Secretary of State Marco Rubio has wrapped up a day of talks in Athens having sealed $4 billion in U.S. arms sales and a deeper pledge to ship American natural gas through Greek routes, in a visit both governments hailed as a measure of the country's rising importance to Washington.
Mr. Rubio is the first sitting secretary of state to lead the U.S. delegation at the Greece-U.S. Strategic Dialogue, a forum begun in 2018.
The sixth round came as wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, tension around the Strait of Hormuz and friction between NATO allies Greece and Turkey leave Washington looking for dependable partners in the region.
"Greece and the United States maintain a historic alliance," Mr. Rubio said, citing turmoil in Iran, Hormuz, Yemen and Ukraine. "We are grateful that Greece is a great ally."
The weapons will be sold through the Foreign Military Sales program.
The two countries also finalized Greece's partnership with the Florida National Guard, agreed to provide Greece with Stryker armored vehicles, and signed agreements on information sharing, certification of American seafarers on Greek ships, and protection of Greek antiquities.
Geography is a large part of Greece's value.
It hosts the Souda Bay naval base on Crete, a hub for American operations in the Middle East, and the port of Alexandroupolis, used to move equipment toward NATO's eastern flank.
So is energy.
Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis called the Vertical Corridor, a network of gas pipelines running north from Greece through the Balkans, the backbone for moving American liquefied natural gas into Europe.
Greek-owned ships, he said, carry a quarter of U.S. LNG exports. For Washington, that is a way to reduce Europe's reliance on Russian gas while selling more of its own.
Turkey hung over the talks. Greece is wary of any move to readmit Ankara to the F-35 program, from which it was removed for buying Russia's S-400 air defense system.
Mr. Rubio has said Turkey cannot return while it keeps the system, but the administration has not changed its careful balancing of Turkey, whose role in Syria, the Black Sea and the Caucasus Washington values.
A dispute over an undersea telecommunications cable also surfaced.
Opposition leader Alexis Tsipras faulted Mr. Rubio for saying the issue involves other countries too and would be discussed privately, calling it a refusal to back international law.
Turkey says it objects to survey and cable work in waters where it claims sovereign rights.
At the Pnyx, where ancient Athenians held democratic assemblies, Mr. Rubio urged Europe and America to defend shared values and face new challenges together.
He then met Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who called Greece "a pillar of stability in a troubled region." Mr. Gerapetritis said Mr. Rubio is now "one of us."
Mr. Rubio's three-country tour continues to Portugal.