Nicolas Sarkozy lays down alliance terms of engagement
Dr. George Voskopoulos
June 06, 2008
During his visit to Athens the French President Nicolas Sarkozy gave
lessons
on solidarity among alliance partners. He was clear about alliance
obligations, something that other Greek allies have not honored, although
they request the political and logis-tical sup****t of Athens. Yet, this
should not be a surprise to anyone, at least for those of us who have
received a French education and are parts of le monde francophone.
The charismatic French leader made some explicit remarks on the
Greece-FYROM
name dispute as he is amongst those who do not find Greek worries
"absurd".
As he pointed out referring to the Greece-FYROM name dispute, "we have
chosen to sup-****t Greece and we will not change our position. Greece and
France wish to see FY-ROM get closer to NATO and the EU, yet, the name
dispute will have to be settled first. The solidarity of France towards
Greece is a fact and it will go on in the future. The Greek position is
justified, responsible and open to a dialogue.".
This is one single statement never heard from American officials investing
in the op-****tunistic Atlanticism of Slav Macedonian government. Actually
the State Depart-ment has invested a lot in a continuous, outdated act of
cannibalizing history and has overlaid NATO´s commitment to the defence of
one of its members.
American policy in the issue has been dominated by inflexibility. Ever
since
1996 there was hard evidence that the US undermined the name issue and
Greek
security and dealt with it as if it were a "name game". A. Mallias, Head
of
the first Mission in FYROM in the mid-1990s, was one of the first
diplomats
who sensed US determina-tion to proceed with recognition of FYROM with its
constitutional name. In mid-June 1996 he was the one who alerted the then
Greek Foreign Minister on US non-facilitating policy [1]. Evidently
current
American policy is not just a tem****ary de-viation from alliance
commitments, a fact that clearly sets a number of priorities for the next
American president.
The last time an American leader felt apologetic for America´s policy
vis-à-vis Greece was B. Clinton. While visiting Athens he expressed his
apologies for the US not standing by the Greek side and the democratic
forces crashed under the military might of a handful of low-rank military
officers. We should have been more careful with our Greek allies.we should
have done more to prevent the expression of the military coup in Greece in
1967.we focused exclusively on the Soviet Union and forgot our obligations
to our ally, B. Clinton said. It takes a charismatic leader to
ac-knowledge
mistakes of the past and Bill Clinton was one of those.
That was probably the first and last moral sup****t Greece got from an ally
that has de jure served ever since 1952. Still too many in Greece think
that
this is not enough. N. Sarkozy made this feeling more acute and exposed
American inability to accommo-date the institutionally-derived
expectations
and security considerations of an allied country.
Nicolas Sarkozy was more than explicit in setting the framework that
should
deter-mine relations between allies. "The Greek people can count on us and
we can count on them", he said. It is sad enough that very few people in
Greece could ever picture an American official saying the same thing
today.
Nikolas Sarkozy gave alliances a raison d´ être and a meaning something
urgently expected form the next American administration.
1] See Greek weekly Ependitis, 15-16/6/1996, p. 18.
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/64225
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