Greece and America became inseparably connected, beginning in 1947, when President Truman declared “The Truman Doctrine” as the means of thwarting Soviet expansion in the direction of Greece and Turkey.
In the ensuing decades, Athens and Washington developed a multifaceted security and economic relationship which continues to thrive despite occasional (and unavoidable), often serious, glitches. It was, in fact, the late conservative Constantine Karamanlis, one of the longest serving Greek PMs, who famously announced in 1976 that “We [Greece] belong in the West,” a statement that gave Greece’s left-communist (and later socialist) wing endless conniptions.
Ever since his electoral victory in 2019, Kyriakos Mitsotakis cut a steady course of cementing the US-Greece connection—under the constant heckling, and denigrating, cacophony emanating from all parties in opposition.
Mitsotakis (correctly) sees a working mutual relationship with Washington as the only longer-term defense
of Greek interests in the Aegean, and the Eastern Med, against a steadily radicalized Islamist Turkey seeking to destabilize the whole region and, given the opportunity, amputate Greek sovereignty in the Aegean Sea by force of arms.
This course of action is all the more recommended in the face of an ever oscillating and indecisive European Union, busy with issuing empty admonitions directed at Islamist radicalized Turkey, who keeps thumbing her nose at the Brussels-EU conclavium and continuing with her wrecker’s ball regional aggressions.
Mitsotakis’s consistently pro-US posture finally attracted a tangible, and highly symbolic, gesture from the Biden administration: Kyriakos became the first ever Greek prime minister to be invited to address a joint session of the United States Congress on May 17. Mitsotakis, his wife and two daughters, attended a welcome event at the White House, during which Ole Biden, who’s traditionally connected to the Greek-American lobby, sported a Hellenic colors-necktie and reminded all he humorously uses the Greek-sounding surname “Bidenopolous” to connect with his voters of Greek descent in his home state of Delaware.
Earlier, Mitsotakis formally met with Biden in the Oval Office. And on May 16, the PM was at Georgetown University for a public discussion on Greek-American relations.
Overall, the Mitsotakis visit was organizationally and materially of unexpected success.
One of the main reasons for this outcome is Kyriakos’s “leadership” presence, his poise and somber business dress, his faultless use of (American) English, and his personal ease in “connecting” with both high and low.
Although often ridiculed in Greece for his facial expressions, and suspected anisophoria, Kyriakos is presently the most “salable” face of Greece abroad after a long succession of average to pathetic Greek PMs struggling to cut an “international” poise (such previous prominent examples: the functionally illiterate neo-communist Alexis Tsipras, and the monotonous, and dreadfully bland and unaspiring socialist, Kostas Simitis).
Mitsotakis’s roughly 44-minute-long address to the joint session of Congress was a welcome (and often surprising) success, with his listeners giving him, at the least, a dozen-plus standing ovations. Following the address, Kyriakos further boosted his PR presence by exchanging handshakes with well wishers, and, in the case of Greek American members, a traditional Greek kiss.
In covering the Mitsotakis US visit, Greek media came up with the usual drivel emerging from political affiliations—and with all opposition parties declaring the visit an abject failure that re-confirmed Greece’s “subjection” to US whims that can be disastrous as Tsar Vladimir’s attack on Ukraine shows signs of turning into an “endless war.”