The dominant Western narrative-now virtually obligatory within its media and foreign policy establishments-asserts that Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 was unprovoked, ...deriving from domestic political imperatives and messianic imperial nostalgia. Yet, while these factors must be included within a comprehensive causal argument, a deeper and more satisfactory explanation for the invasion situates the predicament of the Russian ruling class-and thus government-within the context of the systematic, decades-long project of NATO expansion and a series of specific provocative actions and decisions taken by Kyiv and Washington in the second half of 2021. The United States has consistently opposed integration between Russia and Western Europe. The key parameter of U.S. neo-imperial strategy in Europe-Asia remains embedded in Cold War geo-politics, namely that U.S. hegemony in Eurasia rests on the exclusion of Russia from European affairs and the prevention of a geo-economic axis between Berlin, Moscow and Beijing. However, even as the war may result in a final settling of accounts in the U.S.-Russia relationship and beyond, it has also thrown into increasingly sharp relief the growing conflict of class interests and complex geopolitical asymmetries and contradictions in the transatlantic relationship.
Greece: The Return of the Right Asimakopoulos, Vassilis; Fouskas, Vassilis K.
The Political quarterly (London. 1930),
October/December 2023, 2023-10-00, 20231001, Letnik:
94, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
New Democracy (ND), the centre‐right party founded by Constantine Karamanlis in summer 1974 and currently led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis, scion of a powerful political family, won the twin electoral ...contest of May/June 2023 with a landslide. The victory was comprehensive both in terms of the votes received—over 40 per cent of those who cast their vote (abstention was over 45 per cent)—and because of the near collapse of Syriza (17.83 per cent) and the weak recovery of the other centre‐left party, PASOK (11.46 per cent). Moreover, far right and conservative parties, three in total, entered parliament, amassing some 12 per cent of the vote. We argue that two interlinked phenomena account for these developments. The first was the eclipse of conditions that created the Syriza phenomenon in Greece (the 2010–15 debt crisis); the second was the lack of a credible programmatic alternative that spoke to the middle classes on behalf of both centre‐left parties.
This commentary discusses an announced 2021 Greek civil rights bill that seeks to reform the nation's family laws, with a focus on its implications for the child custody rights of fathers.
The Greek Conundrum Fouskas, Vassilis K.
The Political quarterly (London. 1930),
October–December 2019, 2019-10-00, 20191001, Letnik:
90, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Syriza lost the July 2019 election in Greece to the right‐wing New Democracy Party, though it was not a crushing defeat. This article explains that although Syriza is chiefly responsible for the ...return of New Democracy to power, its remarkable electoral performance is because its party elites, being in power for over four years, succeeded in appropriating the state machine, establishing caucuses of power, influence and clientelism. Thus, the demise of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), upon which Syriza capitalised in full, led to the establishment of a new two (state) party system dominated by New Democracy and Syriza. The extreme left and the extreme right ceased to play a major role in this new political scene.
Cyprus Fouskas, Vassilis K; Tackie, Alex O
11/2015
eBook
Vassilis K. Fouskas and Alex O. Tackie provide a non-partisan approach to the Cyprus issue that goes beyond the perceptions of ruling elites on the island and their NATO masters, which are ...historically responsible for the division of Cyprus today. Fouskas and Tackie argue that the rise to power of two left-wing parties on both sides of the Green Line means it is time to launch a serious political dialogue to initiate a post-imperial constitutional process. This is a feasible undertaking, not least because Cyprus is a member of the EU, but not a member of NATO. Short and accessible, this book aims to revive a debate in the spirit of Dervis Ali Kavatzoglou and Constantine Misiaoulis, popular symbols of a united, democratic and independent Cyprus.
This timely book will explain, via a number of thematic and case studies, that international economics is not an independent terrain of economic activity reproducing itself throughout history, but a ...complex articulation of social, political and culturally determined actions that are inextricably linked. Chapters will address the role of dominant global powers in the making of global industrial and monetary relations, and, in particular, ways in which, and the degrees to which dominant economic and military powers, such as the USA, tend to shape the domestic economic environments of lesser powers after their own image.
Supplementing the chapters will be a comprehensive A - Z glossary section, which will include key International Political Economy terms, e.g. international debt, European free trade area, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, IMF, GATT-WTO, Foreign exchange, fixed exchange rates, floating exchange rates, reserve currency, gold-dollar parity, multinational corporation, preferential trade agreement, hedge funds, etc. Entries will be cross-referenced for ease of use.
This book will be ideal for researchers and students in the areas of politics, international relations and international economics, as well as for academics, economists, business people, and those with an interest in the workings of international political economy.
Imperialism is primarily driven by a combination of public policies and accumulation regimes taking place within the domestic environment of the imperial state itself. As an international policy, ...however, imperialism aims at transforming other states’ socioeconomic and political orders, especially in the global periphery and semi-periphery, by way of transplanting its own class model prevailing in the metropolitan home. The two most important stylised and separable, but not separate, public policies of our times are that of Anglo-American neo-liberalism, which drives post-Bretton Woods globalisation/financialisation, and that of German-Austrian ordoliberalism, which guides the process of European ‘integration’. The argument advanced here is that (Anglo-American) neoliberalism and (German-Austrian) ordoliberalism are not stand-alone domestic policies, but are instead consubstantial with imperial undertakings. The former project is wider and truly global in scope, whereas the latter is dominating the EU/Eurozone and its immediate periphery (the Balkans/Eastern Europe and the MENA region). In this context, the article puts forth a qualitative critique of both public policies as imperial policies of domination, transformation and exploitation, buttressing regimes of permanent austerity and authoritarianism at home and permanent war and devastation abroad.
This special issue addresses principally, but not exclusively, two themes: first, the differences and similarities between two stylised and separable, but not separate, class policies – that of ...Anglo-American neo-liberalism and German-Austrian ordoliberalism; and second, whether or not European Union Treaties and actual policies have been driven by German-Austrian ordoliberal principles. By way of examining these two themes, the contributions also tackle other important questions and puzzles, such as the wider impacts of those policies on society, or the tensions created between theoretical postulates and the practical implementation of them, or why neo-liberalism proved to be so resilient after the global financial crisis of 2007–2008. They also endeavour to place these discussions in wider, global contexts. Our introduction provides a comprehensive summary of the arguments developed by the contributors and poses some further questions setting out a new research agenda in the field of critical sociological and economic studies.
Examining Lenin's strategy towards colonial and semi-colonial periphery is crucial in understanding the way in which early Soviet policy was shaped and implemented towards the crucial conflict in ...Anatolia between Greece-Britain's proxy-and Turkish national resistance movement based in Ankara. We show that, Soviet state interests kept a firm hand on-albeit in different ways-the development of communism both in Greece and Turkey and, for most of the period, it undermined the movement, especially in Turkey when they directly assisted Kemal's nationalism against the Greek campaign in Asia Minor while Kemal's movement was exterminating leading Turkish communists.
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