[ALBSA-Info] Wall Street Journal Book Review

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The Wall Street Journal: Greece's Balkan Ghosts (M. Kaminski reviews "The Unholy Alliance" by T. Michas, 21-10-02)



Bookshelf:
Greece's Balkan Ghosts
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By Matthew Kaminski

The Wall Street Journal Europe via Dow Jones

UNHOLY ALLIANCE

By Takis Michas


The fortunes of Greece's tourism industry depend on cultivating a popular myth abroad of a latter-day Periclean Athens, the cradle of democracy and Western
civilization. European and American policymakers have discovered, often to their discomfort, that the Greeks themselves are far more consumed and shaped by
their recent history.

Modern Greece, entering its third century of existence, is a Balkan country by virtue of geography and heritage. This description riles many Greeks proud of their nation's place in the European Union and NATO. But lest we forget,
Greece was brought into the Western fold, particularly into the EU in 1981, to shore up a struggling state on the Continent's edge. The West's experience with
Greece --it is the EU's easternmost (with Finland), poorest and only eastern Orthodox member -- is of great interest to us as the EU gets ready to take in 10 new members and deepen ties with others beyond its eastern frontiers.

As Takis Michas relates in "Unholy Alliance," Greece hasn't fitted into the European mainstream comfortably. His study has, overtly, a narrower aim: Greece's relations with Serbia during the bloody dissolution of Yugoslavia.
Far from working together with its Western allies, Greece routinely obstructed NATO and EU initiatives, starting with the independence of Macedonia in 1991 to the Kosovo war in 1999. Its political and business class as well as the Greek
Orthodox Church collaborated with the Serbia of Slobodan Milosevic and the Bosnian Serbs under Radovan Karadzic.

Public opinion sympathized with the Serbs and turned a deaf ear to reports of Serb war crimes and ethnic cleansing against the Muslims and Catholics. In seeking to understand Greek behavior, Mr. Michas holds up a mirror to his
nation's collective psyche. He produces a polemic about Greece's tortuous path to modernization as much as an account of the time.

As history, Unholy Alliance fills a gap in the large body of work on the Balkan crises. Athens was an important side actor whose policies and motivations are well discussed here. Whether left or right, successive governments
during the 1990s thought they had found a kindred spirit in Mr. Milosevic. We get a few insights into Balkan-style diplomacy. Antonis Samaras, the foreign minister
in the early 1990s, evidently entertained Mr. Milosevic's grand schemes for dividing up Yugoslavia. In the fall of 1991, the Serb dictator suggested to the Greek chief diplomat he was even willing to carve up Macedonia to create a common Serb-Greek border. Mr. Samaras, who could have used his position to dissuade the Serbs from launching a series of disastrous wars, merely demurred. The Greek political establishment was too taken with leader of this "kindred
Orthodox" state to notice his deadly designs.

The hard-line toward Macedonia over the use of its name and the courting of Serbia dates back to the government of Constantine Mitsotakis. But the man who most shaped Greece in these days was still Andreas Papandreou, who ruled
throughout the 1980s and returned to power as prime minister in 1993. As with Mr. Milosevic, he was a Socialist who whipped up a new sort of nationalism after the end of the Cold War. Looking back, it is a wonder the Balkan wars
didn't spread beyond the territory of the former Yugoslavia.

Not thanks to Greece. Mr. Papandreou helped Serbia bypass the U.N.-imposed trade embargo, feeding the Milosevic war machine. Mr. Michas says the Greeks supplied oil and guns, and its banks were safe homes for Belgrade's cash,
"with the knowledge -- if not the approval -- of the Greek government." Others have uncovered stronger evidence of business collusion with Milosevic's Serbia
than is presented here.

Mr. Michas gets a few scoops of his own. We learn about the Greek paramilitaries who fought alongside the Bosnian Serbs. When Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic took Srebrenica and massacred 7,000 Muslim men, the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II, a Greek flag went up over the fallen
city. The government knew but did nothing. Other interesting tidbits include the lengths the Greek Orthodox Church went to host Mr. Karadzic during his visits and to stop any domestic protests.

It turns out, as well, Greece routinely denied visas to members of the Serbian democratic opposition which today rules that country. And of course during NATO's 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia -- military action that Greece signed up
to in Brussels -- 95% of Greeks opposed the bombing and easily dismissed reports of atrocities against Kosovar Albanians. Greece sympathized not only with Serbia,but "with Serbia's darkest side."

Why? Mr. Michas, a journalistic heretic within Greece and contributor to these pages, says "the events of the last decade have demonstrated the weakness of Greek society, its vulnerability to the sirens of intolerance and willingness to fall under. . . the `spell' of ethno-nationalism." Greek
leaders openly questioned that the collapse of Yugoslavia could yield peaceful, multiethnic successor states, implicitly saying that ethnic cleansing was not only
inevitable but good. A mixed Bosnia or Kosovo would undermine Greece's own founding myth as an ethnically pure Greek nation descended directly from Pericles.

If Greece is to become a truly modern European state, it must have the confidence to face up to a different reality: like its neighbors who were also carved out of the Ottoman Empire, Greece is home to large minorities, among
them an estimated 200,000 Slavs whose existence Athens denies to this day. While Brussels never says so, Turkey isn't the only country which needs to treat its ethnic minorities better.

Greece's insecurity over northern frontiers, created only in the early 1990s,and self-denial of its own multi-ethnic character dates back to the Greek civil war of 1945-48 when many Slavs sided with the Communists. The failure to
burythose ghosts shaped Greek foreign policy in the 1990s, and helps explain the misguided approach toward Belgrade. Mr. Papandreou promoted the idea that Greece was under threat-from tiny Macedonia, from the U.S., from Turkey --
and spun conspiracy theories to justify his policies. It continues to this day. Two years ago, a court in Athens sentenced a Greek citizen to 15 months in jail for
promoting the language of the Vlachs, another small minority that lives alongside the Slavs in Greek Macedonia.

Mr. Michas makes an emotional case -- and a brave one for a Greek. For the general reader, the book could use more balance and political and historical context. He also chooses to ignore recent shifts in Greek foreign policy
initiated by George Papandreou, the son of Andreas, who has sought to improve ties with Turkey and play a more constructive role in the Balkans. Greece pushed for a NATO peacekeeping mission to Macedonia last year; it's the biggest investor in that country.

The name dispute, alas, remains unresolved. Greece joined the euro, an achievement that further ties it to the European mainstream. Earlier this year,Athens at last arrested leaders of the anti-Western November 17 terrorist
group. I think the Balkans can suffer from too much fatalism. There are real signs ofprogress, in Greece and elsewhere.

But let others write the straight history. Mr. Michas's impassioned and often obsessive account deserves to be taken seriously for exposing mistakes that must not be repeated.

---

Mr. Kaminski, an editorial page writer, reported on the Balkans for The
Journal in 1997-2001.

WJEviaNewsEDGE
:PAGE: A10
Copyright (c) 2002 Dow Jones and Company, Inc.
Received by NewsEDGE/LAN: 10/21/02 5:28 AM


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