The decade 2009-2019, the so-called decade of economic crisis and memoranda, has not ended. It has the peculiar quality of infiltrating the period that follows, which never signified a return to normalcy, as the crisis in its multiple forms has now become an integral part of normality. A normalcy that is both postmodern and archaic simultaneously. A new reality that looks towards the future like Janus, but also towards the past.

This transition from crisis to crisis, the sequence and interconnection of crises, the ongoing relevance of the economic crisis, or rather the structural issues related to the economic crisis, were the essential reasons why I accepted the persistent and well-documented proposal of George Kouvaras to organize this long and comprehensive discussion. What I say in response to his questions constitutes my testimony for the critical period of 2009-2019.

The book attempts to place difficult political choices made under acute pressure and in conditions of existential national crisis within their European and international contexts and against the backdrop of the long historical time that is already colored by the pandemic and the war, the Hydra of history. I had characterized the economic crisis as the “war of our generation.” Immediately afterward, the pandemic appeared and is unfolding as a health and scientific “war” against the asymmetrical opponent, the coronavirus.

After two wars in the metaphorical sense of the term, the war in Ukraine emerges in its most archaic and brutal form. A war in the literal sense, with dimensions that have not yet become fully apparent. Therefore, it concerns “versions of war,” both metaphorical and real, that cover the period from 2009 to 2022.

Evangelos Venizelos