I would like to express my gratitude to St Antony’s College for the invitation, as well as for our long lasting collaboration. Fifteen years ago, in this very hall, Kalypso Nikolaidi and I started the first seminar to be offered at Oxford University on global governance.
I therefore appreciate your invitation that gives me the opportunity – for the first time since I took up my duties – to talk about Greek Foreign Policy overall, and specifically in times of crisis.
The study of international relations, focusing on foreign policy experiences of smaller states – and European states in particular – led me to the conclusion that, just as in international division of labor each state has to find the niche in which it will achieve maximum productivity and enhanced presence, so it is, that in international diplomacy each state needs to maximize potential and capabilities on specific issues, in geographical regions, as well as tools. In other words, a state needs to have the necessary capacities. Capacities that will render it capable of fulfilling three ‘duties’; corresponding to three fields:
a. recognizing problems globally, regionally and in their immediately neighboring environment,
b. formulating and setting out alternative solutions and plans, actions and alliances, and
c. marshalling the maximum possible intellectual forces and resources, in order to ensure the most effective implementation of their foreign policy plan, in general – or policy in a specific sector. A plan or policy that is realistic and the implementation of which can return maximum value.
For this to happen, there needs to be:
1. A most profound and multifaceted understanding of the changes in today’s world, in the EU itself, and in Greece’s immediate environs, so that there can be deep comprehension of and reflection on experiences.
2. The association of foreign policy – in its narrow sense – with the other fields of international negotiations, like the ones being carried out on the Greek debt. This means that Greek Foreign Policy (GFP) endeavors to eliminate rather than add problems to the overall governmental package, and, if this is not feasible, to manage them as effectively as possible, calmly, with restraint , and without too much ado. It endeavors to solve problems in its own field and at its own ranks, before these issues reach the Summit level– of prime ministers at the European Council. The aim is to enable the Greek prime minister to concentrate on his priority and immediate mission.
3. Greek foreign policy – its agencies and instruments – envisages itself as an institutional system in the service of relieving the population from poverty. As the vehicle for ensuring, that is, new possibilities for economic and social policy, development of understanding of the struggle for a whole people’s, a wholenation’s future, shaping of a new movement for solidarity with a Greek people in the throes of suffering.
These new possibilities provide the means for potential agreements – already, as of today – for strengthening economic cooperation with third countries as soon as the liquidity problems of the Greek economy are resolved. In the meetings we have already had, we shaped areas of economic/development cooperation with the U.S., with EU member states, with Russia and China, with Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, the Balkans and Turkey. With all these countries and regions, there are agreements or preliminary agreements for further development of economic cooperation. Joint technical-economic teams are already working or being formed to promote investments, major projects, even liquidity assistance for the country; Agreements on major infrastructure projects, like railways and energy pipelines or LNG terminals – projects that will contribute to more extensive and more constant interconnectivity between Greece, Turkey and the rest of the Balkans; between Greece and the states of southern Europe. In this sense, I am extremely optimistic about Greece’s prospects following an agreement on debt and liquidity issues. And this is a matter of concern for those who don’t want a government of and for the people to succeed.
4. We are oriented towards specializing Greece in the three Δs (deltas), as I have been calling them for years now. Unfortunately, this doesn’t carry over to English. So, the three deltas, in Greek, are διαπραγμάτευση, διαβούλευση and διαιτησία. For our purposes, negotiation, consultation, arbitration. Greece can and must specialize, more and more, in these areas, these arts. Israelis and Palestinians, Iranians and Europeans, Ukrainians and Russians can find hospitality in our country, on some of our hundreds of islands, where they can talk quietly and calmly about the major problems they are encountering. Greece is not and does not want to become part of the problems of this nature. But it does want to become a catalyst for assisting in resolving such problems. We were never a colonial power, we are linked to all of these countries by multiple common lines of culture, history, traditions and aspirations for the future. This fact confers special capacities on us.
5. We have a special potential to collaborate with emerging countries in today’s world. Both on covering our needs and to function as a bridge between these countries and the West, to which we belong. Greece sees that, in today’s world, in many regions, there are piles of stones. It doesn’t choose to throw those stones or use them to build dividing walls. Greece wants to build bridges of understanding and communication and cooperation and prospects.
We are living in a transitional era. In a sense, every era has its elements of transition. The world is experiencing major changes, while the center of gravity is shifting from the West to Southeast Asia. From the Atlantic “lake” to the Pacific. New problems and challenges are emerging on the horizon. European societies, unlike that of the U.S., are ageing. Around the EU there is a number of countries with youth in high proportions in their population; tens of millions of young people who hope for and are questing for a better future, a better tomorrow. Our societies are faced with multiple problems. Two of these are the demographic problem and unemployment; the pressures these problems are exerting on the social state. The solution certainly does not lie with abolishing the welfare state, but with increasing productivity, and mainly integrating young talented people from all over the world into our society, which will thereby gain fresh dynamic.
We are living in times when ideology is not playing the same role as during the Cold war. Nowadays the role of Geopolitics is more important than before.
Our world is in the midst a conflict between its current needs and the future demands of nature itself – the mother of us all. Focal points of this clash are our very societies and the way in which they are preparing for their future; Whether they focus on people’s happiness and prosperity, or on numbers and profit margins; Whether they base their preparations on steady, secure growth, under democracy and freedom, or on a policy of reckless adventurism.
As I noted three years ago in a speech here at Oxford, the EU is exhibiting a trend: that is, evolution from a system based on rule of law and a culture of compromise into an empire in which the bureaucracy in Brussels, the financial markets and Berlin (the so-called New Rome) play a special role and have specific rights. The formal legal equality of member states is essentially overturned by the new mechanisms for managing the crisis, forming a classical chain of power and reversing the social acquis, social gains/achievements. The economic appears to transcend the political, the market player supplanting the constitutional citizen.
In this context, two goals take on great importance. Goals that, at first glance, often appear to be conflicting: the safeguarding of democratic, social and human rights, and the safeguarding of security and stability. We believe that these goals can be linked through Greek Foreign Policy: On the one hand, contributing to the achievement of the first (safeguarding democratic, social and human rights) throughout the whole region of the Balkans, North Africa and the Middle East. And on the other hand, achieving the latter goals (security, stability).
In meeting these goals, in facing the new global problems like migration and environmental protection – the EU must bear in mind two positive criteria: a) every action it takes must exemplify the extremely creative role it can play in solving these problems; A positive signal to the whole world that Europe learns, teaches, knows and can find the most appropriate global solutions. b) That the European model is vibrant, is renewing itself, is evolving. It can respond to today’s problems in a manner that satisfies its societies.
The EU can and must contribute in the direction of the creative resolution of this contradiction: a Europe of democracy, of social justice, of equality and the participation of all the member states, with the same rights, in its institutional system; the strengthening of the course of political cooperation and integration, with respect for traditions, choices, needs of the nation states; With the creation of a European demo, ensuring respect for the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, which the troika so easily violated in Greece.
For the EU to move along the positive tracks I just described, it needs to overcome its characteristic weakness, which has impressed me during my few months as a minister: It needs to learn to see beyond the end of its nose, as we say in Greece. To manage our future not as a momentary action, nor as a shareholders’ meeting that thinks with an horizon of quarterly earnings, through reactions with no broader horizon, without rethinking the consequences of its choices, of its actions. The EU has to re-learn to think in the long term. To consider the consequences of its actions and include in each of its decisions visionary elements based on the values and visions of a democratic polity.
We all understand, for example, that in foreign policy a union can use complex and multifaceted tools. Stick-and-carrot tools with third parties, strengthening of sanctions. But when these tools are used, it has to be to the end of bringing the other side to the negotiating table and strengthening values and principles. Not for destroying the other side or pushing them towards disorder and destabilization.
It is very important that we not allow the European vision to be limited to such tools, whether necessary or not. We can’t have our younger generations hearing, from dawn to midnight, the words punishment, memoranda, oppression. For us, the EU is a positive conception, a positive vision. It cannot be limited to certain negative practices.
In other words, the EU of today must return to its founding values, enriched with the experience of so many decades, and in particular with the successes it has achieved in its lifespan, so that it can effectively confront the triangle of instability that is taking shape.
My analysis of the triangle of stability and instability has now had a peculiar international career and is a constant in the Greek Foreign Policy analysis of the situation in our wider region.
Two different forces are clashing in this region: those of instability and destabilization, and those of stability. Our region has the shape of a triangle. At the top of the triangle is eastern Ukraine, with the base running from Libya, in the west, to the Middle East. Within this triangle, there are forces that are not just generating cracks in democratization, but are also undermining the very existence of states. Old forms of statehood are reappearing using modern technologies, means of warfare, and image making: sovereignty of tribes is reviving, as in Libya, and the caliphate in the Middle East. These are regions where human rights are being violated. At the same time, in these regions there are spaces where there are no statehood structures whatsoever. And within this void, there are millions of refugees and victims of war.
If from Libya – which the international community was so focused on – there are 1 to 2 million refugees, there are 12 million moving out of Syria. Following them are millions from Afghanistan and Pakistan (This year alone, 200,000 refugees have arrived in Greece from Syria, and 300,000 from Afghanistan and Pakistan.). Can anyone imagine what will happen in the Mediterranean and in Europe should we see the destabilization of Egypt, with its 95 million inhabitants, of which over 65 million are young and, for the most part, unemployed? Where “in the background” there is civil war in Sudan and the failed state of Somalia.
I say all this because we are taking every possible measure to support a policy of stability and security in the Eastern Mediterranean. We are taking special measures for the stability of Egypt, concurrently supporting its democratization. We are shaping a line of cooperation between Greece, Cyprus and Egypt; cooperation in the direction I described. The second line of stability is equally important: cooperation between Greece, Cyprus and Israel, where we are concurrently developing a policy in support of Palestine, with a number of measures that I agreed upon just the day before yesterday with Maliki, the Foreign Minister of Palestine.
We have also proposed to Turkey and Italy that we put together a third line of cooperation within the triangle, on issues of security and stability, so that we can contribute to the creation of strong pillars for stability from these three lines – at the center of which stands Greece – averting the dominance of the waves of instability that will lead to even more unchecked waves of refugees, as well as to voids that will be filled by jihadists.
On the other side of the triangle, Greek foreign policy supports the resolution of the Ukraine crisis based on the principles of international law, defence of the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine, and the Minsk agreements. Based on the recognition of the rights arising from ethnic and linguistic diversity and the organization, respectively, of their administrative autonomy within a federal Ukraine.
The region of Mariupol is critical for Greek foreign policy. There are over 150,000 Ukrainians of Greek origin residing there. We are proud of the assistance we have given this region: food, medicine, the arrangement of a medical clinic, financial assistance, and the transporting of families to safety in Greece. We are proud because we are the only Western power with the courage to have taken the risk of maintaining diplomatic representation there; of holding our visions and values flag high on a field of battle.
We are a force that supports peace, that takes risks in both good and bad times for the rights of humankind; For the implementation of international law; So that all states can function, based on the principle of the rule of law and the European culture of compromise. These two principles are absent from the conduct and practices of the government of FYROM. The blame is shared between FYROM’s government itself and the Western forces that, in every crisis FYROM has gone through, propose the country’s immediate accession to the Euroatlantic processes, under even fewer conditionalities. We believe there are those who have taught Skopje not to communicate – not to work towards understanding – with its neighbours, making assurances that “they will undertake to convince those neighbours.” And then others taught them not to compromise domestically with the Albanian community, because they would “bring them into line.” In light of these choices, it is understandable that the government in Skopje should be incapable of coming to the necessary understandings and compromises on its own.
We are working for a FYROM that lives in peace and stability. We want it to be present in all international fora, and we want to see the solution of all its problems. In contrast to part of its leadership, we have made multiple proposals on the name issue and taken a major step for compromise. We proposed and agreed to draw up a joint CBM programme. We have made a very interesting proposal with regard to the manner, the process of resolving the name issue of our friendly neighbouring country. The main thing is to get past the irredentism and chauvinistic plans for a “greater” FYROM.
These plans are similar to – and just as counterproductive as – the plans of those who dream of a greater Albania and produce maps [of a greater Albania] that include parts of northern Greece and islands in the Ionian Sea. In particular, the new partner in the government, the PDIU party that is the ‘successor’ of the Nazi parties from the time when the region was under Nazi occupation.
Greece hosts more Albanians than any other country in the world. A large percentage of the country’s GDP comes from them. We are fortunate to have them in our society. At our universities, children of Albanian immigrants are among the top students every year. We recently passed a new law that grants them citizenship. Our country, our government, is one of the friendliest and most fair in the world, with regard to immigrants.
Greece and Albania are linked by a rich common past, common dreams and prospects. There are also a lot of problems from the past, as well as from some views of part of the country’s leadership, such as the non-implementation of agreements. The refusal to implement the provisions of international law. The violation of rights of the indigenous Greek minority. We have the desire and the will to solve the problems and overcome any difficulty. We are planning to propose, in the near future, a package of solutions for all the above problems. Realistic. Hopeful and in the interest of both peoples, far from Balkan-style nationalism and conduct that produces more history than the Balkan region can consume.
Our good relations with Bulgaria and Romania continue unabated: The promotion of our trilateral cooperation is an anchor of stability in the region. The same is the case in our relations with Italy, with which the first agreement on the Economic Exclusive Zone and continental shelf is ready.
Greece’s relationship with Cyprus is pivotal. We believe in, desire and support a Cyprus that is truly independent and sovereign. A Cyprus that is federal, without the weight of shame: Some third power occupying territory of the island and, by extension, of the EU. If we are annoyed – and rightly so – by the presence of foreign forces in Ukraine, a state that is not a member of the Union, our annoyance should be infinitely greater with the occupation of a portion of Cyprus, an EU member state, by a foreign force.
We support and will continue to support an honest solution on the Cyprus issue, without outside pressures. A solution that makes the Turkish Cypriots feel that the island is their home, and makes the Greek Cypriots feel secure. This is why we support the greatest possible – not just the greatest or the possible, but the greatest possible – rights of the Turkish Cypriots and all three minorities. And, on the other hand, the greatest possible security for the Greek Cypriots. Cyprus’s operative problem is neither distribution of resources nor the differences of its communities. It is the occupation. The presence of 43,000 Turkish troops, one for every four settlers of occupied Cyprus, or one for every two remaining Turkish Cypriots, as most have fled abroad.
We want a comprehensive and real solution to the Cyprus problem, and we will support every process. But under no circumstances do we want a ‘virtual’ solution that has us kidding ourselves. Nor, on the other hand, do we want to become prisoners of history. This is why we propose a real, substantial solution. This is why we support the bicommunal talks. This is why we want an end to the status of the guarantor powers. Foreign troops are not needed in Cyprus, a member state of the European Union. And besides, what kind of solution is one that would impose their continuing presence? What kind of solution is it one says that, yes, everything has been resolved, but everything has to remain as it is?
On my recent trip to Turkey, I proposed to my collocutors that we work systematically for the resolution of the Cyprus issue. This means putting an end to the occupation and the violations of the guarantor powers.
Turkey is our large neighbour to our east. A country with much in common with us, in culture and in recent history. [Good and bad.] As I said on my recent visit to Ankara, Allah tossed us into the same place. We have to live together. We have to shape the conditions for cooperation. The solution of the Cyprus issue and the end of any violations or threats will free up multiple cooperative forces between our two peoples.
In order to create a better atmosphere of trust, we agreed to promote certain CBMs proposed by Greece to Turkey and to prepare to start the exploratory talks anew. At the same time, we are taking measures for the development of economic and cultural relations, despite the many Turkish provocations in the Aegean Sea and the constant Turkish violations in the air and on sea. We want to live in peace with Turkey, based on the principles of good neighbourly relations, international law, understanding between peoples, progress. We hope that Ankara will in the end respond.
Overall, our foreign policy is a democratic policy. With positive energy and initiatives. In this context, following consultations, we formulated an initiative of five countries (Greece, Cyprus, Italy, France and The Netherlands, with the participation of Middle East states) for the protection of the multireligious and multicultural nature of the Middle East. The asset of diversity that exists in this region has been present for 2,000 years and we must defend it as a part of our culture and civilization principles for multiculturality and multireligiousness, the principles and values of the enlightenment, of the history and tradition of the region. We have already called on prominent representatives of states, churches and science. You are all welcome.
We will be holding a global conference on the issue in mid-October, in Athens. Immediately afterwards, an initiative will begin that will bring a number of states from around the world together in joint action. This initiative has been positively received by everyone who is aware of it.
Greek foreign policy in the time of crisis is a proactive, responsible policy that is being implemented through initiatives. It is a policy that does not want to divide, but to unite. That does not want to surrender to the past, but to employ the past in the service of tomorrow.
Thank you very much.
June 10, 2015