Introduction

The aim of this book is to study Greece’s policy in the Cold War from the country’s accession to NATO in 1952 until the imposition of the Colonels’ dictatorship in 1967. The book is divided into three parts, each corresponding with a phase of the security problem, but also with the lifetime of a government (or, in the case of 1963-67, with a period of internal instability). Each part will examine the personalities who dominated policy-making in the specific subperiod, and will critically present their analysis. The next chapters will study threat perception; defence policy and the financial problems of security; relations with NATO and with the Soviet Bloc; and Greece’s regional policy – mainly its attitude towards the two peripheral powers, Turkey and Yugoslavia. In the case of the 1963-67 years, the additional military entanglement in Cyprus will also be examined as part of Greece’s regional policy, which complicated considerably its overall international position. The book deals with Greek foreign and security policy in the Cold War; it does not analyse other issues such as Greek attitudes towards decolonization or the new states of the periphery. Moreover, it is not a history of Greek policy in the Cyprus question; the interested reader may turn to recent studies on this issue. However, this book will also deal with the problems that the Cyprus crises created for Greece’s national security policy, such as strategic overstretch, the rise of anti-Americanism and the deterioration of Greek-Turkish relations.