{"id":28648,"date":"2020-10-13T13:56:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-13T10:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eliamep.lncdoo.com\/thesmothetontas-amyntikes-spoudes-stin-ellada-einai-kairos\/"},"modified":"2025-03-19T13:45:13","modified_gmt":"2025-03-19T10:45:13","slug":"thesmothetontas-amyntikes-spoudes-stin-ellada-einai-kairos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/establishing-defence-studies-in-greece-its-high-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Establishing Defence Studies in Greece? It\u2019s high time\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Defence Studies in Greece are severely underdeveloped. Public debate, spurred by the latest crisis in Greek-Turkish relations, demonstrates how little expertise there is on the how and the why of Greece\u2019s armed forces\u2019 limitations and capabilities. A well-developed defence studies discipline is thus imperative, treating national defence: a) domestically, as a policy domain, sharing with other policy domains well-understood and comparable criteria for assessing Greece\u2019s state performance; b) internationally, as comparable to the national defence of countries facing similar national security challenges to Greece. Such a defence studies discipline is a necessary condition for Greece to ensure that its armed forces are fit for purpose over time.<\/p>\n

You may find the Policy Paper, by Antonis Kamaras<\/strong>, Research Associate of ELIAMEP, in pdf here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Introduction<\/h2>\n

This Policy Paper will seek to establish the need for a research unit to be established in Greece exclusively dedicated to defence studies. Due to its strategic rivalry with Turkey Greece is a top spender, relative to GDP, within NATO, with defence related spending consistently exceeding 2 % of GDP even during the fiscal crisis.\u00a0 Yet, and despite the fact that defence studies have been established as a discrete subject of academic Inquiry at least since the 1950\u2019s in the UK and subsequently elsewhere, Greece does not possess a research unit or university department exclusively dedicated to defence studies.\u00a0 Consequently, national defence, which is the ultimate public good that a sovereign nation-state is called upon to produce, is severely under-researched in Greece both in itself and in comparison to other leading public goods, such as public health and state education.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026<\/em> national defence, which is the ultimate public good that a sovereign nation-state is called upon to produce, is severely under-researched in Greece.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The chief rationale of this policy paper is that robust, high quality, publicly available academic inquiry, is both suitable to a democratic polity such as the Greek one, in matters relating to national defence, as much as indispensable to the ability of such a Greek polity to develop and implement an effective national defence policy over time.<\/p>\n

The Policy Paper will unfold as follows:<\/p>\n

In the first section we will give a brief outline of the limitations of current defence studies output and institutionalisation in Greece.<\/p>\n

In the second section, we will analyse these limitations in the context of a review of the intensive public debate principally generated by the rising Greco-Turkish friction of the last ten months. We start with the signing of the Turkish-Libyan agreement in December of 2019 and end with the recent deployment of Turkish and Greek naval forces due to the exploratory activity of the Oruc Reis (press articles on the preceding two years will also be referenced in a few special cases).<\/p>\n

In the third section, we will seek to establish that national defence, in the context of a robust defence studies inquiry in Greece should be demystified. By that we mean that national defence should be examined, in many of its crucial aspects, just like any other public good provided by the Greek state such as public health and state education. We will also relate defence studies in Greece to the comparative perspective as that is established both by the national defence policies of other nation-states and by the scholarship that these policies have generated. We will then relate the \u2018demystification\u2019 and comparative perspectives to the current Greek government\u2019s recently pronounced priorities relating to Greece\u2019s national defence.<\/p>\n

In the fourth and last section we will briefly review the complementarities between defence studies and other fields of scholarly inquiry in Greece.<\/p>\n

Where and why are defence studies today where they are?<\/h2>\n

To our knowledge there is no department or research center established in a public university exclusively dedicated to defence studies. Defence studies do appear in international relations research centers of state universities but their output is scant and their staff expertise thin on the ground. Scholars with a defence studies background are found in the international relations departments of public universities but they are isolated and not surrounded by graduate programmes of study producing a steady stream of post-graduates and PhDs dedicated to defence studies. Relatedly, there does not seem to be a critical mass of Greek academics in universities and research centers abroad, with a defence studies orientation, actively engaged in the Greek national defence scholarship and policy and public debate and\/or returning to Greece to occupy defence study positions thus replenishing the discipline. With very few exceptions, it seems that armed forces cadet and mid-career officer schools have not employed and \/or produced leading defence studies scholars with an internationally notable publications record and an active presence in the public dialogue relating to national defence.<\/p>\n

Importantly, publications and websites dedicated to the armed forces do provide a steady stream of information, analysis and commentary, on Greece\u2019s armed forces and national defence policy.\u00a0 However, the intellectual apparatus either in the public university or think tank sectors has neither the inclination not the analytical depth to separate the wheat from the chaff and thus make the use of this output which is inevitably of highly variable quality in terms of the quality of the expertise made available and the credibility of those producing this output.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will advance four reasons why we believe defence studies in Greece are in such an impoverished state.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is important to speculate on the reasons behind this underperformance in defence studies.\u00a0 Identifying the reasons will take us least half way towards addressing them and overcoming them after all.\u00a0 We will advance four reasons why we believe defence studies in Greece are in such an impoverished state.\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n

First, the legacy of authoritarianism in university campuses during the military junta of 1967-1974, which made any associations with the armed forces toxic for Greek higher education and social sciences in particular. As has been noted, reaction to state repression in Greek state universities rendered campuses sui generis legal jurisdictions whereby a range of opinions and subject matters would be considered illegitimate, particularly by left wing students factions and thus their examination and debate physically disrupted[1]<\/sup><\/a>.\u00a0 Consequently, academics would exercise self-censorship and refrain from engaging with subject matters and fields of inquiry that would engender such reaction. To give an example, it is the opinion of this author that a course in national defence policy, say entitled \u2018From hot incident to all-out war: national defence in the present age\u2019, having as attending students army officers and inviting in its lectures uniformed and Ministry of Defence (MoD) civilian policy makers, simply could not be offered in a Greek state university without causing immense controversy and even physical altercations[2]<\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Second, this lack of engagement from state universities has probably spilled over to the cadet and mid-career officer schools as well as to the non-profit think tank sector. \u00a0The former have not been compelled to match the depth and excellence of the state universities in defence studies, as such depth and excellence does not exist, thus focusing on the narrowly technical aspects of their curricula and attracting less than noted defence studies scholars. The latter have not benefited from the establishment of a robust defence studies discipline that would supply them with a steady stream of high quality defence studies scholars and render research in defence studies visible, prestigious and thus attractive to philanthropic funders.<\/p>\n

Third, as defence is not funded by the European Union but by and large by national resources, Greek social scientists could not anchor their research, on the transparent flows of EU funding and the policy objectives which such funding streams are meant to facilitate, on a variety of domains, ranging from research and development (R&D) objectives to urban regeneration to social welfare.\u00a0 Relatedly, defence is excluded from the purview of organisations such as OECD \u2013 say in contrast to education and health \u2013 which produce a rich stream of data, comparative analysis and policy recommendations for all member-countries, Greece included. NATO is, for the purposes of this analysis, a somewhat comparable organization to the EU, due to its multi-state membership and its mission which aims at institutional and performance-oriented convergence of its member states (in terms, in its case, of the development of commonly agreed defence policies and the achievement of interoperability between the armed forces of member-states). Still, the publicly available NATO data and analyses, comparisons and policy recommendations are no match, in terms of engendering and anchoring academic inquiry, to organisations such as the EU and the OECD.<\/p>\n

Last but not least, the widespread assumption within elite and public opinion in Greece that secrecy should surround military affairs has also restrained defence-related inquiry. This is a factor which we will also address in our analysis of the public debate on national defence of the last ten months.<\/p>\n

From the Turkish-Libyan Agreement to naval brinkmanship: what does public debate tell us about defence studies in Greece<\/h2>\n

A major policy challenge, unfolding over time, commanding top policy makers attention and dominating the news, inevitably draws to public debate a critical mass of bureaucratic and scholarly expertise that inheres in a country.\u00a0 This has been very much the case in the period commencing with the signing of the Turkey-Libya maritime agreement, in December 2019, up to the point of writing of this policy paper with Greece\u2019s navy facing off the Turkish navy which accompanies the Oruc Reis in its seismic research in the Eastern Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

Briefly, the policy domains that public debate covered in the ten month period, at the center-right Kathimerini<\/em> and the center-left To Vima<\/em> and Ta Nea<\/em>, that we reviewed\u00a0 were the following: maritime law and related Greek and Turkish strategies; the politics, the technical aspects and\u00a0 the economics of natural resource exploitation in the Eastern Mediterranean; competitive alliance building\u00a0 by Greece and Turkey; the interaction of foreign and national defence policy; and Greece\u2019s existing and future defence capabilities in view of Turkey\u2019s determination to advance its interests through the use, or threat of use, of armed force in the region.<\/p>\n

In general, issues of maritime law and of the related Greek and Turkish strategies have received a thorough, forensic in its intensity examination by an assortment of ex-policy makers and ex-diplomats as well as politicians in thorough command of their brief, reflecting both the legal training and experience, decades in the making, of Greek scholars, diplomats and policy makers.\u00a0 A particularly vigorous debate took place regarding the pros and cons of past foreign policy approaches with regard to Greece seeking a peaceful resolution of its maritime disputes with Turkey. Issues relating to natural resource exploitation have also received a thorough airing from a variety of sources including IR specialists and technocrats, whether resident or diaspora Greeks, from the energy sector.\u00a0 IR scholars, ex-diplomats and policy makers dealt thoroughly with competitive alliance building and the interaction between foreign and defence policy[3]<\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The subject of Greece\u2019s existing and future defence capabilities was considerably less adequately covered, in our judgment.\u00a0 High ranking retired officers were, by and large and perhaps inevitably, reticent in their op-eds in subjecting to critical scrutiny the armed forces\u2019 preparedness and deterrence capability[4]<\/sup><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 Defence reporters avoided, with few notable exemptions, to analyse Greece\u2019s procurement and weapons acquisition practices and their imprint on Greece\u2019s current military capabilities.\u00a0 Only two scholars affiliated with a Greek academic institution, one from a Greek state university and one from the land forces cadet school, articulated and advocated for some of the desiderata of a future armed force but conspicuously failed to explain what are the defining features of the armed forces that we have at our disposal today, warts and all, and how did we get to acquire them[5]<\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The counterfactual \u2013 the public debate that we could have had and should have had \u2013 was substantiated by two sui generis personalities, ship owner and major benefactor of the Hellenic Navy, Panos Laskaridis, and long retired, and well-known for his blunt speaking, former center right politician, Stefanos Manos.\u00a0 Briefly, they both offered a coruscating critique of the state of Greece\u2019s armed forces focusing on: how time consuming Court of Auditors\u2018 ex ante, archaic audit processes have crippled the availability of fighter jets to the Greek Air Force; how surplus to requirements army camps as well as ill-positioned armed forces units \u2013 due to local pressures \u2013 have denied resources and optional positioning near the theater of operations to the Greek Army and Navy; how operational expenses have been burdened by rank inflation in the Greek officer corps (too many chiefs, not many Indians); how alternative weapons acquisitions, with a possible bigger \u2018bang for the buck\u2019 have not been properly considered; and so on[6]<\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026<\/em> politics has prioritized not combat effectiveness but interest group accommodation via monetary transfers, with potentially catastrophic consequences for national defence.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Importantly, and despite the fact that these two vigorous opinion-makers are neither scholars nor analysts, there was an implicit interpretation in their critique[7]<\/sup><\/a>. Namely, that politics has prioritized not combat effectiveness but interest group accommodation via monetary transfers, with potentially catastrophic consequences for national defence.\u00a0 In other words, Messrs. Laskaridis and Manos virtually alone offered a coherent as a blunt critique of why we are where we are today in terms of our armed forces deterrent capabilities, in the leading print media we reviewed.<\/p>\n

By contrast, as we mentioned above, not sui generis personalities but a diversified cohort of specialists, of expert policy makers and scholars, offered a coherent critique of the vital issue of maritime disputes with Turkey. We refer to the critique of the abandonment, for political reasons, by the ND government, led by Kostas Karamanlis, of the Helsinki process instituted by the predecessor PASOK government.\u00a0 According to this analysis, had there been policy continuity between the then PASOK and ND governments, Turkey would have been obliged to accept international arbitration for the resolution of its maritime disputes with Greece as part of its obligations as a candidate EU member country.<\/p>\n

No such extensive postmortem has been offered on how policy choices by successive governments, over the past 10-20 years, have resulted in the present state of Greece\u2019s armed forces.\u00a0 Yet it could be argued that just as the continuation of the Helsinki process might have forestalled Turkey\u2019s current military aggression, the same outcome might have been achieved had Greek governments been steadfast in maintaining Greece\u2019s military deterrence at peak performance, say, through a ruthless rationalisation programme implemented during the fiscal crisis which would have secured sufficient resources for essential operations and weapon systems.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026<\/em> there was no sophisticated analysis of the state of the Turkish Armed Forces, despite the existence of significant non-Greek scholarship on the politicization and factionalism of the Turkish officer corps.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Importantly, the public debate as we analysed it also exhibited the same patterns of analysis of the Turkish threat to Greece. A critical mass of International Relations and Turkey specialists from the academia, international law jurists and energy technocrats, satisfactorily analysed the drivers and objectives of Turkey\u2019s geopolitical and energy strategy and of the domestic dynamics shaping the behavior of Turkey\u2019s current leadership.\u00a0 However, there was no sophisticated analysis of the state of the Turkish Armed Forces, despite the existence of significant non-Greek scholarship on the politicization and factionalism of the Turkish officer corps.\u00a0 Nor was there a special focus placed on the impact on Turkish military capabilities of Erdogan\u2019s post 2016 coup purges, which has also been investigated by non-Greek scholars[8]<\/sup><\/a>.\u00a0 Turkey\u2019s growing military & industrial complex was registered in the Greek press but again there was no sophisticated analysis on offer on its possibilities and constraints as much on its future trajectory.\u00a0 The author of this Policy Paper has failed to identify a single, internationally notable, Greek expert on the Turkish Armed Forces despite the fact that these Armed Forces constitute Greece\u2019s main national security threat at least since the early 1970s, i.e. for nearly half a century.<\/p>\n

The press coverage of this ten-month period brought to the surface two additional issues.\u00a0 First, and despite the thin literature which is the outcome of the absence of a well-developed defence discipline in Greece, there have been peer reviewed publications by Greek scholars on such important themes as the impact of the fiscal crisis on Greek defence budgetary allocations, the authors of which did not present their informed views in the print media we reviewed[9]<\/sup><\/a>. Second, as we mentioned above, there is a mass of evidence generated by less visible military related websites and journals echoing and specifying to great detail the critique of Messrs. Laskaridis and Manos, evidence that has by and large not been filtered and presented by defence reporters in the prominent papers we reviewed[10]<\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lack of a robust defence studies discipline in Greece has not habituated the Greek public to an honest, evidence-based debate on the state and purpose of the country\u2019s armed forces.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We draw the following conclusions from our analysis:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The lack of a robust defence studies discipline in Greece has not habituated the Greek public to an honest, evidence-based debate on the state and purpose of the country\u2019s armed forces.<\/li>\n
  2. This lack of insitutionalisation of defence studies not only has limited scholarship on defence-related matters but it has also meant that what scholarship there is lacks the links with Greece\u2019s leading media through which to render their research accessible.<\/li>\n
  3. Leading media \u2013 newspaper editors and defence reporters \u2013 are generally weary of sharing with the public what they surely know on Greece\u2019s armed forces. Alternatively, they chose to share such knowledge by proxy, in the case of one newspaper, by granting access to the views of unimpeachable, highly independent personalities, in particular Messrs. Laskaridis and Manos, who are not constrained in \u2018calling a spade, a spade\u2019.<\/li>\n
  4. There is no conceivable national security reason for Greece\u2019s quality print media not to subject to critical scrutiny the state of Greece\u2019s armed forces, as they regularly do in other policy domains such as public health and state education, as this information is already available to Greece\u2019s main strategic rival, Turkey. In particular, due to the proliferation of defence-related specialist publications and websites in Greece any diligent interested party, and certainly any third country intelligence service, can develop a granular understanding of the capabilities and shortcomings of all three of the branches of the country\u2019s armed forces.\u00a0 The only one left uniformed on the state of Greece\u2019s armed forces is the Greek citizenship.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The negative consequences of the lack of sustained, diverse as well as high level scholarship and policy relevant research are multiple, significant and highly pertinent in the current juncture where Greece\u2019s military deterrent capabilities are instrumental to the country\u2019s foreign policy objectives as much as to the defence and inviolability of its sovereignty.\u00a0 We mention indicatively:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. The lack of informed debate on national defence means that status quo-oriented stakeholders, ranging from local communities dependent on defence spending to military officers vested in particular weapon platforms and military tactics and strategies, can effectively resist change that is necessary for the effectiveness of national defence.<\/li>\n
    2. The lack of public and elite awareness and\/or knowledge of the range of options and possibilities that the country has in reforming its armed forces, means that vital and actionable policy recommendations are either not articulated or that the elite and public consensus necessary for such type of recommendations to be implemented does not come into being.<\/li>\n
    3. Valuable voices of reform of Greece\u2019s defence policy \u2013 indicatively reform-minded active and retired officers, MoD civil servants, managers and investors in Greece\u2019s defence sector \u2013 are absent form public discourse and only present, if at all, at marginal publications and websites.<\/li>\n
    4. Armed Forces cadet colleges and midcareer schools of the three branches, army, navy and air force, are at risk of intellectual stagnation as their faculty and students do not engage with cutting edge, comparatively informed debate and research taking place outside the walls of their institutions but within Greece.<\/li>\n
    5. Unlike the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where distinguished international relations and international law scholars support, as advisors or deputy ministers, the political leadership and renew the thinking of the professional diplomatic corps, the political leadership of the MoD cannot likewise renew institutional thinking, as well as strengthen their own policy deliberations, by bringing in high caliber defence studies scholars.\u00a0 Consequently, ministerial advisors to the MoD political leadership are mostly there to help their political masters at the Ministry run the \u2018access game\u2019, ranging from politicised officer appointments, to the choice of weapons systems, to accommodating constituents demands on conscripts\u2019 military unit selection.<\/li>\n
    6. Policy failures and shortcomings \u2013 indicatively, in timely upgrades of weapon systems and \/ or in a timely and effective weapon purchasing policy and process, in the adequate manning of the Greek armed forces, particularly so in the case of the Army – are not methodically identified and highlighted and thus not addressed, raising risks in terms of the country\u2019s ability to neutralize challenges to its sovereign rights and even to its territorial integrity.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Defence Studies two critical objectives: demystify and compare national defence<\/h2>\n

      In our opinion were defence studies to be systematically developed in Greece, both in public universities and at think tanks like ELIAMEP, they should focus in two directions.<\/p>\n

      First at demystifying, and by that we mean the deployment of well-developed scholarly lines of inquiry on Greece\u2019s political economy, overall state performance, administrative practices, state and party relations and so on.<\/p>\n

      Second, in comparing and contrasting key aspects of past and current Greek defence policy and practices with that of defence policies and armed forces of other nation-states. This can be done by utilizing both the excellent international scholarship and the voluminous strategy and planning documents of ministries of defence of various states.<\/p>\n

      \u201c\u2026a necessary starting point is the commonality that Greece\u2019s defence policy has with all other high spending domains in Greece. \u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      On demystification, a necessary starting point is the commonality that Greece\u2019s defence policy has with all other high spending domains in Greece \u2013 certainly with state education and public health \u2013 whereby the priority of the political system is to accommodate distributional expectations at the cost of effective policy delivery.\u00a0 The four key channels through which this priority is enacted, at Greece\u2019s armed forces\u00a0 are: a) promotions, tenure and pension entitlements, b) support of employment at state-owned Greek manufacturing firms and shipyards that supply or upgrade the Greek armed forces with major weapons platforms, c) support of local economic demand through the maintenance of army camps and other personnel-rich military installations, d) sequential limits to conscript service at suboptimal levels, a form of unsustainable series of \u2018tax\u2019 cuts ( the \u2018tax\u2019 being the time offered for free by male conscripts to the armed forces\u2019 three branches).<\/p>\n

      International, policy- and scholarship-informed, comparison would involve critical features of Greece\u2019s defence policy and armed forces such as:\u00a0 armed forces doctrine and structure, weapons procurement process, weapons procurement and international alliances, the professional \/ conscript mix, the development of a domestic defence-related industry and the partnership of the national defence establishment with the nation\u2019s research community.<\/p>\n

      To give but a few examples of the value of such comparison: an examination of Australia\u2019s MoD recent publication of its defence doctrine and armed forces structure, which addresses China\u2019s rise as a military power, would pose the question why the Greek MoD does not engage in a similar exercise, thus relating and committing to the Greek citizen\u00a0 to implement the measures it understands as necessary to defend Greece\u2019s territorial sovereignty and other national interests[11]<\/sup><\/a>; a comparative study of the institution of conscript service, including not only Israel, but also states such as Korea, Singapore, Switzerland and Sweden, will highlight the circumstances under which conscript service does not decay\u00a0 under a variety or actual and perceived national security challenges[12]<\/sup><\/a>; the examination of Israel would be highly useful in developing an understanding of how a small state which is relied upon the US for its main weapons systems, not unlike Greece, has managed to develop a local defence-related industrial capability which both enhances its military prowess and contributes to the international competitiveness of its economy[13]<\/sup><\/a>. In an Annex we will throw further light on the benefits of going comparative on national defence studies by looking at two highly pertinent features of the China-Taiwan case, namely weapons acquisitions under assymetric defence and the US security guarantee.<\/p>\n

      To render even more concrete the utility of a robust defence studies programme in Greece, in the present context, we can relate such a programme, and its lines of inquiry, to the Greek Prime Ministers\u2019 programmatic commitments on national defence, enunciated in Thessaloniki on September 12, 2020[14]<\/sup><\/a>.\u00a0 We commend on the four out of six of the Prime Minister\u2019s defence-related decisions and deliberations (the Prime Minister\u2019s announcements are in italic):<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. The acquisition of 18 French Rafale fighter jets<\/em>. There is highly applicable literature on nation-states\u2019 incentives in diversifying their fighter aircraft fleets, including Egypt and India which have acquired Rafales, despite the significant diseconomies of scale that such choices create in terms of training, spare parts acquisitions, upgrades and so on[15]<\/sup><\/a>.\u00a0 As Greece has consistently opted, in the post 1974 period, to acquire weaponry from more than one supplier country \u2013 say in contrast to Israel or Japan where the US is their dominant advanced weapons supplier \u2013 it is imperative that Greek defence studies evaluate, via a comparative lens, this pattern in major weapons acquisition.<\/li>\n
      2. Elevate the availability and effectiveness of existing weapons platforms through upgrades (frigates, attack helicopters, fighter jets) and purchasing of advanced munitions (relevant to submarines, fighter jets and tanks)<\/em>.\u00a0 Here, defence studies needs to examine the tendency of Greek governments to privilege highly visible public investments \u2013 e.g. buildings, advanced equipment, infrastructures \u2013 in all policy domains but to then fail to commit to their effective operation through adequate maintenance, equipment upgrades, effective personnel mix, public health being a particularly notable example.<\/li>\n
      3. With regard to conscript service, the government is examining the possibility of raising to 12 months in the Land Forces and instituting induction of all conscripts at the age of 18.<\/em> ELIAMEP, in particular, has dealt with this policy issue in the past but, as we mention above, there has not been a systematic comparison of the way conscription has evolved over time and in different countries and the distinctive national security priorities that conscription has meant to address. Indicative of the poverty of scholarly investigation, in this critical pillar of Greek national defence, is the fact that when both Ta Nea<\/em> and Kathimerini<\/em> addressed this issue, by inviting the opinions of supporters and critiques of the PM\u2019s pronouncement, none of the four individuals thus engaged was a defence studies scholar who has investigated this issue in the past[16]<\/sup><\/a>.<\/li>\n
      4. Strengthening of the indigenous defence industry<\/em>. Again, as mentioned above, there is a significant international literature on this issue, with Israel being the lodestar.\u00a0 Furthermore, Greek scholarly debate can link the issue of Greece\u2019s indigenous defence industrial sector with the overall failure, which receives increasing scholarly interest, of Greece\u2019s manufacturing sector to link up with the country\u2019s universities and research institutes for R&D purposes.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Finally, the timing of the Prime Minister\u2019s announcements \u2013 amidst high risk military brinkmanship engendered by Oruc Reis\u2019 exploration activities \u2013 highlights the Greek \u2018paradox\u2019 which deserves high quality scholarly investigation.\u00a0 This \u2018paradox\u2019 entails the perceived necessity by the Greek political system to commit to high level, multiyear defence commitments, due to a near military confrontation with Turkey which lasts days or at most months (but which exposes the years-long, build-up of deficiencies in Greece\u2019s military deterrence).\u00a0 We believe, as suggested above, that first this \u2018paradox\u2019 should be situated in the overall tendency of the Greek polity to opt for a fiscal policy that privileges transfers (e.g. salaries, pensions and so on) over capital expenditures and the funding of operations (i.e. minus personnel costs) meaning that preventative policies are denied the resources they require to be effective. After all, a persistent theme of the fiscal crisis years was the gusto with which successive Greek governments cut the Public Investment Programme.<\/p>\n

        To highlight further the fact that defence is not the exception but the rule in this bias in Greek fiscal policy, for transfers versus policy delivery, we could no worse than point out at how the coronavirus pandemic found Greece with a per population number of intensive care units well below the EU average.<\/p>\n

        What also requires investigation is whether this bias in fiscal policy, in effect decisively shapes an unstated, national security crisis playbook and national defence doctrine.<\/p>\n

        \u201c\u2026when Greece is maximally threatened by Turkey, it seeks to \u2018buy\u2019 some measure of Great Power protection immediately, by ironically committing to future-oriented, multiyear arms acquisition programmes.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

        In terms of the unstated national security crisis playbook, fiscal policy biases by creating weaknesses in national defence which are periodically exposed by Turkish military aggression, possibly privilege \u2018defence diplomacy\u2019 imperatives. On those occasions when Greece is maximally threatened by Turkey, it seeks to \u2018buy\u2019 some measure of Great Power protection immediately, by ironically committing to future-oriented, multiyear arms acquisition programmes.<\/p>\n

        In terms of the unstated national defence doctrine, fiscal policy biases by producing\u00a0 armed forces which suffer from perennially low stocks of advanced munitions, outdated weapons platforms and undermanned land forces (due to the lowering of the \u2018tax\u2019 in time that is the conscript service), entrench\u00a0 the policy makers\u2019 assumption of a short – measured in days not weeks or even months \u2013 military conflict with Turkey, by and large involving the navy, the air force and the special forces, and resulting into an initial draw. After such a draw, Great Power intervention is envisaged which would impose a cessation of hostilities, long before Turkey would be able to deploy its quantitative advantage in personnel and materiel, particularly in Greece\u2019s land border.<\/p>\n

        To the extent that fiscal biases, in addition to lower conscription service which is also determined by the same political cost and benefit calculus that shapes fiscal policy, produce such an unstated defence doctrine, it is incumbent on Greek defence studies to flesh out the risks for Greek national defence and foreign policy objectives.\u00a0 These risks are precisely due to policy makers\u2019 awareness of the limitations placed on Greece\u2019s deterrence capabilities by the distributional priorities of the country\u2019s fiscal policy.<\/p>\n

        \u201cTurkey for reasons of its own, at any given point in time, might decide to either credibly threaten or implement escalation, beyond the fiscally constrained capabilities of Greek military deterrence and despite Great Power intervention.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

        We note in passing that such national defence assumptions on Great Power intervention might have proven to be pragmatic in the past \u2013 e.g. during the Imia crisis \u2013 or even currently, considering both France\u2019s and the US\u2019s distinct support of the Greek position; however, they might not be so in the future. Let us be reminded of the US Pentagon\u2019s saying, that \u2018the enemy gets to vote too\u2019. Turkey for reasons of its own, at any given point in time, might decide to either credibly threaten or implement escalation, beyond the fiscally constrained capabilities of Greek military deterrence and despite Great Power intervention. History is replete with such military misadventures which have indeed boomeranged catastrophically to their instigators – but not before bringing close to ruin those countries which failed to make contingencies for them, so as to either deter or nip in the bud military aggression[17]<\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

        Focused but also interdisciplinary<\/h2>\n

        A focused programme of defence studies, developed in Greece\u2019s public universities and leading thinktanks such as ELIAMEP, will not <\/strong>be an exercise in silo thinking; on the contrary, it will significantly enrich, and be enriched by, other disciplines and directions of scholarly inquiry in Greece.\u00a0 Indicatively:<\/p>\n