Continuing to deepen the strong Greece-US defense relations built during the first term of US President Donald Trump that continued under the presidency of Joe Biden are an important part of Greece’s strategy, National Defense Minister Nikos Dendias underlined in his address at the Delphi Forum in the American capital on Tuesday.
Dendias briefly described the excessively optimistic expectations by the West at the start of the 20th century, which were disproven, and underlined that a new order of things is forming that gives rise to new challenges and increases the tension of the old ones.
“We now realize that the world we believed would exist has nearly disappeared,” he said. “These challenges cannot be managed by single nations, nor even by a nation as powerful as the United States of America. We must, therefore accept a way of operating in our joint defense strategy, at least amongst us in the countries of the western world.”
Dendias used the example of Greece’s neighborhood in the East Mediterranean to underline the two different trends showing up on the global stage, noting that the US must choose which example of an alliance better serves its interests and the efforts it expends to stabilize the international system.
Without naming Turkiye, the defense minister described it as a country that does not feel it should observe International Law and the Law of the Sea, and is a member of NATO without imposing sanctions on Russia, maintaining its strong ties with it. This is not a temporary policy, he noted, but a political direction that progresses.
He then gave the opposite example, of Greece as a country that supports International Law and the Law of the Sea, is committed to democratic values, and is a European Union member that stands by Ukraine and its rights to defend its territory. It has resolved its differences with all regional players on the basis of International Law, and has updated its Armed Forces on the basis of defense, not aggression. “These are the two different models, and it is up to the USA to decide what it wants to choose,” he underlined.
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Source: ANA-MPA
