10 Points
Prologue
Amid all that “hits” us, Turkey’s leadership resurfaced with a veto threat to block Finland and Sweden’s NATO accession, leveraging it to seek concessions; the veto was later lifted after a trilateral understanding, but only after it had served as pressure. Reuters+1 The aim is to alter power balances shaped by Greece’s recent rearmament. I take no joy in rearmament; yet the question stands: why the push for regional pre-eminence over Greece? The pattern includes escalatory rhetoric and moves in the Aegean recorded in 2022. Reuters+1
This is not a nationalist brief. I remain critical of capitalism, Western capitalism, and NATO. What concerns me is the tolerance—within parts of the Greek and global Left—toward non-Western expansionist authoritarianism. Anti-imperialism should be universal and concrete, not reflexive and one-sided.
Point (1)
Greece’s transfer of legacy Soviet-type vehicles to Ukraine was portrayed by some as “turning the country into a Western outpost.” In practice this operated as a ringtausch: Germany provides Marder IFVs to Greece so Athens can pass on Soviet-pattern equipment to Kyiv. Reuters The real question: what counts as a coherent Left foreign policy for a small-to-medium state under immediate pressure from a revisionist neighbour? Inherited distrust of the “bourgeois army” and “militarism” is insufficient when the threat is proximate and material.
Point (2)
Beyond interests, there is ideological inertia—a neutrality self-presented as internationalism that struggles to distinguish the immediate aggressor from the general horizon of anti-imperialist critique. One can recall the UK debates in early 2022 (Stop the War statements and Labour’s response). The Guardian+1
Point (3)
“High theory” does not guarantee historical precision. When it abstracts the conjuncture through levelling analogies—skipping the antifascist break of the 20th century and today’s material specificities—the effect is equalisation, not illumination. (For context, see how contemporary philosophical interventions frame the global scene.) autonomies.org+1
Point (4)
Calls for “unity” that ignore real division—promising a future synthesis—do not deliver unity; they preface a new division that briefly masquerades as one.
Point (5)
States on the edges of poles often “play” all options. Were Greece to suffer heavy defeat/territorial loss, a broad anti-Western convergence—from religious right to radical left—would be plausible; the tacit social contract with the West could rupture.
Point (6)
Exiting one hegemonic pole need not mean entering another. The normative choice is an autonomous strategy of labour and its allies, without indirect alignments with the “enemy of the immediate enemy.”
Point (7)
“Levelling” all imperialisms favours the one acting aggressively now. Conjunctural prioritisation of the immediate threat does not cancel universal critique; it operationalises it.
Point (8)
Paraphrasing Engels: the world is determined not by unity but by materiality. Imperialism is unity-as-multiplicity—no single substance with superficial variations, but material forms constituting its essence.
Point (9)
Revolutionary aims do not presuppose an already unified world; they work to unify a world divided by historical classes and inequalities.
Point (10)
Authoritarianism, mass violence and imperial projects exist “in the East” as well, often sanctified by anti-colonial rhetoric. The present resembles less a neutral “multipolarity” than an emergent bipolarity: a relatively mature Western pole confronting a rising Eastern one; in between, frontier frictions are visible (e.g., Aegean overflights/disputes in 2022). Turkish Minute+1
Ioannis Tzanakos
