The battle between democracy and oligarchy is precariously balanced

America finds itself now where Greece was in 1915 – in a battle between cynicism and the popular will

Greece’s king Konstantine (L) and prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos

At a recent high-society reception on an estate near Athens to celebrate 250 years of Flora Graeca, the seminal collection of Greek plant varieties now preserved in Oxford, a guest was heard to utter impromptu, “Well at least we were spared a Kamala Harris administration. She was completely unqualified and inexperienced.”

The comment was, of course, indirect praise for the US administration we did get, that of Donald Trump, and it was uttered as Trump launched a new phase in his war against Harvard University, revoking its license under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. That threatens dozens of Greek students, researchers, professors and new enrolments with exclusion from the august institution, and should not be a cause for celebration. Nor can it be seen as a sign of competence. Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine to Russia, his weakening of Article 5 treaty obligations to Europe, his personal corruption and his incomprehensible trade war are already old news.

It is not within the scope of this column to question whether ongoing enmity towards the defeated Kamala Harris is motivated by misogyny and racism, nor whether the charge of incompetence and inexperience was a narrative carefully crafted in foreign power centres to front for those prejudices in polite society. It is to remind us that the world has often before been in contests of right and wrong decisions whose consequences would be historic, and whose balance of forces for too long seemed precariously equal.