The United States and Greek-Turkish Relations

The Guardian’s Dilemma

Spyros Katsoulas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000514339
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the role of the United States in Greek–Turkish relations and fills an important gap in alliance theory regarding the guardian's dilemma.

The strategy of a great power involves not only tackling threats from enemies, but also dealing with problems that arise between allies. Every time Greece and Turkey threatened to go to war against each other, the United States had to effectively restrain its two strategic allies without straining relations with either one of them. This book explores how the United States responded to the guardian's dilemma in six crises during the Cold War, pursuing a policy of dual restraint to prevent an intra-alliance conflict, mitigate the consequences of each crisis, and maintain effective control of the Rimland Bridge.

From a neoclassical-realist standpoint, the book examines how the United States responded to each Greek–Turkish crisis, for what reasons, and with what results. It will be of interest to scholars of foreign policy, security studies, geopolitics, and international relations.

1 The theoretical framework

DOI: 10.4324/9781003224181-2

Alliance has always been an essential instrument of statecraft, even as relations between allies have turned out to be more complex, clamorous, and challenging than should have been expected. Allies can be an invaluable asset, but they can also be a source of trouble. Unity of purpose does not necessarily lead to unity of minds. Frictions within an alliance can open a window of vulnerability to the opponent. Problems stemming from discords between one’s own allies, though, have gone largely unnoticed in alliance theory. The current chapter traces the development of alliance as a key concept in the scholarly work on international relations and seeks to fill the gap by introducing the concept of the guardian’s dilemma and the policy of dual restraint.

The gap in alliance theory: dealing with problems between allies

The guardian’s dilemma is hardly something new. In his classic account of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides masterfully describes how the rival city-states of Athens and Sparta sought allies to increase their power, but also mentions how each of them had to deal with problems arising between its own allies. Thucydides recounts Sparta’s troublesome relationship with the strategically located city-state of Megara that left the Spartan camp for the Athenian alliance. The Megarians were annoyed by Sparta’s inaction over a boundary war forced on them by Sparta’s naval ally, Corinth. That was not a minor issue. The Megarian defection precipitated a fifteen-year-long conflict known as the First Peloponnesian War. On the other hand, a territorial feud between the powerful Samians and the weak Milesians prompted Athens to intervene forcefully to restore order within the Athenian-led Delian League. The threat of Spartan involvement exaggerated the severity of the situation and bogged Athens down in a bloody regime-change war in Samos. Whether dealing with intra-alliance problems passively or forcefully the costs can be significant because there is no clear way out of the guardian’s dilemma.¹

In the modern literature of international relations, Hans Morgenthau provides, in his 1948 book Politics Among Nations, an outstanding analysis of power relations between states. The role of alliances is distinguished for its importance. Morgenthau describes alliances as “the historically most important manifestation,” and “a necessary function of the balance of power operating in a multiple-states system.”² In a world determined by the volatile balance of power, alliances are often seen as a safety net, though they might sometimes look more like a trap net. Promises of support made between states, and the expectation of fulfilling these promises, constitutes the bedrock of alliances. However, as Morgenthau maintained, a state’s alliance policy is “a matter not of principle but of expediency.”³ Political expediency applies to all alike: to an adversary no less than to an ally. For this reason, cooperation under anarchy has been a matter of academic interest.

Morgenthau treated alliances as part of his general theory of international politics. A number of scholars have since concentrated their efforts exclusively on creating a comprehensive theory of alliances.⁴ Emphasis has naturally been given to the effect of shifting alliances on the balance of power. The security dilemma is considered to be the basic driving force behind alliances. Security measures taken by one political community are perceived by another as threatening. Cooperation in alliances is treated as the natural consequence of conflicts with adversaries. Little attention has been paid to the possibility of conflicts among allies. Yet, they have the potential to become the Achilles’ heel of the whole endeavor.

The struggle for power does not cease to exist between allies. The motivational amalgam that drives political communities to join an alliance does not disappear when they join hands with others. Fear, honor, and interest—Thucydides’s trinity—continue to regulate states’ affairs. Alliances form, tremble, and break as patterns of power and states’ interests alter. Accordingly, there are two scholarly streams in the growing body of alliance literature: one dealing with the formation and disintegration of alliances, the other dealing with the cohesion and management of alliances.

The focal point of the alliance formation literature is which factors drive states to establish and terminate their strategic partnerships, and whether states tend to balance against an emerging power or to bandwagon with it. There are three main explanations of states’ balancing behavior. Firstly, Kenneth Waltz built on Morgenthau’s theory of international relations to argue that states are primarily security-maximizers, and form alliances to balance against power. According to Waltz, the principal motivational drive of political communities is the anarchical international system.⁵ In turn, Stephen Walt presented the balance of threats theory, still coming from a systemic perspective. Although Walt agreed with Waltz that balancing is more common than bandwagoning, he also argued that it is more accurate to say that states balance against threats, instead of against power.⁶ Finally, Randall Schweller departed from Waltz and Walt’s systemic perspective, bringing domestic politics and “the revisionist state back in.” Schweller put forward the balance of interests theory, arguing that what matters is not whether states balance or bandwagon—since they do both—but what the reasons are for their particular choice. From a neoclassical realist’s perspective, Schweller argued that states choose between balancing and bandwagoning depending on which option better serves their ambitions and interests: “balancing is driven by the desire to avoid losses; bandwagoning by the opportunity for gain.”⁷ Whatever their motivation may be, the crux of the matter is that states tend to gravitate to opposing camps, each dominated by a great power or a coalition of major powers.

Figure 1.1 The balance of power.

The second branch of alliance literature deals with relations between the members of an alliance. Once an alliance forms, its members have to make it work. Although a common cause is sufficient to induce states to ally in the first place, new or old issues might threaten to pull allies apart. Morgenthau touched upon the complications of alliance management in cases where there is an uneven distribution of power within an alliance: “A great power has a good chance to have its way with a weak ally as concerns benefits and policies...[but] a weak nation may well possess an asset that it is of such great value for its strong ally as to be irreplaceable.”⁸ Waltz was much more categorical about the leverage of the strong over the weak, identifying the importance of capabilities as the overarching determinant in intra-alliance relations.⁹ Nonetheless, small states have managed to find ways to influence great powers’ policies in their favor. Weak as they may be, small states can resist the pressure and defy the authority of overwhelmingly stronger states, creating what Arnold Wolfers described as the “paradoxical power of the weak.”¹⁰

A compatibility of interests is a prerequisite for the foundation of an alliance as much as for its endurance. Returning to Thucydides, “identity of interests is the surest of bonds, whether between states or individuals.”¹¹ This, however, should not conceal the fact that alliances are not a monolithic bloc of nations unequivocally united towards a common cause, but a partnership of sovereign states, each trying to advance its own interests in the best possible way. As a result, on certain occasions, allies find it necessary to restrain other members of an alliance from taking a course of action that is against their own interests. Paul Schroeder pointed to the fact that the desire of one state to control another is encountered frequently in international history. Studying the function of alliances during a broad range of time, Schroeder concluded that, besides opposing a threat, an alliance can be formed to accommodate a rising power through a “pact of restraint,” while it can also provide the great powers with a “tool of management” over weaker states.¹²

Patricia Weitsman and Jeremy Pressman expanded on the idea of alliances as pacts of restraint. Weitsman pointed to the fact that there are different levels and kinds of threat and that, under certain circumstances, adversaries may have incentives to form Dangerous Alliances with each other. Weitsman’s working assumption was based on the maxim, “keep your friends close but your enemies closer,” and she argued that sometimes states will try to manage threatening neighbors by allying with them rather than balancing against them. If the level of threat is low, adversaries may form a “hedging” alliance aimed at preserving flexibility and forestalling trouble; if the level of threat grows higher, states may seek to form “tethering” alliances with their adversaries in hopes of restraining them.¹³ In a similar vein, Pressman focused on cases when Warring Friends forge alliance ties to restrain risky military actions by their partners. Powerful states can thwart the military plans of their weaker allies if the latter embarks on a perilous course of action. But if the more powerful ally fears that restraining its partner might undermine broader national security goals, it would not be expected to mobilize sufficient power to restrain the ally.¹⁴

Alliances can, therefore, be as much about allies as they are about enemies. But allies are dealing with their adversaries at the same time as they are dealing with each other. In his seminal work on alliance theory, Glenn Snyder developed the link between adversaries and allies in what he termed the “alliance security dilemma.”¹⁵ Snyder described the interlocking dilemmas that grip a state when it tries to restrain both its ally and its adversary in order to avoid an unwanted military clash. Efforts to restrain an ally from competing with the adversary may not only dissatisfy the ally, but also encourage the adversary to pursue its goals. The dilemma involves a difficult choice between support or non-support of allies, and between firmness and conciliation toward the opponent. The danger is that intra-alliance rivalries might send a signal of weakness to rival coalitions and even lead to the disruption of the alliance.

Figure 1.2 The alliance security dilemma.

Thomas J. Christensen and Victor Cha further elaborated on the alliance security dilemma. Christensen, a political scientist and career diplomat, argued that, contrary to conventional wisdom, a divided coalition can actually be Worse than a Monolith. Looking into how the two opposing alliance systems interacted in East Asia in the first half of the Cold War, Christensen concludes that divisions and rivalries within an opposing coalition can make it even more aggressive, and thus the use of coercive diplomacy against it becomes less effective.¹⁶ Cha made a notable effort to adapt the alliance security dilemma so that it covered cases of competition between allied states. Cha developed the concept of “quasi-alliances” in order to describe the paradox of Alignment Despite Antagonism in the South Korea–Japan–United States strategic triangle.¹⁷ Cha’s contribution is important in pointing to the fact that relations between lesser states are affected not only by the behavior of a powerful adversary but also by the behavior of their shared ally. After examining various phases of the volatile Japanese–South Korean relationship, Cha concludes that, when U.S. policies led Japan and South Korea to fear U.S. withdrawal of its security commitment, the two adversaries drew closer together. By contrast, when U.S. security commitment was assured, Japan–South Korea relations deteriorated. Cha’s quasi-alliance model offers an insightful explanation of the oscillation between friction and cooperation in Tokyo–Seoul relations, but that is not all there is to intra-alliance dynamics. Not only can the leading state of the alliance have a more active role and influence upon its minor partners, but it may also be forced to stand in the middle between them in the event of a crisis, because allies can go to war, too.

This seemingly paradoxical situation occurs because an alliance is not the sum of the aggregate power of its members, but rather a collaboration of sovereign partners. In the wilderness of international relations, uncertainty is a constant, and each state is, by default, responsible for itself. Whether strong or weak, each political community tries to acquire those means that will bring it closer to the attainment of its ends. So, alliances serve different purposes to different states, and sometimes they may even serve diverse purposes to the same ally.

In order to protect themselves and secure their interests, great powers have to guard spheres of influence that lie far beyond their borders. However, as great powers establish bonds with smaller powers, they are also wedded to their problems. The powerful states have to provide for the security and welfare of smaller powers to keep them strong enough to counter any rival, but also to keep them satisfied, lest they decide to join the opposite camp in view of potentially greater gains. Small powers join one side or the other either out of fear, depending on which power is more menacing to their own existence and independence; or out of self-interest, hoping to gain more by the coalition of forces they think is more powerful; or, finally, out of necessity, if the ultimate choice is not completely in their hands. Still, smaller powers do have their own goals, which are more often directed against their immediate neighbors. When a great pow...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The theoretical framework
• 2 The geopolitical context
• 3 The first crisis, 1955
• 4 The long crisis, 1963–1964
• 5 The short crisis, 1967
• 6 The great crisis, 1974
• 7 The first Aegean crisis, 1976
• 8 The second Aegean crisis, 1987
• Epilogue
• Index