January 12, 2026
Evangelos Venizelos
Article published in Kathimerini
International law or Realpolitik?
International law or Realpolitik? The dilemmas of Greek foreign policy in a ‘threateningly hyper-mobile’ international conjuncture
Invoking international law and declaring respect for it constitutes one of the critical parameters of the foreign policy of a medium-sized Western country, a member of the European Union and NATO, such as Greece – especially a country that faces a particular national security problem extending beyond the European and NATO frameworks. Yet such a declaration does not in itself amount to a comprehensive national strategy or a coherent national security doctrine.
The elements that compose national power and shape the balance of forces are obviously far more numerous than international law alone. The recourse to international law in Greek official – and more broadly public – discourse over the past half-century, rooted in the founding trauma of the Metapolitefsi in relation to Cyprus, is not made merely or primarily for idealistic or axiological reasons, but because it is widely believed to protect the national interest: both Greece’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and sovereign rights, and the prospect that the real situation in Cyprus might be altered and a solution agreed closer to the model of a bi-communal, bi-zonal federation.
Greek-Turkish relations
We must, however, be honest with ourselves. According to the long-standing official Greek position, recourse to international law in Greek-Turkish relations leads to the delimitation of the continental shelf and the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) through a bilateral agreement or by agreed referral to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. This approach, however, encounters opposition from those who maintain that, under international law, Greek positions on all issues must be accepted by the other side, by all states and by all international organizations without the interposition of any international judicial process – which might result in a decision not fully satisfactory to Greek claims. It scarcely needs to be stressed that meanwhile the national security problem remains real, and sovereign rights in these maritime zones are largely not exercised.
By the same logic, in the Cyprus issue the occupation of the northern part of the island, the presence of strong Turkish military forces and Turkish settlers continue; and the new factual development, I fear, is the change in the status of the fenced city of Famagusta, which from being available for return to the Republic of Cyprus is becoming a field of investment interest for Turkey and the Turkish-Cypriot side.
Certainly, recourse to international law has prevented recognition of the Turkish-Cypriot “entity” in the occupied areas, while the European sense of legality constitutes a significant component of the acquis formed by the accession of the Republic of Cyprus to the EU and the Eurozone. Moreover, a process governed by international law was what led to the rejection of the Annan Plan by the Greek-Cypriot side in the 2004 referendum, and likewise a process governed by international law led to the failure of Crans-Montana talks (2017) – from which almost nine years of substantive stagnation have now passed without affecting the real situations on the ground.
The entire school of thought that holds that time works in favor of the national interest and that existing factual situations in Greek-Turkish relations and in Cyprus are preferable to international agreements or international judicial decisions that might diverge in certain points from the full acceptance of Greek and Greek-Cypriot positions and preferences – even their innermost ones – is a school of Realpolitik.
Yet it may also present itself as a school of thought absolutely devoted to international law: Factual situations, it argues, have arisen because the other side has violated and continues to violate international law (through the invasion and continuing occupation of Cyprus, and through unilateral illegal claims – or at least assertions – in Greek-Turkish relations). Let these factual situations remain, this view holds, until the other side restores compliance with international law under pressure from the international balance of forces. Hence the expectation and the pursuit of an international balance of forces as a real condition that will lead to the full application of our own conception of international law.
Misunderstandings
The misunderstanding originates from the widespread belief, first, that the other side does not invoke international law and does not declare its respect for it; second, that the international community as a whole – despite the colossal conflicts and internal realignments it is undergoing – accepts as indisputably valid international law what we perceive as international law; and third, that our own national priorities are always internationally important and overriding, notwithstanding so many open fronts, novel developments, and the overturning of what had been taken for granted.
International law is not normatively perceived in the same way by all. Through its invocation, diametrically opposed claims may be advanced, as indeed occurs in all fields of law. There are, moreover, fundamental issues concerning the very nature of international law – issues touching upon its deeper relationship with national sovereignty and the balance of forces, issues literally of the philosophy and epistemology of law – which, in the conduct of foreign policy by numerous international actors unequal among themselves and amid the continuous flow of international political, economic and military conjunctures, are either glossed over or addressed in a blunt manner.
International law recognizes state sovereignty but also limits it. This is its genetic problem, for it ties it to sovereignty that appears equal for all states as a legal magnitude, yet is provocatively unequal and asymmetric as a real magnitude. The European conception of sovereignty – among the member-states of the EU and the Council of Europe participating in the project of European integration, transferring essential competences to the EU, accepting the authority not only of their national constitutions but also of the ECHR and EU law, and judicial review not only by national courts but also by the ECHR and the CJEU – is radically different from the conception of sovereignty prevailing in the United States, not only under the Trump administration that pushes everything to its extremes.
It is obviously radically different from the conception prevailing in China and Russia. A conception of sovereignty also implies a conception of international law, of the International Court of Justice, of the International Criminal Court, of the United Nations and the Security Council. The United States, Russia and China – permanent members of the Security Council – have, for example, not recognized the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has not been signed by Turkey, but neither by the United States nor by Israel.
The American conception
The supremacy of the US Constitution, according to American logic, is unquestionable; the European debate on the plurality of legal orders is not even comprehensible in the United States. Conversely, the “extraterritoriality” of US jurisdiction constitutes a major chapter in American legal discourse. The arrest of Nicolas Maduro and the charges brought against him will be adjudicated by the American judicial system and, if he exhausts his remedies, ultimately by the US Supreme Court not by the president who ordered the military operation to execute a judicial warrant against a foreign national on the territory of another state, one who is not recognized as a legitimate head of state enjoying immunity. This is the American conception of international law.
It is scarcely necessary to recall the Russian conception, or numerous other old and recent examples. Accordingly, for a country such as Greece, invoking and universally respecting international law is a significant parameter of its foreign policy, whose mission is to defend the national interest in a world that does not function as the courtroom of a universal tribunal judging everything by international law, but rather operates in a complex, contradictory, asymmetric and contingent manner – constantly writing and erasing history, which thus fails to teach us what it should and tends to repeat itself not as farce but as tragedy.
To the question, therefore, whether Greek foreign policy can combine Realpolitik and respect for international law, my answer would be that Greek foreign policy must primarily possess historical consciousness, which includes historical geography. With such consciousness, it can place in its proper position the acquis of international legality and Western legal civilization with its values and self-evident principles, but also, obviously, all the parameters of national power and the full picture of the international balance of forces and its dynamics, with a keen awareness of the situation on the ground. This is an extremely demanding exercise, the conduct of which presupposes that, as a state, a political system and a civil society, we are able – through serious discussion and consensus on the essentials, without pettiness and without self-deception – to express the nation as a historical subject within a threateningly hyper-mobile international conjuncture.
*Evangelos Venizelos is a former deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, former minister of national defense, former president of PASOK, and emeritus professor of law at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
Relative link: https://www.ekathimerini.com/opinion/1292113/international-law-or-realpolitik/
