Need of a New Greek Foreign Policy.
By Nicholas Economides
The Greek state is characterized by extreme stasis and inefficiency with occasional shining exceptions. But abroad, and especially in America, rapid technological development and radical political changes significantly affect Greece's immediate region and itself. It would be a euphemism to say that Greece has fallen behind diplomatically. More accurately, Greece receives diplomatic blows every day. And the tragedy is that most of Greece's diplomatic defeats are all but inevitable.
Unfortunately, we have a neighbor who wants to create a caliphate with the borders of the Ottoman Empire. Thus, it occupies Syria and significant parts of Cyprus and Armenia with weapons and intervenes with military force in Iraq, Kurdistan, and Libya, and with frequent threats to Greece, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. The fact that Turkey threatens almost all of its neighboring countries (and not only) gives Greece a diplomatic opportunity to coordinate with them to effectively deal with the common threat. Instead, Greece did the exact opposite. It responded with the “Athens Declaration” that downplays Turkey’s threats and proclaims the huge lie that Greece does not have major differences with Turkey. This has undermined Greece’s subsequent efforts to convince the EU and the US not to further arm Turkey, and the EU not to buy weapons from Turkey. America and the EU are understandably asking “why not?” since Greece has officially stated that its relations with Turkey are almost perfect.
Greece seems to be afraid of the current US administration and is trying to "fly under the radar" so as not to get screwed by Trump. Of course, it was wrong for the Greek state to be close only to the Democrats during the election, but, whatever happened in the past, it must find ways to work harmoniously with the Trump administration. And obviously, a country, especially in a sensitive region, cannot be silent or "fly under the radar."
Read the full eKathimerini article.
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Nicholas Economides is a Professor of Economics at NYU Stern School of Business.