Antonios NESTORAS
Historically, Greece’s main security concern has been the increasing power and aggressiveness of neighbouring Turkey. Greece’s close proximity to Turkey and the fact that it has less military capabilities and a smaller population add up to Greek insecurity. For that reason, apart from investing in strong armed forces, Greece has consistently relied on participation in Western European integration – namely NATO, the WEU and the EU – in order to balance Turkey.
Expectations from NATO quickly faded after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, which Greece acknowledged as evidence that the alliance was unable or unwilling to guarantee Greek territorial integrity when it came to Turkish aggression. Similarly, the Imia crisis in 1996, which brought Turkey and Greece on the verge of war, demonstrated that the EU was unsuitable to guarantee Greece’s borders. Soon after, the St. Malo summit in 1998 would revive the Greek hopes for the emergence of a European defence that could provide security against Turkey.
Following on from St. Malo, the Helsinki European Council in 1999 would assert the EU’s ‘determination to develop an autonomous capacity to take decisions where NATO as a whole is not engaged’. By this time, however, Greek strategy had changed. In the Helsinki summit, Greece had tried to downplay the security dimension with Turkey by lifting its veto over Ankara’s perspective for EU membership. This move was supposed to progressively eliminate Turkish aggression by allowing the country to participate in European integration and socialise itself with EU values and methods. Ideally, opening the door to Turkey’s EU integration would be an alterna- tive to the ineffective strategy of searching for security providers.
However, as recent developments in Turkey have proved, this great expectation did not square with reality. Today, Ankara seems almost indifferent to European membership and Turkish elites seem more concerned with asserting Turkey’s role as an autonomous player in the region that was once dominated by the Ottoman Empire. While Prime Minister Erdogan used the prospect of EU accession in order to consolidate his power, in the background of the accession negotiations he imple- mented a radical transformation of the secular Turkish politics and established a new regime along the lines of political Islam.
During the latest Cyprus crisis in 2014, after Turkey’s violation of an EU Member State’s exclusive economic zone, Greece, as well as Europe, realised beyond any
THE COMMON SECURITY AND DEFENCE POLICY: NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
discussion in Brussels and other European capitals seems to be already heading towards some special status of Turkey, but not a full membership.
What is left from this sorry state of affairs is the need for Greece to secure guaran- tees for its territorial integrity. At the end of the day, as far as Greece is concerned, the Turkish threat remains and continues to be constituted in increasing violations of Greek airspace or the Athens Flight Information Region (FIR), refusal to submit the Aegean continental shelf dispute to the International Court of Justice and a casus- belli – endorsed by the Turkish Grand Assembly – should Greece extend the territo- rial waters limit from six to twelve miles (typically allowed under the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention). Among other provocations in 2015, Turkey’s decision to unilaterally issue a Notice to Airmen to reserve an extensive airspace over the Aegean Sea from 2 March – 31 December 2014 for military purposes, even though it was eventually withdrawn, is symptomatic of the situation.21
To make matters worse, the prolonged economic crisis in Greece is dramatically tipping the balance of military power in favour of Turkey. In this context, perhaps the CSDP and the vision for a common European defence could materialise eventually as a convenient bulwark against Turkish belligerence. In fact, given the dire situation of Greece’s finances this seems as the only viable alternative. Finances are key to Greece’s future role in the CSDP. An improvement in the ATHENA mechanism could, for example, lead to further commitments of Greek military personnel and equip- ment.
Greece has already proved an active supporter of CSDP. Not only did Greece play a role in the EU police mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina and CONCORDIA (in FYROM), but the country is currently participating in five military operations (even if mostly by contributing to military and police training) and seven civilian missions. Greece is also leading, as the Framework Nation, a ready to deploy EU Battlegroup (HELBROC) along with Cyprus, Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine. In the first half of 2014 HELBROC was put at readiness for a fourth time, and it will likely do so in 2016, 2018 and 2020 too. Greece also participates in the Spanish-Italian Amphibious Force (SIAF) EU Battlegroup.
Unfortunately for Greece, the problem with the CSDP is that it is a big idea without form, an ambitious concept without any established content. Apparently, every other EU Member State is interested in shaping the CSDP according to its own strategic planning and nobody can foresee how the deliberations may conclude. Should Greece be interested in the CSDP, it is not because it is a prerequisite to assert the EU’s global role, but for the reason that it has the potential to transform the EU into a security provider for the smaller Member States. The odds are not favourable,
but, considering the ongoing confrontation of Europe with Russia, Greece may find unexpected allies in other small states in Europe’s borders.
So far, it is still unclear whether the newly elected Greek government that everyone is talking about will shake strategic thinking in Athens. Naturally, SYRIZA seems to be preoccupied with straightening out the state’s finances. There are, however, sugges- tions as to a likely new approach in national security: a few days after the elections, while Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis was touring some of the main European capitals to marshal political support for a renegotiation of Greece’s debt, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was hardening his stance toward Ankara in an interview to Sabah, a daily Turkish newspaper. Around the same time, Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias was announcing his intention to block further EU measures against Russia over Ukraine.
SYRIZA’s blend of open confrontation with the EU and pro-Russian mannerism could be a negotiating tactic over EU economic policy; the outspoken condemnation of Turkey’s latest provocations just a cheap trick to consolidate domestic support. If that is not the case, then the Greeks may already be tinkering with the idea of security beyond the CSDP.