US President Donald Trump speaks, during a charter announcement for his Board of Peace initiative aimed at resolving global conflicts, alongside the 56th annual World Economic Forum (WEF), in Davos, Switzerland, on January 22, 2026. [Jonathan Ernst/Reuters]
History is being written before our eyes, with every inconceivable post by Donald Trump, with the images of the latest betrayal of the Kurds by the United States, with the declarations of leaders who note the final passing of the world of the past 80 years.
In older times, people did not know what was being cooked up for them in distant conference halls. Today, observing people with below average intelligence and morals deciding the fate of nations, we are just as powerless, other than understanding earlier the ills that are headed our way.
Governments see things at the same time that the rest of us do, and they must manage a situation in which the givens of many decades are dissolving into air. In Greece, for many years we were in lockstep with the United States and the European Union, which, until now, were on a common course.
Domestically, despite our being in the “West,” there was no easing of the contest between rationality and a strange obsession with hostile conspiracies and fantastical friendships that would save us. From the War of Liberation, foreign powers affected developments, empowering their representatives at the expense of the whole.
It was only with its accession to what is now the European Union that Greece was able to see itself as being among equals. But fear of Turkey always forced it to stay close to the United States for its security. The many years of buying weapons beyond its economic means may have won the temporary goodwill of its suppliers, but it also deprived society and the economy of funds. The foreign threat kept alive the clash between “patriots” and “sellouts,” and contributed toward seeing black money and huge debts as natural. And so, we did not attain the European average prosperity.
Now that Trump has crowned himself king of the world, with a Board for Peace in which he will decide who takes part and what they decide, Greece must march in step with the EU and develop new alliances, which it has been doing. But in the turmoil, Turkey has been strengthened, and so our country needs to maintain good relations both with the United States and the EU. We are heading back to the instability of the past. And we need a cool appraisal of the dangers and consensus among ourselves – just what we always lacked.
