Alexis Giannoulis
(RIEAS Research Associate & Security Analyst)
Copyright: www.rieas.gr
The definition of National Security is changing. The latter years have seen a rise in multidimensional threats to states and population including both man-made (e.g. terrorism) as well as natural hazards with the two sometimes interacting (shortage of a particular natural resource creating violence or terrorist activity or indeed foreign intervention).
Likewise, unemployment is the source of a series of social and, in extension, political problems a country, any country can face. In addition, unemployment is in itself an indicator of several possible malfunctions and wrongdoings as far as public policy or the very structure of a society and an economy are concerned. Whereas high unemployment rates in parts of Africa, Asia and Central and South America have been so far the norm with relatively high rates of criminal activity and state failure, the recent financial and consequentially social crises in both North America as well as Europe provide an interesting and challenging paradigm of the correlation of unemployment and an increase in the risks to National Security.
It’s official. The Europeans have lost it completely concerning the sovereign debt crisis and what to do about it. Herr Schäuble, in charge of the EU kommandantur, is now hinting that the agreement about a second Greek bailout, reached on July 21st, may not go ahead as planned. Greece is already being put through the hoop by the creditors over the first bailout, agreed in 2010, since the Papandreou regime has disastrously failed in everything it promised to do, while the country is disintegrating thanks to a catastrophic depression caused directly by the Troika-imposed insane austerity that turned, not unexpectedly, into a poisoned chalice which is killing millions of Greek families. 
As Greece lies bankrupt, and continues being pummeled by the Troika (IMF, EU, ECB) into ever more brutal austerity, the presence of the Papandreou regime in power is now the central question of the Greek crisis.
The European “union” these days is in the roughest tumble of its short history. 
After a lull of a couple of months, Greece is again in the sights of the northern (or German) EU bloc, with Greece’s “saviors” throwing out open threats of cutting bailout aid immediately if the Papandreou regime does not act instantly to further strangle the Greek economy into extinction as agreed so many times before. 
Greece nowadays breaks disastrous records one after the other: it has the European “union’s” worst economy; it has the lowest rating in the world by international rating houses; its sovereign debt continues to balloon thanks to catastrophic austerity imposed by the troika (the IMF, EU, ECB) that has killed all hope for even modest recovery from the deepest depression since the end of WW2; unemployment has shot past 15% and will be soon topping 20%, if not more; hundreds of thousands of smaller and medium-sized businesses have been shuttered and more will follow as punitive taxation destroys the fabric of what is left of a domestic market; and government waste, fraud, and mismanagement continues unabated.