Latest / Prof James Ker-Lindsay / 003. Has Greece Finally Regained Its Importance? | How Nations Think

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003. Has Greece Finally Regained Its Importance? | How Nations Think · Prof James Ker-Lindsay

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: You're listening to How Nations Think with me, James Carlinsey.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: In each episode, my guest and I take a deep dive into a country's foreign policy, exploring the key events, figures, and factors that have shaped its view of the world.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Few countries in Europe have experienced such dramatic shifts in their foreign policy as Greece.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Born out of a struggle for independence, it spent much of the 19th and early 20th centuries seeking to expand its borders before redefining its place in the international system after a catastrophic war in Asia Minor.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Since then, Greece has navigated the Cold War, military dictatorship, tensions with neighboring Turkey, EU membership, and a devastating financial crisis.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: But how have these events shaped the way that Greece sees the world?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And where is the country heading as Europe enters a new era of geopolitical competition?
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: To explore all this, I'm delighted to be joined by Spiros Economides, Associate Professor of International Relations and former Deputy Director of the Hellenic Observatory at the London School of Economics.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Spiros.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining us.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I it's it's really great to be talking to you.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we've known each other for a very, very long time.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, this is a subject that obviously we're both very passionate about.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I think when when we talk about Greece, we probably need to go back to the beginning of the emergence of the modern Greek state in the 1820s, 1830s.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I think there are two trends which seem to have had such a significant impact on Greece as it's as it's developed and as it is today.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the first of those was the role of outside powers, the great powers in the formation of the Greek state.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the second was the emergence of a very small Greek state uh that didn't match the borders as Greeks saw it.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so I just wondered how you would link those two factors uh in the emergence of Greece, certainly in the first century of its existence, before you know we can talk about what happens after the First World War.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I think for that first century, that seems such a pivotal element that actually does play a part in even how Greece, I think, thinks today.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, James, thank you very much for having me on your channel to talk about a subject which you and I have spoken about many, many times before.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's no doubt that the emergence of the Greek state uh in the in the early part or the middle part of the 19th century was very much the product of great power politics.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was very much the product of an international relations nexus in Europe, in which the great powers, the British, the French, and the Russians, were initially opposed to the Ottoman Empire.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: And they supported the Greek War of Independence because it served the purposes of the balance of power in Europe, it served the purposes of some kind of concept of realpolitik in which, you know, trying to get one over on your adversary and rival by supporting a war of independence in Greece or in Serbia or elsewhere was seen as a way of advancing your interests across Europe.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, those alignments between the great powers are constantly changing, but one of the things that did happen was that the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s resulted in the creation of a Greek state, which was supported by outside powers, and it was very much uh upheld by outside powers to a certain extent.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now, we mustn't forget that there was a great degree of Phililennism built into that.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: There is this romantic notion that um the Greek state emerged not only because of the realities of international politics in Europe, but also because there was this great affinity to supporting the Hellenes, uh, the birthplace of various ideals and philosophies and the romantic notion of struggles of independence against um, you know, the Ottoman uh outsider barbarian, in a sense, in European terms.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: So those two things came together and resulted in the creation of a Greek state which was very much limited in terms of territory.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a Greek state which, for some who consider themselves to be Greeks, was the beginning of something bigger.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: And for others, it was never going to be big enough because the Hellenic world spread far beyond the borders of that particular Greece.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we must keep in mind that even though the Greek state emerged in the 1830s with certain limited territorial boundaries, it was limited still primarily by the Ottoman Empire.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: So whatever the great powers outside, apart from the Ottomans, uh, saw in Greece, it was still bounded by the realities of an Ottoman empire, which was still in place until the end of the First World War.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, the Hellenic world, as some Greeks saw it at the time, didn't correspond with the borders of Greece.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, action was limited in scope because it was surrounded by this very important, still important and powerful state against which it was limited in terms of its maneuver.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, you know, we we saw the expansion of the Greek state over the course of the 19th century, um, and you know, sort of taking on new territories, Epirus, uh, and then of course we get into the early uh 20th century, uh, and you had the Balkan Wars.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think um, you know, uh it's obviously when we're talking about Greek history, I mean it's a huge, huge area.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but how did the first world war really transform uh Greece?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, because uh as I say, we we'd seen the expansion of the Greek state.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Crete had been brought in at the end of the 19th century, then, as I say, Macedonian Thrace.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but it did seem that the end of the First World War, the end of the Ottoman Empire, really was a pivotal moment in the story.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I think the sort of incremental growth of the Greek state territorially was partly due to the support of outside powers as well.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: It couldn't do anything on its own.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't have the military capabilities to take on the might of the Ottoman Empire.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: So there was incremental change where there were skirmishes, there were small wars fought, but at the same time, diplomatically, the great powers kept on, if you want, ceding territory to the Greek state, especially in the north, but also across the Ionian and the and and the Aegean.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's not only the First World War, it's the precursor to the First World War in terms of the Balkan Wars and the First World War, which are pivotal in terms of both the emergence of a larger Greek state territorially, but also, in a sense, the end of the idea that the whole Hellenic world would be sort of encapsulated under the borders of a modern Greece.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the First World War is really important because it means the end of the Ottoman Empire, primarily.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: The Greek state didn't know which side of the war to when to join the war.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it joined the war at a stage where it found itself going to benefit from the crumbling of the Ottoman Empire.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it came out of the First World War as a victorious power.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Its prime minister was, you know, quite an important figure in the Versailles negotiations leading to the Treaty of Versailles.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, pictorially, you can see Elifteus Venicealous in a lot of these uh paintings that capture the moment uh at Versailles.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: But it was the true it was that it was the collapse of the Ottoman Empire that gave Greece extra impetus in terms of gaining territory and perhaps lodged in the minds of certain Greeks and their leaders that we can now spread uh our territory to incorporate those parts of the Hellenic world which have been under Ottoman Empire ever since our independence, but maybe ought to be part of Greece.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, I mean, I I think, you know, we have that situation of the, you know, the Greek invasion into Asia Minor and the war that, you know, I think played so much to define the relationship because the emergence of Turkey, and and we'll talk a little bit, I guess, later on about the sort of the Greek relationship with Turkey as it emerged in the later part of the uh 20th century.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: But the catastrophe, as it's called, did seem to also play such an important part in defining uh defining Greece.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um perhaps you could sort of just explain a little bit about how that played out, and then also the relationship between Venezelos, who obviously is this giant of Greek sort of foreign policy and history, um, and Ataturk in Turkey.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I mean the the Great Catastrophe, as you called it, I think is is a massive sort of turning point in terms of the nature of the Greek state, on the one hand, domestically, and what the Greek state represents, and also its foreign relations.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: So what happens essentially is that there is, without going into too much detail, a basic preconception, idea, a reality, that vast parts of the Aegean coast of Turkey, as we call it today, um, you know, the Ionian is inhabited by Greeks, and so it's Greek.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: And at some point, the decision is made that we what we need to do as a state is to militarily uh take control of these areas to defend the rights of Greeks uh in Anatolia, you know, in this part of Turkey.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: And what essentially happens is a military campaign uh which initially goes very, very well, but perhaps, according to some historians, overstretches, overreaches, and results in a military defeat on the one hand, but also a catastrophic uh attack on the civilian populations, uh the Greek civilian populations and Armenian civilian populations on the Aegean coast, who are basically expelled from Turkey.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Now, for Greece, this is a momentous uh um um uh occasion, one because it is a catastrophic defeat militarily, but also because it means the influx of over a million and a half people, which really changes both the size of the population in Greece and the nature of the population.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: It changes the character of the population.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yes, they're Hellenes, but they're Hellenes from a slightly different world.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: And they're Hellenes who start then playing a very significant role in defining what Greece should be, where its limits are territorially, uh, what its neighborhoods look like in the major cities, how quickly the population's growing, and so on and so forth.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: So for Greece, for modern Greece, for the modern Greek state, the great catastrophe is a stigma.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's a military defeat, uh, but it's also uh a redefining moment in terms of the nature of the Greek population and the state.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of foreign policy, of course, it's very, very complicated because, on the one hand, there were certain European friends who were encouraging Greece in its uh attempt to protect the Greek populations of uh Asia Minor.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but also many Greeks felt completely let down at the last moment when those same people did not come to the defense of the Greek armed forces when they were being pushed back into the sea by the forces of Kemala Tatur and the creation of this modern Turkey, uh, which ensued very, very quickly.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: So from that moment on, the relationship with Turkey becomes a difficult one, a complicated one, and one which is going to characterize the relationship in the Eastern Mediterranean forever and a day after that.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, you mentioned Eleferos Venizelos and Kemala Tatuk.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Many people object to the idea of taking individuals as great leaders and using them to describe the importance of various historical events.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: But in these cases, these were larger-than-life figures.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: These were figures who were key in defining the modern Greek state and the modern Turkish state at that particular point.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: They were immense political leaders.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting that the confrontation in 1922 and the ensuing peace treaties in 1923 were built around these two phenomenally larger-than-life political leaders who left their imprint on their respective countries, uh, for better or for worse, uh, for the rest of the relationship over the next 150 years.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that point about, you know, we for those of us who sort of very interesting sort of Greek-Turkish relations.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that is obviously seen as the high watermark of uh, you know, that countries have been at war and they they then find peace and uh a close relationship seems to emerge.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, you know, as things develop, we see that during the Second World War, Greece is invaded, occupied by Nazi Germany and by fascist Italy as well.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Turkey plays a neutral role.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, Greece emerges from the Second World War, and it's a completely new world that's emerging uh with the Cold War and of Greece falling into civil war.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I just sort of was interested in how that early period of the Cold War played out in Greece, that it suddenly found itself uh along with Turkey as being sort of a pivotal front line, if you like, uh in the emergence of sort of East-West confrontation.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Let me just go one step back and talk a bit about the Second World War, because I think this fits in quite neatly with what we were talking about before in terms of the emergence of the Greek state in the 1830s.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Here you had a small state in Europe that actually defeated the Italians militarily, forced Nazi Germany to invade it, and in a sense derailed the whole timetable that Adolf Hitler may have had about where the war in Europe was going and when the invasion of the Soviet Union would take place.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Here we have again an instance in which Greece is part and parcel of this balance of power game in Europe, but also uh standing up, uh the sort of romantic notion of the small Greek state standing up to the sort of the the large, uh, you know, the large, you if you want, lion of Germany, which is, you know, roaring to invade it.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: So you have this again in the Second World Period, the plucky Greek, the plucky Greek, the plucky Greek state uh emerging as somebody who uh stood up to the invaders, somebody who stood up to um, you know, the authoritarian forces in Europe, even though it was itself a dictatorship in the run-up to the Second World War.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so this image again blends the idea of you know the realities of international politics and war in the 1913 forties, and there's a romantic element of Hellenism and Greekness defending some spirit of Europe, the idea that we have to defend certain values and so on and so forth.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, the I think you've hit the nail on the head.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: The end of the Second World War, the Greek Civil War, um, and the beginnings of the Cold War are pivotal in terms of Greek foreign policy for the next generation.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because what you have is uh a moment in which the United States of America steps in to support the national forces in Greece, that is the government forces in their struggle against the communist forces in the Greek Civil War.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: The civil war ends, and Greece is firmly lodged on the western side of the Iron Curtain.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it is firmly lodged there uh for reasons which are entirely to do with Cold War politics and entirely to do with the fact that it was supported by the United States of America in defeating the communist forces, domestic communist forces in Greece, and found itself uh on the western side of the Cold War divide.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Strategically, though, Turkey was far more important than Greece.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Greece was important politically.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: Greece was seen as a landmark case by the United States of America in terms of defeating communist forces.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the victory, the American victory in Greece as it was perceived, was seen as a harbinger, if you want, of what may come next in terms of fighting communist insurgencies everywhere in the world, that we can take them on militarily and defeat them, and that's going to be giving the Kremlin a bloody nose.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Strategically, though, Turkey was far more important.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: It shared a long border with the Soviet Union.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: It was located strategically with respect to the Middle East, to the Caucasus, and so on and so forth.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, despite the fact that it had been a neutral state during the Second World War, um, despite the fact that it lacked this sort of affinity with the Western world that was born out of both historical circumstance and also the romantic element of Philelinism, Turkey found itself in a position of being able to bargain with the USA and found itself in a position where the Truman doctrine, which everybody imagines to be something that President Truman announced to support Greece, was in fact a doctrine which supported Turkey and Greece.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so you had now all of a sudden these two states which weren't yet rivals but had a difficult past at the beginning of the 20th century, now being on the front line in the war against the communist world as depicted in the Cold War world.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: That this was part of the Iron Curtain, and that Greece and Turkey were lumped together in the struggle against communism as perceived in Washington and other Western capitals.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a little sort of a slightly weird situation in which these two countries with different trajectories, bound together territorially because of the Aegean Sea and the history of the great catastrophe, uh now found themselves on the same side in a struggle which perhaps they didn't see the same way, and in which one side was much more strategically important than the other.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think sort of, you know, that that whole element of the Cold War, uh, you know, that they were both within NATO, uh they were allies.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, things started to change from the mid-1950s.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um essentially the emergence of Cyprus, which, if you like, was uh one of those last unredeemed parts of the sort of Hellenic world that many in Greece sort of felt needed to be part of the Greek state.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, on the island, 80% of the population were Greek Cypriots, they wanted to unite with with Greece.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that started to shape that relationship.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: But also we saw that within Greece, the end of democracy and the country falling to military rule.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so how how did that all seem to blend together in in the course of the 1960s?
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: And what sort of tensions did it create that you you had Greece and Turkey both parts of the Western Alliance, but becoming increasingly at odds with one another.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And within Greece, you had a regime which really stood against the ideas of liberal democracy, which was meant to be right at the heart of sort of Western thinking.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, there was this characterization in the 50s and 60s, on and off, that Greece was democracy and Turkey wasn't, and that Greece was a democracy which had emerged from, you know, the civil conflict at the end of the Second World War, supported by the United States of America, but developed into a liberal democratic state with free elections and so on and so forth, while Turkey was taking a slightly different path.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was more authoritarian, it had these blips where there were military leaderships in place, and there was this stark contrast, which wasn't exactly real, because yes, Greece was a democracy, there were free elections regularly, but it was a state and a country which, especially in its foreign policy, was reliant on the United States of America.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, a point I'd like to make is that from the end of the Second World War, from the end of the Greek Civil War in 1949 until uh the late 1960s, perhaps even the early 1970s, uh, Greece was really pro-American, at least at the leadership level.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of its foreign policy, it saw itself dependent on the United States of America for its foreign policy survival and success.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, its foreign policy was limited.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: It was part of this Cold War nexus, it belonged to the West militarily as part of the NATO alliance since 1952.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't a member of the European community yet, and it relied heavily on American support to defend whatever minimal interests it may have perceived to have in the Aegean and elsewhere.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it was firmly in the American camp.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Its relationship with its northern uh uh its northern uh um neighbors, Albania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, part of the socialist world, even though not part of the uh Soviet bloc, were also dependent on the support of the United States of America.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, for Greece, membership of NATO, membership of the Western world was an American project.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: For Turkey, this came later in a sense, because it was so much more strategically important.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't have to see itself as being supported by the United States of America.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: It could make up the rules a bit.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: And this began to bring a bit of tension into the relationship between Greece and Turkey, who are slightly different in terms of their relationship with Washington because of strategic importance.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think what happens uh in the 1960s, or from the 1950s onwards, if you is you have the beginnings of the unraveling, if you want, of the Treaty of Lausanne in many respects.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because the minority, the Greek minority, which still exists in Turkey and is provided for by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, starts coming under attack.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: The emergence of the Cyprus question, that's what people normally refer to it as, uh, is an issue which starts uh make a lot of Greeks think about the protection of Hellenism beyond the borders of the Greek state.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: And Cyprus is really Greece's near abroad to many Greeks, something that uh doesn't necessarily belong to Greece territorially, but is Hellenic and needs to be defended as part of that.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: And this gives rise then to movements for union, analysis, uh, you know, both in Cyprus and in Greece.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: And as this uh uh uh becomes uh a more important issue, you also have the collapse of democracy in Greece and the emergence of a dictatorship in 1967, which is supported by the United States of America, but ultimately ultimately self destructs and self destructs by trying to create a situation in Cyprus where a group Greek majority is going to take over the island in its complete completely and causes a Turkish reaction, the invasion of Cyprus, and so on and so forth.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: So here you have an American moment in terms of Greek foreign policy until 1974, in which Greece is totally embedded in the Western world militarily and politically, perhaps even idealistically.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: It is drifting towards authoritarianism.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: A dictatorship comes into power and ultimately self-destructs on the rocks of the idea of Cyprus being part of Greece.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that, in a sense, brings to a conclusion the beginning of that phase of a Greek-American relationship, a closeness.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because my argument is that from the 19, the mid-1970s onwards, when democracy is restored in Greece, when Konstantinos Garaman Lis returns from exile and becomes, in a sense, the great figure of Greek politics post-junta, his determination was never to rely solely on the United States of America again for the protection of Greek foreign policy interests, not just with Turkey, but beyond as well.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it begins this sort of shift, not of unilateralism, a shift, a pivot to trying to find other guantors for Greek foreign policy interests beyond the United States of America.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Very simply.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because Turkey was strategically very important to the USA.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: And this, the evidence for this, the final evidence for this, was the fact that Turkey was allowed, the argument goes, to invade Cyprus, right, in 1974, with the Americans turning a blind eye because Turkey was such an important ally.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so you have this shift from being completely dependent on the United States of America in diplomatic and security terms to trying to find security guarantees and foreign policy protection elsewhere.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's one of the reasons why the process towards EU membership is speeded up so fast in the late 1970s under the leadership of Karamandis.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: He wanted to somehow move away from being completely beholden to Washington.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that he suspended Greece's membership from the military command of NATO at the end of 1970s, or in the middle of the 1970s, is a key, I think, piece of evidence that suggests that there was something there which was more than just a protest.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: There was something there which was a search for another pole that could support and defend the interest of Greece abroad.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: This sort of really neatly explains sort of the next element in all of this, which of course was Greece joining the European Union, uh, European economic community as it was back then.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: But um it also tied in, I think, with an another aspect, which I think is fascinating.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you mentioned Karamanlis as this huge figure uh of Greek foreign policy following um the fall of the junta and the re-emergence of democracy in the country.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, the other great figure uh of that era uh was Andreas Papandreou uh coming from the left.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it it's really interesting how um, if you like, you know, Greece was still a NATO member, although, you know, it had sort of, as you rightly pointed out, it had decided to sort of withdraw from the military uh elements.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how did that all tie together, the, you know, in in the creation of a new Greek foreign policy uh in the late 1970s, early 1980s, which would see it through effectively to the end of the Cold War, and we can talk about that in a minute.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: Let me just take you one step back, if I may, James, to the idea of Greece joining the European economic community, because the emphasis of many people put is that Greece was allowed to join uh the EEC in 1981 because this was a way of guaranteeing democracy in Greece, post-junta, uh, guaranteeing the kind of democratic institutions that Karaman Lise had helped restore and processes that it helped restore, et cetera, and also that it would bring wealth to the country.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a great explanation.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: It does make sense on all fronts.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm always the advocate of this idea that for many, many Greeks, including Karaman Lis, the European community was as much about a security guarantee as it was about uh reinforcing democracy and promoting economic growth and prosperity.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the fundamental aspects of this is that unlike in NATO, which Greece and Turkey were both members of, Greece would become a member of the European community and Turkey would not.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: And this gave it, this gave, in Karama Elise's eyes, Greece had two major advantages as a result.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: One, it wasn't beholden completely to the United States of America, and two, as a member of a growing institution which would provide for Greece on many levels, including the exclusion of Turkey.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: It would not have to do this constant balancing act.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: It was in, Turkey was out, we've got leverage here, we've got something over this rival of ours.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a really important consideration that it wasn't simply about the economics and politics of it.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: There was something about the security and diplomacy of being a member of the European community, which shows the sort of pivot towards Europe in Karamanis' eyes, being significant in the grander scheme of things historically and politically in the area.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, you mentioned the rise of Pasok and Andreas Papandreu.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: They come to power in 1981, the same year that Greece joins the European community.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: And here is a party and a larger-than-life figure, a canny politician, somebody who is a demagogue and a populist, but knows how to maneuver his way around the political field, both internally and externally.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: So Greece joins the European community, Papandou becomes prime minister, and there's all this bluster about Greece not belonging to the West, and Greece being a proponent of a new way, uh third way of socialism, and being a great supporter of what then becomes the global south.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: And Yasser Arafat's a great friend, and so the Soviet Union is not the great enemy that it was purported to be, and the American bases must be removed from Greece, and so on, and so forth.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: This is great anti-Western rhetoric.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: But in essence, in essence, Andreas Papandriel could only survive as the kind of politician that he was with the financial support of the European community.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of the foreign policy that he enacted, talked about, tried to do, was only possible essentially because he was still part and parcel of this community of states that gave him a great degree of leverage.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: The other interesting thing, of course, is that under the Papandreov Premiership, we nearly went to war with Turkey.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: And people tend to forget that in the middle of the 1980s, under his prime ministership, there was no backing down.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: There was no backing down from what was seen as the Turkish challenge.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: And the Aegean became this playground of military, almost military mishaps in the air and on the sea, converging on the idea that the territorial waters hadn't been probably delineated of the Treaty of Lausanne, that certain of the islands hadn't been demilitarized as provided by the Treaty of Lausanne.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: There were claims as to the sovereignty of islands.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: Cyprus, of course, was still a tremendously important issue.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so Papandre, on the one hand, was stuck with this third way of international politics and the idea that he wanted to distance Greece from its allied past, from its NATO past, and confronted with the same kinds of issues that could only be resolved in the same kinds of ways.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so you had this strange situation where a very popular prime minister elected repeatedly on a very populist mandate, on in foreign policy terms with a rhetoric which was completely unprecedented in terms of Greek foreign policy, confronted by the same kinds of issues and having to seek support from the same kinds of people.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: So the reality of the fact is that even in 1986, a Greco-Turkish war was only avoided and averted because of the intervention of the United States of America and certain European allies who said, now hold on here.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: We're part of the same alliance.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: You can't go to war with each other, you've got to sit and discuss, uh, and so on and so forth.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's this constant paradox of irrespective of who's in power in Athens, the relationship with Turkey is defined by certain characteristics which are standard and which take the support of the outside world to mediate to try and find at least not a solution, but a more peaceful relationship between the two states.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess that takes us on to the next big break in world affairs, which of course the end of the Cold War.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how how did this affect Greece and uh Greece's relationship?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: I guess, to my mind, with its immediate neighbors, uh many of which, as you had pointed out, had been part of the socialist bloc.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, uh, how how did Greece respond to this pivotal moment?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh I think the end of the Cold War for Greece was disastrous in many respects because it took away uh its raison d'être internationally.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: It was for many, many years, for many decades, uh, since the early 1950s, a part and parcel of a defined Western world in which it was a central actor.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was a frontline state, it was a European state, the word Europe was Greek, it represented the ideals of the free world, and Greece didn't have to maneuver that much internationally beyond its alliance, and then more latterly its relationship with its European community partners.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden, the end of the Cold War changes the nature of international relations in Europe.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: You have the emergence of new states, which are going to be very difficult for Greece to handle, as I've say in a few words about in a second, but it also changes the relationship between Greece and the West.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it it what does it mean to be part of the West?
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's not black and white anymore in terms of East-West democracy communism.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: It gets far more complicated now.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh it's a problem for Greece because it has to start redefining itself and redefining what it stands for, where it belongs, and how it's going to address its regional issues.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: And its regional issues become instantly very, very complicated.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: There is no longer an iron curtain across its northern borders, and its relationship with Turkey is not mediated by the need to keep a peace between two NATO allies.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you and I know full well that the collapse of Yugoslavia is a major turning point in terms of Greek foreign policy.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because with the collapse of Yugoslavia, you have essentially two items of a lengthy agenda that come to characterize Greece, at least in the eyes of outsiders.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: And the first is the fact that it's characterized as behaving as an unwestern power.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you being so friendly with the emerging Serbian threat to stability in the region when a lot of people are identifying the Serbs as the cause not only of the collapse of Yugoslavia, but also of the violence into which Yugoslavia defended and the undefensible acts that took place in Bosnia and Kosovo and elsewhere?
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: What is this affinity that you have with Serbia?
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: The reality is, of course, that for many Greek leaders of the time, and there were a number of changes in government, a stronger Serbian state supposedly was going to bring stability to the area and not produce the one scenario that the Greek state was not ready to deal with, and that was the emergence of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, now known as North Macedonia, the Macedonian issue, really changed the nature of Greek politics to a certain extent, and it changed the nature of its relationship with the outside world, especially its Western partners, because Greece was confronted with the emergence of a state which had certain irredentist claims, but also with a state for which many Greeks belong, thought belonged to the Hellenic world.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: That, you know, the Macedonian territory was part of the imaginary of the Greek people back to the 1870s.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so all of a sudden, a hundred and more years later, you had the re-emergence of this problem which confused Greeks.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: And they took shelter, not in a rational foreign policy, which said this neighboring emerging uh state uh has made irredentist claims over parts of northern Greece, has um has taken on uh symbols uh and characteristics of our past and our history and emblems.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: It seeks shelter in this extreme form of nationalism which harks back to Alexander the Great.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: And whilst this may make sense in Greece, it makes no sense to its allies and partners.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so all of a sudden, at the end of the Cold War, you have really serious regional problems, including territorial contestation, including the changing of borders, including issues which affect Greece tremendously in terms of security, and also this retrenchment into a form of nationalism, which at the time may have seemed to be appropriate, but to the outside world is inexplicable.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: And this for me is an important turning point, not only because uh it is significant in terms of international politics of the region, but it's also significant because it changes in that period the relationship of Greece with its friends and allies, who seem to think that this is not the Greece that we know.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is not the state that we supported in the late 1940s, early 1950s.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is not the Greece that we allow to join the European community.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: This is not the NATO ally.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this is something which we haven't confronted before.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that is a really big setback in terms of Greek foreign policy, which was only, I think, um, recovered uh over a decade later.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: I I sort of remember very clearly uh the the at the turn of the millennium, the you know, things started to change.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think Greece was on and up.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think attitudes, the European Union was planning to expand.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that Greece started to recover a lot of its standing with its European partners.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was seen as a very important uh partner for dealing with the Balkans and joining the European Union.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, you and I remember the 2003 Thessaloniki European Council, which in many ways was absolutely pivotal in um shaping the idea that the Balkans would eventually join the European Union.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but of course, what we really think about from that decade was the financial crisis and how the the effect that that then had on Greek foreign policy, as I say, just as it seemed to be recovering uh its standing, uh, that it was it was faced with this huge, huge, and I mean, you know, it's it's difficult to think this is almost 20 years ago now, uh, that this this was all happening.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: But how did that affect um Greek foreign policy and what how has Greece rebuilt or reshaped its foreign policy since then?
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: Can I just make one little point about the intervening period?
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because there are two things that stand out to me that need to be brought up.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: And the first is that uh to recover some of the lost ground in terms of alliances and friendships and partnerships, um, uh the Greek leadership, especially under cost of Summitis, had to tread a very thin line between uh uh being a sort of more independent actor in the Balkans and also being a supporter of NATO actions, especially in relation to Kosovo.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a step which Sumitis took, which was very dangerous domestically in terms of political alignments, by saying that look, we will not participate in any NATO intervention against Serbia and Kosovo, but we won't stop our allies using Greek territory to support that particular operation.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that went a long way in starting to rebuild the fences and the image of what Greece was in relation to its Western partners.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, in the in the 1990s, there was also another confrontation with Turkey, which nearly came to war, the IMIA crisis, which cannot be ignored.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a difficult period to navigate, in which, you know, the the um the the the outside world intervened again to make sure that it didn't become an international catastrophe.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: The second thing is, of course, that you also have, as you mentioned, enlargement.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: And here in the early 2000s, we have the emergence of a Greek foreign policy which becomes pretty hard-nosed with respect to its, especially community European Union partners, uh, essentially by tying the Cyprus issue to the enlargement of the European Union.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: So when the so-called Big Bang enlargement was about to take place to incorporate uh the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Cyprus and uh and Malta, Greece essentially held the European Union hostage and said, look, if you don't allow Cyprus to join, irrelevant whether it's united or divided, then we will veto the whole expansion and enlargement of the European Union.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a pretty, a pretty, you know, a pretty big veto right to uphold.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's something which I think we must just point out because it starts at the beginning of a process where Greece does become a bit more hardline in terms of its foreign policy action, both with respect to its partners, but also in the Aegean as well.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: Interestingly, going to the financial crisis, I'm of the opinion that during the financial crisis, where Greece was extremely vulnerable, and extremely vulnerable because of its precarious financial situation, and extremely vulnerable because its complete dependence on the European Union and international financial institutions for its survival, there wasn't much foreign policy.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: And there certainly wasn't any attempt to coerce Greece at this vulnerable moment to make concessions, say, with respect to the Aegean, or with respect to North Macedonia, or with respect to Cyprus.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: And this is something which has intrigued me because one would have expected that at this moment, when there was so much dependence, that when there was so much conditionality, that somebody somewhere would have said, look, one of the conditions that you have to really uh build into your foreign policy is to make concessions with respect to your northern neighbors or Turkey.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, you know, we will reconsider this particular uh stability package or that particular loan.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that didn't happen.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it's intriguing to me why that didn't happen.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that the financial crisis was seen as a financial crisis on the one level, and on another level, it was seen as a European crisis of governance, but it wasn't seen as something which Greece could be, if you want, coerced into making concessions in terms of its foreign policy.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose the one outcome, in a sense, of the government of Alexis Tsipras, who saw out a vast part of the financial crisis, was the agreement with North Macedonia, which put an end to that particular issue.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that, I think, is a turning point in terms of Greek foreign policy as well, because now it's restored fully as this country which is not objecting to the emergence of North Macedonia, has reached an agreement with it, uh, can become a senior partner in the relationship, uh and is not seen to be the sort of black sheep of the European Union with respect to the Western Balkans and with respect to this particular issue.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's a sort of more modern Greece now.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the nationalism of the early 1990s, it's not the Greece of Alexander the Great.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is European Greece.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: This is a Greece that can reach compromise with its neighbors, a peace deal that makes sense to everybody, and then we can move on from this.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: Not popular amongst all Greeks, but nonetheless a step forward for many Greeks.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think, you know, this brings me to a final question, which is, and I think you there is that sort of balance that seems to have emerged in in terms of Greece's relationship with its European partners, uh, with uh many of its neighbors.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, obviously, we still know that tensions exist with Turkey, and that is a complex relationship which has cyclical.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I think what I'd like to really focus on are two key actors.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, or maybe slip in about China, but the United States and Russia.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because these right from the start of Greece, um, you know, we've talked about its its role of great powers, uh, talked about its dependence on the United States and then pushing it away.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it does seem in recent years uh that Greece has moved in a much more positive direction in terms of its bilateral relationship with Washington.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: And equally, Russia has been such an important actor in all sorts of ways, it seems, over Greek history.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: And there was longer sense, uh, I think probably because of Papandreyu, that you know, many Greeks, even if politically the country hadn't embraced Russia, that culturally it's sort of, you know, something was there.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: And yet again, in recent years, it seems uh that Greece has really pushed back.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's taken a very clear stance, for example, on the Ukraine war.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and just it would be interesting to hear a little bit about those relationships and and what what underpins it and how Greeks see this.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I think there are two issues there.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: One is the foreign policy agenda, and two is how how Greeks see this because they don't always match up, and this is sometimes perceived as a problem of democracy.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um I try to characterize the Relationship, the foreign policy agenda of Greece throughout the 20th century, especially the second half of the 20th century, especially the second half of the 20th century, as this initial complete reliance on the United States of America as the guarantor of Greek foreign policy and security interests, and the sort of pivot to Europe in the aftermath of 1974, and trying to find security guarantors who are not simply Washingtonian, that could can understand the Greek dilemma from an extra-NATO perspective and don't see everything as having to maintain a balance between Greece and Turkey.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that pivot is a really important one.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that pivot is one which shapes Greek foreign policy in the 70s and 80s.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: But I think you're absolutely right in the last decade, including under the government of Alexis Tsipras and Syriza, and especially under the new democracy government of Kiryakos Mitsotaikis, you've seen an attempt to balance out the relationship with Washington and with the European Union, especially in security terms.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: So you have bilateral agreements with the United States of America within the context of NATO, you know, a special mutual defense agreement which guarantees military equipment which otherwise would not be available to Greece, including very advanced weaponry like F-35 fighters, but also this relationship with Europe and its security and defense aspect, which is built out by Mitsuotaikis and a mutual defense agreement with France and the purchasing of European weaponry, et cetera.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: So there has been this attempt to find a balance now between Washington and roughly put, Brussels, Washington, and Europe.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: So not all the eggs are in one basket, that you have a complete sort of array of friends that span the Atlantic and are across Europe itself.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's something which the current government has done very well in trying to manage and not making, making sure that nobody feels left out of this equation, that we're not pivoting back to the United States at the exclusion of Europe, or that we're not simply a member of the European Union that doesn't want the transatlantic relationship to remain very, very important.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that I think has been a success story from my point of view in terms of Greek foreign policy and security policy.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: The relationship with Russia is a much more complicated one for reasons that you are very familiar with.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: Historically speaking, Russia, of course, uh, Tsarist Russia, was a friend of the emergence of the Greek state.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: The Soviet Union was not necessarily a friend of Greece for obvious reasons relating to the Greek Civil War, even though that was a matter of perception as well to a certain degree.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: And also during the Papandreou years and beyond, there was this idea of playing off the Soviet Union and the United States of America for the pursuit of certain Greek interests.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: The most important thing, though, I think, which you put your finger on, is this idea of a cultural and religious affinity.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: The idea that there's something that binds together Greeks and Russians because of orthodoxy, because of the history of Tsarist Russia, because of an enmity with Turkey, which on one level is completely emotional.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's not borne out by fact, but at the same time resonates amongst many uh Greeks.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: The Ukraine war is a classic case in which the Greek state, Greek foreign policy firmly came out in favor of a Western position in support of Ukraine against Russia.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that is not something that all Greeks agree with, but there hasn't been the same kind of disquiet that one would have expected amongst the Greek population.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: Having said that, I think this raises an interesting point, especially in the Greek context, between the foreign policy of governments and what the Greek electorate may think about the foreign policy of government.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: But as we all know, uh elections are rarely won on foreign policy issues.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so there may be a proportion of Greeks, a large proportion of Greeks who think of Russia as a friendly state and don't really understand why Greece has gone gung-ho in support of Ukraine.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to putting the ballot in the box, they are not going to vote on that.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: They're going to vote on what they see as being in the best interest of Greece in terms of prosperity, growth, security, and so on and so forth.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it's always been the case, it's always been the case in one form or another, especially in the last 20 years, that it's going to be pro-Western.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've always got this conscious image, even in the Papandreo use, of this vast anti-Americanism, which characterized, you know, a significant proportion of the Greek electorate, and who, you know, uh reveled in the anti-Western rhetoric of Papandreo.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: But if you went to Athens and other places in Greece, you saw a society, a community which was capitalist, which enjoyed the fruits of a particular kind of political and economic system, and which wanted those kinds of freedoms and liberties, which were guaranteed by something that they'd become a member of many, many years ago.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: And there was this constant sort of uh, you know, double take.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: What is it you really want?
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: Where is it that you really want to be?
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so the romantic emotional aspect of it is Russia's a friend, et cetera, et cetera.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: But the reality of is I want to have a good life.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that good life is primarily guaranteed by a political and economic system which is located elsewhere.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: Spirit, um thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us about all of this.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: As I say, it it's a huge, huge topic.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you've you've handled it masterfully.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: I I wouldn't have expected anything less.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: But look, this is it's been really, really brilliant talking to you.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh thanks so much.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: My pleasure.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: We could go on for hours, but unfortunately we don't have that much time.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening.
• 49:36
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• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: It makes a real difference and helps me to grow and invite new experts.
• 49:49
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• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'll put the links in the show notes below.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: Many thanks again for joining me and catch you in the next episode.