ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the angularities of the Greek position in relation to a resurgent "Hellenism". Greek anxiety over the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) relates to a complex historical constellation of recurrent ambitions and agonies. It is a problem corresponding to other regional ones complicating Greek international policy. The Megali Idea in many ways reconciled Hellenism with Byzantine/Orthodox traditionalism. After the Roman conquest, Macedonia and Greece experienced a political and, most importantly, a cultural integration and absorption through language and Christianity. The Byzantine Empire, as heir to the Eastern Roman Empire, became less Roman and more Greek over the centuries. In the subsequent Greek civil war (1946-49), Yugoslavia supplied aid to the Communists while the United States, implementing the Truman Doctrine, supported the national government. In the Greek-Macedonian affair, European Union and the United States policy seemed peculiarly inept, even panicked, consequently humiliating a partner, an ally, and a much needed regional stable state.
