Euroforce and ‘strategies’
Greece’s party leaders debated the issue of Europe’s rapid reaction force during a parliamentary session late Tuesday. This issue is a crucial one for Europe’s defense, especially Greece’s, as our country is the one of the 15 EU members which faces national security concerns because of a third country that is a NATO but not an EU member. One would expect that, in confronting this predicament, the government would have displayed a careful, thought-out approach and would have consulted the opposition well in advance, in order to present the EU with a strong Greek position backed by solid domestic support. The parliamentary debate revealed that none of this has occurred. The government is dealing with the issue in the manner it thinks best, whereas the opposition is convinced that the matter has been handled wrongly and that it poses a threat to national security. Prime Minister Costas Simitis holds his own personal views regarding how Greece should tackle issues that concern Greece and Turkey inside the EU framework, while opposition leader Costas Karamanlis is directly at odds with the prime minister’s positions. Simitis says that he informs the opposition on foreign policy and security-related issues whenever necessary, while Karamanlis begs to differ. The prime minister listens to the arguments of the conservative leader but ultimately rejects them, claiming that Karamanlis is cultivating a climate of «fear and concern.» The Greek Communist Party (KKE) denounces this confrontation as a «show,» while the Synaspismos Left Coalition’s leadership sees it as an exchange of accusations aimed at creating a polarized political environment. All the above concern an issue which is essential for national security and which should have been dealt with already by the government and the other parties, rather than having been allowed to become a matter of domestic political wrangling. Already, Greece’s stance on Turkey’s maneuvering over the EU and NATO defense planning seems to have taken an unfavorable turn for Athens. Our position is unstable and has come under international pressure; and Tuesday’s parliamentary session once again revealed that while the country may lack a national strategy at the level of foreign policy and security, it still has plenty of strategies at the domestic political level.
