A Closer Look at Post-War US-Greek Relations:
A Review Essay

Athanasios Antonopoulos, Redefining Greek-US Relations, 1974-1980: National Security and Domestic Politics. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 2020. Pp. xiv + 272.

Spyros Katsoulas, The United States and Greek-Turkish Relations: The Guardian’s Dilemma. London: Routledge. 2022. Pp. xii + 217.

Spero Simeon Paravantes, Britain and the United States in Greece: Anglo-American Relations and the Origins of the Cold War. London: Bloomsbury Academic. 2022. Pp. xvii + 235.

by Harry Papasotiriou

Three young scholars, a political scientist and two historians, have recently published books that shed new light on the post-war relations between the United States and Greece. While coming from two different disciplines to some extent the books complement each other: The two historians focus their work mainly on primary archival research, and the political scientist offers a theoretical argument that helps readers interpret intra-alliance dynamics. The book by Spyros Katsoulas, the political scientist, examines the longest timeframe, analyzing six case studies spanning from the 1950s to the 1990s. The books by Spero Paravantes and Athanasios Antonopoulos examine in greater detail two shorter periods in the 1940s and the 1970s, respectively.

Paravantes examines the formation of the post-war, anti-Soviet Western alliance during the period from 1944 to 1950. He does so from the point of view of British and American policy in Greece. According to Paravantes, it was the British who were initially determined to keep Greece on the side of the west and out of the Soviet sphere, which emerged when the Red Army entered Eastern Europe in 1944-1945. In October 1944 Churchill flew to Moscow, reaching an agreement with Stalin that Greece should be left under British influence, Bulgaria and Romania under Soviet influence, and that Yugoslavia would be shared fifty-fifty (the “percentages agreement”). However, Churchill soon faced a problem: When the Germans retreated from Greece in October 1944, a strong communist-led resistance movement controlled much of the mountainous Greek countryside. With the communists’ decision to take over the Greek capital in December 1944, Churchill sent forces to defeat them in the Battle of Athens. Thus, by this time in late 1944, years before Foreign Service officer George Kennan formulated the American containment strategy, Britain was already containing the Soviet Union.

Paravantes argues persuasively that the British were determined to bring the United States into their effort to keep Greece out of the Soviet orbit. However, while the communists and their allies had been defeated in Athens, they remained strong in the countryside, and Tito’s Yugoslavia was willing to support them in return for annexing much of Northern Greece. By late 1946, there were growing signs that a new round of civil war was imminent in Greece. Thus, it became even more urgent for Britain, which by now had become economically weakened by the war, to convince the United States to bear the main material burden of keeping Greece out of communist control.

Britain’s Attlee government famously notified the Truman administration in February 1947 that within 40 days it would withdraw from Greece and Turkey (apart from the threat of a communist take-over in Greece, Stalin had also demanded Soviet control of the Turkish Straits). This brought the United States into action. Declaring the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan in March and June 1947, respectively, the United States implemented Kennan’s containment strategy. Interestingly, Paravantes’s research in the British and American archives illuminates that Britain was not so economically drained that it was unable to assist Greece and Turkey after March 1947. If, as Paravantes argues, the British “ultimatum” was a way to shock the Americans into prompt action, it succeeded brilliantly. Thereafter, massive American military and economic aid ensured the victory of successive Greek governments over the communist insurgency.

Paravantes’s book is based on solid research presented in a clear manner. It is a pity, however, that the book is marred in two ways: First, the author makes careless mistakes. Otto was not installed king of Greece at the beginning of the Greek Revolution in 1821 but at its end in 1832. Hitler did not invade the Soviet Union in May of 1941 but on June 22, 1941. The Greek military coup of 1967 did not take place four years after John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address but six years later. The Greek communists were defeated in October and not in November 1949.

Second, the author appears to regret British and American policy towards Greece. However, Greece would not have been better off in the Warsaw Pact given that NATO membership helped keep regional tensions with Greece’s northern neighbors, particularly Bulgaria, in check. Paravantes also states that British and American policy was a failure in terms of rebuilding “economic and social stability” (210), but he neglects the fact that from 1950 to 1973 Greece had one of the highest economic growth rates in the world and the highest in Europe (according to the OECD). These oversights notwithstanding, the author is more justified in connecting the 1967 coup to the legacy of the Greek Civil War—a conflict that gave birth to the belief that the Greek army was the guarantor of the country’s internal security.

The other two books focus on American policy towards Greece and Turkey during periods when relations between the two US allies were tense. Katsoulas utilizes and enriches theoretical arguments about intra-alliance dynamics. Specifically, scholars have argued that members of an alliance face potential abandonment by their allies if those allies fail to assist them when they are attacked. They also have argued, conversely, that members of an alliance face potential entrapment if they get dragged into a conflict that is initiated by another of their allies. Katsoulas adds a third potential problem: Allies can so embolden an ally that it engages in behavior which is detrimental to other members of the alliance.

Katsoulas next applies these concepts to the “guardian’s dilemma,” which occurs when the leader of an alliance must manage disputes between two junior allies. While the leader will not want to be entrapped in a conflict between them, the leader risks causing feelings of abandonment in one or both junior allies while trying to manage their disputes in an impartial manner. The leader also risks emboldening one ally into provocative behavior, which will lead the other ally to feel abandoned. Applying these theoretical concepts to six distinct case studies of Greek-Turkish tension—all of them difficult for the United States to manage—Katsoulas demonstrates the guardian’s dilemma.

To demonstrate how important Greece and Turkey are to the United States, Katsoulas utilizes traditional geopolitical arguments about the importance of the Eurasian “rimland” (the densely populated coastal regions of the Eurasian continent) for the sea powers of Britain (before World War II) and the United States (after World War II). Both were seeking to limit the reach of the major land powers (usually Russia and Germany during the two world wars) in the “heartland,” the geographic center of Eurasia, including Central Asia, Russia, and Eastern Europe. He argues that, if one land power had dominated the heartland—that is, if Germany had conquered the Soviet Union during World War II—then it may have dominated the world. To prevent such an occurrence, the leading sea powers had to control the rimland.

To these traditional geopolitical arguments Katsoulas adds his own concept of a “rimland bridge,” arguing that certain parts of the rimland have added geopolitical importance as they are vital choke points and/or bridges between important regions. One such rimland bridge is the geographic area of Greece and Turkey. Katsoulas argues that the leading sea power must keep this area from being controlled by the leading heartland power due to important choke points (the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits as well as the Suez Canal) that are vital for the Mediterranean lines of communication and because this area is the bridge between Europe and the Middle East. Because Europe’s trade with Asia and the Black Sea region, including the flow of oil from the Middle East to Europe, largely passes through the Suez Canal and the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits into the Mediterranean, this is a vital route for the leading sea power. Katsoulas then applies this concept of the rimland bridge to American policy in six distinct cases of Greek-Turkish tension.

The first of the six crises examined is the Tripartite Conference of September 1955 when Britain joined Greece and Turkey to discuss the future of its colony, Cyprus. During the conference, a large-scale pogrom was secretly organized by the Turkish Menderes government against the Greek community in Istanbul. The ensuing escalation of nationalistic emotions in both Greece and Turkey took American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who vainly tried to convince the leaders of the two countries that the Soviet threat should override their differences, by surprise. His even-handed stance left Greece feeling abandoned by the United States.

The second crisis that Katsoulas addresses is the 1963-1964 ethnic violence in Cyprus. Specifically, the Johnson administration’s determination to prevent a Turkish invasion of Cyprus—an invasion that could have led to war between Greece and Turkey—emboldened Greek Cypriots as well as Greece, which secretly sent a brigade to Cyprus. When President Johnson sent a letter to the Turkish Prime Minister Inonu stating that NATO’s article 5 (on common defense) would not apply if the Soviet Union retaliated by attacking Turkey in the event of a Turkish invasion of the island, Turkey felt abandoned by the United States.

The third crisis in Cyprus, which began in 1967 with ethnic violence, resulted in a renewed threat of Turkish military intervention. The crisis was defused when Greece agreed to withdraw its brigade from Cyprus, leaving Greece to feel abandoned by the United States.

The fourth crisis began when the Greek colonels’ military regime overthrew Cyprus’s government in a military coup on July 15, 1974. This gave Turkey the opportunity to invade Cyprus on July 20, 1974, and initially to occupy a limited area of northern Cyprus. However, the American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s policy of inertia emboldened Turkey, which launched a second invasion—one that resulted in the occupation of thirty-six percent of the island and displacing one third of the Greek-Cypriot population. While Kissinger assumed that Turkey would return some of the occupied territory to facilitate an agreement through negotiation that would resolve the Cyprus issue, this did not occur, and Cyprus remains divided to this day. Greece felt so abandoned by its allies at this time that it temporarily withdrew from the military wing of NATO. Interestingly, however, the Turks also felt abandoned when, in defiance of the Ford administration, the US Congress imposed an arms embargo on Turkey.

While the first four cases addressed by Katsoulas are about Cyprus, the fifth and sixth are about the Aegean Sea in 1976 and 1987, respectively. With the quintupling of oil prices in 1973-1974, the prospect of seeking oil extraction in the Aegean became more enticing. With fifteen major and many other small Greek islands in the Aegean close to the Turkish Asia Minor mainland, a standard reading of international law as codified in the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention places about ninety percent of the Aegean continental shelf and exclusive economic zone under Greek authority. Turkey argues that the Asia Minor landmass should override, at least to some significant extent, the zone rights of the Greek islands. As a result, the 1976 and 1987 crises were the result of Turkish exploration of potential oil fields on the Aegean continental shelf. In both crises, as well as in one that occurred in 1996, which is not examined in Katsoulas’s book, American meditation pulled Greece and Turkey from the brink of war, stabilizing the rimland bridge vital to the United States but leaving both countries somewhat abandoned.

Katsoulas’s book is well argued both in his discussion of theory as well as in his treatment of the six case studies. His theoretical framework illuminates the relations between the United States and her junior allies, Greece and Turkey. Finally, the six case studies he examines are well researched, and they are assessed in an objective scholarly fashion.

While Katsoulas examines the period between 1955-1977, Antonopoulos’s book examines the relations between the United States and Greece from1974-1980, but in greater detail. He begins with the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, a traumatic event for Greece that coincided with the difficult transition from dictatorship to democracy. While the new prime minister, Konstantine Karamanlis, was prepared to go to war with Turkey after the second Turkish invasion of the island in August 1974, Greece’s military leadership dissuaded him, pointing out that the country was militarily unprepared. As an alternative, and to convey Greek frustration over feeling abandoned by its allies, Karamanlis withdrew Greece from the military wing of NATO.

Regarding the September 1976 Aegean crisis, Antonopoulos points out that Kissinger avoided repeating the inertia he exhibited during the Cyprus crisis in 1974 and actively intervened to prevent a Greek-Turkish war. The author highlights that the Karamanlis government in Athens extracted a written pledge from Kissinger that “the United States would actively and unequivocally oppose either side’s seeking a military solution” (112). He also pledged the seven to ten ratio of American aid to Greece and Turkey, thereby maintaining a reasonable strategic balance between the two states.

Antonopoulos notes that later, under President Jimmy Carter, Greek American relations experienced an improved climate. Unfortunately, however, this did not lead to any breakthroughs in Greek-Turkish affairs in either Cyprus or in the Aegean. The book ends with Karamanlis’s efforts, which were supported by the Carter administration, to reintegrate Greece into NATO. While Turkey’s democratic governments blocked this effort, a military government that seized power after launching a coup in Ankara in September 1980 acquiesced to Greece’s reintegration. This provided Carter with a foreign policy success in the waning days of his administration.

Antonopoulos’s thoroughly researched book offers a detailed account of the formulation of Greek policy towards the United States in the critical days and years after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus and the restoration of democracy in Greece. The Greek policies of this period were to have a lasting influence on Greek policy for decades.

Overall, the three books under review are well researched and provide new insights into Greek-US relations in the post-war era. At times, the relationship was turbulent, causing strong currents of anti-Americanism in Greek society. However, the relationship can now be analysed dispassionately with scholarly detachment, as seen in these three books.

September 6, 2024

Harry Papasotiriou is Professor of International Relations and Strategic Studies at the Panteion University, Athens, Greece. His most recent book is American Grand Strategy, 18th-21st Centuries (in Greek). He is currently working on issues
regarding Byzantine grand strategy. He is the co-author (with Paul Levine) of
America Since 1945: The American Moment (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, second edition 2010).