A leading power in a difficult neighborhood

We often like to play the role of the victim and the downtrodden. We see it now around us as the mentality of "poor Greece is a punching bag" is being formed, just because Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama spoke at a gathering of ethnic Albanians in Athens last Sunday and the new president of North Macedonia referred to her country only as "Macedonia" rather than by its constitutional name. It's like we feel a sweet attraction to victimization, but it's not worth even thinking about it.

Greece is the serious, strong, purely Western, purely democratic European country in a very infamous, difficult and unpredictable neighborhood. It has no right to feel any insecurity toward neighbors that are very small in geopolitical size and power. And at the same time it has every reason to distance those neighbors from the would-be anti-Western "protectors" of the region, whoever they are...