COSTAS KARAMANLIS: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE GREATEST STATESMAN SINCE PERICLES
By Tracy Dove, Ph.D, editor, The Russia News Service
U.S. Politics Today, DC
September 17, 2007
Despite searing heat and deadly forest fires, Greeks were able to
make it to the polls this weekend and return by a thin margin their
conservative Prime Minister, Costas Karamanlis, to office. If the
slim victory for Karamanlis was as sweet as Greek white wine, then
certainly the reform agenda he has set for his party will be the
hangover after the election.
Greece is trailing behind the Eurozone in many of the classic economic
indicators, and Karamanlis has returned with a weakened mandate and
a pocketful of pledges to rebuild the country both physically and
economically. The conservative Prime Minister won’t be alone in this
endeavor; he will be accompanied by a book which he himself penned
about the country’s greatest 20th century statesman- Eleftherios
Venizelos- and Karamanlis will need this inspiration in order to
drive through the reforms, which are part of his own megali idea,
and bring to the Greeks that prosperity and dignity which they feel
have eluded them with past leaders.
There is hardly enough praise that can be dropped at the dorrstep
of Eleftherios Venizelos; it is thanks to him that Greece did not
come away from World War I as an impoverished suburb of Bulgaria or
a medieval fiefdom of Ottoman Turkey. The setting for this story is
Paris, 1919, and the victorious allies of the Entente were busy carving
up the defeated empires of Europe, and Venizelos had arrived in high
fashion to make an argument for greater territory for Greece. Of the
world leaders that appeared before the Council of Four that Summer,
there is much praise recorded for Venizelos: "A magnificent type of
Greek" wrote American Frances Stevens, and described him as energetic,
persuasive, indefatigable- "deliciously indiscreet- a good old boy
and a really big man."
Venizelos was on a mission; he knew that the Council would determine
what to do with the bad guys- Turkey, Bulgaria, Germany, Austria and
Hungary- but he also knew that the re-carving of the European pie
could be just what Greece needed to recover its essential "Greekness"-
as Venizelos himself called it.
Venizelos was fortunate that Greece he had two of those evil empires
nipping at its borders. There were the Bulgarians, who were described
as complacent beyond the reaches of their tiny country, and the Turks,
who were just as anxious to start over without the Ottoman Sultan
as they were to annex back some of that Greek territory they lost in
the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. But it was Venizelos who had the ear of
the British and French delegations, which were charmed by his manners
and powerful presence at the negotiating table. It was recorded that
the Greek delegation arrived in Paris to reserve 3 whole floors of
the neighboring hotel, although their entourage was only 89 persons-
which was still more than was necessary for the talks. In this way,
Venizelos’ great ambitions for a Greater Greece were established well
in advance of his arrival, and although he left with less than he
had hoped for- it was far more than the allies were ready to give him.
The entire Greek negotiation approach was founded in the idea that
most of the Balkans and present day Turkey were actually populated
by Greeks. This was a fatuous claim at best, and Venizelos’ map of
Greece that he spread out on the table before the Council erroneously
included Albania, much of southern Bulgaria, and almost all of
Anatolia and Armenia. Over coffee with Lloyd George, Venizelos felt
the British Prime Minister out over the idea of making Constantinople
the capital of the new Greece, to which George- who was hopelessly
ignorant of European geography- gave an uncertain nod that he would
later regret. As a result of the Greeks and their ambitious maps,
heated argument and uncivilized name-calling ensued, while the head
of Italy’s delegation- Prime Minister Orlando- broke down again
into fits of sobbing at the potential loss of Albania. But the most
powerful opponent to Venizelos’ schemes was America’s Woodrow Wilson-
who saw the territorial designs as a slap in the face of the ideal
of self-determination.
Venizelos had been careful to throw around quotations taken from
the US President’s 14 Points, but it didn’t help him any. Wilson
was opposed to rendering any territory to Greece where there were no
Greeks currently living.
Venizelos wasn’t easily discouraged; he had naturally set his goals
preposterously high, and now it came down to hard bargaining for the
most important of territories to Greece: Thrace- both its eastern
and western parts. It is here that eventually the allies around the
negotiating table reluctantly sided with the powerful Greek. Lucky
for Venizelos, Wilson was at home and quickly tiring of convincing
the Americans to sign the League of Nations, and before he would die
of a stroke brought on by the haggling in many of America’s 48 states,
Wilson, too, conceded to most of the Greek demands and gave Venizelos
the victory he needed to bring back home to the nationalistic Greeks.
But Venizelos quickly became a victim of the Greek political scene,
which was not content with their Prime Minister’s signatures on the
Treaties of Neuilly and Sevres; in and out of office for several
periods, he finally settled in Paris- in a forced exile- and died
there in 1936. Today’s newly re-elected Karamanlis won’t suffer the
same humiliations as his hero, but then again, the stakes are not as
high as they were back in 1919.
There is a lot to be said for Greece as the birthplace of democracy-
and some of it isn’t good. Any observer of modern Greece will tell
you that the ancient democratic tradition wasn’t about discourse
and the civil exchange of ideas- it was about who could yell the
loudest. This anecdote is not unkind to the Greeks, who themselves
have had to rely on boisterous politicians, wealthy shipping magnates,
and countless big fat weddings to keep their country on the map.
Venizelos today is a hero in most parts of Greece, but as to whether
Karamanlis can follow in this statesman’s footsteps has yet to be seen.
Tracy Dove, editor of The Russia News Service, is a Professor of
History and the Department Chair of International Relations at the
University of New York in Prague.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
