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Hardly anyone expects Papandreou to do that. But if the Harvard-educated economist and former Berkeley professor has a proven track record for anything in politics, it is for mercurial gestures. A onetime U.S. citizen who reverted to Greek citizenship in 1964, he seems to have thrived during his first term on ruffling feathers among the Western allies. The exponent of a nebulous "Third Road to Socialism," Papandreou irked the Reagan Administration by dubbing the U.S. the "metropolis of imperialism." Even though Greece has been a NATO member since 1952, he opposed the alliance's decision to deploy cruise and Pershing II missiles in Western Europe, while barely mentioning a deeply threatening Soviet buildup of SS-20 missiles on the Continent. At times, Papandreou's anti-Western posturing reached surprising extremes. In 1983, for example, his government refused to condemn the shooting down of a Korean airliner by Soviet jet fighters, and Papandreou briefly championed the Soviet claim that the aircraft was a U.S. spy plane. Last March he irritated his European Community partners by threatening to veto the entry into the group of Spain and Portugal, an event scheduled to take place next January. He backed down only after winning $1.5 billion in development aid.
For all his outbursts against the West, Papandreou's sallies have largely proved to be grandstanding. In the main, they have been the product of the historic enmity between Greece and Turkey, a fellow NATO member. That confrontation intensified after the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, in which Greeks are the ethnic majority. During Papandreou's tenure, the two countries have failed to resolve long-standing disputes over air and sea jurisdiction around Greek islands off Turkey's Aegean coast, as well as over the 1983 declaration of independence by Turkish Cypriots in the zone under their control.
Most Greeks join Papandreou in decrying what they consider a U.S. tilt toward Turkey as a strategically more important NATO partner. Nonetheless, following his 1981 election, the Prime Minister failed to follow through on earlier threats to pull Greece out of NATO and the European Community. Moreover, despite his continued opposition to the presence of U.S. bases, Papandreou negotiated a five-year renewal of the leases in 1983. Says an adviser at NATO headquarters in Brussels: "By his standards, at least, he has been less extreme. We're hoping everyone will give him the benefit of the doubt."
A less charitable calculation is that Papandreou will now be too preoccupied with domestic problems to needle Greece's allies. During the campaign, he promised to "guarantee the expansion of the welfare state," mainly in the areas of pensions and health care, rather than institute prudent austerity measures. If he pursues that promise, Greece's economic woes might worsen. Inflation now stands at 18.5%, the highest in Western Europe. Unemployment has more than doubled, to 8%; among Greek youth it is estimated to be around 28%. Foreign investment has dried up, local capital has fled the country, and despite European Community subsidies, Greece's foreign debt has risen to $12.5 billion, from $7.9 billion when Papandreou came to office. Says a Western diplomat: "Greece will have to cope with so many economic problems in the next few years that there will be no room for fantasy in diplomacy."