Nationalism in Greece

            Nationalism is the country’s thought that its role in an event or that its interest is of the utmost importance in the world. In Greece, this plays out in the wake of the economic downfall. Interestingly, Greece and Germany are in a bit of a “name-calling” stand-off, where Germany is degrading Greece over its poor economy, but Greece pointing out that Germany went through its own economic downfall, particularly after the events of World War I. In this, Greece’s bailout plan seems like it would have been a treasure to the once-desolate country of Germany, who had virtually no help after the war.

            Zakaria sees danger in the rise of nationalism because it’s not interconnected. We’re not independent countries that don’t interact with one another. In The Post-American World, Zakaria talks about how the United States, when it involves itself into international crisis, generally thinks it is helping, and not hurting (Zakaria, 33). This is not always the case (for example the Vietnam war, where we implanted ourselves into a state that did not want our help establishing a new rule). Zakaria also talked about how America can only accommodate itself to the rise of other powers if it is willing to have other major countries become larger stakeholders in the “new order.” (Zakaria, 44). Basically, he’s talking about how the United States needs to share its toys with other countries, because when everybody gets to play, everybody is happy. An example in Greece would be between the massive slave population and the white, land-owning males. In this case, the ratio number of slaves versus the number of land-owning men were severely outnumbered. In this case, the biggest reason given to the freedom of slaves was the revolts during Sparta’s war with Greece.

Cartoon displaying Greek inequality
Courtesy of The TOC

            

          A study by IMK shows that the rise of austerity in Greece has led to inequality income between the lower-income households and upper-income households. What the study showed was that between the years 2008 and 2012, with the growth in poverty has also made the richer a lot richer. It showed that some social indicators were the result of a bad crisis management (especially during the economic crisis Greece is going through at this point) which only happened at the expense of political power and income gain. In this case, inequality is the difference between being able to get by and complete and total poverty to those who have been on the bad receiving-end of this crisis.

           

The results come in the form of a growing poverty level in Greece. It’s also leading to a scramble when it comes to the Greek bailout program and the immigration crisis that is now going through all of Europe.