Biden expected to meet with Greek PM Mitsotakis

US President Joe Biden and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis are to meet at the White House today to discuss US-Greece bilateral relations. 

They are expected to cover the war in Ukraine, global energy prices and EastMed tensions. Biden and Mitsotakis meet after Athens on Thursday ratified a five-year extension of and amendments to the 1990 US-Greece Mutual Defense Cooperation Agreement, allowing US forces to train and operate in additional areas of Greece. 

Although ratification of the agreement is intended to show Greece’s solidarity with NATO against Russia in Ukraine, it incidentally speaks to Greece’s dissatisfaction with Turkish military activity in the eastern Mediterranean. Ankara and Athens have accused one another of permitting unauthorized military flights over their respective airspaces in the region. While Turkey has generally disapproved of unilateral US military investment in Greece, approval of the agreement is unlikely to have a substantial adverse impact on US-Turkey relations. It may, however, further reduce the possibility of the US acting as a neutral broker in resolving Turkey-Greece EastMed tensions. On-going tensions between Turkey and Greece also adds to internal divisions in NATO and thus weakens the bloc’s projected image of unity against Russian aggression in Ukraine.