While Greece crisis is getting worse for its people and their everyday lives, it seems that another geopolitical concern comes to play.
Greece as the south-east edge of Europe, used to work as a stabilization factor since it was the one that was balancing Turkey's ambition at Balkan Peninsula, by being a preventive force. At the same time since late 1980s, it was the country that was supporting many economies in region by letting immigrants (many times by illegal trespassing) come in and work in non-registered labor force. Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, FYROM were receiving substantial amounts of money out of Greek payrolls to immigrants working in all manual labor jobs.
In addition to this, Greek investments by many enterprises and even banks, helped those economies to grow and build a network of dependency on Greek funds which now do not exist. These funds reached even at Azerbaijan where SOCAR moved to buy state Gas Company, in order to get a foot in EU and the energy pie.
Greece is also part of many treaties and agreements on security and defense besides NATO. The recent ones signed with Egypt and Israel, were considered as very important as they create a "defensive arch" against ISIS and their aggressive ambition. Need to underline here that since those agreements were applied, there is less arm trafficking and smuggling through Greek borders to regions occupied by Islamists. Only recently 16 army armored vehicles were impounded while they were sent to Libya which is mostly under Islamist occupation.
Greece is also a country that holds the entrance of Black Sea since Aegean is the only sea route to get to Mediterranean and Middle East oil. The vast number of islands present create a multipoint network of navy monitoring routes and give the possibility of building a multi-based navy force with strong features, like speed and fire power combined by land, sea and air, against anyone who tries to break this barrier from the East, North or South.
But besides the economic and strategic position of the country based on the geographic location it exists, there is also another point of significance. Greece is the closest European harbor for Asia and Middle East, where as logistics point of entry can someone move cargo by sea, air and railways/roads. COSCO, a company of Chinese interest is already co-owner of Piraeus port (greatest in country) while they are claiming that they are going to bid on State Railway company and they are already showing interest on the greatest airport of the country , E. Venizelos.
HP(Hewlett Packard) is also a multinational company that decided to invest at Greece and is already gaining profit as their logistics expenses were brought down by 45% ( !!! ) according to their public statement.
All these are facts that is easy for anyone to cross-verify on the internet and other sources. What is not easy to comprehend is the following repercussions that will follow a possible fall of Greece from within.
According to most European officers like Jean Claude Junker, GREXIT is no longer something "on the table" and Greece will be continuing its reforms within European Union. Well this is very far from the truth. Most of these European officials, who proved to be very incompetent, on what they are doing to prevent this problem reaching to this critical point, neglect one thing.
Greece as all countries, can only exist, when its people are able to live and have something to hope for. At this point most Greeks are in deep depression, they are angry with both, their leaders and European Union, as they feel that they were fooled (not to blame them) and they can be the destroying factor that might change everything.
A country like Greece in a political and social turmoil, is not something easy to handle. Previous mentioned characteristics of geopolitical and geostrategic nature of the country, is something to be taken very seriously. Losing the ability to control and stabilizing the area while giving room to Islamic aggression to come closer to EU frontiers, is a very very dangerous prospective.
Greek people, if pushed to desperation with a very strict and "no future" memorandum as this one, might seem good on paper and numbers, but truth be told will be pushing them to equally desperate reactions causing tremors to the whole European and Western structure.
A pretty clear sign of that, was the latest referendum with a strong 60% plus showing negativity against European will, to press even harder. It might have been dealt with now, but this is like fire. You think you have put it out, but it still burns underground and only need some "fuel" to come back up and then it wont be stopped.
Europe is also suffered a great hit. Most of European citizens seen that there is nothing left from the original declaration that was talking about an EU for its people. It is rather an EU for its banks and euro. If someone strays out of this framework, then he will have to deal the same situation that Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, Ireland face for a long time now. This is not attractive and already many possible candidates are backing up on their applications.
This needs to change if they do not want see this Union rumbling down with a huge noise. Policy of austerity, applied by Berlin in seeking to apply a new form of Charlemagne's peace by using economy, is not receiving positive approval and soon it will push Germany, for the third time in 100 years against the whole of West. It is no secret that already USA and many other EU countries are highly displeased with the way things are going.
Coming back to the Greek issue, it seems that this is where there is a critical juncture point caused by the many errors made by both sides that lead things to a dead end. Greece may seem to be out of danger but this is far from truth as the new memorandum is not providing a possible solution to the Greek people to come back and stabilize their economy. This will cause serious ripples at region's Geopolitical status quo. Europe then as a union will have a serious problem to solve. If Greece can't overcome the problem with the help of the 3rd memorandum, then pretty soon other countries will follow and they will be much larger economies.
Europe will also have to deal with Balkan Peninsula economic aftermath of a Greek crisis fall out (already in place due to imposed capital controls measure) and last but most important, the front line of control and defense against enemies of the East ( ISIS ) will be lost and of course Turkey will use all of its gained power with no preventive force to hold it back. Force that will be used to pressure Europe on many things.
Europe and Greece have a very important issue on their hands. Do they work together with clear intentions and no cards under the table , to help Greek state and people to recover by making all these reforms to achieve a certain vision/goal and not just repaying loans… or do they continue as they did in the past and lead all things to a possible havoc state where all parties lose?
Alexandros Niklan
Sr. Security Consultant
IISCA Sec group
Πηγή: geopolitics.com.gr
