one can easily see that Albanians since the creation of their state have not, are not, and will not pursue an irredentist agenda toward their neighbors.