Geopolitical challenges
You don’t need to be Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski to see that Greece is facing major geopolitical challenges. History has taught us that whenever Greece is experiencing a period of instability, Turkey takes advantage of this weakness to set a precedent. The Greeks were violently evicted from Asia Minor during a period of major turmoil in Greek politics. The end of the military dictatorship of 1967-1973 was followed by Turkey’s occupation of northern Cyprus, and the handover of power from Andreas Papandreou to Costas Simitis came just before the Imia crisis in 1996.
Now Turkey is also in crisis. Its foreign policy has seen nothing but a string of failures, the mighty Recep Tayyip Erdogan is battered yet remains as arrogant as ever, and what will happen over the next few weeks is completely unpredictable.
To be fair, Ankara has not sought to take advantage of the Greek crisis so far. But in recent months it does seem to be testing the waters. It knows of Greece’s weaknesses and also that Athens has spent all of its political capital on the debt negotiations.
Athens needs to be extremely wary.
The Imia crisis taught us that the challenge is to avert an unnecessary escalation of tension without ceding sovereign rights. So far, it seems that we have learned our lesson but this does not mean that Greece can let it’s guard down.
Turkey is not Greece’s only concern. The wave of undocumented migrants is also a significant threat and one that is extremely difficult to control. It not only constitutes a major financial burden but it is also impossible to know whether there may be radical elements hiding among the thousands of people fleeing war and poverty.
Last but not least, there appears to be some strange plan underfoot from Turkey to infiltrate the Balkans, and Albania in particular, which cannot come to any good in the future.
All of these factors point to a power reshuffle in the region. The United States has all but withdrawn from the Eastern Mediterranean though the threat of jihadist terror is bringing it back in. Europe as a whole has no foreign policy to speak of and plays no real role on the geopolitical chessboard. Russia is trying to expand its sphere of influence in the Balkans and southern Europe but its alliances and plans have not yet matured.
So, it is in this framework and with a weakened state that Greece has to face its geopolitical challenges. The good news is that the country’s foreign policy and defense stance has not changed much in recent years and there is some level of stability on these fronts. That, at least, shows that we have matured as a country in some respects.
