The Greek Conundrum

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

Prelude to America’s Downfall: The Stagflation of the 1970s

Since the end of the Bretton Woods system and the stagflation of the 1970s, the transatlantic core, under the leadership of the United States of America, has been trying to expand its model of free market capitalism embracing every part of the globe, while addressing its domestic overaccumulation crisis. This article follows a historical methodological perspective and draws from the concept of Uneven and Combined Development (UCD), which helps us consider the structural reasons behind the long and protracted decline of the American economic power. In this respect, according to the UCD concept, there is no global power that can enjoy the privilege for being at the top of the global capitalist system forever in a world which develops unevenly and in a combined way. Power shifts across the world and new powers come to challenge the current hegemonic power and its alliance systems. The novelty of the article is that it locates this decline in the 1970s and considers it as being consubstantial with the state economic policy of neo-liberalism and financialisation (supply-side economics). However the financialised capitalism of the transatlantic assemblage lack industrial base producing, reproducing and recycling real commodity values. Further, the article shows that this attempt to remain at the top of the global capitalist system forever has not been successful, not least because the regime which the recovery of the core had rested upon, that of neo-liberal financialisation represents a major vulnerability of the transatlantic assemblage eroding the primacy of the United States of America in it

Neo-Liberalism and Ordoliberalism: A Critique of Two Forms of Imperialism and Authoritarianism

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' socio-economic and political orders, especially in the global periphery and semi-periphery, by way of transplanting there its own class model that prevailed at 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) neo-liberalism and (German-Austrian) ordoliberalism are not stand-alone domestic policies but are instead consubstantial with imperial undertakings, the former project being wider and truly global in scope, whereas the latter is dominating the EU/Euro-zone 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

Economic Drivers of Turkey’s Foreign Policy and the Issue of “Strategic Autonomy” (Sub-Imperialism)

This policy paper draws on analyses, conclusions and a re-composition of papers presented to the 3rd third panel of the project, “Turkey, Asia and the EU in a Changing Global Order”. It also builds on the two preceding policy papers of the same project, advancing the argumentation along four key points: a) The changing relations between Turkey, Asia and Europe reflect on the one hand, Turkey’s growing economic presence at regional, European, and Afro-Asian levels and, on the other, the protracted downturn of Euro-Atlantic economies that followed the 2007-08 global financial crisis and the Eurozone crisis. b) Turkey’s active foreign policy reflects these changes seeking “strategic autonomy” in her international and regional decision-making, thus taking on “sub-imperial” forms. c) The war in Ukraine has disrupted Chinese economic penetration of EU markets, blocked Russian gas supplies to the European Union (EU) while partially and provisionally changing Turkey’s strategic position in NATO as the Turkish Straits are bypassed by the Greece-Balkans corridor to supply war material and logistics to Ukraine. d) Turkey’s active multidimensional foreign and defence policy should be seen in the above contexts and in line with an emerging “non-aligned movement” centred on the so-called “Global South” (China, India, Pakistan, Brazil, and other emerging economies). The EU must confront these realities by creating policy conditions for more independence from the U.S. within NATO and facilitating a peace agenda in Europe and Asia

Prelude to the present crisis: the US and the weaponization of global finance, 2018-19

Mainstream pundits and media commentators saw the crisis in US-Turkey relations and the collapse of the Turkish currency in the crucial 2018-19 juncture as a result of Turkey's refusal to hand over to the US an American Evangelical priest. The analysis here shows that the roots of the conflict in times of crisis contexts, uncertainty and hegemonic instability, go far beyond political epiphenomena. They involve the weaponization of the US Treasury in the service of global power-politics

Greece, global fault-lines and the disintegrative logics of Germany’s primacy in Europe

Post-Keynesian, heterodox and Marxist political economists have rightly argued that the eurozone crisis is not a fiscal crisis but a balance of payments crisis, mainly caused by the pivotal position of Germany in the European Monetary Union (EMU) and its neo-mercantilist model of growth (low wage, low inflation and export-led). This view, however, sees the split between core and periphery in the European Union as something created with the introduction of the EMU in 1999. This chapter contends that this is not the case. By putting forth a global fault-lines historical perspective and focusing on the case of Greece, it is argued that the problem is not the introduction of the EMU but the geopolitical and macroeconomic asymmetries between core and periphery in Europe since the inception of what vaguely – and even inaccurately – can be defined as ‘European modernity’. Global fault-lines offer a macro-historical and macroeconomic understanding of crises seen as structural events generated by the evolving and contradictory tendencies of capitalism as a world system. It is not just a political economy perspective but a perspective that encompasses many instances of the social, especially geopolitical and geocultural structures

The Brexit vote: A financial thunderclap with long-term consequences

The Brexit vote was a financial thunderclap for the entire Western chain of globalised finance. The EU and the Eurozone now face an unknown period of disintegration, instability and rebranding