A Time for Realism
Sitting in Athens, one’s perspective, regarding developments in Greece’s wider neighbourhood, is obviously different from that of many other allied capitals. Here one has the impression, as it is cultivated by the mass media especially in its electronic form and many of the country’s elite, that uncontrollable, irreversible processes have taken hold and that the world as we know it is steadily being reshaped and recalibrated. An unusually high and troubling recent rate of seismic activity does certainly not help alleviate a general feeling of malaise. What seems to be troubling public opinion? Kosovo has unilaterally declared independence with the blessing of most great and not so great powers of the West, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) wants to become a NATO member preferably without compromising in its name dispute with Greece, Turkey is simultaneously beset by two existentialist crises – the head scarf issue and the Kurdish conundrum, and Cyprus has a new Presiden