US Secretary of State Marco Rubio reflected on the decisive influence of ancient Greece on the formation of Western civilization and especially of the United States, while praising bilateral relations in an address in Athens, Greece, on Wednesday.

Rubio described Greece as “a model ally” and calling on other European countries “to join together in a great renewal of the Western spirit, an inheritance stretching from Athens and Rome to Christendom to the founding of the American Republic.”

“Our vision is an alliance that is greater than the sum of its parts. We want to win together, and we must,” he said in a speech delivered from the Pnyx, the official meeting place of the Athenian democratic assembly.

Describing the historic links between the two countries, the secretary of state said “the ancient Greeks seem to exert an almost mystical power over our memory. They call upon us to return to them again and again,” adding that, unlike the ruins of other civilizations that have disappeared from living memory, the Acropolis Hill has continued to exert a unique influence on the imagination of the Western world for thousands of years.

Rubio said that the debt the US and the West as a whole owes to ancient Greece runs far deeper than the institutions and political ideas it bequeathed.These institutions and ideas, he noted, were the outward expression of the ancient Greeks’ deeper characteristics: their worldview, their imagination, the virtues they demanded of their citizens, and the values ​​they were willing to defend. They were, “the things for which they lived, fought, and died.”

“Today, we find ourselves at a crossroads. The next decade will write the story of the next century,” Rubio said, discussing today’s challenges. “The course we take will determine whether the West maintains its place at the head of the world, or resigns itself to a future of atrophy, servitude, and decline.”

“Under President Trump, the United States has made its choice. We choose the unapologetic pursuit of national power,” he said, setting as goals the reindustrialization of the American economy, the achievement of “superintelligence,” and the return of American astronauts to the Moon.

Source: Ekathimerini.com