On February 28, the United States and Israel launched military strikes on Iran because of the parties’ fears that Iran possesses nuclear weapons that would threaten America’s allies and US national security. Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter prohibits the threat or use of force against other states. Such actions contradict the principle of respect for the sovereignty of states and non-interference in their
internal affairs. Clearly, the UN Charter disallows aggression.

This article highlights the effectiveness of China’s diplomatic efforts to de-escalate in order to preserve regional peace and
security. In this context, it is necessary to examine the effectiveness of achieving the goals of this diplomacy, which is a set of initiatives aimed at achieving sustainable peace and development for all without exception on the basis of living and common destiny. It is effectively linked to compliance with international law, the UN Charter and resolutions of international legitimacy within the framework of consensus.

The success of China’s diplomatic efforts and objectives in the Middle East region depends on the extent to which the regional actors cooperate with those efforts. In this context, the commitment to the effectiveness and governance of the international system in accordance with international law and the UN Charter is the compass of this dialogue.

In particular, the objectives of Chinese diplomacy are clearly defined and the directions are closely and firmly linked to what is stated by the law and international consensus, it emphasizes the need for dialogue and consultation to resolve any dispute by peaceful means; the rejection of the use of force in order to enhance influence, control or support allies at the expense of other parties.

On the other hand, the absence of a diplomatic solution and the failure of the current Chinese
diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the situation will be a prelude to the collapse of the entire international
system. In such a case, the Law of the Jungle will prevail, and then the region will witness more wars and conflicts that portend a total war whose end would be unpredictable.

The reason for this is that America and Israel are seeking to form allies in more than one place in order to provide support in various ways. If this happens, the future scenarios for the effectiveness of international relations will be ambiguous, then the prospects and
the future role of the UN Security Council as mandated by the UN Charter to protect the sovereignty of states, the security of citizens and their national gains will end up in sustainable deficit.

In this context, I firmly believe that the US, Israel and their Western allies have become firmly convinced of the need to build alliances, reshaping the region in line with their interests. For them this is an opportunity to reshape the international system in accordance with theirwishes, and to evade international legal obligations regarding the resolution of outstanding issues regionally and internationally, foremost of which is the resolution of the Palestinian issue.

Therefore, today’s situation requires active and balanced States. The Middle East region needs to cooperate seriously and responsibly with the efforts of Chinese diplomacy in order to achieve its goals, Namely, to stop the war and protect the security and sovereignty of states and the lives of citizens and their national gains, far from any bets on the American or Israeli side and their Western allies. Especially as the latter aim at more destruction in this region and the failure of sustainable development plans, and the aggravation of internal conflicts in order to hit the sovereignty and security of states, and also to control citizens, plunder their goods and destroy their national gains, thereby achieving their central goals by further embodying colonialism and strengthening control and influence in the expansion of one state at the expense of other peoples and states.

China alone cannot offer a magic solution to address the current Middle East destruction and bloodshed. China’s diplomacy stems from a culture of tolerance and coexistence and rejection of aggression or interference in the affairs of others. It is aimed at cooperation to
reach common good. Beijing offers initiatives and ideas that fit into the international system and the spirit of the UN Charter, based on equal rights for all member states.

The success of well-meaning Chinese endeavors means good and victory for all, stopping wars, protecting people’s lives and property, respecting the sovereignty and security of states, and achieving sustainable peace and development for all without exception on the basis of mutual respect.

Το ημερολόγιο έδειχνε Πέντε του Δεκέμβρη, το έτος 2024, εσπερινός του Αγίου Νικολάου στον ομώνυμο ναό στον Λυκαβηττό. Πώς περνά ο καιρός, πάει ένας ολόκληρος χρόνος … Συνάμα με τες ευχές μου για την ονομαστική του εορτή ενεχειρώ  στο Νίκο της διαρκούσης Προεδρίας ένα προσωπικό εμπιστευτικό υπόμνημα. Περί εξωτερικής πολιτικής. Αναφέρομαι σε ανέξοδους τρόπους ενίσχυσης του διεθνούς κύρους της κολοβής μας δημοκρατίας κτίζοντας σε διεθνείς πρωτοβουλίες της ανένταχτης – κομματικώς ομιλούντες – ταπεινότητας μου. Ένα κράτος κολοβό, όχι μόνο λόγω Τουρκικής κατοχής στον βορρά και Βρετανικής επικυριαρχίας στο νότο αλλά επιπροσθέτως από την αβελτηρία των ταγών αυτής. Ο Νίκος μού χαμογελά και ευχαριστεί.

Μια κουτσουλιά τόπος είμαστε. Πέντε μέρες αργότερα τον συναντώ εκ νέου στην διχοτομημένη πρωτεύουσα. Εκδήλωση διεθνούς κοινωνικού χαρακτήρα. Έχοντας γνώση της προτίμησης του στην αμεσότητα του ενικού και της πολύχρονης μας, αν και άκαρπης γνωριμίας – σίγουρα όχι λόγω δικής μου υπαιτιότητάς – χαιρετώ, ερωτώντας τον: «Νίκο τι θα πράξεις; Τα όσα σού προτείνω είναι προς δικό σου συμφέρον και του διεθνούς μας κύρους πάνω από όλα». Με ύφος απόλυτης σιγουριάς και εμπιστοσύνης μού απαντά κοφτά:

«Είπα του Κόμπου να σε δει…»

Επιτρέψτε μου να συνεχίσω την αφήγηση σε ύφος λαϊκό, κατ’ εικόνα και ομοίωση του Προεδρικού ύφους. Ο Κόμπος με … γκαστρώνει για ένα … εννιάμηνο. Η κύηση οδηγεί τελικά την συνάντηση μας στις 19 του Αυγούστου στο Υπουργείο. Παρατώ την επιστημοσύνη και την συγγραφή στη Βρετανική Βιβλιοθήκη (Λονδίνο, εννοείται) για χάρη της. Καταφθάνω στον ατημέλητο κήπο του κτιρίου του Υπουργείου. Ανεβαίνω με βάση το πρωτόκολλο στο γραφείο Υπουργού με συνοδεία νεαρού διπλωμάτη.

Το αποτέλεσμα της πολυπόθητης συνάντησης; Σκέτο … ανεμογκάστρι!

Πέραν της γλαφυρότητας και της χαριτολογημένης αφήγησης, η ουσία είναι πραγματικά δύσπεπτη. Ο Κόμπος φτάνει στο χτένι. Δεν θα ήταν δυνατό να κρατώ μέσα μου αυτόν τον Κόμπο … για χρόνια. Για να έχω ήσυχη την συνείδηση μου απέναντι στους ενενηντάχρονους γονείς, που με ανάθρεψαν με ιδανικά και αξίες, με σεβασμό στην πολυετή πορεία μου στα διεθνή ιδρύματα, κρίνω ότι οφείλω να εκθέσω σοβαρότατα ατοπήματα στην άσκηση εξωτερικής πολιτικής. Εξηγούμαι:

Βιέννη, Δεκέμβρης 2024. Οργανισμός για την Ασφάλεια και Συνεργασία στην Ευρώπη – ΟΑΣΕ.  Σύνοδος ΥΠΕΞ των συμμετεχόντων κρατών. Θέμα: Εκλογή νέου Γενικού Γραμματέα του Οργανισμού. Βαρύτατη η ευθύνη του Κωνσταντίνου Κόμπου: συναίνεσε αμαχητί στην εκλογή του Τούρκου βετεράνου διπλωμάτη Σινιρλίογλου στην κορυφή της ηγετικής πυραμίδας του μοναδικού πολυμερούς Ευρασιατικού Οργανισμού Ασφάλειας. Είναι η πρώτη φορά που εκλέγεται Τούρκος στην ηγεσία ΟΑΣΕ για τριετή θητεία. Με την σύμφωνο γνώμη του Κόμπου. Ο καθένας μπορεί να ανατρέξει στο διαδίκτυο και να μάθει ποιος είναι ο Feridun Sinirlioglu …

Χωρίς κανένα απολύτως αντάλλαγμα! Εκλογή του Τούρκου Εν Λευκώ!

Σε μια απέλπιδα προσπάθεια μου να λύσω τον επί χρόνια Άλυτο … Κόμπο υπέδειξα ότι είμαι εγκεκριμένος διαμεσολαβητής ΟΑΣΕ εδώ και μια δεκαετία, αποφοιτήσας της Διπλωματικής του Ακαδημίας προ εικοσαετίας (2003). Μολαταύτα ουδέποτε κλήθηκα σε αποστολή του Οργανισμού. Το γεγονός αυτό και μόνο οφείλεται στην ανεπάρκεια και αναποτελεσματικότητα του Υπουργείου των Εξω … φρενικών. Πού είναι το Γραφείο Προώθησης των Κυπρίων Ειδημόνων για Πρόσληψη στους Διεθνείς Οργανισμούς; Άλυτος Κόμπος! Πόσο μακριά θα φτάσεις με τους έξι άξονες της εξωτερικής πολιτικής; Και δεκάξι να ΄χεις αν δεν έχεις τους ανθρώπους σου στους διεθνείς οργανισμούς, πως θα ασκήσεις επιρροή; Εκατό τριάντα δύο εκατομμύρια ευρώ σού εγκρίνει η Βουλή για το Υπουργείο ετησίως, δεν μπορείς να διαθέσεις δύο, να παλέψεις τον διορισμό Κυπρίων προσοντούχων;

Αλλά είπαμε, χρόνια τώρα, συσκέψεις και συναντήσεις και ανεμογκάστρι! Υπέβαλα στο νεαρότερο Κωνσταντίνο Κόμπο ότι όφειλε στα πλαίσια της υπηρεσίας του προς αυτό το ημι-κατεχόμενο από την Τουρκία κράτος, να εξαργυρώσει τουλάχιστον την συναίνεση του στην εκλογή Σινιρλίογλου, με απτό αντάλλαγμα: την τοποθέτηση μου σε σημαίνουσα – τη βάσει προσόντων και αποφοίτησης της Διπλωματικής Ακαδημίας Βιέννης – θέση στη Γραμματεία ΟΑΣΕ, σφήνα στον Τούρκο διπλωμάτη. Εφόσον η συναίνεση του ήτο μονόδρομος, όπως διατεινόταν. Αυτό επέβαλλε η εξυπηρέτηση των Κυπριακών συμφερόντων. Αντ’ αυτού επέλεξε το μηδενικό για την Κύπρο αποτέλεσμα αφού η Άγκυρα μπλόκαρε την υποψηφιότητα του για την προεδρία του 2026 … Εύγε Άλυτε Κόμπε!

Είκοσι δύο χρόνια στην  αίθουσα αναμονής για μια θέση στον ΟΑΣΕ, κτίζω διεθνείς διασυνδέσεις για την Κύπρο μας  με έξοδα από την τσέπη μου. Σε διηπειρωτικές διαδρομές που με βρίσκουν από το Τόκιο μέχρι το Μπουένος Άιρες. Σε πέραν των εξήντα χωρών …

Ουδέν έπραξεν ο Κόμπος! Θέτοντας το σε πρώην υπουργό, μού  υπέδειξε με νόημα: Ουδείς πράττει ουδέν!

Although I am not a Jew, I share the view of many thinking Jews that Zionism is essentially a warped ideology. Perhaps, and to their credit, some of the most powerful and persuasive arguments against the activities of the Israel lobby and Zionism have come from Jews. Some Jews cannot ‘stomach Zionism’. For those whose motives are purely spiritual, the Jewish state is at best an irritant, at worst a blasphemy, according to The Atlas of the Jewish World, published by Time Life Books in 1995. One of the most critical books about the excesses of Zionist fanatics against innocent Palestinians was written by an Israeli academic, Ilan Pappe. It details in precise terms the plan to expel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their lands, even before the war of 1948, including how and when particular murders of civilians were planned to achieve maximum effect.

Were it not for one of my grandfathers, extreme Zionists would have killed my mother, and I would not be here writing this. Why? Well, between 1947 and 1949 my mother was interpreting for the United Nations in Rhodes (her birthplace), where various meetings were taking place to solve the Arab-Palestine-Israel problem. She even beat Moshe Dayan at table tennis. Her friend Ralph Bunch (Count Bernadotte’s chief aide) asked her to accompany Count Bernadotte to Palestine, where the two- state solution was being promoted. Luckily, her father did not allow her to go: thank God, since my mother escaped the murder of the count and his driver by those of Netanyahu’s ilk, insane Zionist fanatics.

Had the fanatic killers not succeeded, there would likely have been a two-state solution. When this possibility again became serious in the early 1990s, with the Oslo Accords, the fanatics again stepped in, murdering their chief architect, Israeli Prime Minister Rabin.

Since then, the fanatics have held sway: in September 2000, not long before he was elected Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (previously Scheinerman), visited Temple Mount, thus igniting the second intifada. Since then, every few years, thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed, as well as a handful of Israeli ones.

One could argue that the root cause of all this horror began when Cain killed Abel. More recently and realistically, we can blame Herzl’s Zionist fanaticism, Britain (the Balfour Declaration and taking French leave of Palestine in 1948), and Bernadotte’s and Rabin’s murders. As for the latest round of slaughter, it is obvious that the trouble began when the Jewish state began the illegal eviction of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem.

Who won? Israel, because it killed many more children than Palestinian rockets did – only two Israeli children were killed. This is the evil logic behind the continuing theft of Palestinian land. As for the USA, the Zionist fanatics will not allow Washington to be an honest broker. Quite the opposite: Trump and his Christian Zionist friends have seen to that, by illegally recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state, even recognizing the Golan Heights as legitimate Israeli territory. Let us look a little more closely at what lies behind this.

The most recent critique of the Zionist lobby was written by respected academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in 2006, causing a furious reaction among extremist Zionists. The article’s main argument was that the power of the Israeli lobby had led to one-sided US support for Israel, which was inconsistent with its own interests and those of other states in the region. The US had become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the occupied territories, ‘making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians’; the article highlighted US hypocrisy in this complicity, given that it presses other states to respect human rights, and that it condones Israel’s nuclear arsenal, while insisting that Iran and others must not have a nuclear capability. Perhaps the most recent example of US connivance in unacceptable Israeli behaviour towards the Palestinians was the US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton’s, comment that the building of settlements for Jews on occupied Palestinian territory was ‘unhelpful’, when it is in fact downright illegal, indeed criminal in terms of international law. In terms of euphemistic language, it reminds one of the phrase ‘collateral damage’ for killing civilians, or ‘awkward murder’ and ‘naughty rape.’ The extremist land-grabbers in Israel know that they can count on US support.

The influence of the Israeli lobby has indeed contributed to the US devoting one sixth of its foreign aid budget to the sixteenth wealthiest nation on earth. In addition to this, Israel receives 1.8 billion dollars a year in military aid. Clearly, the term ‘aid’ is in this context a euphemism for massive political, economic and military support. There is ‘little doubt that Israel and the lobby were key factors in the decision to go to war’, wrote Mearsheimer and Walt, who continue by demonstrating the power of the Israel lobby in pushing the US into attacking Iran, all with the full support of the ‘neo-conservatives’, as those Christian Zionists are also labelled. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) plays the leading coordinating role among the plethora of Jewish organizations in the US, and is a ‘de facto agent’ for Israel, with a ‘stranglehold on Congress’.  Although the Israeli embassy in Washington takes great pains to claim that it has no official policy-making contacts with the Israel lobby, the authors make clear that American Jewish leaders often consult Israeli officials, to ensure that their actions advance Israeli goals. Those critical of Israel keep silent, however, because they fear that the lobby will damage their careers. If there were no AIPAC, Americans would have a more critical view of Israel, and US policy in the Middle East would be different.

Zionist organizations in the United States have always been powerful, and the phenomenon of the disproportionate influence they wield has been suspected, but rarely enunciated fully, for a long time. Many who wish to criticize the less positive side tend not to do so, for fear of being labelled ‘anti-Semitic’, in itself an odd idea, since the Semitic peoples include Arabs, among others, leading to suggestions that the term ‘anti-Semitic’ has been hijacked.

Lest any of you readers are already smarting in fury and indignation at these daringly critical words, and preparing to apply your ‘conspiracy theorist’ label, consider that as early as 1972, the British embassy in Washington wrote a confidential paper on ‘Zionist Organizations in the United States’, part of a series for a proposed Foreign and Commonwealth Office paper on ‘the role and effectiveness of Zionist organizations in the United States and Western Europe’. A covering letter from the British ambassador in Tel Aviv stated: ‘I need hardly say that this is a subject on which the Israeli Government is very sensitive, because the continuing support of the Diaspora is an important element in their national security. They might well be suspicious of our motives if it comes to their knowledge that we were preparing a study of this kind […].’

The paper can be considered as a – perhaps subtler – version, in certain respects, of the recent Mearsheimer/Walt paper, remarkable in that it was written thirty-four years earlier. Had it been published, it could well have produced a Zionist backlash, just as the recent Walt/Mearsheimer critique did. The paper equated for its purposes the term ‘American Zionism’ with active support for Israel and its policies. Extracts from the paper speak for themselves, requiring little if any interpretation: ‘The well-organized lobby of Jewish organizations concentrates its activities on influencing congress. There is very little activity in State Legislatures, mainly because few issues arise affecting Israel or the Jewish community in those bodies. The obvious point of pressure must be Congress and there is little doubt that much of the active output of the Zionist organizations is devoted to that end […] whenever an important event occurs in the world at large or in this country, or whenever there is any public threat to Israel, a flood of letters descends upon the offices of Senators and Representatives throughout the country. Some, no doubt, are spontaneous, but the majority show unmistakable evidence of a careful orchestration.’

The paper devoted some attention to Zionist activity in the press, ‘which are [sic] in any case responsive to pro-Israeli articles, largely because a number of press magnates, editors and journalists are themselves of Jewish stock.’ An example of clearly illicit pressure is given: ‘A well-known columnist, who writes in the Christian Science Monitor, told us last year that, when he wrote an editorial which contained mild criticism about the intransigence of the Israeli government, he received a telephone call from the Israeli Embassy in Washington within the hour to express official Israeli displeasure. He was told that such judgements would not be well received by many of the big firms in the Boston area who bought advertising space in the paper and that the Israeli Embassy were confident that he would not wish to deprive his paper of much needed revenue. […] There can be little doubt that the Israeli Embassy discreetly passes on information to the Jewish organizations [my italics], but it would be difficult to point to a direct link’.

Other interesting observations emerge from the paper. For example, whereas Jews made up about 3% of the population, between 18 and 25% of faculty members at Ivy League universities were Jews, while 8% of the urban population of the US were Jewish, and 96% of Jews lived in towns. ‘There is little doubt that Zionist organizations and the Israeli lobby wield considerable political strength in this country, stated the paper, concluding that ‘support for Israel has a universal appeal, being quite distinct from the lobbying efforts of other ethnic minorities’.

And so it is today. The fanatic Zionists who control Israel and Washington will continue to try and obliterate the Palestinian presence. One can but hope that within a few years, to forestall more Palestinian anger at being robbed by Israel, the US, China and Russia will force a two-state solution on Israel. Failing that, shame on the world, and the likes of Cain.

I began this article by wondering if I could do this. All I wished to show is that Zionism and its fanatics are beyond the pale. I hope that I have succeeded.

For several decades the international system has seen a concern about the so-called North-South divide. This divide encompassed a gap between the advanced industrial world and the so-called third-world that encompassed Latin America, Africa, and much of Asia. In more specific terms it was an economic gap, best indicated by a much lower standard of living outside of Europe and North America.

Even before the end of the Cold War, the Mediterranean saw increasing numbers of illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees from war zones coming from the Middle East, North Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and of course Sub-Saharan Africa. Hundreds of thousands of refugees began crossing the Mediterranean fleeing from war zones, civil wars, and of course last but not least economic conditions that were not acceptable anymore given the opportunities that people in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America saw in the advanced industrial democratic world. This gap was compounded by the fact that the demographic growth in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia was not economically sustainable. Rising expectations saw then millions of people trying to move into Europe. In 2019 alone, 2.7 million immigrants from non-EU countries entered the EU.

As refugee and immigration crises in the European Union have shown neither national governments nor the European Union institutions have been able to develop a systematic or coherent approach in dealing with constant conflicts in the Middle East or Africa. The end of the cold war had welcomed the idea of peace in our time, but as Samuel P. Huntington prophetically outlined in his essay and eventual book The Clash if Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, the international system was going to see a constant conflict between the secular democratic Euro-American world and as it turned out, the Islamic and Chinese world. The wars in the Persian Gulf, the Near East and the rise of Islamic terrorism in Africa, Europe and Asia followed the traumatic attack by a handful of radical Islamic terrorists on New York. By 2021 the consequences could be seen through the American retreat from Afghanistan. That country had been the breeding ground for the attacks on New York. The United States, Britain and other Western countries came to be humiliated by the Taliban’s victory. 

The Taliban victory in Afghanistan saw hundreds of thousands more refugees trying to enter Europe principally through Turkey and Belarus. Radical Islam wrote a new chapter in the history of the Islamic world. 

The constant international crisis that precipitated a flow of immigrants and refugees to Europe demonstrated increasingly the inability of the European Union and the United Kingdom to resolve an issue that challenged in the final analysis European culture, European economic wellbeing and societal sustainability. The rise of political parties that articulated the apprehension, fears and anxiety of widespread strata of the European population accepting non-European and Islamic newcomers, legal and illegal in France, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Germany for example, were symptomatic of future political instability. The inability of European countries to agree on common policies of protecting European borders and even developing a defensive mechanism outside the framework of NATO speaks of structural deficiencies in European strategic decision making.

Immigration was in the final analyses fueled by demographic growth in   Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Governments in Europe were unable to respond to the increasing expectations of the populations of those regimes. The population of Egypt had reached by 2020 102.3 million, Pakistan 220.9 million, Bangladesh 164 million, Ethiopia 115 million, and Nigeria 206.1 million; these are examples of what Europe was going to face. Increasing mass communications and transportation allowed millions of people to enter Europe. 

European governments seem unable to coordinate a policy that could cope with the increasing movement of people from the developing world towards Western Europe and North America. The issue of illegal immigration was of concern to many societies in Asia, Latin America, and Africa to the extent that economic concern lead many people to move from one nation to another. For example, the case of Bangladesh stands out, hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis were moving into India generating social, economic and social conflicts. And in the case of Africa, millions of people were moving across the continent with spill over into North Africa and Libya. In turn, hundreds of thousands of Africans were trying to cross the Mediterranean into Italy, Spain and Greece to reach the promised land: the European Union.

The sustainability of such movements did not and does not seem to concern international organizations and NGOs that were and are interested in bringing refugees to Europe. Inevitably, the issue of settling refugees, providing employment and preventing cultural clashes was the subject of much debate but with no solution in sight.

Critical debates on sustainability and climate change did not necessarily address themselves to the catastrophic problem of population growth and food supplies. In fact, the reluctance of some countries such as India, Indonesia and China to comprehend the anxieties of industrial states and European and North American activists was to be expected. Beijing, Delhi and Jakarta were by far more concerned with their populations and their standard of living. Rising expectations could not be postponed because they could be a cause of political instability. The demand for fossil fuels was not decreasing as energy was crucial to the creation of a higher standard of living for hundreds of people in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Immigration is bound to be the biggest challenge for the European Union and Britain. Illegal immigrants from the Middle East were coming to France to cross the channel as others were trying to come through the Italian peninsula to enter Switzerland and Germany. The soft underbellies of the European Union, Italy, Spain and Greece continue to be so. Countries such as Belarus and Turkey use the movement of immigrants into the European Union as a tool for gaining concessions from Brussels and individual European countries. The president of Turkey Erdogan had been successful earlier (in 2015) in gaining financial support from the European Union and Germany to stop the flow of Islamic immigrants into the continent. Hundreds and thousands of refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan could become a great tool for gaining concessions from the European Union and single European states whose power is becoming ever more marginal. 

The trend in international conferences shaped by Western powers and NGOs on climate change, sustainability, energy and food security, and human rights should be understood in the context of an overwhelming demographic shift that does not seem to enter into the political calculus of Western decision makers and their constituents. 

European and American museums are confronted by requests of the return of artifacts bought or seized by colonial powers: Greece Presses for the Return of the Parthenon Marbles to where they belong: Athens Acropolis.

Researchers still looking for the Amber Room, Tsarist treasure allegedly stolen by the Nazi occupation forces and presumably destroyed or still hidden somewhere in Germany.

In 2008 a scandal hit the world of archaeology in Spain as it was reported that supposedly ancient artifacts were faked. In time the scandal became connected to the attempts to strengthen a real or imaginary Basque nationalist past. This episode in Spanish archaeology history is a modern example of how archaeology has played a role in shaping modern national identities and the creation of national myths.[1] In the Spanish case, Basque nationalism rooted in a very ancient language was one of the sources of conflict in 20th century Spain. It contributed to fueling the Spanish civil war in the 1930s and terrorism in Spain after the transition from Franco’s dictatorship to a modern democracy. Only in 2017 ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna – Basque Country and Freedom)[2] finally stopped fighting the Spanish state. Paradoxically, the end of this violent Basque separatism was followed in Spain by a Catalan separatism and the attempt of some Catalan parties to declare independence by arguing for a separate identity that set apart the Catalonian region linguistically and culturally from mainstream Spanish history.

The archaeological background to modern nationalism and conflicts is not new. In fact, in the earlier part of the 19^th century the Greeks, with great European support and sympathy, fought against the Ottoman Empire for a political and cultural independence that was stimulated by a connection to Classical Greece and of course the Byzantine Empire. By 1870, the German archeologist Heinrich Schliemann had begun discovering Homer’s Troy. His findings and the discovery of artifacts connected to ancient Greece stimulated enthusiastic interest in the near-Eastern archaeological and historical heritage.[3][4] Streams of archaeological discoveries reshaped a new Hellenic identity that shaped Greek politics and the conflicts with the Ottoman Empire, conflicts that saw the catastrophic Greek-Turkish war of 1922 and decades later the conflict in Cyprus between the Greek majority and the Turkish minority.

In Cyprus, the destruction of Greek archaeological sites was one of the subjects of the Greek-Cypriot political stance against the occupation of northern Cyprus by thousands of Turkish soldiers following the 1974 invasion of the island, when Turkey claimed it was protecting the rights of the Turkish-speaking minority.[5] The invasion followed years of conflict in Cyprus, ruled for decades by the British from 1878 until 1960[6]. The ethnic conflict was resolved through a compromise where the Greek-Cypriot desire to be reunited with Greece was set aside by giving independence to the island along with a constitutional compromise between the two ethno-linguistic groups.

Modern archaeology and the new scientific disciplines associated with it have now come to create greater knowledge and insight into the past of many regions across the globe.  They have also fueled value systems and political ideologies that have now come to spread increasingly across regions and nations, serving to bolster the perennial search for power and meaning in an international system tied by new economic realities and social mobility that challenges older historical and religious traditions. Some intellectuals and critics have used the encounter of the West with the non-traditional world, especially Islamic in the Middle East, as an example of cultural colonialism above and beyond political and economic imperialism. A classic case of the debate on the subject was the systematic work of Edward Said who wrote extensively criticizing western scholarship as being unable to truly understand the East – especially the Middle East – in his work Orientalism. His approach was very influential in the academic world, and continues being so, though his understanding of the Western-European insights into the Middle East especially are methodologically unsound and ideologically biased.[7]

Thus, archaeology comes to have even greater relevance in the reformulation of many aspects of international relations and ideological and civilizational clashes.  It then becomes even more incumbent on academics at large, especially historians, archaeologists, and ethno-linguists to dispel whenever possible the constant mythologizing and distortion of historical and archaeological scholarship.[8] The Americas were not exempt from these trends.

Across the Atlantic the mystification of new archaeological and linguistic discoveries became a systematic component of local nationalism, particularly when studying pre-Columbian civilizations in Central and South American states and Native American tribes in the United States and Canada. In Mexico, the Aztec heritage boosted Indianismo, which came to be one of the pillars of the new regime in Mexico after the epic of revolution that shaped a new Mexico after 1912.  From the 1920s onwards, the official historiography of Mexico emphasized Aztec civilization which had been systematically studied since the 19^th century by Western archaeologists and denounced the Spanish conquest as an assault on some past noble human experiment.  The reformulation of a new Mexican identity saw even a revival of attempts to remove the bones of Hernán Cortés, the Spanish conquistador who had been entombed in Mexico City. By 2020, the Mexican government, run by a progressive leftist president was seeking official apologies from Spain for the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire, and for the violence involved in the establishment of Spanish cultural hegemony in Mexico.[9]

The reinterpretation of the past by now had come to see in both North and South America the denunciation of Columbus and the arrival of the Europeans. In some respects, it was a reassertion of the Rousseauian paradigm of the Noble Savage being overwhelmed by civilization. In fact, the reaffirmation of aboriginal rights in North, South, and Central America from the Arctic Circle to Patagonia, in claims to land and resources came to be often articulated through archaeological discoveries and the assertion of the parity of native languages with Spanish as in Peru, Bolivia, Mexico, or Guatemala.

Even in Europe, the creation of a pan-European identity seemed to have enhanced the reaffirmation of ethno-linguistic ideologies rooted in mythical pasts given some superficial credibility by archaeology and linguistics. Examples range from the Dardanian movement in the Balkans following the independence of Kosovo as Albanians and Kosovars reiterated their European roots by linking to classical Greek history and mythology, including the destruction of Serbian Orthodox religious sites to the revival of Celtic religions and outright paganism professing a return to animism and Norse religions in Scandinavia. In the United States within the last generation there has been a revitalization of Neo-Pagan religion and witchcraft, ranging from the Church of Satan as an established institution to Wicca as a legitimate religious experience.[10] New political movements, ranging from neo-Scandinavian nationalism to neo-Nazism have connected their political ideology to Old Norse religious mythologies.[11]

These new phenomena tended to have a more strictly sociological significance and had yet to develop a political relevance. The age of instant electronic communication lent itself to the mystification of archaeology, ethnography, and linguistics from Europe and North America to the rest of the globe.  Fueled by misperceived scientific and academic research, science fiction, UFO sightings, political propaganda, mysticism, religion, eschatology, and catastrophism gave rise to a vast body of literature, movies, and internet-propagated debate and speculations grounded in the outright mystification of science and racialism intensifying and legitimizing national conflicts and political violence.

Their interpretation of the past through archaeological discoveries and political influence in terms of modern ideological postures characterizes every area of the world, ranging from Latin America to Australia and Africa. [12] European and American museums came to be confronted by requests of the return of artifacts bought or seized by colonial powers. The British museum, for example, was going to return the Benin bronzes to Nigeria.[13] The bronzes had been seized by British troops in 1897 during the British conquest of Benin. Benin today is in modern Nigeria, and part of the federal state.

The Greek Cause for the Parthenon Marbles Return to Athens

In modern Europe one of the more chronic problems in archaeological politics is the pressing demand of the Greek state for the repatriation of the Parthenon Marbles, also known as the Elgin Marbles, from the British Museum to Athens. The Marbles were part of the façade of the Acropolis of Athens and were allegedly purchased by Lord Elgin, the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1807. The issue came up again following Brexit, as the Greek government pressed once again for the return of the Elgin Marbles.[14] The subject became part of the diplomatic bargaining between the United Kingdom and Brussels over the future of the political relationship between the European Union and London. The controversy has been going on for decades. In the same vein, stolen art from Italy is a subject of Italian international requests for return of what it considers to be Italian cultural patrimony.[15]

Last but not least, the Nazi German state’s looting of European art all over the occupied areas during World War II still stands out as an example of the role of war in the displacement of national art and culture. Researchers are still looking for the Amber Room, a Tsarist treasure allegedly stolen by the Nazi occupation forces and presumably destroyed or still hidden somewhere in Germany.[16]

Thus, one may conclude here by saying that symbolically archaeology goes beyond the mere study of the past through what remains of the past materially, but it also shapes how individuals and nations may see themselves in the modern age. As archaeological explorations expand, inevitably the reinterpretation of the past also takes place. This is especially relevant in the Middle East, which by many standards, is the birthplace of civilization. Arguably, the most important dimension of this past is a religious experience that has characterized the Middle East ever since the birth and evolution of Judaism, the rise of Christianity and the shaping of monotheistic belief systems.

Modern Re-Elaboration of Jewish Identity Through Rise of Zionism

Perhaps the most outstanding example is the modern re-elaboration of a Jewish identity through the rise of modern Zionism in 19^th century Europe and the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1947. In the 2^nd century AD, the Romans wiped out what had been a Jewish ethno-religious state in Judea along with the destruction of what had originally been the Temple of Solomon in 70 AD. Judea became a Roman province and hundreds of thousands of Jews were enslaved and deported throughout the Roman Empire, though the territory still held a considerable population of Jews.

Some decades later, in 132 AD the Jews rebelled again. This revolt saw Emperor Hadrian raze Jerusalem and rename it Aelia Capitolina. To add insult to injury, Judea came to be renamed Palestina with a reference to one of the peoples in the area, the Philistines mentioned in the Bible. From then to modern times, Palestine was a common name for a territory that eventually became the state of Israel and came to be seen by Jews scattered across the world as a land to return to with the coming of the Messiah. Herein lies an added Christian dimension to the religious and cultural relevance of the Jewish historical linkage to a lost state, to be restored with, by a coming Messiah for Jews and the second coming of Christ for all Christian denominations.

The rise of Islam in the 7^th century and the conquest of Jerusalem by the Muslims in southern Arabia added a third monotheistic appeal to the city of Jerusalem which came to have historical and cultural consequences for centuries for the people of the region, Europe, and in time for international relations from the 19^th century onwards. By the 18^th century, there was already a historical and archaeological interest in the Middle East and the biblical connection was the most relevant aspect of it. In the development of modern states in the Middle East, whether Turkey, Iran, Egypt, or as a matter of fact anywhere else in the world, reconstructing the past through archaeology and other disciplines such as linguistics was not a new phenomenon, and continues to be ever more relevant. Paradoxically, in an ever more globalized world, national identity becomes ever more relevant for domestic political purposes. The reconstruction of the past through archaeology to enhance modern national identity becomes ever more interesting in terms of ideological, economic, and international premises. Thus, tourism, education, propaganda, articulated through mass and social media come to stand out and add to an even greater dimension to the models developed in the theories of international relations and conflict.

[1] Ashley Cowie, “Archaeologist Busted for Faking Artifacts Showing Jesus Crucifixion,” in Ancient Origins, 8 February 2020. https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/iru-veleia-artifacts-0013266

[2] Claude Canellas, Sonya Dowsett, and Isla Binnie, “Basque militants ETA surrender arms in end to decades of conflict” Reuters, April 2017. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-eta-idUSKBN1790YK

[3] Caroline Moorehead, Priam’s Gold: Schliemann and the Lost Treasure of Troy (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2016).

[4] Robert Payne, The Gold of Troy: The Story of Heinrich Schliemann and the Buried Cities of Ancient Greece (Dorset: Dorset Press, 1990).

[5] Lefkios Zaphiriou, Costas Nicolaides, Miltos Miltiadou, Marianna Mammidou, Van Coufoudakis, “The Loss of a Civilization; Destruction of cultural heritage in occupied Cyprus” Government of Cyprus, 2012.

[6] For a Turkish perspective, see Ozmatyatli, I. O. & Ozkul, A. E. “20th Century British Colonialism in Cyprus

through Education.” (Egitim Arastirmalari-Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, 50, 1-20. 2013).

[7] Morris Mottale, “Book Review: Orientalism and Islam: European Thinkers on Oriental Despotism in the Middle East and India.” (Canadian Political Science Association, 2010).

[8] See Also: The MESA Debate, 22 November 1986. Cf: Robert D. Kaplan, “Remembering Elie Kedourie: How One Analyst Spoke Truth to Power in the Middle East.” (The National Interest, 25 April 2020)

[9] “Mexico demands apology from Spain and the Vatican over conquest.” (BBC, 26 March 2019). See Also, Renzo Pipoli “Spain denies Mexico apology over 1521 Spanish conquest.” (UPI, 26 March 2019)

[10] See for example Jessica Bennet “When Did Everybody Become a Witch?” (New York Times, 24 October 2019). See also; David Brooks “Commentary: Witchcraft enjoying a surge in popularity” (New York Times, 13 June 2019).

[11] Samuel Sigal “What To Do When Racists Try To Hijack Your Religion” (The Atlantic, November 2, 2017).

[12] Paul Daley “There’s a new push for the return of looted Aboriginal artefacts – in the name of ‘truth telling’.” (The Guardian, 1 December 2019). See Also; Geoff Gray “A Cautious Silence: The politics of Australian anthropology”. (Aboriginal Studies Press: August 1, 2007)

[13] Kieron Monks “British Museum to return Benin bronzes to Nigeria.” (CNN, 14 December 2018). See also: “The British Conquest of Benin and the Oba’s Return”, Art Institute of Chicago (2013).

[14] Ian Wishart “EU Brings Greek Demand for Elgin Marbles Into Brexit Talks.” (MSN, 19 February 2020).

[15] See for Example “Italian Court Orders Getty Museum To Return Statue To Italy”. (NPR, 5 December 2018).

[16] “Amber Room: Priceless Russian treasure stolen by Nazis ‘discovered by German researchers’” (The Independent, 19 October 2017).

Indicatively, total final energy consumption is forecast to double in Turkey by year 2050. This is the EnerOutlook forecast based on sustained economic development of emerging economies which takes into account the effect of global warming (such a scenario is compatible with a global temperature rise of between three to four degrees Celsius).

To address the problem of increasing domestic energy demand, Ankara has been actively pursuing nuclear energy to lessen its high dependency on energy imports. Consequently, in May 2010, Russia and Turkey signed a Cooperation Agreement, under which Rosatom State Cooperation has since been constructing the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant. This NPP will eventually contain four reactors with a combined capacity of 4800 MW. Other nuclear power projects in Sinop, Black Sea region and the Eastern Thrace region remain in the planning stages.

Construction of the Akkuyu NPP begun in December 2017. Its final cost is expected to rise over 20 billion USD – roughly equivalent to the size of Cyprus’ economic output in 2020. The first reactor is expected to become operational in 2023, the year that marks the centenary anniversary of the Republic of Turkey. No doubt, Erdogan’s government is planning festivities for this significant event, to boost its plunging popularity.

Despite serious concerns about the safety of the Akkuyu NPP, located as it is, in the high seismic activity region of Mersin, construction continuous. Every consecutive year in the following three years (2024-26) will see a new reactor coming into operation.

The first controversy over the impact of this huge nuclear power project on the environment appeared already six years ago: on 12 January 2015, it was reported that the signatures of specialists on a Turkish government-sanctioned environmental impact report had been forged. The appointed specialists had resigned six months prior to its submission, and the contracting company had then made unilateral changes to the report. Naturally so, this revelation sparked protest within the Turkish Cypriot community. The proximity of the prospective Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant to our island could not be lightheartedly ignored. This powerful NPP will operate at about 110 kms from Lefkosia. In the context of an unexpected nuclear accident caused by an earthquake or otherwise, North or South Cyprus becomes immaterial. A fatal nuclear accident carries the danger of overwhelming both parts of the island.

In this respect, it is vital that the leaderships of both Greek and Turkish Cypriots stand in unison: the Eastern Mediterranean environment and its protection is a common cause. More so as Ankara exhibits a mixed approach, to say the least, towards international legal instruments on nuclear safety: Whereas Turkey signed up to the Convention on Nuclear Safety which entered into force 24 October 1996, it has not done the same with the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management which entered into force 18 June 2001.

The normalization of relations between Morocco and Israel came in with the United States agreeing to legitimize Morocco’s annexation of Spanish Sahara, a territory which had been vacated by Spain in 1976, something that Rabat had been seeking for a long time regardless of the opposition of the Organization of African Unity and ostensibly against international law and precedent. Trump was able to convince Arab parties to recognize Israel by promising arms and foreign aid, more importantly, opposition to Iran and its nuclear policies gave Washington even more psychological leverage amongst conservative Arab states.

There were a series of factors which allowed President Trump to seize the moment and achieve these diplomatic breakthroughs which contributed to the changing balance of power in the Middle East. These developments had not been expected and did not receive the deserved attention in terms of power shifts in the region and in the international system. Such an evolution will be seen in the context of an increasing shift away from the use of fossil fuels, specifically oil and coal, and an increasing trend towards renewable energy, ranging from solar power to hydrogen power, and as many expected, advanced nuclear power, with a possible move towards nuclear fusion. An indicator of these trends was the realization on the part of some Middle Eastern powers that their possession of oil reserves was not guarantee for future economic wellbeing and security. Thus, confrontation and war with the Jewish state and support for the Palestinian cause had become an ever greater liability for the future of political and economic wellbeing of many states, ranging from Africa to the Persian Gulf.

The trend away from fossil fuel was and is being further highlighted by the concerns over climate change and the policies that states will follow to mitigate the effect of climate change and global warming. Indeed, one crucial concern in the financial world, for example, was the role of the insurance and reinsurance companies in planning new insurance policies and possibly high premiums for catastrophes, fires and severe weather storms such as hurricanes. These trends inevitably influencing the corporations whose profits derive from investments in economic enterprises connected to the energy sector, ranging from oil refining to coal powered power plants, the plastic industry, the automotive industry, air transportation, shipping, and tourism. Areas of interest for alternative and renewable energy sources range from solar power, hydrogen power, nuclear power through both fusion and fission, and eolic power.

The consequences of such a shift for the financial institutions and investment banks, and most importantly for pension funds, are difficult to fathom. In analogous terms, the consequences for international power relations become ever more problematic for forecasting international security trends and future balances of regional and global power. The breakthrough of the Trump Administration in brokering peace agreements in the Middle East is an indicator of how decision makers in Washington crafted US security policies in the Middle East and the Mediterranean to further American interests. Traditionally, as John Kerry and the Obama Administration had kept harping on, there was a constant focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict and how failure to resolve the Palestinian – Israel conflict would block peace from being reached in the region. Indeed, the success and appeal of Iran in the area owed much to its fanatic opposition to the Jewish state and its support for the Palestinian cause. As it was, it turned out that given the trends in the Arab world, the Palestinians could not now veto peaceful relations between Arab states and Jerusalem. The Saudi state did not object to these developments and its role as the guardian of Islamic holy sites, its control over huge petroleum resources, and foreign exchange allowed Saudi rulers to indirectly promote Israeli-Gulf cooperation.

The trend away from the use of fossil fuels is taking place, paradoxically, when Turkey is challenging many of its neighbors for control over oil and gas production in the Mediterranean while truculently threatening Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, France, and the European Union. In fact, Erdogan, at the United Nations was denouncing Trump and the United States, along with Israel in virtually anti-Semitic terms in his promotion of Palestinian rights and independence. Ankara was meanwhile moving arms, mercenaries and advisors into Libya while claiming rights over large swaths of the Mediterranean Sea. The Turkish moves in the Mideast and North Africa were matched by an increasing Russian military and political presence in the region, highlighted by Moscow’s military presence in Syria, and an ever larger navy in the Mediterranean. Trends in the Middle East and Persian Gulf also witnessed an ever increasing interest in Chinese investments, especially in the case of Iran, where the Ayatollahs were enticing Beijing in return for oil, gas, and financial backing of the Iranian economy with the hope of blocking American influence in the Gulf. Peace trends were being paradoxically strengthened by the ever increasing fear on the part of Arab States of Iranian Shiite imperial ambitions that saw a very successful manipulation and control of paramilitary organizations controlled by Iranian officers and the revolutionary guard in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, the Gaza Strip, Yemen, and very likely in some African States as Islamic radicalism spread throughout East and West Africa.

As the Gulf saw conservative Sunni Arab States reassess their relations and past confrontations with the state of Israel, the diplomatic breakthroughs were an indicator of shifts in the balance of power in the area as Turkey and Iran were articulating nationalist neo-Islamist ideologies generated by Khomeini’s Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979. In the 20th Century, the region’s preeminence from West Asia to North Africa was connected to international demand for oil and gas. From the Caucasus to the Persian Gulf, to Libya and Algeria, oil and gas became one of the central themes in international conflict and cooperation with oil producing states manipulating the price of oil. Geology gave these states in the Middle East and North Africa an incredible leverage in extracting concessions both economically and politically from Europe and the United States. However, by 2020, concern about climate change and the increasing CO2 emissions, convinced all nations of the necessity for decreasing the use of fossil fuels and to seek alternatives in renewable energy or nuclear power.

The economic shifts in the evolution of energy alternatives were inevitably shaping the economic evolution of the international system. Leaders of Gulf States, as well as other oil producing nations such as Norway, realized that the demand for advanced technology and scientific research was now as important as the financial resources that had been accumulated in the last two generations. The trend toward peace treaties was structurally driven. Thus, ideology was now taking a more secondary seat in the political calculations of the leadership in the Arab and Islamic world. All the same, it had been inevitable that for some countries ideological considerations did not lose their primary role in their foreign policies, as in the case of Turkey and Iran. By September of 2020, Ankara had goaded Azerbaijan to go to war with Armenia as a conflict between the two Caucasian countries would have enhanced the neo-Ottoman ambitions of Erdogan’s Turkey. Some of Erdogan’s statements were already causing apprehensions in Tehran as he implied by the end of 2020 in Baku that Iranian Azerbaijan, with a Turkish-speaking population, was part of the greater Turkey that Erdogan was envisioning.

Iranian Shi’ite ideology was not to be underestimated in Tehran’s policies as the Ayatollahs’ aggressive moves within the Arab and Islamic world were rationalized in terms of defending Islam and Shiism. Trends in the Gulf toward more peaceful relations with Israel and more cooperation with the United States were ever more motivated by anxiety and fear about Iranian political ambitions. Turkey’s own imperial moves in North Africa, the Caucasus, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria and Turkish vocal and truculent support for Palestine as it denounced “Zionism” were again indicators of historical ideological motivations that were provoking anxieties in many Arab countries, particularly Egypt, the most important Arab country. Erdogan’s cooptation of the Muslim Brothers, an organization dedicated to Pan-Islamism, and by now based in Turkey after fleeing Egypt, was not to be underestimated. The Muslim Brothers were very influential in Tunisia, Morocco, Qatar and they were supported even by the Iranian Mullahs, regardless of their historical aversion towards Sunnis.

The trends toward new configurations of power relations in the region and in the Mediterranean had been made strategically possible by the fact that in the United States and Canada, more oil and gas was being produced than ever before, and the United States was not dependent on oil imports as the case had been in the 1970s and 1980s. If anything, the US could be an alternative to Europe and Japan for oil and gas. President Trump tried to pressure but failed to convince Germany to abandon the construction of gas pipelines from Russia, offering American gas via maritime routes.

The ever increasing surplus of oil and gas in the world was decreasing the economic power of many states, not only in the Middle East but also in states such as Mexico, Venezuela, Angola and Nigeria, a trend that was enhanced by the discovery of new fossil fuel deposits in the world. In the Mediterranean, the discovery of gas and oil deposits in the territorial waters of Israel, Cyprus, and Egypt saw increasing cooperation in building sea pipelines to carry gas through Europe. Cooperation was brought forward amongst gas producing states within an International Organization, including, Cyprus, Israel, Palestine, Greece, Italy and Jordan.

What stands out in terms of the historical developments shaping the international system is European Union’s inability and certainly Germany to have a role in promoting peaceful developments in the area. Even the much vaunted role of China in the international system does not see a comparable Chinese involvement in promoting peaceful trends in the area. As it is, the international system relies –as always- on Washington and Moscow with the contributions of Paris and London in promoting a more stable Middle East. That is to say historically the role of the Great Powers that had shaped the Middle East in modern time is not declining. Trump had indeed reasserted American power in the wake of Obama’s failure to resolve some of the more outstanding conflicts of the Middle East. The evolving shift away from the use of fossil fuels has been matched by a reassertion to Great Power politics echoing the developments of European 19th Century history, as Imperial Russia, Great Britain and France competed for hegemony over the territories of a declining Ottoman Empire. The paradox now is that Erdogan’s Turkey has become a revisionist power trying to reassert a historical role more consonant with Ottoman history and reflecting a virulent Turko-Islamic nationalism.

National and international rhetoric about climate change, human rights and the more progressive world has not necessarily impacted on international power politics whilst the arms race in the Middle East, South Asia and the Pacific were and continue to be harbingers of new political scenarios. Realism and idealism continue to shape international diplomatic activity, national rhetoric and political ideologies regardless of the fact that the Covid-19 virus did have an impact on slowing down diplomatic interaction and that climate change rhetoric appealed to more active political parties in Western countries.

The successful diplomatic activity of the Trump administration which has begun in 2017 with Trump’s visit to the area and Washington’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, triggered the chain of developments that brought more Arab States to recognize Israel. In turn, the expansion of alternatives to fossil fuels, the fear of climate change and new developments in mass communications and artificial intelligence portend to be the harbingers of structural changes in the international political economy.

By 2020, the confrontation between Turkey and Greece in the Aegean and in the Mediterranean at large, saw the Greek Minister of Defense speak about possibility of military conflict with Turkey.(i) This statement by the Greek Minister of Defense came a few hours after the Turkish President held a press conference in Ankara with Fayez Al Sarraj, Prime Minister of the UN-recognized National Accord Government based in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.(ii) Erdoğan said that Turkey and Libya would proceed with oil exploration and drilling in Greece’s contested maritime space in the eastern Mediterranean(iii), adjacent to Crete and now claimed by Libya aided and abetted by Ankara as it kept challenging Athens. Turkey had begun its military and political involvement in the civil war in Libya while confronting the Saudi, Emirati and Egyptian involvement in North Africa against a Turkish presence and the ideological influence of the Muslim brothers and manipulated by Erdoğan’s Islamist ideology. Just a few weeks earlier, there had been confrontations between Greek and Turkish forces on the border in Thrace.(iv) Thousands and thousands of real and imaginary refugees and other irregular migrants from the Middle East at large, including Afghanistan and Pakistan, moved to Turkey and planned on entering Europe. Having encouraged them to move to the Greek border, Ankara is seeking to entice those manipulated unfortunate souls to step into the European Union. In its confrontation in Cyprus, Turkey paved over the entry point in northern Cyprus in favor of entering the republic to the south.

Some years earlier, the war in Syria had seen thousands of refugees going to primarily Germany and Sweden. This development gave Erdoğan a chance to blackmail Europe to receive aid and status recognition and drawing concessions regarding Ankara’s relations with the European Union. For decades, Turkey had tried to be admitted into the European club. The EU, in trying to avoid conflict with Turkey, had already admitted Greece in 1980 and promised future admission to Turkey as to avoid conflicts in the area. Both Athens and Ankara have been long standing members of NATO but that membership has not lessened the confrontation between the two countries. Neither has it mitigated Turkey’s contemporary attempt to revise power relations with its Greek neighbor.

The Arab-Israeli conundrum receives the bulk of interest in Europe and North America, and of course the Islamic world, as the Jewish state’s legitimacy has always been challenged at some level or another. The European, and especially Italian relations to North Africa and the Middle East and inevitably to Mediterranean security have been historically linked in the mind of the European public and political parties to the wars between Israel and its neighbors. What are overlooked in the European political world are the other conflicts in the Middle East. For example, the partition of Cyprus, the confrontation between Turkish and Greek worlds which overlaps with contentious maritime borders, potentially rich with oil and gas in the Aegean Sea and off the shores of Cyprus. Sectarian conflicts in the Middle East are also relevant, as Shii, Sunnis and other radical Islamists in the Sunni world challenge the social fabric and political systems of individual states such as Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria.

Italy with specific strategic interests is, arguably, the European country with the most important role in the Mediterranean. The fall of Gadhafi in 2011 after an internal revolt aided and abetted by France and other powers against the desires of the Italian government brought a power vacuum that allowed hundreds of thousands of African, Middle Eastern and Asian illegal immigrants moving successfully to the European continent through Italy. The Syrian civil war added even more impetus to these catastrophic migrations that have brought the European Union to a point of delegitimization in the eyes of many European citizens. In the recent past, the government of Silvio Berlusconi, had been successful in supporting the Gadhafi regime so as to stop illegal immigration in exchange for Italian development aid and of course purchase of Libyan oil.

Historically Italy’s main state-owned oil company, Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi, ENI, successfully entered the international oil and gas markets from the 1960s onward. Its total revenues never matched those of companies such as Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell, Total or British Petroleum (BP); all the same, the company itself came to play a big role in Italian daily and political life. It does so to this day. It serves Italian strategic needs very well. The Italian gas and oil markets have always been characterized by long term national policies, because of the vulnerable economic position of Italy as it lacks natural resources. Following the Chernobyl disaster, Italy did away with nuclear energy in the 1980s. In this regard, the rhetoric about renewable energy in the country has not been matched by policies. By 2019, ENI was drilling offshore Cyprus for gas and oil, challenged by Turkey.(v) In early 2020, both Italian ENI and French energy giant Total announced the suspension of their drilling programme in Cyprus waters allegedly because of the corona virus crisis. However, not a few are those who believe that the real reason is the Turkish bullying.

The energy power game was also seeing at this time the entry of another player, Israel, with the plan to build a gas pipeline from the Israeli controlled seabed in the Eastern Mediterranean to Europe via Cyprus and Greece. The East Med pipeline has already received European support with the European Commission designating it as a project of common interest.

As in many European nations, Italy relies heavily on revenues derived from the taxation of energy consumption and highway tolls. The Italian transportation industry has been faced with a lot of challenges and its contribution to environmental degradation and pollution is not to be underestimated. In the last decade, the government has pushed forward policies to motivate the population to purchase more environmentally sound cars. However, it looks like it will take some generations before the adoption of non-polluting cars. All the same, Middle Eastern conflicts have influenced the price of oil in markets all over the world, and have been exploited politically by states in conflict such as Iran vs Saudi Arabia. As many oil producing nations encounter political problems, such as those in Venezuela, industrially advanced states – Italy is one of them – have to be very careful about managing and resolving international conflict. International conflict and instability in the eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea present a challenge to any Italian government and even to the military organization to which Rome belongs, in this case, NATO. The politics of oil and gas, became less problematic as by 2020, the price of these commodities had collapsed in the international market while the United States had become the largest producer of oil. But in no way did this relatively positive development lessened the need for alternatives to fossil fuels for environmental considerations.

Whilst Turkey and Greece are members of NATO, the policies of the current Turkish government continue to be very confrontational toward Athens and Nicosia. Current relations between Washington and Ankara are becoming ever more problematic because of overlapping conflicts in the Mideast such as the Syrian civil war, the confrontation between Israel and its Arab neighbors and the rise of the Islamic State. A development that took important political significance was the acquisition of Russian anti-aircraft missiles S400 by Ankara over and above the objections of Washington.

Turkey’s acquisition of sophisticated Russian military hardware was, by 2020, an indicator of a successful Russian re-entry into the politics of the area, after the demise of the Soviet Union, as Moscow’s involvement into the Syrian and Libyan civil wars foreshadowed another chapter in the great power conflicts in the Mediterranean. While the United States, under the presidency of Donald Trump, had stated that the US administration was committed to withdraw from conflicts in the area, the reality on the ground showed that the US was still heavily involved in the security of the region. Among other reasons, was the decades old confrontation between Iran and the United States as the radical Mullahs of Tehran had successfully entered the Near-East, especially Iraq and Syria, directly challenging US interests in the area, threatening Israel with genocide and challenging very subtly both Russia and Turkey for hegemony in the region. (vi) In fact, by 2020, American military commanders involved in anti-Islamic terrorism campaign in Africa (vii) were mentioning the possibility and inclination toward an American involvement in Tunisia as its border with Libya was becoming even more challenging for international security.(viii)

The great power game was already witnessing the entry of China in the region through Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative that saw, on paper, a revival of the Silk Road and the systematic expansion of Beijing’s commercial interests in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.(ix) The entry of China added an ever greater dimension to the theory of the balance of power in the study of international relations. If anything, it confirmed and strengthened the ideas of neo-realism in international affairs and challenged idealism and globalization as harbingers of peace and conflict resolution in the world. What stood out was the inability of Italy to act as a great power in the Mediterranean and even more the European Union as its policies for peace and cooperation seemed to be totally irrelevant to the power conflicts in the region.

(i) Paul Antonopoulos, “Greek Defense Minister: Turkey’s behavior is aggressive but our powerful Armed Forces are deterrent,” Greek City Times, June 5th, 2020, https://greekcitytimes.com/2020/06/05/greek-defence-minister- turkeys-behaviour-is-aggressive-but-our-powerful-armed-forces-is-a-deterrent/.
(ii) Ibid.
(iii) Ibid.
(iv) Steven Brown, “Tensions soar as Turkish troops invade Greece occupying piece of land on contested border” Express, May 22, 2020, https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1285915/turkey-Greece-invade-contested-border- world-war-3-latest-ww3-news.
(v) “Our work in Cyprus,” ENI, https://www.eni.com/en-IT/global-presence/eurasia/cyprus.html.
(vi) Sina Azodi and Giorgio Cafiero, “Idlib is a stress test for Iranian-Turkish relations,” Atlantic Council, March 17, 2020, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/idlib-is-a-stress-test-for-iranian-turkish-relations/.
(vii) U.S. Army Africa Public Affairs, “USARAF commander engages Tunisian Land Forces army chief,” United States Army Africa, May 13, 2020, https://www.usaraf.army.mil/media-room/pressrelease/29481/usaraf- commander-engages-tunisian-land-forces-army-chief.
(viii) Jared Szuba, “US commander suggests sending military trainers to Tunisia after Russia sends aircraft to Libya,” Al-Monitor, June 1, 2020, https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/06/us-commander-send-military- trainers-tunisia-russia-libya.html.
(ix) Andrew Chatzky and James McBride, “China’s massive Belt and Road Initiative,” Council on Foreign Relations, January 28, 2020, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-massive-belt-and-road-initiative.

In the first part of the 21st century, what became increasingly important was the role of China and its systematic policy of creating an economic network through maritime and land routes between the Far East, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean. Thus by 2020, Beijing’s increasing presence in the Mediterranean was characterized among other developments by commercial control of the Piraeus harbor in Greece, Haifa in Israel, and an interest in Trieste, in Northeastern Italy on the Adriatic. The presence of new Chinese immigrant communities in Italy boosted China’s evermore interest in what China called the “Belt and Road Initiative”(1).

In the Mediterranean, China had an ever growing presence in Algeria. Indicative of this presence was the construction of Djamaa El Djazair or the Great Mosque of Algiers by the China State Construction Engineering Corporation. It was the largest mosque in Africa and the third largest in the world, bigger even than the Great Mosque of Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque of Medina.(2) By 2019, Italy was the first major European country to join the “Belt and Road Initiative” (3), a move that was met with criticism from both Washington and the European Union.

The power and influence of China was such that, considering European moral and ethical concerns about conflicts in Africa and immigration from the Islamic and African world and continuous statements on diversity, tolerance, and religious freedoms, there was very scant interest in the persecution of Islamic national minorities in China, especially the Uighur Turkic national minority in Sinkiang western China.(4)

By 2020, the Trump Administration’s commercial, political, military and territorial objections to China’s international behavior (5) was another confirmation of what in the 1990s been called the Clash of Civilizations, or rather a great power conflict that certainly in the Mediterranean was not a new chapter in its long history. There was a new actor in the Mediterranean and all littoral states had to adjust accordingly.

In May of that year, the Secretary of State of the United States Mike Pompeo made a visit to Jerusalem that made ever clearer that Israel was the closest ally of Washington in the Middle East, as Trump pushed his Middle Eastern Peace plan to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. At the same time, Washington made it clear that the presence of China in the area economically, strategically and politically was not welcome. In the previous decade, Israel had allowed China to enter the Israeli technical and economic world. Chinese firms for example, were involved in building a metro system and were set to participate in the construction of a desalinization plant. American objections to the Chinese presence of a G5 advance phone network system in Israel were taken into account by Jerusalem. The US convinced Israel to avoid Chinese involvement with the construction of the phone system as it potentially allowed China to spy on Israel and its political, and military intelligence alliance of the United States.(6)

The COVID-19, Coronavirus, or Chinese virus of 2020, highlighted an ever increasing Sino-American confrontation worldwide with challenging implications for the strategic configuration of power in the Mediterranean interesting enough, for classical theories in International Relations ranging from the balance of power to hegemonic competition to clashes of civilizations.

(1) See Morgan Stanley post on March 14th, 2018, https://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/china-belt-and-road.
(2) See Youtube video post March 12th, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3kXGmqAqMs.
(3) See CNBC post by Holly Ellyatt on March 27th, 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/27/italys-joins-chinas-belt- and-road-initiative.html.
(4) See Haaretz post by Davis Stavrou on October 17th, 2019, https://www.haaretz.com/world- news/.premium.MAGAZINE-a-million-people-are-jailed-at-china-s-gulags-i-escaped-here-s-what-goes-on-inside- 1.7994216.
(5) See Fox News post by Liam Quinn on October 30th, 2019, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mike-pompeo- communist-china-beijing-challenges-head-on.
(6) See Jerusalem post on May 23rd, 2020, https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/israels- relations-with-china-are-creating-a-storm-629076. Also see Times of Israel post on May 26th, 2020, https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-us-pressure-israel-taps-local-firm-over-chinese-bid-for-desalination-plant/.

In his intervention during the consultation session, 12^th December, 2019, Dr. Leventis stressed the role of the International Security Forum as the leading Cypriot think tank promoting the cause of peace and disarmament in the region. In this context he emphasized that the island republic of Cyprus, being the south easternmost gate to the European Union but at the same time enjoying friendly bilateral relations with the Arab world as well as Israel and Iran offers the perfect venue for reconciliation and disarmament efforts promoting much needed peace and stability in the turbulent Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

In the margins of the three-day Brussels conference, Dr. Leventis held private meetings and consultations with a large number of delegates, including officials of the European External Action Service, discussing ways the International Security Forum, Cyprus can contribute to the network’s stated goals.