| Summary: | This essay discusses Greece’s relationship with its neighbourhood to the north and to the east in a historical perspective. It begins with a brief presentation of Greek foreign policy during the 19th and 20th centuries, then examines the more recent post-1989 regional environment, and concludes with Greece’s present regional position. It is divided into four parts. The first part presents an overview of the first 100 years of nation-state building, a time of regional competition and territorial expansion in the context of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire leading to the Balkan wars, the First World War and the ‘Asia Minor Catastrophe’. The second part looks at the period following the Second World War, marked by the Cold War international bipolarity and sharp ideological divisions. The third part considers Greece in the context of the post-Cold War era, marked by the wars in Yugoslavia, the increasing influence of the European Union (EU) and Greece’s engagement in the region. The final part examines the post-2009 climate of economic crisis in Greece to the present, its worst crisis since 1929, and how this affected the country’s relationship with its neighbours in South Eastern Europe.
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