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(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

Online Publication Date: 01 September 2006


To cite this Article: Huliaras, Asteris and Tsardanidis, Charalambos (2006)
'(Mis)understanding the Balkans: Greek Geopolitical Codes of the Post-communist
Era', Geopolitics, 11:3, 465 - 483
To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/14650040600767909
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Geopolitics, 11:465–483, 2006
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ISSN: 1465-0045 print / 1557-3028 online
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DOI: 10.1080/14650040600767909

(Mis)understanding the Balkans: Greek


Geopolitics, Vol. 11, No. 3, June 2006: pp. 1–32
1557-3028
1465-0045
FGEO
Geopolitics

Geopolitical Codes of the Post-communist Era

ASTERIS HULIARAS
Greek Geopolitical
Asteris Huliaras andCodes
Charalambos
of the Post-communist
Tsardanidis Era

Associate Professor, Department of Geography, Harokopion University of Athens, Greece

CHARALAMBOS TSARDANIDIS
Director, Institute of International Economic Relations, Athens, Greece

For most Greeks, neighbouring countries like Yugoslavia, Bulgaria,


Romania and Albania formed a terra incognita for almost half a
century since the end of the Second World War. In the early 1990s
communism collapsed in all four countries and despite the three
bloody wars that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia, information,
goods and people crossed Balkan boundaries in unprecedented
speed. The paper examines three geopolitical codes about the Balkans
that successively dominated Greek views and policies in the last
fifteen years: the idea of a menacing ‘muslim arc’, the image of the
Balkans as a Greek ‘natural hinterland’ and the idea of the
Balkans as an undisputed part of Europe. All these geopolitical
ideas were introduced by the Greek political elite and influenced
decisively both Greek foreign policy and public attitudes for about
half a decade each.

A man encounters an unfriendly group of warriors in the jungle.


“Are you with us or with the others ?” the warriors ask.
“With you” is the man’s immediate answer.
“Sorry”, the warriors’ retort, “we are the others.”
(Story told by Greek Ambassador Loucas Tsilas1)

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

Address correspondence to Asteris Huliaras, Department of Geography, Harokopion


University, Athens, Greece. E-mail: huliaras@hol.gr

465
466 Asteris Huliaras and Charalambos Tsardanidis

geopolitical code includes ‘a definition of a state’s interests, an identification


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of external threats to those interests, a planned response to such threats and


a justification of that response’.4 Geopolitical codes evaluate places and are
the spatial expressions of geopolitical efforts to transform ‘a global space
into fixed perspectival scenes’.5 Geopolitical codes operate at three levels:
global, regional and local.6 The local-level code refers to the evaluation of
neighbouring countries. Regional-level codes characterise states that can
project power beyond their immediate vicinity. Only few states (like the per-
manent members of the UN Security Council) have worldwide geopolitical
codes.
Geopolitical codes are linked with geopolitical visions. The latter term
is more general and includes, in Dijkink’s words, ‘any idea concerning the
relation between one’s own and other places, involving feelings of (in)secu-
rity or (dis)advantage (and/or) invoking ideas about a mission or foreign
policy advantage’.7 Geopolitical visions are ‘translations of national-identity
concepts in geographical terms and symbols’,8 a kind of national ‘models of
the world’.9 They are ‘a synthesis of the views professed by various strata of
the political elite, the academic experts, the creative intelligentsia and public
opinion as a whole’.10
Dijkink argues that there is a strong degree of consonance between the
(less articulate) popular geopolitical visions and the (more sophisticated)
geopolitical codes employed by practitioners of statecraft. Both govern-
ments and the public, he argues, are ‘subjected to a mechanism that distorts
the information about the world as consequence of the structure of domes-
tic society and national “peak-experiences” from the past’.11
Geopolitical codes and visions do not remain constant and stable but
change.12 However, geopolitical visions tend to be more resistant to change
than codes. According to Dijkink, ‘even major wars (like the First World
War) or “lost” wars (like Vietnam) are an insufficient cause for changing
geopolitical visions’.13 In contrast, geopolitical codes can change both radi-
cally and within a rather limited period of time. Sometimes a radical change
in geopolitical codes is the result of a perceived failure. For example, in
Italy the failure of the fascist imperialism that focused on the Mediterranean
(the idea of Mare Nostro – ‘Our Sea’) was replaced in the post-war era by a
shift to the north – to cooperation with the country’s northern neighbours.
Prime Minister Alcide Gaspieri codified this change in a very clear way:
‘Italy’, he said, ‘must climb the Alps’.14 This change in geopolitical code was
linked to a change in geopolitical vision. Italy considered itself not a
‘Mediterranean’ (like Spain, Portugal or Greece) but a ‘European’ country
(like France or Germany).
Quite often the change in geopolitical codes is not linked to a failure or a
crisis but simply reflects changes in elite perceptions. Sometimes foreign pol-
icy codes die and are replaced by others without any obvious ‘structural’
explanation. It seems that the reason behind change is not only the external
Greek Geopolitical Codes of the Post-communist Era 467

milieu, but also what policy makers believe the external milieu to be.15 For-
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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

The term ‘Balkans’ was invented by Western geographers in late nineteenth


century to describe a region that until then was known as the ‘Ottoman
Europe’. The region was perceived by Western intellectuals and foreign pol-
icy makers as a particularly unstable and violent place. As the historian
Mark Mazower observes: ‘From the very start the Balkans was more than a
geographical concept. The term, unlike its predecessors, was loaded with
negative connotations – of violence, savagery, primitivism – to an extent for
which it is hard to find a parallel’.19 In the final analysis, like the ‘Orient’, the
Balkans served as ‘a region, which enabled [major European powers] to see
themselves as modern and advanced’.20
From the term ‘Balkans’, Western intellectuals invented the term ‘Bal-
kanisation’. After the First World War, ‘Balkanisation’ gained official linguis-
tic recognition and acquired several negative connotations as a threat to
international order, stability and peace. ‘Balkanisation’ is now a well-
established term, generally understood, according to James Der Derian, ‘to
be the break-up of larger political units into smaller, mutually hostile states
which are exploited or manipulated by more powerful neighbours’.21
468 Asteris Huliaras and Charalambos Tsardanidis

In the early 1990s the well-established derogatory connotations for the


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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.

GEOPOLITICAL CODE 1: THE ‘MUSLIM ARC’

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
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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
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constant repetition of the ‘Muslim threat’ theme in innumerable articles in


Greek newspapers was extremely effective. As a journalist observes, ‘this
message soon achieved the status of a mantra in Greek public discourse as
the media conjured up a powerful picture of bloodstained mujahedeen of
preferably Turkish descent ready to swarm into Greece’.29 Many Greek
intellectuals supported and strengthened this view. Just as an academic well
known for his moderate views wrote:

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

In practice however, the creation of an ‘Orthodox arc’ was rather diffi-


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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

According to a commentator, Christodoulos enjoyed for many years the


highest popularity ratings in Greek public opinion42 ‘not as a defender of
the faith or morality, but rather as an outspoken guardian of national iden-
tity under imminent threat’.43
472 Asteris Huliaras and Charalambos Tsardanidis

In short, during the 1990–1994 period, the Greek elite evaluated a part
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of the region (inhabited by Muslims) beyond the country’s northern border


as a threat to its national security and another part (the orthodox) as
Greece’s ‘natural ally’. The Balkans were reduced in Greek foreign policy
making circles to ‘security commodities’.44 The ‘Muslim arc’ idea disap-
peared as a Greek geopolitical code only in the second half of the 1990s
because the Greek political and economic elite chose to abandon it in
response to a changing regional situation (in particular the signing of the
Dayton Agreement). This ‘Muslim arc’ concept was replaced by another
one, that was positive (it did not regard the Balkans as a threat), but also to
a large degree deeply problematic.

GEOPOLITICAL CODE II: THE BALKANS AS A GREEK


‘HINTERLAND’

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
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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.)

the confrontational policies adopted in the early 1990s). As a Greek aca-


demic aptly put it: ‘The [Greek] private economy almost completely ignored
official policy and proceeded to penetrate the Balkan region, establishing a
powerful economic stronghold in practically all the Balkan countries’.47
The new geopolitical code was above all closely linked to Constantinos
Simitis’ rise to power. The Greek Socialist Party (PASOK) had returned to
power in 1993, led by Andreas Papandreou. In 1996 Papandreou resigned
due to ill health and was replaced by Simitis. Simitis and a small group of
modernisers were successful in engineering a spectacular change in Greek
foreign policy discourse to pro-western positions. This ‘westernisation’ or
‘modernisation’ (in Simitis’ preferred term) of Greek foreign policy included
a complete abandonment of nationalistic rhetoric of the Samaras years and a
(gradual) rapprochement with Turkey.48 In short, the Greek socialists under
Constantinos Simitis tried hard, and were to a large extent successful, in
reversing Greece’s confrontational policies of the early 1990s and in pre-
senting Greece abroad as a ‘Western nation’ that attempted to bring stability
and economic development to a troubled region.
Therefore, Greece moved towards developing its relations with Balkan
countries not only at the bilateral but also at the multilateral level, taking
474 Asteris Huliaras and Charalambos Tsardanidis

initiatives to promote regional stability through the establishment of regional


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cooperation schemes. These efforts focused on building a new climate of


trust and gave birth to a bolder proposal, on Greece’s initiative, for the con-
vening of a summit of all Balkan leaders for the first time in recorded history.
Finally, the summit took place in Crete in November 1997.49
The ‘natural hinterland’ idea gradually gained prevalence in Greek
elite circles and the media. While in the first period (1991–1995), most ref-
erences to the Balkans were found in the political pages of Greek news-
papers, now it was the financial pages that took the leading role. In May
1999, the centre-left pro-government daily Ta Nea argued that ‘the Balkans
were the ground on which the phenomenon of globalisation first mani-
fested itself for the Greek economy’.50 That same day, I Kathimerini, a
leading newspaper of conservative centre-right orientation, concluded that
‘the idea of a Balkan hinterland has been one of the foundations upon
which the Greek development vision was built’.51 Speaking in the Greek
Parliament, former Foreign Minister Theodoros Pangalos criticised some
Greek intellectuals who argued that the term ‘hinterland’ was a Nazi con-
struction, claiming that there was nothing wrong with it in the case of
Greece’s ‘economic penetration’ of the Balkans.52
The ‘natural hinterland’ idea and the relevant discourses regarding
Greece as ‘regional superpower’ or a ‘Balkan hegemon’ are deeply prob-
lematic. First they are, geographically speaking, overstatements. The major
zone of economic activity run by Greek operations did not include all the
Balkans. Greek companies were present in the country’s three neighbour-
ing states (Albania, Bulgaria and FYROM) and Serbia. However, in other
Balkan states the ‘Greek presence’ was either insignificant (Bosnia and
Croatia) or rather weak (Romania).53
Second, although a large part of Greek investment was carried out
by Greece’s leading banks and food processing companies, most of the
Greek investors were small trading companies, retailers and clothing
manufacturers ‘seeking to rebuild lost competitiveness by shifting pro-
duction to low-wage countries such as Bulgaria and Albania’.54 As an
economist argued, Greek investment projects were ‘labour intensive,
small scale operations, [ . . . ] industries with [outdated] technologies,
pay[ing] low overheads, compet[ing] on price rather than product differ-
entiation, [lacking] an established brand name’.55 Moreover, and more
importantly, most of Greek investment in the post-1996 period was not
private – it came from Greek para-statal companies like the state-owned
telecommunications company and the state petroleum company, which
have quite often been accused of political clientelism and irrational eco-
nomic behaviour.
Third, the ‘natural hinterland’ idea ignored the fact that the economic
opening to the Balkans entailed several negative aspects for the Greek
economy.56 Above all, the Greek investments in the Balkans often increased
Greek Geopolitical Codes of the Post-communist Era 475

unemployment in Greece (especially in the clothing and textile industries)


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as companies closed their production units in Greece and transplanted them


to countries like Bulgaria or Albania.
However, despite these inconsistencies, Greek policy makers, govern-
ment officials, journalists, academics and the business elite used economic
data in a very eclectic way to ‘prove’ the ‘large-scale’ and ‘extremely signifi-
cant’ Greek economic penetration of the Balkan markets. For example, the
number of investments was the preferred way to demonstrate the ‘Greek
presence’,57 while (more interesting) statistics on the value and structure of
investments were largely ignored.
Moreover, there was clear confusion between Greece’s foreign policy
and the role of private actors. Most commentators and politicians in Greece
took it for granted that private and public interests coincided, that the inter-
ests of Greek businesses and those of the Greek state were identical.58 Only
in 2003 did the Greek media start to realise that the Greek economic penetra-
tion of the Balkans was not to the benefit of all Greeks. When a multinational
clothing company (Palco) closed its installations in Greece and announced
that it will open a production unit in Bulgaria, a public outcry ensued in
Greece. It was not the first time that something like this had happened. Hun-
dreds of Greek companies had done the same countless times since the early
1990s. But it was the first time the Greeks realised what was going on. Finally,
the ‘natural hinterland’ idea was also based on an old-fashioned view that
corporations, when they become transnational or when they relocate to other
countries, keep their ‘national identity’. Strangely, in the post-1995 period, all
businesses with headquarters in Greece were considered as ‘agents’ of Greek
national interests, business people were compared to diplomats, investments
were thought of as Greek foreign policy instruments.
However, perceptions produced a new reality. It gradually became clear
that Greece had major economic interests in the Balkans and that a new polit-
ical approach to reflect them had become necessary. Therefore, Greek foreign
policy priorities and the interests of Greek business have begun to converge as
never before.59 As the Greek Deputy Minister for National Economy pointed
out, ‘Each one of the Greek companies developing its activities abroad consti-
tutes a bridge of cooperation and contributes to the further development of the
relations of friendship and cooperation with the neighbouring countries. We
need the relevant support of the companies to accomplish this goal’.60
To a great extent Greek businessmen (and some businesswomen)
accepted and reproduced the discourse presenting Greece as a ‘regional
superpower’ and did not hide their ‘national pride’ for their achievements.
Of course the new government policy suited them well. But it was also a
kind of internal political legitimisation for the Greek business community:
for the first time in over 25 years of anti-free market and anti-business rhet-
oric, the Greek public and media started to regard Greek businesspeople as
‘national heroes’.
476 Asteris Huliaras and Charalambos Tsardanidis

GEOPOLITICAL CODE III: THE “EUROPEANISATION”


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OF GREEK FOREIGN POLICY

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

FIGURE 3 Western Balkans according to the European Commission. Source: European


Commission.
Greek Geopolitical Codes of the Post-communist Era 477

the Balkans into the EU was now considered by Athens to be a number one
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priority, a factor capable of contributing decisively to the consolidation of


stability, democracy and market economy in the region.
Therefore, Greek foreign policy makers claimed that only the EU
framework could provide the means for cementing peaceful relations in the
region, mainly through an integration process that could bring about the
same reconciliation as in the case of relations between France and
Germany. For Greece, the option of leaving even part of the Balkans per-
manently outside the European institutional structures was considered
destabilising, and could lead to a new round of violent conflict. Greece’s
national interests in the Balkans were seen as better served via multilateral
efforts in the EU framework, rather than via unilateral or bilateral ones. Not
only was the nationalistic and opportunistic policy of the early 1990s aban-
doned,62 but also the bilateral or the regional framework were considered
as secondary to the multilateral. Thus ‘multilateral’ came almost exclusively
to mean ‘integration into the European Union’.
The progressive ‘Europeanisation’ of Greek Balkan policy was
described as a transforming development. Two analysts have argued like-
wise: ‘Virtually all of Greece’s external policy challenges, including some of
the most traditional and neuralgic, have now been placed in a multilateral
frame’.63 But it was more than that: ‘Europeanisation’ for the Greek govern-
ment did not only refer to the Balkans, but also to Greece itself.
However, despite the rhetoric, Greek foreign policy towards the Balkans
is still far from being truly ‘Europeanised’. Relations with the Balkan countries
continue to reflect to a large extent the ongoing struggle between conserva-
tives/traditionalists and modernisers/transformers in Greek foreign policy
making circles.64 On the one hand, the modernisers are proposing a policy of
integrating the Balkan states into the European Union and on the other hand,
the traditionalists argue that inside the ethnocentric and hostile environment
of the region, Greece must first seek to defend its immediate security interests
from the rivalries and antagonisms between and among its northern neigh-
bours.65 While the modernisers perceive the Balkans as a region which
should be integrated into the EU, the traditionalists see the region as a
domain where Greece could emerge as a regional hegemonic power.
In the final analysis, the Europeanisation process represents only one
side of the wider debate between modernisers and traditionalists among
Greek foreign policy makers that is ultimately a debate over Greece’s iden-
tity. As it is just one element in the debate, Europeanisation of Greek Balkan
policy cannot possibly represent a new state of affairs, but only part of a
larger picture.66
The continuing dysfunction of domestic institutions and other actors
further reinforces the view that Greek foreign policy has not yet become
‘Europeanised’. One of the most important ‘dysfunctions’ is the stance of
Greek public opinion on foreign policy issues.
478 Asteris Huliaras and Charalambos Tsardanidis

NATO’s air strikes against Serbia in the spring of 1999 provoked an out-
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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

Geographical arguments were always on the periphery of Greek nationalism.


The Greek state always used historical, rather than geographical, arguments to
justify its existence and territorial claims.70 Partly this was a reflection of the
Ancient Greek heritage. But also, because of confusion between Greek
national and religious identities in the nineteenth century, the Greek elite
chose, from the early stages of independence, historical and cultural argu-
ments in order to maximise the new state’s territorial claims. In this way Greece
could justify territorial aspirations that covered a large part of the Balkan
peninsula. Thus, for at least the first decades of the twentieth century, ‘the
Greek perception of space was extremely vague’.71 In practice the importance
of historical arguments for Greek national identity survived for decades. Even
when the country applied to join the European Communities in 1974, the argu-
ments employed were historical and not geographical: according to the rele-
vant official discourse, Greece was European not because of its geographical
location but because she ‘was the birthplace of European civilisation’.
In the late 1980s, Greece’s disappointing economic record, failure to
attract investment and its inability (or unwillingness) to adjust to EC regula-
tions led many (including former Commission President Jacques Delors) to
question the original decision for accepting her to the European Club. And
indeed Greece’s economy was falling behind its competitors. In the early
1990s the country’s per capita income had fallen below that of Portugal’s.
Greece was at the time the poorest member-state of the European Union. Its
insistence on the copyright of the name of Macedonia contributed to the
further darkening of the country’s image in the outside world. In the words
of a sympathetic observer, Greece had ‘managed to become, deservedly or
not, the black sheep of Europe’.72 In 1994, the British Economist claimed
that ‘despite 13 years in the European Union and handouts worth $ 6 billion
Greek Geopolitical Codes of the Post-communist Era 479

a year, Greece still seems to belong more to the volatile Balkans than to
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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
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become something different.


It seems surprising that a single geopolitical vision (the feeling that
Greece is ‘different’ from the rest of the Balkans) can produce such a diver-
sity of radically different geopolitical codes in such a short period of time.
But on the other hand, Greece is not an exception. As Dijkink observes,
‘each new [United States] administration tends to devise a new geopolitical
code designating different countries as hostile or friendly’.77 The Greek case
seems to confirm the view that ‘geopolitical imaginations’ or ‘imagined geo-
politics’ yield a variety of totally different options to foreign policy makers.

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
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(1995) p. 3, http://www.hri.org/emphasis/is1–3.html (accessed 6/12/05)


19. M. Mazower, The Balkans (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2000) p. 4.
20. G. Ó Tuathail, ‘Understanding Critical Geopolitics: Geopolitics and Risk Society’, in C. S. Gray
and G. Sloan (eds.), Geopolitics, Geography and Strategy (London: Frank Cass 2001) p. 115.
21. J. Der Derian, ‘S/N: International Theory, Balkanisation and the New World Order’, Millen-
nium: Journal of International Studies 20(3) (1991) p. 488.
22. An example is the book of the American journalist Robert Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts (New York:
Vintage 1994). It was reported that the book influenced President Clinton’s policy in the Balkans.
23. Mazower (note 19) p. 5.
24. S. Wagstyl and S. Fidler, ‘Under the Volcano’, Financial Times (28 June 1999).
25. M. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1997).
26. For very interesting but more cultural than political research see D. Tziovas (ed.), Greece and
the Balkans: Identities, Perceptions and Cultural Encounters since the Enlightenment (Ashgate: Aldershot
2003).
27. A. Nicolson, ‘A Fall from Cultural Grace’, The Spectator (12 November 1993).
28. This mentality in the early 1990s reached a dangerous peak when a group of politicians across
the political spectrum apparently decided to invest heavily in nationalist shares. See L. Tsoukalis, ‘The
Future of Greece in the European Union’, in T. Couloumbis, T. Kariotis and F. Bellou (eds.), Greece in
the Twentieth Century (London: Frank Cass 2003) p. 328.
29. T. Michas, Unholy Alliance. Greece and Milocevic’s Serbia (Austin: Texas A&M University Press
2000) p. 32.
30. T. Veremis, ‘Greece: The Dilemmas of Change’, in F. S. Larrabee (ed.), The Volatile Powder
Keg: Balkan Security after the Cold War (New York: Rowman & Littlefield 1994) p. 132.
31. P. Vasilopoulos, ‘Samaras’ Conjecture and Islam’, O Oikonomikos 14 (6 September 1990) (in
Greek).
32. I Kathimerini (2 September 1990) (in Greek).
33. Quoted in ‘O Fovos tou Islam’, Eleftherotypia (21 January 1996) (in Greek), (accessed 7/2/05)
http://www.Iospress.gr/ios1996/iis19960121a.htm
34. For a comment see ‘Balkan Powder Keg’, Editorial, The Toronto Star (6 September 1993).
35. G. Kassimeris, ‘Can He Make Spring a Party for All Seasons?’, The European (16–19 September
1993). For the role of the Orthodox Church in Greek politics see V. Georgiadou, ‘Greek Orthodoxy and
the Politics of Nationalism’, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 9/2 (1995) pp. 295–315;
T. Lipowatz, ‘Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism: Two aspects of the Modern Greek Political Culture’,
Greek Political Science Review 2 (1993) pp. 31–47 (in Greek); Th. Stavrou, ‘The Orthodox Church and
Political Culture in Modern Greece’, in D. Constas and T. Stavrou (eds.), Greece Prepares for the Twenty-
First Century (Washington DC: The Woodrow Wilson Center/The Johns Hopkins University Press 1995)
pp. 35–56.
36. N. Zahariadis, ‘Nationalism and Small State Foreign Policy: The Greek Response to the Mace-
donian Issue’, Political Science Quarterly 109/4 (1994) pp. 647–668; D. M. Perry, ‘Crisis in the Making?
Macedonia and Its Neighbours’, Südosteuropa 43/1–2 (1994) pp. 31–58.
37. Michas (note 29).
38. D. Constas and Ch. Papasotiriou, ‘Greek Policy Responses to the Post-Cold War Balkan Envi-
ronment’, in V. Coufoudakis, H. J. Psomiades and A. Gerolymatos (eds.), Greece and the New Balkans
(New York: Pella 1999) p. 231.
39. S. Kut, ‘Turkey in the Post-Communist Balkans: Between Activism and Self-Restraint’, Turkish
Review of Balkan Studies 3 (1996/7) pp. 43–45.
40. G. Ó Tuathail, ‘Theorizing Practical Geopolitical Reasoning: The Case of the United States’
Response to the War in Bosnia’, Political Geography 21/5 (2002) p. 619.
41. S. Christodoulos ‘The Axis of Orthodoxy Command of the Era . . . Is Moving’, To Vima tis Kyr-
iakis (9 February 1992) (in Greek).
42. MRB, Six-month Report, Athens: MRB (June 2005) Tables X, ‘Images of Greek Public Figures:
Archbishop Christodoulos’, p. 78.
43. G. Mavrogordatos, ‘Orthodoxy and Nationalism in the Greek Church’ in J. T. S. Madeley and
Z. Enyedi (eds.), Church and State in Contemporary Europe (London: Frank Cass 2003) p. 130.
44. G. Ó Tuathail and J. Agnew, ‘Geopolitics and Discourse: Practical Geopolitical Reasoning in
American Foreign Policy’, Political Geography 11/2 (1992) pp. 190–204.
482 Asteris Huliaras and Charalambos Tsardanidis

45. Speech in Patras, Greece, (10 May 1996), (accessed 6/17/05) http://www.garsenis.gr/content/
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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,
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27(2), (2005) pp. 231–232.


67. M. Kondopoulou, ‘The Greek Media and the Kosovo Crisis’, Conflict and Communication
Online 1 (2002), (accessed 3/10/05) http://www.cco.regener-online.de
68. See K. Brown and D. Theodossopoulos, ‘Rearranging Solidarity: Conspiracy and World Order
in Greek and Macedonian Commentaries on Kosovo’, Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans 5/4
(December 2003) pp. 315–335.
69. Y. Loulis, The Crisis of Politics in Greece (Athens: I. Sideris 1995) (in Greek).
70. G. Prevelakis, ‘The Return of the Macedonian Question’, in F. W. Carter and H. T. Norris
(eds.), The Changing Shape of the Balkans (London: UCL Press 1996) p. 143.
71. Ibid. p. 144.
72. Quoted in Ioakimides (note 47) p. 178.
73. ‘Elsewhere in the Balkans’, The Economist (17 September 1994).
74. See, among others, Th. Veremis and Th. Couloumbis, ‘In Search of New Barbarians: Samuel
P. Huntington and the Clash of Civilizations’, Mediterranean Quarterly 5(1) (1994) pp. 36–44.
75. G. Prevelakis, ‘The Hellenisation of the Balkans or the balkanization of Greece ?’ in S. Gerassimou
(ed.), Balkans Coming Back (Athens: Agra Editions 2003) p. 158 (in Greek).
76. A. Tziampiris, ‘Greece and the Balkans in the Twentieth Century’ in Couloumbis, Kariotis and
Bellou (note 28) p. 147.
77. Dijkink (note 7) p. 12.

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