The decade of 2009-2019, the so-called decade of economic crisis and memoranda, has not ended. It has the peculiarity of infiltrating the period that follows, which never marked a return to normality, as the crisis in its multiple forms has now become a component of normality. A normality that is both postmodern and archaic simultaneously. A new reality that looks like Janus towards the future 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 associated with the economic crisis was the essential reason why I accepted the persistent and well-documented proposal of Giorgos 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 suffocating pressure and under conditions of existential national crisis in their European and international contexts and in the horizon of the long historical time that is already colored by the pandemic and the war, the Lernaean Hydra of History.

"I had characterized the economic crisis as the 'war of our generation.' Immediately after, the pandemic appeared and is evolving as a health and scientific 'war' with the asymmetric opponent being the coronavirus. After two wars in the metaphorical sense of the term, the war in Ukraine appears in its most archaic and brutal form. A war in the literal sense, with dimensions that have not yet become fully apparent. Therefore, these are 'versions of war,' both metaphorical and real, that cover the period 2009-2022." Evangelos Venizelos