Is Greece European?

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s Greece European?

lobal Affairs WEDNESDAY, JUNE 6, 2012 - 04:00 Print Text Size

By Robert D. Kaplan

Chief Geopolitical Analyst

Greece is where the West both begins and

ends. The West -- as a humanist ideal --

began in ancient Athens where

compassion for the individual began to

replace the crushing brutality of the nearbycivilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia.

The war that Herodotus chronicles

between Greece and Persia in the 5th

century B.C. established a contrast

between West and East that has persisted

for millennia. Greece is Christian, but it is

so Eastern Orthodox, as spiritually close to Russia as it is to the West, and geographically equidistant between

russels and Moscow. Greece may have invented the West with the democratic innovations of the Age of Pericles, but

r more than a thousand years it was a child of Byzantine and Turkish despotism. And while Greece was the

orthwestern bastion of the anciently civilized Near East, ever since history moved north into colder climates following

e collapse of Rome, the inhabitants of Peninsular Greece have found themselves at the poor, southeastern extremity

Europe.

odern Greece in particular has struggled against this bifurcated legacy. In an early 20th century replay of the Greco-

ersian Wars, Greece's post-World War I military struggle with Turkey led to a signal Greek defeat and as a

onsequence, more than a million ethnic Greeks from Asia Minor escaped to Greece proper, further impoverishing the

ountry. (This Greek diaspora in Asia Minor was a massive source of revenue until the Greeks were expelled.) Not only

d World War I have a bloody and epic coda in Greece, so did World War II, which was followed by a civil war between

ghtists and communists. Greece's ultimate escape from the Warsaw Pact was a rather close-run affair: again, the

fect of Greece's unstable geographical location between East and West.

reece struggled on. As recently as the mid-1970s it was governed by a particularly brutal military dictatorship (led by

olonels from the backwater of the Peloponnese), which lasted for seven years, and fear of another coup persisted

uring the initial stage of its reborn democracy. Even though the Olympic tradition began in Greece in antiquity and the

st modern Olympics were held in Greece in 1896, Greece was denied the right to host the centenary modern

ympics in 1996 owing to the country's lack of preparedness in organization and infrastructure. Greece did host the

004 Olympics, but the financial strain that the games put on Greece contributed to the country's economic fragility in

e run-up to the current debt crisis.

s not entirely an accident that Greece is the most economically troubled country in the European Union. The fact that

s located at Europe's southeastern back door also has something to do with it. For Greece's economic and politicalevelopment bear marks of a legacy not wholly in the modern West.

oughly three-quarters of Greek businesses are family-owned and rely on family labor, making meritocratic promotion

fficult for those outside the family. Tax cheating is rampant. The economy suffers from a profound lack of

ompetitiveness, even as Greece is mainly a service economy, relying on tourism, in which manufacturing constitutes a

eak sector. Of course, these features have much to do with bad policies enacted over the years and decades, but

ey are also products of history and culture, which are, in turn, products of geography. Indeed, Greece lacks enough

oductive land to be an agricultural power.

hen there is political underdevelopment. Long into the 20th century, Greek political parties had a paternalistic,

offeehouse quality, centered on big personalities -- chieftains in all but name -- with little formal organizational support.

eorge Papandreou, the grandfather of the recent prime minister of the same name, actually headed a party called the

George Papandreou Party." Political parties have been family businesses to a greater extent in Greece than in other

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estern democracies. The party in power not only dominated the highest echelons of the bureaucracy, as is normal

nd proper in a democracy, but the middle- and lower-echelons, too. State institutions from top to bottom were often

verly politicized.

oreover, rather than having a moderate left-wing party and a modern conservative one, as is common throughout

estern Europe, in Greece through the early 1990s there was a hard-left party, the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement

ASOK), which during the Cold War openly sympathized with radical Arab regimes like Hafez al Assad's Syria and

oammar Gadhafi's Libya, and a somewhat reactionary right-wing party, New Democracy. The drift of both those

ading parties toward the center is a relatively recent affair.

nd so the creation of late of a hard -left party, SYRIZA, and a hard-right neo-Nazi movement, Golden Dawn (vaguely

miniscent of the military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974), both harbor distant echoes of Greece's mid-20th

entury past. Ironically, while Greece's extreme economic crisis created these radical groupings in the first place, ifese new parties fare badly in the upcoming poll it might indicate a firm rejection of extremism by Greek voters and a

ermanent turn toward the center -- toward political modernity, that is.

here is a tendency in all of this to throw one's hands up at the specter of the Greeks and declare them too much

ouble than they're worth, at least for Europe. But such an attitude reeks of hypocrisy, even as it denies Western self-

terest. When Greece joined the European Union in 1981, its economy was manifestly not ready; Brussels had made a

nk political decision, not an economic one -- just as it would in admitting Greece to the eurozone in 2002. In both

ases, the ground-level, domestic reality of the Greek economy was swept aside in favor of an abstract quasi-historical

sion of Europe stretching from Iberia to the eastern Mediterranean.

f course, Greece, during the 1980s -- when I lived there for seven years -- might have used the influx of cash from the

uropean Union in order to discipline and reform its economy. Instead, then PASOK Prime Minister Andreas

apandreou used the money to swell the ranks of the bureaucracy. Thus, did Greece remain underdeveloped, and the

eam-gamble of Brussels failed. The saddest irony is that the sins of the hard-left Andreas Papandreou were visited

pon his well-meaning, center-left son, George, who had his short tenure as prime minister from 2009 to 2011oisoned by his father's economic legacy.

ut Western self-interest now demands that even if Greece leaves the eurozone -- and that is a big "if" -- it

evertheless remains anchored in the European Union and NATO. For whether Greece drops the euro or not, it faces

ears of severe economic hardship. That means, given its geographic location, Greece's political orientation should

ever be taken for granted. For example, the Chinese have invested heavily in developing part of the port of Piraeus,

djacent to Athens, even as Russia's economic and intelligence ties to the Greek area of Cyprus are extremely close. It

as been speculated in the media that with Greece short of cash and Russia enjoying a surplus, were the Russians

ected from ports in Syria in the wake of a regime change there, Moscow would find a way to eventually make use of

reek naval facilities. Remember that Greece and Cyprus both have modern European histories mainly because they

ere claimed by Western powers for strategic reasons.

other words, from the point of geography and geopolitics, Greece will be in play for years to come.

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U.S. Credibility in th

Wake of a Deal on

Syria

The PC16: Identify in

China's Successors

Understanding Wha

Went Wrong in

Benghazi

Greece Pushes

Eurozone CrisisFurther

The Eurozone Crisis

the Coming Months

The Social Effects o

the European Crisis

ARTICLE AUTHOR

Robert D. Kaplan

Robert D. Kaplan is the author

Monsoon: The Indian Ocean a

the Future of American Power

which was published by Rando

House in October 2010, and

released in paperback in September 2011.

newest book, The Revenge of Geography:

What the Map Tells Us about Coming Confl

and the Battle Against Fate, was published

Random House in 2012.

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Is Greece European?