Greece a Failed State

The present study of Greek history, between the year 1936 before World War II and present, is made to find reasons why Greece is a failed state. I conclude that modern Greece always has been and is an appendage to the interests of the great powers in the eastern Mediterranean. Greek politics is an adaptation of great power interests. Through their interest to check the Ottoman empire and their naval victory over the Turco-Egyptian fleet at Navarino, Britain, France and Russia established Greece in 1827 as a monarchy by imported king blood lines. More recently in the 20th century, through empire interests, Germany, the Soviet Union and the United States, have been the main contenders in Greek politics. For strategic reasons, foreign loans and military assistance have been provided, by default helping unproductive Greece become a developed nation based on foreign debt. As strategic reasons and interests have waned, foreign loans were called for payment and in the first part of this century Greece now finds itself heavily indebted and unable to pay its European creditors.
I further conclude that Greek politicians have failed the nation they purportedly serve. Responding to their foreign contenders, Greek governments representing its elites have always followed the commands of foreign interests leaving the broad Greek society subject to raw manipulation by the Greek state and its propaganda. Subject to orders received from their patrons, they have polarized Greek society early on into royalists-venizelists more recently morphed into conservatives-communists and democrats-socialists. But whatever alternating color government assumes, the system is rigged because elected leaders and elites are working for themselves and, except for obtaining votes, care less about their citizens. The glue that holds the Greek political system together is patronage.
Always insuring its survival and profits from foreign loans, the Greek state acts as a broker between its foreign patron(s) and Greek society. Opposition dissent is mitigated by carrot, heavy public employment and large pensions, and by stick, well compensated right leaning military and police backup. It seems unlikely that a failed state like Greece, with institutionalized patronage, public corruption and tax-evasion, can be remade into a decent one.
The Greek condition is aggravated by the fact the Society, which depends on the State for income, is unproductive and thus, absent foreign help, unable to sustain itself. A large percentage of the Greek population has in the past and continues to migrate to find employment. Today the Greek diaspora is about half the size of the Greek population.

Dettagli