Hellenic Foundation for Defense and Foreign Policy, Year Book 1988 (review)

Reviews 137 filótimo does do this. Perhaps in offering these stories, Hirschon raises an empirical question: are the self-assertive behaviors in fact valued positively, as we have long supposed and as filótimo would suggest? Or are they valued negatively, as the stories would suggest? The question thus raised, we might discover, on closer examination, that when Greeks behave agonistically they think "the Fall," and, as Clifford Geertz has said in reference to the cockfight in Bali, so behaving and so thinking, they enact for one another what it is they most want not to be. Frederick Gearing State University of New York, Buffalo Hellenic Foundation for Defense and Foreign Policy, Year Book 1988. Edited by Theodore Couloumbis and Thanos Veremis. Athens. 1989. Pp. 237. One of the more welcome developments in Greek scholarly endeavors in recent years is the creation of several new research institutes devoted to the study of issues of national and international importance. Of these, perhaps best known in the United States is the Hellenic Foundation for Defense and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) whose director , Thanos Veremis of the University of Athens, is one of Greece's leading political historians. The foundation's first Year Book, which Veremis has coedited with Theodore A. Couloumbis, now Professor of International Relations at the University of Athens, and an authority on Greek foreign policy, is a collection of essays authored by "Greek scholars and practitioners who deal with matters of foreign policy, strategy, tactics, security and peaceful change." They mainly examine the dominant issues in Greek foreign and defense policies under Andreas Papandreou's PASOK government. As is to be expected, the volume's section on defense matters focuses on Greece's strategic importance and its contributions to the Atlantic alliance. In a brief and well-argued essay, Van Coufoudakis reviews the mission and value of NATO's southeastern flank for the alliance system as a whole and examines the tactical problems caused by the quarrels between Greece and Turkey. Fotis Kikiras attempts to refute the charge, often heard in the United States, that the European members do not shoulder enough of the alliance's costs. The operational role of Greece in the event of an East-West conflagration in 138 Reviews the eastern Mediterranean is examined by N. Lazarides, whose scenario envisages only conventional warfare and strict adherence to NATO planning. The troublesome issues faced by small states as they attempt to arm themselves without becoming dangerously dependent upon foreign suppliers are summarized by Athanassios Platias, who does not, however, apply his findings specifically to Greece. Claiming that NATO has tended to neglect its southern flank (but without considering why this may be the case), Yannis G. Valinakis maintains that recent international developments have in fact enhanced the strategic importance of the eastern Mediterranean and in particular the military value of Greece's mainland and islands. Covering some of the same ground but from a different perspective, Veremis portrays Papandreou's "New Defense Doctrine" as a necessary reorientation of the country's commitments to NATO in light of the fact that for the past fifteen years the threats to Greece's security have come from Turkey rather than from the Warsaw Pact. The section on foreign policy, much smaller than the first, contains an excellent article by D. C. Constas, who reviews the years 197486 and argues persuasively that in matters of external relations a broad national consensus, which cuts across the political spectrum, has come into being and has been articulated most successfully by PASOK. This conclusion, which is borne out by the results of the two elections in 1989, offers important insights into PASOK's popularity, which endured in the face of the severe economic woes and scandals at the top. Taking a broader view, Couloumbis compares the "style and substance" of Karamanlis and Papandreou's governing roles and concludes that despite ideological and personality differences both provided strong and effective leadership at critical moments. And in an essay which properly belongs elsewhere in this volume, C. P. Economides examines the relevant treaty texts concerning the status of the Aegean islands and concludes that Greece is on solid ground when it insists that it has...