In the Shadow of a Long and Glorious Past: Understanding Greek Foreign Policy

This essay presents the major factors that make up the framework in which Greek foreign policy operates and explores whether they have any connections to past centuries, especially to Antiquity. They include Greece’s consequential geographical location between East and West and the fact that the country has often found itself at the center of international developments and debates. It is argued that Greece’s relative weakness demands strong alliances, elicits compensatory actions, and often allows individual politicians to play an outsized role in diplomatic affairs. Finally, the salience of nationalism, the current return to a more active participation in the eastern Mediterranean, and the extraordinary resilience of the Hellenes complete an explanatory framework for Greek diplomacy with specific historic antecedents.