EDITORIAL

The visit of the Greek prime minister George Papandreou to Israel on July 21-22 has been cautiously greeted as a new beginning in Greek- Israeli relations. Greece has traditionally shunned expanded relations with the Jewish state. In a way, it is an irony of history that the incumbent Greek prime minister took the initiative to pay a visit to Israel: his late father, Andreas Papandreou, was an unabashed friend of the PLO and Yassir Arafat and missed no opportunity, while he was prime minister of Greece, to publicly slam and vilify Israel with complete abandon. It was in December 1981 that Papandreou the Elder granted the PLO equal diplomatic status to that of Israel (but, in the background, even a ‘non-aligned’ firebrand like the old Papandreou was quietly searching for ways to improve ties with Israel, beginning with the signing of bilateral cultural and commercial agreements in 1984).

The International Monetary Fund has just issued an interim report titled “Greece: Stand-By Arrangement -- Review Under the Emergency Financing Mechanism.” Let’s do a reality check and explain what lies behind some of this template language, so familiar to those who actually have the guts and the time to apply themselves to such reading. Plain “on the ground” English actually shows the real facts hidden behind these eery “technocratic” documents. Text in italics is lifted verbatim from the report.

The Greek government was “surprised,” newspapers said, because, suddenly, Turkey sent one of its hydrographic vessels to loiter in the northern Aegean near the Greek island of Samothrace performing, the Turks said, updating of navigational charts! This was a tin excuse of course, but the Turks aren’t amateurs at this. Ever since the Imia crisis in 1996, they have been working persistently at creating tensions and “incidents” that can be then woven permanently into a broader scheme of pushing Greek sovereignty in the Aegean back and advancing their own interpretation of the so-called “gray zones” theory in the Archipelago.

The catastrophic fiscal crisis that is rapidly consuming Greece, with the unabashed and eager help of her own government, is having many unintended consequences, aside from viciously impoverishing millions of Greeks and returning them to the level of standard-of-living expectations of the 1960s. As bone-crushing deficits, plain and hidden, consume large swaths of the country’s public sector, the Lego construction of the current Greek state reveals itself in all its awe-inspiring glory and structural brittleness.

A NOTE BY THE EDITOR

In recent months, with the fiscal crisis consuming our last vestiges of self-respect and whatever was left of a sense of individual security, Greek society has descended into an uncharted dark cave of horrors. So far, fears of widespread rebellion and street unrest have not been realized, but it would be hard to find an individual in this country who does not harbor deep, often debilitating, dread about what is to happen next. Young people, especially, see little, if any, light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Contrary to what many will tell you, Greek youth isn’t completely lost: there are young people today who surprise with their wisdom and analytical skill in the face of the worst crisis this country has met since the Second World War. Let, then, one of them speak on “What does it mean to be Greek?” at this time of the most brutal New Occupation of the country by foreign powers with the open collaboration of local “saviors.”

Sic vis pacem, para bellum

Throughout human history leaders who kept their eye on narrow domestic expediencies, and failed to appreciate the proverbial "forest" whose trees one must look not separately but as a whole, have invariably faltered -- and, along with them, their nations have similarly stumbled and fell. At the root of this malaise lies, almost without fail, the absence of strategy.

More than a year ago we asked on this very page the question of What Happened to Greek strategy? The disheartening answer, which has not changed since, was that Greece has simply left strategy by the wayside. Greek leaders, motivated by partisan politics and domestic wranglings, have had little time for strategy. To put it plainly, strategic thinking does not inform Greek governments.