THAT WAS THE old Greece. The new Greece is far different. Led by Prime Minister Costas Simitis and Foreign Minister George Papandreou, the son of Andreas, Athens has adopted a dramatically new approach to relations with Europe, America and its Balkan neighbors. Educated in the West, modernist and Europe-oriented in outlook, Simitis and Papandreou head a group of technocrats who seek to make Greece a more dynamic and reliable democracy—and a force for stability in the region.
Old-guard critics deride them as “America’s boys.” But they seem to be succeeding. Relations with Turkey are better than they’ve been in decades. Far from shunning Macedonia, Greece has become, oddly enough, the beleaguered republic’s new best friend and biggest investor. Last week Simitis met U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington, D.C. It was only a get-acquainted session, but the American president praised Greece’s new “vision,” particularly its new demarche with Turkey. Papandreou himself told NEWSWEEK that Greece nowadays is a more confident country: “We’re acting with a sense of responsibility and have an historical opportunity to change the face of this region for the better.”

Greece’s transformation began in 1999. Then, in one of the more humiliating diplomatic blunders of modern Greek history, the foreign minister of the time, Theodore Pangalos, offered sanctuary to Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdish terrorist fleeing authorities in Turkey. The idea was to hide him at the Greek Embassy in Kenya. But Turkey got wind of the plan and seized Ocalan, its avowed public enemy No. 1, and whisked him home for trial and conviction.
The debacle forced a wholesale rethinking of Greece’s foreign policy. Simitis sacked Pangalos and replaced him with Papandreou, who has since brought a more worldly and accommodating attitude to his post. “He has a vision of Greece as a bridge between Europe and the Balkans,” says Sherle Schwenninger of the World Policy Institute. Adds Nicholas X. Rizopoulos, a history professor at Adelphi University in New York: “He doesn’t talk, look or think like his father. He’s a total antithesis.”
That new thinking has already brought dramatic changes in the country’s tangled relations with the outside world:
Yugoslavia and Kosovo: Greece walked a tightrope during the civil war and subsequent NATO air campaign. Greek public opinion was—and remains—pro-Serb. At the outset of the Kosovo conflict in 1999, Greece worried about refugees and the reaction of its own people, and tried to persuade the allies not to bomb the Serbs. Yet while Greeks took to the streets to protest the allied action, the government refused to break ranks with NATO. Instead, Papandreou and others shuttled to Belgrade, seeking to convince Milosevic that, as Rondos puts it, “the witching hour had come.”
Today, Greece has a modest number of peacekeepers in Bosnia and Kosovo, and Athens has expressed a willingness to boost its contingent if the United States, busy in Afghanistan, reduces its Balkan presence. What’s more, under a Greek Plan for Economic Aid and Reconstruction in the Balkans, $586 million has been pledged to Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Romania, pending approval by Parliament.
Macedonia: It took international intervention to keep Greece from bullying Macedonia over the latter’s name. (Greece considers the name Macedonia part of its Hellenic heritage.) But when fighting with Albanian guerrillas erupted last spring, Greece rushed to its old foe’s side. At Papandreou’s urging during a visit to Skopje, Macedonia’s foreign minister flew to Albania, prompting the Tirana government to disavow the rebels. Greece then helped set up refugee camps in those two countries—though it refused to accept any refugees itself.

It took a lot longer for Greeks to be bitten by the apathy bug. A lot longer than their American counterparts. And although more Greeks than Americans still vote at their elections, it is beginning to look like "h ekselixi" will create the same type of population there as we have here.

Greeks used to be individualists. It gave them a reputation for troublemaking, but kept them informed, aware and active in their government. Now they are beginning to be followers. Go with the group. The government knows best. No more trouble making for those who wish a different future for them than they do. Greece is becoming another country where the government tells and the people do, instead of the other way around.