We heard foolish slogans from foolish young people during the Independence Day parade, this March 25.
We saw the inauguration of a monument to “National Memory” at the Pentagon before a committee of veteran right-wing “defenders of the Nation”.
We also had the agreement with Chevron concerning exploration and extraction in two offshore areas south of Crete.
They are all important in their own way. But which of them best safeguards the interests of the nation?
The nationalist slogans? The right-wing veterans? Or a deal with a global energy giant that reaffirms our sovereign rights?
I don’t think I need to answer that. The answer is obvious.
And the reason is simple. The best response to an unstable and treacherous environment, and the clearest affirmation of a principled policy based on law, is results. Especially when they validate the principles and law that inform it.
Now, let’s see how Turkey reacts to the de facto challenge to its much-vaunted “Turkish-Libyan memorandum”. What will Erdogan do? Sink Chevron?
All of which proves that, in this uncertain and unstable world that’s emerging, Greece has just one tactic in practice: To be everywhere. Wherever it can be.
In Paris, Jerusalem, Brussels, Brussels, south of Crete.
And always with a sense of proportion and scale, without exaggeration and grandiloquence, without know-it-alls and arrogant leaders or pompous representatives.
Speaking with our own voice? With our own voice. But there.
Ultimately, no one today can map the world that’s emerging with any certainty. Alexandros Tsipras may have been lucky to find a “New National Compass” amidst all the turmoil, but the rest of the planet is holding its breath.
Our nation is being called upon to safeguard its position, its security and its interests in a world whose outlines are still vague and coming into being.
Not through nationalist verbiage or empty rhetoric, but through alliances and agreements that serve these exact interests.
This is the only way to build up and consolidate our national self-confidence.
A self-confidence that will not be bolstered by illusions of invincible power, or stubborn claims of undeniable and inalienable rights.
But by the certainty of a country that protect its interests in the most effective way there is: with patience, method and conviction.
This is the best (and perhaps the only) way a modern European democracy can respond to an amorphous and unknowable reality.
