The speech delivered by Mr. Georgios-Stylianos Prevelakis, Professor of Geopolitics, Panthéon-Sorbonne University, on Friday, January 18, 2019 titled "Greece in a geopolitical triangle of instability: the Balkans, the Middle East, Russia", which was held at the IASO Events Hall, was a huge success.

University Professors, prominent intellectuals and politicians as well as a large crowd had the opportunity to attend the speech delivered by Mr. Prevelakis.

In his introduction, Mr. Prevelakis used a parallelism between medicine and geopolitics, in which, as he pointed out, the existence of disharmony between the internal and external environments may cause problems in the fields of both healthcare and international affairs. He referred to the international situation by saying that "We live in a time that our external environment is rapidly changing; Trump’s America, Europe in crisis, our concerns for "threatening" Russia, the Balkans with all the weaknesses of the past that have not been overcome, the Middle East on fire, and increasingly threatening Turkey."

At the same time, considering our internal environment, besides the current political context, we encounter a major demographic problem, with a population that is shrinking and aging, as well as an economic crisis that plagues the country, which, in the long run, will deprive the Greeks of absolute majority and make Greece less and less owned by the Greeks.

Mr. Prevelakis noted the three major categories of transformations that concern us.

The 1st is the West, i.e. what is happening with Europe and America against the threat of the Soviet Union. He highlighted the divergence observed over the past two years between Europe and America, which is becoming increasingly acute. "The West is no longer the safe haven imagined by K. Karamanlis," he said.

The 2nd is Russia and the 3rd is the Middle East, Turkey, and East Mediterranean countries that all are in destabilization, and, as he underlined, this affects us to a great extent in a variety of ways.

We need to determine our image from a global perspective, Mr. Prevelakis noted, and not as a mere entity, as a territorial state. We need to ensure that, in this changing world, we do possess all required resources; and if we use them in a plan-oriented manner, we will be able to adapt our internal environment to the changing external environment. Thus, instead of coming last in the East, we will be the bulwark of a globalized West against a geopolitical area facing serious problems.