A discussion with George Kouvaras

on the background of the economic crisis and what followed

A few words about the book

The Issues of War 2009-2022 is based on Evangelos Venizelos’ complete and systematic narrative of the period of the economic crisis, the decade of the memorandum 2009-2019. Evangelos Venizelos, in response to the questions of George Kouvaras, presents the events, the behind-the-scenes, the people and his interpretation of the situations experienced by the country in the international and European context of the time. All this is related to the sequence of crises, the transition from the economic crisis to the pandemic and from the pandemic to the Russian military invasion and the war in Ukraine.

As Evangelos Venizelos writes in the preface, ‘The decade 2009-2019, the so-called decade of economic crisis and memorandums, is not over. It has the peculiarity of entering the following period, which never marked the return to normality, as the crisis in its multiple forms has now become a component of normality. A normality that is both postmodern and archaic at the same time. A new reality that, as a Janus, looks to the future as well as to the past.

This transition from crisis to crisis, the sequence and interconnection of crises, the continuing relevance of the economic crisis, or rather the structural issues linked to the economic crisis, was the essential reason why I accepted George Kouvaras’ persistent and well-informed proposal to organise this long and comprehensive debate. What I say in response to his questions constitutes my testimony to the critical period 2009 -2019.

The book tries to place difficult political choices made under suffocating pressure and under conditions of existential national crisis in their European and international contexts and on the horizon of the long historical time already coloured by pandemic and war, the Hydra of History.

I have described the economic crisis as the ‘war of our generation’. Immediately afterwards, the pandemic emerged and developed as a health and scientific ‘war’ with the asymmetrical opponent being the coronavirus. After two wars in the metaphorical sense of the term, the war in Ukraine appears in its most archaic and brutal form. A war in the literal sense of the word, with dimensions that have not yet become apparent in their entirety.

These are therefore ‘versions of war’, metaphorical and real, covering the period 2009-2022.

The author’s books Democracy between Conjuncture and History are also published by Pataki Publications. Expectations and dangers of the revision of the Constitution (2018) and Palingenesis and Reflection. Essays on the 200th Anniversary of the Greek Revolution (2021).