Europe and Greece, revisited

By way of a counterbalance to my earlier blog link to Tim Judah’s argument that Greece isn’t really European (I’m simplifying a lot), here is a link to a Stratfor article that argues Greece cannot so easily be dumped by Europe. Robert Kaplan argues that:

1. Greece was allowed into the EU and the Euro as a political matter and nobody was under any illusions about its economic weakness; so it’s not really fair of “Europe” to just give up on it now; and
2. Greece remains geopolitically important; it narrowly avoided being sucked into Mordor (sorry, the Warsaw Pact) after the second world war by western intervention and remains vulnerable to Russian influence today; Russia is providing financial support to Cyprus and might do the same for a bankrupt ex-Euro Greece; the quid pro quo could be a Greek home for the Russian fleet, not something that NATO would welcome; and on top of that the Chinese have invested heavily in Piraeus (though I personally don’t think the PRC is likely to use Greece as a springboard for an invasion of Europe).

So there is a moral argument and a self-interested political one to help the Greeks, to avoid a bitter, angry Greece turning to the east.