GREECE
As can easily be imagined, these arms purchases amount to billions of dollars. The total seems to be around 15 billion. The PASOK government has not given any official figures. There have only been "leaks," which continually lead to re-
Papandreou talks peace, but steps up arms race vising the estimate upward.
We have gone from reports that talked about 1.5 billion dollars to reach the estimated figure of 15 billion today, if that is the real figure. What the PASOK government is trying to do is (1) fool
Having risen to power on a wave of anger against Washington and Nato, the backers of the hated dictatorship of the colonels, the PASOK government of Andreas Papandreou has distinguished itself by statements denouncing Reagan's step-up of the arms race and his threats aimed at the
Soviet Union.
The following article from the September issue of Ergatike Pale, the paper of the Greek section of the Fourth International, indicates that
PASOK's nationalism has another side besides the conflict with Nato, one that makes the whole operation fundamentally contradictory.
what arms deal the Greek government has
It is not clear yet exactly
But Ergatike Pale points up some of the main lines of PASOK's made.
armament policy. The article has been somewhat abridged.
The celebrated "buv" of the century seems finally about to be concluded.
The government says that negotiations will be concluded before October 1 for the purchase of the Mirage-2000, F-16
This deal involves not only airplanes.
A whole superarmament program is being set in motion. As the deputy minister of defense, Antoni Drosogiannis has said, "the arms program covers all three services, and so, following the decision to buy these ultramodern aircraft, it is now the turn of the land forces and the navy."
"Therefore," he went on to say,
"orders will be placed this year for tanks, military helicopters, warships and antiaircraft weapons - mainly missiles."
Drosogiannis continued: "The extent of the modernization of the land forces and the navy will depend on the total expenditure for arms approved by the
You see, the
Ministry of the Economy.
price of independence is extremely high, and such choices have definite effects on everything, these programs cannot be ininto our five-year program for economic development."
What this program of new superarmament of the land forces and the navy involves is not yet known (nor do we believe that it will be in its full extent).
Nonetheless, military circles indicate that a hundred to two hundred tanks will be bought (M-60s, Leopard-2s and AMXs, each of which costs hundreds of millions of drachmas). (1)
For the first time, about eight military helicopters are to be purchased
(Cobras and Apaches), each of which costs about 120 million drachmas. Also to be purchased are warships, in two
The first calls for buying five, and the second, ten.
Each of these will cost about 100 million dollars. To all of this, you have to add the missiles that are soon to be bought - 300 Super Side-
(air-to-air missiles about a thousand Mavericks (air-to-ground missiles), for a total cost of 31 million doi-
14
Virtually the only industries that are blooming in Greece are those that pro-
The contributions these industries have made to capital are enor-
First of all the Hellenike Biomekhania Oplon (EBO - the Greek Arms Industry) made a clear profit of 1,116 million drachmas in 1983. It should be noted, moreover, that about 71% of EBO's total sales are exports and they bring in about 80% of its net profit.
In fact, the EBO is not the only military industry. There is also the Pyrkal, the Hellenike Aeroporike Biomechania (Greek Airplane Industry), and Stagier, which makes heavy vehicles and tanks. And this is not counting the subsidiary
Incredible as it may seem, Greece has a higher level of military spending than any country in Nato in comparison with the Gross National Product (7.1%). is higher even than that of the USA, Great Britain, France and Turkey.
Military Appropriations as a % of GNP
7.1 US 6.9 Britain 5.6 France 4.2 Turkey 4.9
Moreover, Greece is first in another
It has the highest percentage of its working population in the armed ser-
Total Number in the Armed Services as % of the Economically Active Population public opinion and (2) get it used to the "buy of the century" gradually through
Billions of dollars are being spent recklessly for superarmament the government claims that every extra drachma the workers demand in raises endangers the national economy and upsets the government's incomes policy.
Perhaps some comparisons will give a better idea of the extent of this swindle. The aircraft alone cost 1.2 trillion drachmas, while the estimated cost of building the subway is 30 billion drachmas and the estimated cost of building the projected metallurgical complex in Chalkis for producing molybdenum, zinc, sulfuric acid, phosphoric acid, and so forth is 25 bil lion drachmas. For the cost of one airplane we could build a whole modern A "jet-assisted" economy?
The premier and the various ministers in his government have continually stressed that these arms purchases are well planned and regulated. "We are the only that has pushed aside the middlemen," spokesperson Demetrio Maroudas. are the only government that has inte grated arms spending into a five-year plan for development," his boss, Papandreou,
From on high, they continually insult our intelligence. So, to top it all off, we learn that "with this buy of the century, velocity. We are supposedly going to make enormous profits from the "compensatory contributions of various companies," as well as investment, increased exports, the importing of new technolog ies and so on. On the other hand, we will be paying for this in installments at least up to 2012. Moreover, they are, as one minister said recently, paying more for these new arms than the "rent for the American bases."
However, there is yet another trap in this matter. Premier Andreas Papandreou has said: "We cannot achieve democracy or socialism while we are under constant threat [from the Turks]"
Such statements and others like them are dropping freely from official lips. 1. About 6,700 million dollars.
International Viewpoint 29 October 1984
This point, being obvious, has no significance in itself. But it serves to justify certain things.
The government and its various scribes have set out to convince us that although we have to pay the steep price of 15 billion dollars for all these weapons systems, at least it will enable us to rest easy for twenty years at a minimum. Nothing is more false than this.
First of all, even if one assumes that by buying all these weapons Greece is tosuperiority over Turkey, nothing prevents the latter from turning the tables by buying more up-to-date
If that happens, then Greece will have to buy still more
Secondly, all the weapons the Greek government is buying, and this is true for some of the most recent ones, have an offensive character and by no means a defensive one.
Moreover, as has been explained — very cautiously to be sure - by various
"We will have to accept the fact also that we are threatened and that we will have to prepare from a tender age to de-
We must also accept the fact that girls, who are developing an independent identity, will have to replace their brothers in the backup services, in the public services and in communica-
Mr. Bousbourelis is swept along by the daring of his thought. to do a lot of planning and a lot of work, and a lot of study to arrive at a system where boys and girls will get three weeks training and then only the boys will get special training of three months at age 18 with two-week refresher courses every year in the same unit, with the same officers and the same comrades up to age 35, so that these units can be operational within five hours."
This sort of thing is clear enough withthat Bousbourelis is the sort that might weapons only a quantitative one, conventional weapons can be adapted for nuclear war in a short time and vice
We reject the attempts to make an absolute distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons. Because they do this, we consider the reformists of the two Communist parties accomplices of PASOK and Papandreou.
Moreover, the policy of the reformist CPs is not only criminal in this respect. Basically they are caught up in a logic that does not differ much from the PASOK in that they accept the view of Turkey as the aggressor.
The CP (Interior) can always be heard saying that there must be negotiations." In every other respect, it accepts not only the ideological and political basis of the government's arming but its tactical aspect also, namely that it necessary to modernize the armed
It is true that the CP (Exterior) has scribblers at the service of PASOK, the be expected to express present-day rule of military strategy (and not just in Greece) is not defensive war or the occupation of land (which seems to be more or less impossible in our case) but long-term destruction of the enemy's
Thirdly, it is not at all true that we can "rest easy" with so many weapons of such types in the hands of the military. Moreover, it is not just this that is disturbing but the strength that is thereby acquired by the main repressive force of the bourgeois state and the ability it gains to make itself physically independent. It is not just the experience of this country not so long ago that makes us nervous
The class war itself makes this dangerous, as history has shown.
Some circles are not oriented ially toward PASOK or the right but are concerned more generally with terests of the bourgeoisie. They are discussing a full "modernization" of the and the problem of the army's human material. saying is much more far reaching
Such weapons cannot be used by just anyone, they say, they need specially trained men serving for many years, at least five. That is, this new armament requires an army that would include larger numbers of professional and semiprofessional soldiers.
In this connection, it is worth quoting a few sections from the article by Ch. K. Bousbourelis, which was published in To Vema [the "serious" rightist daily] on August 26:
"We are going to have to free ourselves from certain hangups and rhetoric about Praetorian Guards and such things. Because technological advances demand many more professional noncommissionand five-year volunteer soldiers than in the past. The airforce, the navy and various units of the army will have to be made up primarily of long-
How to attract the youth to the military profession is somespecialists are going to International Viewpoint 29 October 1984 totalitarianism and militarist societies on opportunity, and especially this year, the year of Orwell. Reject PASOK's chauvinism
The PASOK government has made no bones about the fact that its plan will demand a lot of sacrifices, that we will have to accept a reduction of our standard of living to pay for all these new weapons systems. This means still more austerity for the working people, so that billions of dollars can be burned on the
No, we rejeet this logic. We state categorically that there is nothing to separate us from the Turkish working
Every drachma that goes into weapons both here and there not only helps to poison the relations between our two peoples but condemns them to economic backwardness, poverty and destitu-
We do not see this rivalry, this race for military superiority, leading to economie development. The reverse will be the rechauvinism of the PASOK was only words. Now it is starting to take on material expression - continual arming, continual changes in the structures of the army that reinforce its militaristic fea tures. What does this government of arms, above everything else, hold in store for
It is important, moreover, to expose the Papandreou government's false pretences of being for policies to promote peace, as exemplified by Papandreou's various initiatives on the Pershing II and Cruise, for the abolition of atomic weapons, for a Nuclear-Free Balkans, and so
There is no greater hypocrisy than to make proposals for disarmament and at the same time to plunge yourself into a mad arms race. Not only is the difference between nuclear and conventional taken a different position, and that least verbally it has come out in opposition to the "buy of the century." is also true that their verbal opposition is severly undermined and put in question by its acceptance of the ideological and political cover used by the Greek bourgeoisie and the PASOK government, that is, the idea of Turkey's "aggressiveness," of "Turkish expansionism.",
The workers and the popular masses have to fight against giving up one drachma for military spending, to abolish all military appropriations, and in their place to start up a program of public works, schools, hospitals and housing for working people.
We have to combat every sort of chauvinist hysteria and the militarism that the bourgeoisie and PASOK want to impose on the entire society. Against this, we have to develop a profound internationalist solidarity between the workers of Greece and Turkey as the basic condition for freeing them from the economic morass in which they are trapped, from the poverty and destitution to which their ruling
We must also do this to defend their lives, because there is a real danger
We have to fight every form of militarism as a real threat to democratic, and civil liberties of the workers and as a source of totalitarian-
We have to develop a spirit of real antimilitarism, especially among the workers. We have to help build a movement both inside of and outside of the army. We have to strive to extend soldiers committees for democratic and trade-union freedoms in the army.
We have to show that it is not a wicked, expansionist Turkey that creates the threat of war, but the capitalist system itself and the ruling classes of both Greece and Turkey. We Greek workers must fight for unilateral disarmament, for internationalist solidarity among the exploited masses of Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, for socialism.