Greece: the N(ATO) Factor

Article published 7 April 2015

Tomorrow, on 8 April, Tsipras will meet Putin in Moscow. At the same time, the EU, the ECB and the IMF will hold another summit on Greece, which the following day has to pay a 45 million euro tranche of the loan granted by the International Monetary Fund.

Officially, the issues in the Moscow summit relate to trade and energy. One of these is the possibility that Greece becomes a European hub for the new gas pipeline, replacing the South Stream, blocked by Bulgaria under US pressure, that crosses Turkey and will carry Russian gas to the EU border. They will also discuss a possible relaxation of Russian retaliatory measures against the sanctions - permitting the import of Greek agricultural products.

According to his statement to Tass (31 March), Prime Minister Tsipras has communicated to the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, and to the EU Representative on Foreign Policy, Federica Mogherini, that «we do not agree with the sanctions against Russia» [1]. And, at the first EU Summit in which he participated on 19-20 March, he officially supported the view that «the new European security architecture must include Russia».

Confirming such a position, Tsipras will once again be in Moscow on 9 May for the 70th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, a celebration boycotted by most Western leaders (Obama, Merkel and Cameron leading the flock). On the other hand, it will be the Chinese President, Xi, with a contingency of Chinese armed forces that will parade in Red Square with the Russian forces to symbolize the ever-closer alliance between the two countries. President Putin, in his turn, will be in Peking in September to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the victory over the Japanese military.

By getting closer to Russia, Tsipras’s Greece is therefore actually becoming closer to China and to the new Euro-Asian Economic Area, that is in its gestation period on the basis of the Investment Bank for Asian Infrastructure established by Peking to which Russia together with around 40 other countries belong. From financial institutions in this area and also from those in the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) – that aim to supplant the World Bank and the IMF, dominated by the US and the major Western powers – Greece could receive the means to free itself from the stranglehold of the EU, the ECB and the IMF. Also, because China wants to make Piraeus, a hub of primary importance in its trade network. According to the «The Independent», «the Greek Government is ready to nationalize the country’s banks and to create a new currency»; in other words, it is ready to leave the Euro and, if compelled, also the EU [2].

But at this juncture, another factor enters the equation: Greece is not only a member of the EU but also NATO. «Greece, a friend to Moscow, could paralyze NATO’s capacity to react to Russian aggression ». So warns Zbigniew Brzezinski [3]. Stern words not to be taken lightly: Brzezinski was, for a long time, the White House’s strategic adviser and he is still in close contact with it. Even if the defense minister Kammenos guarantees that «the new Greek government maintains its NATO commitments despite its political relations with Russia», Washington and Brussels are surely conspiring to prevent Greece becoming the “weakest link in the new confrontation with Russia and, in fact, with China. The 1967 coup, which brought the military to power in Greece was implemented on the basis of NATO’s plan «Prometheus» [4].

While the times have changed, the political and strategic interests on which NATO is established have not. In the meanwhile, it has become more of an expert in domestic destabilization methods.