by StuartN » Thu May 11, 2006 1:02 pm
This again is from the same source and worthy of examination and comment.
The role of the United States in the events of July 1974 are among the most contentious still remaining. Many Greek Cypriots believe that the American secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, sided first with the rogue regime under Nicos Sampson, and then sided with the Turkish government in its decision to intervene militarily. Law-abiding supporters of Makarios thus feel buffeted on two scores, and this view is backed by anecdote and inclination. The latter is twofold: the U.S. had, in its longtime policy of anti-communism, welcomed the 1967 coup in Athens, and had been very bumptious with Makarios because of his role as a leader of the non-aligned movement. This is apparent as early as 1964 in the memoir of George Ball, and it was quite obvious thereafter. This consistent policy of supporting anti-communists tilted Washington toward anyone willing to do its bidding in the long struggle against the Soviet Union. Hence, support for the Greek junta, and momentary support for Sampson over Makarios.
The attitude toward Turkey followed similar lines. Turkey was a stalwart ally in the Cold War. Much of America’s policies in the Eastern Mediterranean can be explained by this singular point-of-view, even after the collapse of the USSR. (The U.S. also gave tacit - - and maybe explicit - - approval of the military coup in Turkey in 1980.) A priority has been to prevent conflict between Turkey and Greece, which Washington has consistently acted to do, but this is also best understood in the context of the Cold War and the significance of preserving the southeastern flank of NATO.
In Cyprus in 1974, then, the policies of the United States supported, however briefly and tangentially, the criminal regime of Sampson, because he was an anti-communist in the Grivas tradition and he was installed with the help of the Greek fascist junta. When this became untenable, the U.S. backed off. It did relatively little to prevent the Turkish invasion of July, launched in response to the Sampson coup. When Turkey invaded for the second time a month later, this too earned a quiet nod from Washington, in that it did nothing much to stop it. A second variant on this theme is that Kissinger had foreknowledge of the Greek-instigated coup of July and the Turkish invasions, and did nothing to stop any of these events when a word of warning may have sufficed.
But one must ask, was there anything concrete, apart from verbal warnings, that the U.S. could do to stop the Greek colonels from attacking Makarios in July and the Turkish government and military from intervening in July and again in August? It is more likely in the first case than the second that such foreknowledge could have prevented the events from unfolding. There was a distaste for Makarios in official Washington, but that does not mean the U.S. supported his ouster in advance; a threat to cut off aid to Athens or to isolate the regime politically may have sufficed to prevent the coup in Nicosia. But it may also be that the junta, tottering as it was, would have pursued its reckless course in any case. One must recall that the creation of EOKA and EOKA B, the many plots against Makarios, and the Greek junta itself were not creations of the CIA, but creations of Greeks and Greek Cypriots themselves. They were the plotters and implementers of these heinous crimes. That America stood by is in some respects shameful, but not the root cause.
In the case of the August invasion, it’s highly improbable that even a little more could be done. Nixon’s presidency was in shambles, and there were far more important issues at hand - - Vietnam, the Israeli-Arab confrontation, and relations with the Soviet Union more generally, at a time when the U.S. president was close to a psychotic breakdown. (Nixon resigned one week before the second Turkish invasion.) Committing to a course of toughness and perhaps sanctions or a naval blockade against Turkey at that point was a very difficult task, and, in the view of American policy makers, hardly worth the possible repercussions.
The charges made against Kissinger and the United States are plausible, of course, which is why the notion of complicity or conspiracy is far from absurd. The U.S. has done in many regimes when it suited: Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973, and so forth. Kissinger was a first-class plotter and dissembler, and he was capable of anything. The popular notion of U.S. involvement was articulated most intelligently in the 1998 book, The Cyprus Conspiracy, but the authors’ evidence is not strong. The main argument - - that the U.S. acted in Turkey’s favor to maintain its intelligence facilities on the British bases - - does not quite add up: those facilities, even if in some sort of jeopardy, were being superceded by other technical means. And the case rests on evidence of a Pentagon plan to deal with partition of the island, but the Pentagon has plans to cover virtually any eventuality, so the existence of a particular plan relating to Cyprus - - among many others - - is not evidence of American intentions. There are also suggestions, based on a remark by James Callaghan, the British foreign secretary, that Britain was contemplating a naval blockade to prevent a Turkish invasion, and the U.S. vetoed it. That is plausible, but it is hardly evidence of conspiracy when America acts in a restrained manner to forgo what could have been a very costly and even catastrophic naval action. [See reviews of The Cyprus Conspiracy.]
The United States improvised and did what it could, awkwardly and without ethics, to lower the possibility of a war between Greece and Turkey. That the island was partitioned was, in Washington’s eyes, an unfortunate but hardly troubling outcome. Perhaps this is the source of Cypriot anger---not because the U.S. did too little, but because it never considered Cyprus to be important enough to do more. It is impossible to say with confidence what might have occurred with more American pressure on Turkey not to intervene in August, but it is likely that Turkey would have proceeded anyway. That was in their planning, and they showed no signs of being restrained from something they felt they should have done many years before.
) partition to the interest of the USA?
