The Day Small Nations Taught the World to Say No.

Greece’s Ohi Day and Israel’s doctrine of Ein Brera reveal how small nations survive — by turning defiance into strategy, power into peace, and alliances into security.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (C), his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu (R) and Cypriot President Nikos Anastasiadis pose in Athens on January 2, 2020, ahead of the signing of an agreement for the EastMed pipeline project designed to ship gas from the eastern Mediterranean to Europe. (ARIS MESSINIS / AFP)

October 28 is not just a date in Greek history — it is a decision renewed every year. A reminder that dignity is not negotiable, that sovereignty is not a bargaining chip, and that the word “No” can be a strategic asset when anchored in readiness and a culture that prizes freedom above convenience.

The power of that “No” — ΟΧΙ — still echoes far beyond the Pindus Mountains. It speaks to Israel’s own civilizational vow — ein brera (“אין ברירה”), the refusal to live at another’s mercy — and to the hard-earned truth that peace is not built by appeasing force but by shaping an adversary’s choices.

The historical anchor is crisp. In the pre-dawn of October 28, 1940, Italy’s ambassador Emanuele Grazzi delivered Mussolini’s ultimatum to Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas: admit Axis forces to “strategic points” in Greece or face invasion. Metaxas answered in the language of diplomacy, French — “Alors, c’est la guerre” — words the Greek public translated into a single syllable of defiance that became national liturgy: Ohi. Within hours, Italian columns rolled from Albania; the Hellenic Army soon threw them back across the frontier in the first Axis setback of the war. It was not an outburst of romantic bravado but a coherent act of statecraft — a decision to confront coercion with credible will and immediate mobilization.

If Ohi Day feels innate to the Greek spirit, it is because it springs from older roots. Elefthería i thánatos — “Freedom or Death” — the cry of 1821, forged a Greek ethos that blends phronēsis with philotimo: wisdom joined with honor, strength with responsibility. From the War of Independence to the crucible of the First World War, Greece learned one rule: when greater powers set the terms, true nations set their own — and bear the cost with discipline and dignity.

Israel’s parallel is not a metaphor; it is a kinship of strategic temperament. Declaring independence on May 14, 1948, in the face of a looming regional invasion, was an act of leadership cut from the same cloth as Ohi — not theatrical, but responsible, defining survival through clarity of purpose and the will to bear costs. Nineteen years later, the Six-Day War’s preemptive strike was not an intoxication with force but the grim arithmetic of a small state compressing risk in time to avoid catastrophe. For generations, Israelis have called that posture ein brera — “no alternative” — a doctrine deeply embedded in their strategic thought.

What do nations do with such a doctrine of refusal once the smoke clears? For both Greeks and Israelis, the answer is to institutionalize it — in strategy and in force design. Israel’s IDF strategy rests on deterrence, early warning, and decisive action, organizing a multi-front defense for an age of missiles, proxies, and cyber. Greece, meanwhile, has translated Ohi’s ethic into a modernized order of battle. In both cases, the “No” became a system.

To speak of saying “No to power” is not to celebrate negation. Albert Camus, in The Rebel, reminded us that the rebel’s “No” is not a gesture of destruction but a defense of meaning — a refusal that implies a “Yes” to something higher: law, dignity, life itself. Read Ohi Day through that lens and you see not a spasm of defiance but a moral and strategic template — a rule for small nations at the edge of empires to preserve agency without courting nihilism. The same template explains Israel’s restraint when it can, and its resolve when it must.

The condition for peace, then, is not a mood; it is a structure of incentives. Thomas Schelling called it “the diplomacy of violence”: shaping an adversary’s choices so that compliance is better than defiance. Durable peace rests on credible power, the will to use it if required, and the steady offer of a better bargain. This is why the 1978 Camp David negotiations led to the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty: battlefield realities made the alternative to peace — another war — obviously worse, while the treaty offered full Sinai withdrawal and normalization. Deterrence theory is sometimes caricatured as bellicosity; in truth, it is a language of limits that make compromise rational.

The challenges of our time are no abstraction — they test power and resolve. For Greece and Cyprus, Turkey’s Blue Homeland doctrine, its Aegean violations, and its ongoing occupation of one-third of Cyprus are daily proof that law without strength is merely suggestion. In this reality, “Poseidon’s Wrath” [1] — the joint doctrine of Israel, Greece, and Cyprus — stands for one principle: if the vision of UN Resolution 541, calling for Cyprus’s reunification under its lawful sovereignty, cannot be achieved peacefully, it will not be left to endure by force.

For Israel, the same law of survival applies. Self-defense is not aggression; deterrence is not disgrace. Building strength, the will to use it, and its use when no choice remains – these are not threats to peace, but its foundation. What was true in every war before will remain true in every conflict to come: peace endures only when power stands behind it.

Together, these three nations illustrate the role of a “Sovereign Edge State” — or an “Edge Nation”: countries that sit on the fault lines of the global order, absorb threats and deter aggression, yet choose to remain anchored to an open, rules-based world. Their geography makes them exposed – but their discipline makes them essential.

Peace without leverage is an illusion. Deterrence, not appeasement, sustains stability. The hardest decisions nations make are not for headlines but for generations – to act, or to hold, always from a position of unquestioned strength.

Greece’s Ohi and Israel’s ein brera are not rejections of diplomacy but its moral foundation. Saying “No” to coercion is only half of leadership; the other half is the courage to build a future on strength, alliances, and trust.

That is why October 28 is more than a Greek holiday — it is a lesson in responsible courage. The free world must choose for its children, not for the moment: to build strength that deters, partnerships that endure, and the moral clarity to say “No” when it must — so it can say “Yes” when it matters.