By DYLAN EDWARD

Last week, an envoy of U.S. diplomats visited Greece on the occasion of the sixth round of the U.S.-Greece Strategic Dialogue—a bilateral partnership launched in 2018 to shore up military and economic cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean and Red Seas. During the visit, on Oct. 7, while standing at the famous Pnyx Hill against a backdrop of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a speech on the need to rebuild Western alliances in the context of “new competition between great powers again.”

The bulk of Rubio’s speech consisted of a jingoistic, saber-rattling diatribe grounded in a nationalist mythology that portrays the United States as the supposed inheritor of ancient Greek and Roman civilization, extended through European Christendom, and culminating in U.S. global dominance as an alleged historical necessity. Following from this myth, Rubio’s denunciations of modern society’s tendency toward “open borders,” abandonment of nationalism, and declining military supremacy echoed familiar fascist fables, such as Mussolini’s posturing as the restorer of the ancient Roman Empire.

Alas, the same tales that legitimated the conquest, colonial plunder, and imperial wars of bygone eras continues to find resonance among today’s decadent ruling-class.

Rubio’s remarks were given before an audience of roughly 250 attendees, comprising high-ranking Greek diplomats from the incumbent far-right New Democracy Party (ND)—such as Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Foreign Minister Girogos Gerapetritis, and Defense Minister Nikos Dendias. The U.S. Ambassador to Greece, Kimberley Guilfoyle, also attended, although just days later, she has been compelled to resign from her post after scandals have multiplied over allegations of corruption. Other notable officials represented included diplomats from Germany, Israel, and France, members of the U.S. military, among others.

Also in attendance were prominent Greek capitalists and shipping tycoons, including George Prokopiou, one of Greece’s most prominent shipping magnates, overseeing 102 tankers, dry bulk cargo ships, and liquid natural gas (LNG) carriers through his multiple companies; Nikolas Tsakos, owner of Tsakos Energy Navigation, an international shipping and energy transportation business, and son of Panagiotis Tsakos, founder of the Tsakos Group and owner of more than 110 oil tankers, LNG carriers, container ships and dry cargo vessels; and Maria Angelicoussis of the Angelicoussis Group, one of Greece’s largest privately controlled shipping groups, overseeing 158 oil tankers, LNG carriers and dry bulk vessels.

Rubio’s speech—saturated as it was with nationalist appeals to “Western” culture, values, and history—was more than an abstract celebration of Western civilization typically parroted by the likes of PragerU or the Proud Boys. By invoking figures ranging from Plutarch and Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas and Hernán Cortés, Rubio advanced an immediate political task for the ruling-class: the need to consolidate transatlantic imperial hegemony between the United States and its European allies amid intensifying competition in an increasingly fracturing, multipolar world order.

Rubio remarked: “The course we take will determine whether the West maintains its place at the head of the world or resigns itself to a future of atrophy and servitude and decline. We will either choose to act now or lose the choice to act at all. … Under President Trump, the United States has made its choice. … We choose the unapologetic pursuit of national power, to take back control of our critical supply chains, to reindustrialize our economy, to rebuild our defense, to fight for dominance of the technologies and industries of the future.”

The material stakes of this appeal become clearer in the context of the ongoing war with Iran, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and the renewed escalation of Houthi attacks on maritime traffic in the Eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea. These crises also illuminate the strategic significance of Greece’s position in the competition over energy markets and infrastructure, where U.S. efforts to consolidate its influence in the Eastern Mediterranean intersect with its broader confrontation with Russia and its efforts to secure alternative energy corridors into Europe.

This situation exposes the imperialist world-system’s vulnerability (and volatility) to disruptions at strategic maritime chokepoints, threatening energy supplies, commercial shipping, and Western imperialism’s regional and global dominance. The Houthis’ campaign against Israeli-linked shipping, initiated in response to Israel’s genocidal war in Palestine, has further internationalized the conflict, drawing the security of maritime commerce into the broader regional confrontation.

For Washington and its European allies, the stakes extend much beyond the mere restoration of freedom of maritime navigation: they concern the defense of the strategic infrastructure through which US imperialism prolongs its increasingly wavering global influence over international trade and energy flows. Rubio’s special envoy to Greece is just one instantiation of a multi-pronged approach by the U.S. ruling-class to support far-right governments in Europe (e.g., the ND in Greece), further atomizing the EU and laying the groundwork for a series of bilateral trade and security agreements in its place.

Critically, however, Rubio’s warmongering emissary to Greece didn’t take place unabated. On Tuesday, Oct. 6, nearly 1500 protesters—consisting of students, trade unions, and left-wing organizations such as the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and OKDE-Spartakos (the Greek section of the Fourth International)—gathered in Athens to oppose the expansion of U.S.-Greek imperial cooperation.

Protesters marched from the University of Athens to the U.S. and Israeli embassies, chanting antiwar slogans such as “NATO out!” The protest focused on a series of anti-imperialist demands, including:

• Opposition to Rubio’s visit
• Closing U.S. military bases in Greece
• Ending arms trades between the U.S. and Greece
• Withdrawing Greece from NATO
• Building unity between Greek and Turkish workers to fight for wages and against war
• An end to collaboration with Israel, hands off Iran, and for Palestinian liberation

The emergent slogans and demands from within the antiwar movement in Greece point toward a program that U.S. antiwar activists can take up from within the belly of the imperial beast.

For antiwar activists in the United States, the task is to build international solidarity by opposing U.S. military bases, arms deals, the war with Iran, and Washington’s collaboration with Israel. The call for unity between Greek and Turkish workers points toward an internationalist alternative that is necessary at this moment as the U.S. continues to violently reshuffle the terrain of imperialism.

Photo: Alexandros Vlachos / AMNA