Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Geopolitics
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713635150
(Mis)understanding the Balkans: Greek Geopolitical
Codes of the Post-communist Era
Asteris Huliaras a; Charalambos Tsardanidis b
a
Associate Professor, Department of Geography, Harokopion University of Athens,
Greece
b
Director, Institute of International Economic Relations, Athens, Greece
DOI: 10.1080/14650040600767909
ASTERIS HULIARAS
Greek Geopolitical
Asteris Huliaras andCodes
Charalambos
of the Post-communist
Tsardanidis Era
CHARALAMBOS TSARDANIDIS
Director, Institute of International Economic Relations, Athens, Greece
Ideas influence foreign policy making. They serve as ‘road maps’ that
clarify goals, and act as ‘focal points’ when deciding among options.2 Quite
often ideas about foreign policy are organised in coherent forms. John Gaddis
has employed the term ‘geopolitical code’ to describe an organised set of
political-geographical assumptions that underlie foreign policy making.3 A
465
466 Asteris Huliaras and Charalambos Tsardanidis
milieu, but also what policy makers believe the external milieu to be.15 For-
Downloaded By: [Swets Content Distribution] At: 19:00 16 February 2008
eign policy analysis has shown the importance of leaders’ beliefs about their
environment and has described the cognitive processes that affect the ways
new information is processed and incorporated into existing belief systems.16
It seems that geopolitical codes tend to be more important and more
prone to radical changes when the domestic actors that are involved in
foreign policy making are relatively few and when institutions (like bureau-
cracies) are relatively weak. Under such conditions, foreign policy decision-
making is more likely to be dominated by the personalities of the prime
minister and/or the foreign minister. According to many observers, this is
exactly the case of Greece during the 1990s.17 In that period, the Greek For-
eign Ministry apparatus and the Greek foreign policy bureaucracy were
extremely weak in contrast to the personal diplomacy exercised by prime
ministers, foreign ministers and their advisors. An analyst gives a good
example:
The imposition of the [Greek economic] embargo [on the Former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia was] announced [in 1994] by the Prime Minister
with no prior consultation with the ministry that supposedly is responsible
for the foreign policy of the country. Career ambassadors have repeatedly
expressed their frustration over being constantly steam-rolled by the
ambitions and quest for short-term political gains of Ministers and Prime
ministers.18
BALKAN DISCOURSES
Balkans became stronger than ever as the western media and western pol-
icy-makers took the view that the violent collapse of Yugoslavia was the
product of ancient hatreds.22 In Mazower’s words: ‘It is hard to find people
with anything good to say about the region, harder still to discuss it beyond
good or evil’.23 Politicians of the region itself accepted and even reproduced
this negative image of the Balkans. In 1999, the President of Slovenia, Milan
Kucan, said that the Balkans ‘is like a volcano. You never know where and
when the lava will come to the surface’.24
Influenced by Edward Said, Maria Todorova has explained how the Bal-
kans was transformed in the twentieth century into one of the most powerful
pejorative designations in history.25 Using the term ‘Balkanism’ to describe this
phenomenon, Todorova claimed that the fact that the Balkans were never colo-
nised by Western powers led to its becoming the repository of any manner of
fantastic imaginings. However, Todorova’s work focused more on western per-
ceptions of the region than on the ways the locals perceive each other.26
This paper is about Greek perceptions of the Balkans. Focusing on the
post-Cold War period, it identifies three distinct (and conflicting) Greek
geopolitical codes concerning the Balkans: the ‘Muslim Arc’ (in the begin-
ning of the 1990s), the ‘natural hinterland’ (in the middle of the 1990s) and
the ‘Europeanisation’ (in the end of the 1990s). All three codes were intro-
duced by the Greek political elite and decisively influenced public attitudes
and foreign policy making in Greece for about half a decade each.
For half a century, the Cold War division of Europe made the (rest of the)
Balkans a terra incognita for most Greeks. The end of the Cold War seri-
ously changed the ways Greeks perceived the world. In the early 1990s, the
collapse of communism left most Greek foreign policy makers believing
that their country’s ‘strategic importance’ was waning. To a certain extent
this was also a western perception. In the words of a British journalist –
typical of western views during that period: ‘With the collapse of the Soviet
Empire in Eastern and Central Europe, Greece’s usefulness as an eastern
bulwark of NATO has disappeared’.27 The 1991 Gulf War that coincided
with the break-up of the Soviet Union was considered in Greece as substan-
tially increasing the strategic value of Turkey. Thus, Greek policy makers
felt that the West (especially the United States) was abandoning them in
favour of their country’s main adversary. Events in the Balkans added more
to Greek feelings of insecurity – creating, in the words of Professor Loukas
Tsoukalis, a ‘siege mentality’ in Greek foreign policy circles.28
Greek policy makers were caught unprepared for the depth of change
that occurred in the Balkans after the end of the Cold War. As Greece was a
Greek Geopolitical Codes of the Post-communist Era 469
Downloaded By: [Swets Content Distribution] At: 19:00 16 February 2008
FIGURE 1 Geopolitical Code I: The ‘Muslim Arc.’ Image created by Gregory Tsardanidis.
stalwart supporter of the territorial status quo in the region, it viewed with
suspicion (if not fear) the emergence of new states in its northern neigh-
bourhood. The turmoil in the Balkans also had negative economic repercus-
sions for Greece because of the disruption of significant transportation
routes to central Europe. At about the same time, hundreds of thousands of
Albanians crossed the Greek-Albanian border, in search of a better life. For
the first time in its modern history, Greece became the final destination of a
mass migration movement of non-Greeks. In short, 1990–1991 was a period
of cataclysmic events in Greece’s relations with its northern neighbours. Not
since the bloody civil war following the German occupation more than half
a century ago had so many Greeks felt threatened. This perception of inse-
curity was epitomised by the emergence of the ‘Muslim arc’ idea.
In 1991 a geopolitical view appeared in the Greek media and in foreign
policy making circles about the existence of a ‘Muslim arc’ in the Balkans
that threatened the stability of the whole region and posed a serious threat
to Greek national security. The story was quite simple: Muslim populations
of the Balkans formed an axis, an ‘arc’ from Turkey to Albania, that trans-
gressed Bulgaria, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM),
Kosovo and Bosnia. This arc was considered to pose a threat to the stability
of the region since the Greeks thought that Turkey tried to manipulate it in
order to create conditions suitable for Muslim secessionist movements
(involving also Western Thrace – a Greek territory with about 100.000 Mus-
lim inhabitants). Thus, many in Greece preferred to use the term ‘Turkish’
instead of ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islamic’ arc. Consequently, behind the ‘Muslim arc’
concept was the fear that the Turkish ‘threat’ to Greek territorial integrity
470 Asteris Huliaras and Charalambos Tsardanidis
would spread from the eastern to the northern borders of the country. The
Downloaded By: [Swets Content Distribution] At: 19:00 16 February 2008
Since 1989 Turkey has been making inroads into the Balkan Peninsula
via Islamic outposts. More than 5.5 million Muslims . . . reside in a geo-
graphic wedge that extends from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, separat-
ing Greece from its Slavic Christian neighbours. Turkey is trying to
become the champion of the Balkan Muslims. . . . [This] may prove dan-
gerous in a region already torn by separatist movements.30
Nevertheless, the ‘Muslim arc’ concept was more a political than intel-
lectual construction. One of the most important supporters of the idea was
the Greek foreign minister Antonis Samaras. The US-educated minister,
probably influenced by the discussion of a future conflict between the
West and Islam (a constant theme in US intellectual circles after the Gulf
War that was codified in 1993 by Samuel Huntington) thought that it could
be useful if Greece presented itself in the international scene as a bastion
of the West against an ‘aggressive and expansionist Islam’.31 In his own
words: ‘We are the spearhead of non-Islamic Europe. And our role in the
West is determined by this fact’.32 In 1991, immediately after the interna-
tional recognition of Bosnia, the Greek Foreign Minister declared that ‘the-
ories about the Muslim arc (in the Balkans) are well-founded’.33 In the
months that followed, the Greek press was full of stories about Islam’s
‘expansion’ in the Balkans.
The proponents of the ‘Muslim arc’ idea thought that Greece should
develop a counter-strategy aiming at the creation of an alliance of ‘Ortho-
dox forces’, or an ‘Orthodox arc’. A Greek secret service report that was
leaked to the press said that the Orthodox Christianity should form the basis
for foreign policy and Greece should seek to create an Orthodox arc in the
Balkans ‘to set against the Turkish Muslim arc in the region’.34 In mid-1993
Samaras as foreign minister was dismissed by Prime Minister Mitsotakis. He
then left the ruling party, provoking the fall of government and new elec-
tions, where he participated as leader of a new party (‘Political Spring’). It
was then that the former foreign minister made public his vision to form an
alliance of Eastern Orthodox states (including Serbia and Russia) to defend
Greek national interests against the ‘Muslim arc’. A journalist commented
that this was ‘the first time a politician ha[d] attempted to involve the Greek
Orthodox Church in the modern political process’.35
Greek Geopolitical Codes of the Post-communist Era 471
cult since Greece had already entered into an era of bitter conflict with
‘Orthodox’ FYROM over the new Republic’s name36 while in ‘Orthodox’
Bulgaria the political party representing the Muslim minority became part of
the governing coalition. Thus, in the very end, the ‘Orthodox arc’ was lim-
ited in Greek discourse to the Greek-Serb ‘friendship’.37
Indeed the ‘Muslim arc’ concept was extremely simplistic and analytically
totally unsuitable.38 Balkan Muslims belong to different ethnic groups and do
not form a culturally homogeneous entity. After all, as many analysts point
out, in the Balkans, ethnic identity is far more important than religious affilia-
tion. Islam in Albania is very lightly worn. Also Bosnian Muslims – at least
before the Srebenica massacre – were rather secular (described by journalists
as the most secular Muslims in the world). Still, the Balkan areas where Mus-
lims form the majority are rather dispersed and fall short of forming an ‘arc’
from the Black Sea to the Adriatic – as claimed by Greek nationalists.
Moreover, Turkish foreign policy makers behaved differently from
what Greek analysts and foreign policy makers had anticipated. At the
beginning of the 1990s, Turkey was very worried (probably as much as
Greece) about the redrawing of international boundaries in the Balkans
(after all the Turkish government was confronting a domestic secessionist
insurgency – the Kurdish rebels of the PKK). Moreover, at least in the
period 1991–1992, Turkey did not seem to have a clear strategy toward the
region, while its political and economic presence there was rather limited.39
Nevertheless, the ‘Muslim arc’ concept survived for some years without
clashing with reality and significantly influenced the way the crisis in former
Yugoslavia and the international interventions in Bosnia (and much later in
Kosovo) were perceived in Greece. While one of the dominant discourses in the
West claimed that in the Bosnian war the Serbs were the real perpetrators and
the Muslims were the victims,40 Greeks understood the situation in exactly the
opposite way. For the Greek press and most politicians, the real perpetrators in
the Yugoslav conflict were the Muslims helped by other Muslim countries while
the real victims were the Orthodox Serbs. Bishop (later Archbishop) of the Greek
Orthodox church Christodoulos expressed this view when he claimed:
In Bosnia the Serbs are fighting . . . with a cross in one hand and a gun
in the other. They see the Muslims on the other side, trained by fanatic
Mujahedeen who have come from various Islamic countries to fight in
the name of Allah, to destroy churches, to rape, to massacre non-
combatants and children without restraint.41
In short, during the 1990–1994 period, the Greek elite evaluated a part
Downloaded By: [Swets Content Distribution] At: 19:00 16 February 2008
Since 1995, the ‘defensive’ geopolitical code of the ‘Muslim arc’ gradually
gave way to a ‘regional superpower’ idea. Now Greek foreign policy makers
saw their country as the most powerful state in the region, the ‘natural
leader’ of the Balkans. The (other) Balkan countries were seen as an El
Dorado, full of economic opportunities, cheap workforces and untapped
markets. In sharp contrast to the previous period, the Balkan space was
considered not as ‘inimical’ or ‘dangerous’ but rather as ‘friendly’ and ‘use-
ful’. The new discourse included historical references to the eighteenth and
the nineteenth centuries when Greek merchants traded throughout the
Ottoman Empire. The Balkan peninsula was described as a ‘natural hinter-
land’, ready to accept Greek ‘economic penetration’. In the words of Greek
Minister of Defence Gerasimos Arsenis: ‘With the end of the Cold War,
Greece regains its hinterland in the Balkans and finds herself in front of the
challenge to play again her historical role’.45
The new geopolitical code was not so much inspired by the Dayton Peace
Accords (1995) that brought (a fragile) peace in Bosnia than based on the fact
that within a few years, about 3,500 Greek companies (mostly joint ventures
with local partners) had set up operations across the Balkans, investing by the
mid-1990s probably more than $ 2.5 billion (estimates vary considerably
because for tax reasons much of this amount has been directed through Luxem-
bourg or Cyprus-based off-shore companies). Greek trade with its northern
neighbours increased spectacularly within a few years. Greek exports to the
Balkans (excluding Turkey) went up more than 2.3 times in the 1992–1996
period, with imports increasing 1.3-fold, creating for Greece a trade surplus of
$ 546.2 million in 1996, compared to $ 71.1 million in 1992.46
The interesting thing is that this economic activity until 1996 occurred
without the support of the Greek government (to a large extent because of
Greek Geopolitical Codes of the Post-communist Era 473
Downloaded By: [Swets Content Distribution] At: 19:00 16 February 2008
FIGURE 2 Geopolitical Code II: The ‘Natural Hinterland’. Source: Cartoon published in the
Greek weekly To Vima tis Kyriakis (7 September 1997) (http://tovima.dolnet.gr/data/D1997/
D0907/1and10b.gif.)
By the end of 1990s, and especially after the Kosovo war, a new geopoliti-
cal code appeared: now the discourse of ‘Europeanisation’ became domi-
nant in Greek foreign policy making.
We saw in the beginning of this paper how academics have analysed
the coupling of Balkans with undesirable qualities that rendered the identity
of their inhabitants as not particularly covetable. The European Union tried
to alter this perception of the countries in the region by introducing in 1998
a new geographical division between ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ Balkans.61 The
European Commission saw ‘Western Balkans’ (that no longer included Slov-
enia that became a full EU member in 2004) as being closer to the past
clichés of political instability and unrest while ‘Eastern Balkans’ (Romania-
Bulgaria) were considered to be closer to ‘European standards’, prepared to
conclude the next round of negotiations for full membership.
The Greek government was more radical. Since 1997 Athens had
started to promote the idea of re-naming the Balkans as ‘South-Eastern
Europe’. Though it was not Greece that invented the term (that existed
since the nineteenth century), the Greek Foreign Ministry made a very con-
sistent effort to change the region’s name in its endeavour to indicate that the
Balkans should be considered an integral part of Europe. The integration of
the Balkans into the EU was now considered by Athens to be a number one
Downloaded By: [Swets Content Distribution] At: 19:00 16 February 2008
NATO’s air strikes against Serbia in the spring of 1999 provoked an out-
Downloaded By: [Swets Content Distribution] At: 19:00 16 February 2008
cry in Greece. Despite the socialist government’s consent within the NATO
framework for the attack on Milosevic’s forces, the Greek media and the
Greek public saw the military intervention ‘as an act of aggression not only
against Serbia, but also against the geopolitical order in the Balkans’.67
Greek public opinion sided – almost unanimously – with Serbia. The rea-
sons behind this stance vary from long-standing Greek anti-Americanism to
a cultural and religious affinity to Serbs.68 But, in sharp contrast to the past,
only the Greek public and the media adopted it. The governing elite
thought otherwise. On the other hand, the Kosovo crisis was one of those
rare moments that the Greek public showed a strong interest in foreign pol-
icy issues.69 The Greek public and media’s interest in NATO’s intervention
in Kosovo was strong but short-lived.
CONCLUSION
a year, Greece still seems to belong more to the volatile Balkans than to
Downloaded By: [Swets Content Distribution] At: 19:00 16 February 2008
Western Europe’.73 For the Greek elite and the Greek public, Western per-
ceptions of Greece seemed unjustified and unfair. In 1993, the publication
of Samuel Huntington’s famous article on the conflict of civilisations pro-
voked an outrage in Greece, not because of the flimsiness of its theoretical
framework, but because it classified Greece in the ‘Slavic Orthodox world’
and not in the group of Western nations.74
Interestingly, the three Greek geopolitical codes of the post-Cold War
Balkans examined in this paper are in nature more geographical than histor-
ical. That’s a significant change. It is not necessarily a positive change (as
spatial views of the world are no less accurate than historical views). Never-
theless, it is a process of identity change.
The ‘Muslim arc’ was in reality a defensive geopolitical code, reflecting
the confusion and inability of Greek foreign policy to adapt itself to the new
emerging regional milieu. The Greek political elite constructed a new geo-
political code, aiming at reversing the perceived decline of Greece’s geopo-
litical importance. The ‘Muslim arc’ concept created a reality suitable for
Greek self-perceptions. According to it, Greece was again becoming the
geographical frontier of the Christian West against a Muslim menace.
The second geopolitical code described the Balkans as a Greek ‘natural
hinterland’. The poorest European country, the ‘European underdog’,
thought itself a regional hegemon. Greece considered herself not as a small
Balkan country in Europe but as a European power in the Balkans.75 Thus,
the ‘Balkans’ served as a region that enabled the Greek elite, the Greek
businesspeople and the Greek public to see their country (and themselves)
as a modern and advanced European nation (people).
The third geopolitical code was based on the idea of ‘Europeanisation’:
Greece, though part of the region, considered herself as different from (the
other) Balkan states. Greece saw herself as a European country in a Balkan
context, a country which was in a position to ‘Europeanise’ her northern
neighbours. As a young Greek academic in full confidence pointed out,
Greece ‘could on occasion represent the regional point of view more effec-
tively and accurately in various international fora [because it] possesses a
more sophisticated and intimate knowledge of Balkan history’.76 In the final
analysis, the ‘Europeanisation’ discourse adopted by Greek foreign policy
makers in the past is an effort to offer a solution to the perpetual question
of Greek identity (geopolitical vision): if the Balkan countries become mem-
bers of the European Union, then the eternal Greek identity question
(whether the country is Balkan or European) will become less polarised,
less antithetical.
In a sense, in all three geopolitical codes, Greece, without totally reject-
ing its Balkan identity, feels different and in a sense more ‘European’ than
its northern neighbours. As in the Greek Ambassador’s story (at the begin-
ning of this paper), for the Greek elite, the Balkans are a strange, elusive
480 Asteris Huliaras and Charalambos Tsardanidis
Other: when Greece approaches the (rest of the) Balkans, the Balkans
Downloaded By: [Swets Content Distribution] At: 19:00 16 February 2008
NOTES
1. Quoted in K. Nicolaidis, ‘Introduction’, in G. T. Allison and K. Nicolaidis (eds.), The Greek Par-
adox (Boston: The MIT Press 1997) p. 7.
2. J. Goldstein and R. O. Keohane, ‘Ideas and Foreign Policy: An Analytical Framework’, in
J. Goldstein and R. O. Keohane (eds.), Ideas and Foreign Policy. Beliefs,Institutions and Political Change
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1993) pp. 3–30.
3. J. L. Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1982).
4. P. Taylor and C. R. Flint, Political Geography: World System, Nation-State and Locality (New
York: Prentice Hall 2000) pp. 90–91.
5. T. Luke and G. Ó Tuathail, ‘Global Flowmations, Local Fundamentalisms and Fast Geopolitics:
“America” in an Accelerating World Order’, in A. Herod, G. Ó Tuathail and S. Roberts (eds.), An Unruly
World ? Globalization, Governance and Geography (London: Routledge 1998) pp. 72–94.
6. Taylor and Flint (note 4) p. 91.
7. G. J. Dijkink, National Identity and Geopolitical Visions: Maps of Pride and Pain (London:
Routledge 1996) p. 11.
8. Ibid. p. 14.
9. Ibid. p. 7.
10. V. Kolossov, ‘“High” and “Low” Geopolitics: Images of Foreign Countries in the Eyes of
Russian Citizens’, Geopolitics 8/1 (2003) p. 125.
11. G. Dijkink, ‘Geopolitical Codes and Popular Representations’, Geojournal 46 (1998) p. 294.
12. Dijkink claims that change in geopolitical codes ‘should be one of the central themes of
research in geopolitical representations’ (Ibid. p. 293). And indeed there is a growing literature on geo-
political images. See for example K. Dodds and D. Atkinson, Geopolitical Traditions: A Century of Geo-
political Change (London: Routledge 2000).
13. Dijkink (note 7) p. 141.
14. G. Parker, Geopolitics: Past, Present and Future (London: Pinter 1998) p. 66.
15. H. Sprout and M. Sprout, ‘Environmental Factors in the Study of International Politics’, Journal
of Conflict Resolution 1(4) (1957) pp. 309–328.
16. See among others, A. George, ‘The “Operational Code”: A Neglected Approach to the Study of
Political Leaders and Decision Making’, International Studies Quarterly 13(2) (1969) pp. 190–222; A.
George, S. Walker, M. Schafer and M. Young, ‘Presidential Operational Codes and Foreign Policy Conflicts
in the Post-Cold War World’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 43(4) (1998) pp. 610–625; R.-K. Herrmann, ‘The
Empirical Challenge of the Cognitive Revolution: A Strategy for Drawing Inferences about Perceptions’,
International Studies Quarterly 32(2) (1988) pp. 175–204; O.-R. Holsti, ‘Foreign Policy Formation Viewed
Cognitively’, in R.-M. Axelrod, Structure of Decision (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1976); Robert
Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1976).
17. P. C. Ioakimides, ‘The Model of Foreign Policy-Making in Greece: Personalities Vs Institu-
tions’, in S. Stavridis, Th. Couloumbis, Th. Veremis and N. Waites (eds.), The Foreign Policies of the
European Union’s Mediterranean States and Applicant Countries in the 1990s (London: Macmillan
1999) pp. 140–170.
Greek Geopolitical Codes of the Post-communist Era 481
18. D. Keridis, ‘Greek Foreign Policy After “Macedonia”’, Emphasis, A Journal of Hellenic Issues 1
Downloaded By: [Swets Content Distribution] At: 19:00 16 February 2008
45. Speech in Patras, Greece, (10 May 1996), (accessed 6/17/05) http://www.garsenis.gr/content/
Downloaded By: [Swets Content Distribution] At: 19:00 16 February 2008
03/03c/04/10_5_1996n.htm
46. ‘Greek companies find a regional strength in Balkan businesses’, I Kathimerini (English edi-
tion) (14 September 1998).
47. P. C. Ioakimides, ‘Greece, the European Union and the Balkans in Post-Cold War Era’, in
Coufoudakis, Psomiades and Gerolymatos (note 38) p. 181.
48. For a critical view of the first years see A. Kazamias, ‘The Quest for Modernization in Greek
Foreign Policy and Its Limitations’, Mediterranean Politics 2/2 (1997) pp. 71–94.
49. Ch. Tsardanidis, ‘Un acteur-clé dans la région de la Grèce’, Le Courrier des Pays de l’Est 1008
(2000) p. 55.
50. 22 May 1999 (quoted in D. Hormovitis, V. Sirinidou and D. Anagnostou, ‘Stereotypes of
Domestic Minorities and Neighbouring Peoples in the Greek Press’ (April–December 1999) p. 18,
(accessed 5/21/05) http://www.Vlachofiles.net/gr-press99.htm
51. Ibid.
52. Greek Parliament Minutes, ‘Discussion for the Greek Plan for the Reconstruction of the Bal-
kans’ (13 March 2002).
53. A.-S. Wallden, ‘Greece and the Balkans: Economic Relations’, in Ach. Mitsos and El. Mossialos
(eds.), Contemporary Greece and Europe (Ashgate: Aldershot 2000) p. 439.
54. K. Hope, ‘EU Outpost Looks Closer to Home’, Financial Times, Survey: ‘Greece and South-east
Europe’ (1 June 1998).
55. L. Labrianidis, ‘Are Greek Companies that Invest in the Balkans in the 1990s Transnational
Companies?’ in Mitsos and Mossialos (note 53) p. 479.
56. L. Labrianidis, ‘The Opening of the Balkan Markets and Consequent Economic Problems in
Greece’, Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 12 (1996) pp. 211–235; L. Labrianidis, ‘The Reconstruction of
the Balkans and the Role of Greece: A Critical Approach’, in G. Petrakos (ed.), The Development of the
Balkans, (Volos: University of Thessaly Press 2001) pp. 371–396 (in Greek).
57. K. Ifantis, ‘Perception and Rapprochement. Debating a Greek strategy towards Turkey’, in
M. Aydin and K. Ifantis (eds.), Turkish- Greek Relations: The Security Dilemma in the Agean (London:
Routledge 2004) p. 249.
58. The inceased interpenetration of state and society and the shifts, and political fusion, in public-
private boundaries have resulted, as Orazio Lanza and Kostas Lavdas remark, in a new politicisation of
organised interests. This interpenetration takes place not only in the domestic arena but refers also to the
priorities of Greek investments abroad and more particularly in the Balkan countries. See O. Lanza and
K. Lavdas, ‘The Disentanglement of Interest Politics: Business Associability, the Parties and Policy in Italy
and Greece’, European Journal of Political Research 37/2 (2000) p. 227.
59. Ch. Tsardanidis, ‘Economic Dipomacy as a Means of Foreign Policy: Greece and South-Eastern
Europe’, Agora without Frontiers 6(3) (2001) p. 322 (in Greek).
60. Speech by Deputy Minister of National Economy Yannis Zafeiropoulos, 8th Annual Forum of
Thesaloniki (unpublished paper 2 April 2001) p. 10.
61. W. van Meurs and A. Yannis, The European Union and the Balkans. From Stabilisation
Process to Southeastern Enlargement (Munich: Center for Applied Policy Research, University of
Munich September 2002) p. 8, (accessed 3/18/05) http://www.cap.uni-muenchen.de/download/2002/
2002_EU_Balkans.pdf
62. D. Kavakas, ‘Greece’, in I. Manners and R. Whitman, (eds.), The Foreign Policies of European
Union Member States (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2000) p. 148.
63. I. Lasser, F. S. Larrabee, M. Zanini and K. Vlachos, Greece’s New Geopolitics (Santa Monica:
Rand Corporation 2001) p. 36, (accessed 3/8/05) http://www.rand.org/cgi-bin/Abstracts/e-mko-
rder.pl?$15,,,MR-1393-KF,,,Greece’s+New+Geopolitics,,,1
64. Theodore Couloumbis suggests a distinction between the ‘multiteralist’ orientation which tends
to be Eurocentric and the ‘uniliteralist’ which tends toward enthnocentricity. The former emphasises eco-
nomic and political variables in addition to military ones. The latter recommends reliance on power-mil-
itary alone. See Th. Couloumbis, ‘Greek Foreign Policy since 1974: Theory and Praxis’, Hellenic Studies
5(2) (1997) pp. 49–63.
65. Kazamias (note 48) p. 89.
66. Ch. Tsardanidis and S. Stavridis, The Europeanisation of Greek Foreign Policy. Paper presented
to the University of Crete’s Conference on Thirty Years of Democracy – The System of the Third Greek
Republic, 1974–2004, Rethimno (20–22 May 2004) p. 24 (in Greek), and Ch. Tsardanidis and S. Stravridis,
Greek Geopolitical Codes of the Post-communist Era 483
“The Europeanisation of Greek Foreign Policy: A Critical Appraisal, Journal of European Integration,
Downloaded By: [Swets Content Distribution] At: 19:00 16 February 2008