Greece and its neighbourhood(s) in 2020
One of the major symptoms of Greek foreign policy is its chronic inability to be a protagonist beyond its immediate neighbourhoods, i.e. the Balkans, Turkey , and the Mediterranean – in spite of its extensive conscious involvement in the first two regions since the end of the Cold War. Successive Greek governments have used analogous rhetoric and set similar objectives – the need to ‘ Europeanise ’ Greece’s northern and eastern neighbours, the need to see them integrated into the European Union, the need for the wider neighbourhood to become ‘normal’, ‘boring’, ‘regular’. The diplomatic and political energy spent on assuring that the aforementioned comes to pass has been both inexhaustible and exhausting yet results (i.e. change in the desired direction) have been slow almost at snail’s pace. In part, this is due to the inability/unwillingness of the neighbours to completely transform themselves; in part it is due to the inability of the Greek foreign policy machinery to convince n...