As someone who has been traveling to Greece every few of years for four decades, I have often been asked by people in Washington to explain the politics of my ancestral homeland. They would see the country’s instability–a radical left government trying to overthrow the international financial order, or a neo-Nazi party winning seats in parliament–and ask: “What the heck is going on in Greece?”
Today the situation is remarkably different. That radical left government locked arms with the United States to expand Souda Bay and end the North Macedonia name controversy. And the center right government that followed has impressed Washington with its pro-growth economic policies and steadfast support of NATO in helping Ukraine.
Meanwhile, it is the United States that experienced a violent attempt to overthrow a national election and is entering the November midterms with candidates who still deny the validity of the 2020 results. So, the question I hear from my Greek friends is: “What the heck is going on in the United States?”
I’m not sure anyone can fully answer that question. The situation in America is as unprecedented as it is alarming. It is possible, however, to describe the political and policy landscape in Washington right now, how it might change given what opinion polls suggest are the most likely election outcomes, and what that might mean for the physical and financial security of Greece, Cyprus, and the Eastern Mediterranean.
While the threats to democracy and the rule of law in the United States are serious, they are also increasingly well understood by government officials, corporate and philanthropic leaders, and by a growing percentage of the voters. The most dangerous threats any country faces are those it doesn’t expect–like the attacks on 9/11 or, indeed, the 2016 election results, which even Donald Trump didn’t see coming. Everyone now expects future efforts to undermine elections. That’s why Congress is on the verge of passing legislation that will make it more difficult to manipulate the electoral process in the way Trump tried in the run up to January 6. And while the American democratic system remains vulnerable, it also contains redundancies and checks and balances that make it hard to fully subvert. To cite just one example: former president Trump recently lost a court battle over highly classified documents he illegally took from the White House because of a decision by a three-judge panel, two of whom he himself put on the bench.
Over the last 200 years, the party in power has almost always lost dozens of congressional seats in the midterm elections. Just a few months ago, opinion polls indicated that the 2022 midterms would follow that historic pattern, with Republicans easily winning back control of both houses of Congress this November.
But something happened this summer to change the dynamics: both parties delivered on their promises. The Democrats passed sweeping measures to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure, clean energy, and microchip manufacturing, while the price of gasoline dropped for three straight months. The Republicans also delivered, via a conservative Supreme Court, on their promise to take away the right of women to have an abortion. Turns out voters were impressed with the Democrat’s accomplishments and repulsed by the Republican’s. Today, opinion polls suggest Democrats will hold the Senate and have a 30 percent chance of retaining the House, too.
Of course, anything can happen in elections. But let’s presume, as the polls suggest, that Republicans take the House and Democrats hold the Senate. What might that mean for the biggest policy areas that affect Greece and the region?
One thing that won’t change is support for Greece and Cyprus in Congress. Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, Greece’s best friend in the Senate, will continue to chair the foreign affairs committee. Democratic Greek Americans in the House, like John Sarbanes and Dina Titus, will be in the minority, but Republican Greek Americans, like Gus Bilirakis and Nicole Malliotakis, will be in the majority.
Another thing that won’t change is support for a harder line against China. Neither party is returning to the days when the emerging Chinese market was seen as key to US prosperity and accommodating China’s economic and political demands was rationalized as leading to that country’s liberalization.
Support for the war in Ukraine will continue, too, but with caveats. Republicans will use control of the House to raise questions about U.S. aid to Ukraine, especially the disparity between that and European aid levels. But they are unlikely to have any serious impact on the administration’s Ukraine policy until a year from now, during budget season.
That means the Biden administration will have a relatively free hand to continue its strategy in Ukraine – – one that, while not without flaws, has proven more effective than almost anyone predicted. From early in the conflict, President Biden has articulated a clear understanding of the stakes. It a test not only of the relative powers of liberal democracy and nationalist authoritarianism, but of a core tenet the UN charter: the right of nations not to be invaded. If Vladimir Putin continues to lose in Ukraine, China will have more reason to doubt the wisdom of military action against Taiwan, and Turkey will be less likely to do something stupid in the Aegean.
For many decades Republicans, taking their cue from the Pentagon, were generally more willing to support Turkey than Democrats, for whom human rights weighed heavier. Today there is unprecedented frustration with and skepticism about Turkey at the highest levels of the military, in the writings of conservative defense intellectuals, and among GOP lawmakers. And Republicans as well as Democrats are increasingly aware of Greece’s relative stability, fidelity to NATO, and deepening relationships with the US and Israel.
All this is obviously positive for the security of Greece, Cyprus, and the region. But it also has promising implications in the economic realm, particularly in energy. Both political parties in the United States now strongly prefer to see Greece rather than Turkey become the interconnector for north African, Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean gas and electricity.
There are two ways the Biden administration can help make that a reality. First, diplomatically, by making its preference clear to Greece’s European allies and to large energy and investment firms. Fortunately for Greece, the diplomat at the center of America’s international energy policy, the new assistant secretary of state for energy, is the former US ambassador to Greece Geoffrey Pyatt.
The second way the administration can help is through the decisions it will make over the rules and deployment of $370 billion dollars in alternative energy investments it recently secured in the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, as well as related legislation likely to pass that would ease restrictions on the construction of energy infrastructure, like pipelines and liquefied natural gas facilities. The person in the White House who will be managing that portfolio is none other than John Podesta, a former senior official in the Clinton and Obama administrations and a Greek American who is keenly aware of the Eastern Mediterranean situation.
Another area of emerging thinking in the Biden administration that could have positive consequences for Greece is trade policy. In the 1990s and 2000s, the United States tried to negotiate broad trade agreements with Europe by breaking down regulatory barriers to advance the interests of large American corporations. Those efforts, like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, famously failed—Europe just wasn’t going to agree to buy American chlorinated chickens. The Trump administration abandoned that approach for a more nationalistic bludgeoning of Europe with tariffs—a strategy that pleased his base but similarly failed to advance trade or lead to any lasting agreements.
The Biden administration is trying a third approach: to negotiate with the EU agreements on discrete areas – such as carbon content, supply chains, antitrust, privacy, data security, technology transfer, and so on—while sidestepping the more contentious issues, like agriculture. It has already seen progress on this agenda in the resolution of the Boeing/Airbus trade dispute, the signing of a US/EU agreement on steel and aluminum, the creation of the U.S.-E.U. Trade and Technology Council, and the U.S.-OECD agreement on a minimum 15 percent tax on global corporations. The administration’s aim is not just economic, but geostrategic. It is to raise middle- and working-class wages on both sides of the Atlantic, the better to undercut domestic support for illiberal politics, and to create standards that challenge the economic predations of Russia and China.
In the future Washington is also likely to push for a Marshall Plan-like effort to rebuild Ukraine. Given Greece’s geographic location, its energy and transportation infrastructure, the relative sophistication of its financial institutions, and the fact that it has a substantial diaspora in Ukraine, I would be surprised if the United States doesn’t encourage Greece to play an outsized role in that rebuilding effort, just as President Clinton encouraged Greece to do in the Balkans when he spoke in Athens in 1999.
In these and other ways, the situation in Washington is one that can be advantageous for Greece–and also for Cyprus, as we’ve just seen with the lifting of the U.S. arms embargo on that country. No one can know what the political future of the United States will be. But for now, it has a president more committed to the transatlantic relationship than any since Clinton and maybe even Eisenhower. There are plenty of situations in the world now to be anxious about, but that is one to be grateful for.
Paul Glastris is editor in chief of the Washington Monthly magazine. A former White House speechwriter, Glastris wrote more than 200 speeches for President Bill Clinton, including the president’s landmark address to the Greek people in November of 1999. He was previously a correspondent in the Midwest and Europe for US News and World Report, where he covered the war in Bosnia and reported from Russia, Greece, Germany, Turkey, and India. This essay is adapted from remarks he delivered at an Economist Magazine event in Athens on September 26, 2022
