A very timely seminar at the London School of Economics was hosted earlier on this evening by the Hellenic Observatory.
There is no end to the long standing prickly Greek – Turkish relationship and many have tried to find the most efficient strategy to ease things down before the shit hits the fan. Containing conflict is paramount but when the conflict goes through major centres of power, things can be more difficult and results pessimistic.
The seminar tried to establish a comprehensive account defining the strategy of “smart balancing” Greece should devise vis-a-vis Turkey’s despicable demands and threats and revisionist policies in the wider Eastern Mediterranean region.
The speaker, Prof Panayotis Tsakonas*, did his best with well construed slides to explain all aspects of Greece’s foreign policy over the last 50 years combined with the variable involvement of her European partners.
In conclusion a “soft” balancing approach was suggested as probably the best prospect in order to avoid a wider conflict in the region, based on a coherent national policy adopted by all main Greek political parties.
“Jaw Jaw is better than War War” is Winston Churchill’s famous maxim concerning the desirability of dialogue over destruction in the conduct of relations between states.
The event was chaired by Kevin Featherstone who is Eleftherios Venizelos Professor in Contemporary Greek Studies, Professor in European Politics and Director of the Hellenic Observatory.
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A good turn out from all sectors of the British capital and Greek Diaspora including the shipping one headed by Dimitris N. Monioudis, president of the HESGB – Hellenic Engineers Society of Great Britain!
*Panayotis Tsakonas is Professor of International Relations, Security Studies and Foreign Policy Analysis at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA). He is also Director of the MA Program in “International and European Governance and Policy”, Director of the “Institute of Migration and Diaspora Studies” and Head of the “Programme on Foreign Policy and Security” at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). He has held research posts in various academic institutions, including Harvard (1998-99), Yale (2003), and Oxford University (2015). His research and published work (books, monographs, contributions in edited volumes and articles in peer-reviewed academic journals) have been published in Greek, English, German, French and Italian. He also served as Scientific Advisor at the Ministry of National Defense (1996-1998), as Special Adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs (1999-2003) and as President of the BoD of the Center for Security Studies/KE.ME.A (2016-2019). He has co-authored, with Dr. Thanos Dokos (Greece’s current National Security Advisor) two books on National Security Strategy. His book: The Incomplete Breakthrough in Greek-Turkish Relations. Grasping Greece’s Socialization Strategy (Palgrave-Macmillan, New York, 2010) was nominated by the Modern Greek Studies Association for the “Edmund Keeley Book Prize”.
