Stronger Together - Greece: You Can’t Choose Your Neighbours but You Can Choose Your Friends

The longer it takes to deal with this unacceptable limbo, the more the EU waters the seed of radicalization and fuels hatred, extremism and violence. Furthermore, the March 2020 incidents at the northern Greek borders with Turkey testify to the instrumentalization of the migration challenge from the Turkish side. The same challenge is further aggravated by the continuing instability in Libya and the existing cracks in the buffer zone that the EU is trying hard to establish at the northern coast of Africa. The political agreement on the New Pact on Migration and Asylum should rapidly evolve to concrete legislative action and a revised and more comprehensive agreement with Turkey on this issue should become the primary EU objective in the period to come.

Burden-Sharing Between the EU and the US / NATO

Countering these security challenges will contribute to the pursuit of EU strategic autonomy. After all, according to the High Representative, Josep Borrell, at the core of this concept lies the defense of European interests and values, not exclusively in the security and defense realm. Dealing with regional instability and migration by no means suggests a transatlantic rift or competition with the US. It entails the construction of a stable, rules-based regional order, inspired by the liberal and democratic values that bring the two sides together rather than drifting them apart. In that respect, the pursuit of strategic autonomy in the Mediterranean basin should be seen as an indication of a healthy and symbiotic relationship with the US, especially while the United States is operating a so-called "Asian pivot", shifting its attention to the Pacific region. Given this tectonic re-orientation and since geopolitics - very much like nature - loathes the void, it is imperative for the EU to fill in the gap, always in pursuit of a regional liberal order. 

The ascendance of the EU as a political and security actor has always been welcomed by the overwhelming majority of the Greek political system, albeit seen most of the time through the prism of the Greek-Turkish rivalry. Without ignoring the importance of the American factor, as illustrated by the significant upgrade in the bilateral relations in the last couple of years, Greece is very keen on and supportive of European military collaboration schemes, be they PESCO projects or the European Defense Fund. The main concern, in Greece as in many other EU member-states, is whether such schemes can indeed lead to substantial military cooperation and in due time defense integration, or whether they rather constitute rhetoric fireworks that will not survive the test of time. At this stage, following a prudent security portfolio diversification, Greece balances with one foot on each boat, namely the American protection and the increased European autonomy, being supportive of the latter without relinquishing the former. 

The five-year programme of the Greek armed forces modernization, amounting to over 11.5 billion euros (14.5 billion US dollars), is not limited to the purchase of French military aircrafts but also entails contracts with American defense firms, like Lockheed Martin. 

This dualism enables Greece to adhere to and call for a symbiotic relationship between NATO and the EU in terms of security and defense. Both organizations can be useful security providers as long as they take advantage of their comparative advantage and focus on their distinctive security niche. Stability is not only an issue of military might, after all! But even in the defense realm, the two organizations are not necessarily rivals. The development of autonomous European defense capabilities should not lead to duplication or trigger a crowding out effect, with EU member-states shifting their priority from NATO to the EU. To avoid such a harmful potential competition, the European defense integration process should evolve in an inclusive way, with due emphasis on interoperability and filling the existing NATO gaps. This is not only going to render the European defense venture more politically realistic and feasible, but it would also strengthen the collective defense capabilities of the West in a period of expanding competitive multipolarity and international "Westlessness".

The former has been tested and has failed numerous times in the past. The latter envisages defense cooperation emerging as a spillover effect of the collaboration between national defense industries. In this approach, defense integration will emerge as a corollary of economic and industrial partnership. The Commission and several non-state stakeholders are currently flashing out the economic benefits of such a path of defense integration in a consistent and persuasive way. The rationale and the modus operandi of the European Defense Fund (EDF) best capture this approach. Still, the halving of the available resources (from 13 to 7 bn euros) from the initial Commission proposal during the negotiations for the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) (2021-27) suggests that this is not a politically uncontested approach.

The Headline Objective and the European Rapid Reaction Force, the Battlegroups, and even - to a lesser extent - the ongoing PESCO projects have all been hailed as major breakthroughs towards the establishment of a defense dimension for the European project, only to be later on politically trimmed down. The EDF can make the difference due to its primarily economic logic and the economic benefits it accrues. The consolidation of the European defense industry can lead to defense integration from the back door, at least augmenting pressure on governments to seriously consider this prospect. This will have little to do with converging security or defense priorities, at least in the first place. Such priorities are a function of geographical location and diverging national perceptions of threat and their osmosis will take long. What will matter in this case is rather the spillover effect of converging business interests that can generate diffused socio-economic and political benefits for all member-states through economies of scale in military Research & Development, lower cost of armaments, and a growth potential for the European economy. 

Copyright: Sakis MITROLIDIS / AFP