ABSTRACT
Sea powers are naturally drawn to the Mediterranean and, traditionally, great powers operating in the Sea have sought to control the local residents. When Britain was weighing up what remained of its status as a great power in 1946, it was deemed essential that a presence in the Mediterranean be maintained in order to influence the countries of southern Europe. In a memorandum written on 13 March 1946 on defence in the Mediterranean, the Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin argued:
If we move out of the Mediterranean, Russia will move in and the Mediterranean countries, from the point of view of commerce and trade, economy and democracy, will be finished. We have a chance of holding Italy in the Western civilisation, and although Yugoslavia is really under Russian control at the moment, the position there is very uneasy and one wonders how long as a Mediterranean people Yugoslavia will put up with Russian control…. It is essential from our point of view that Greece remains with us politically…1
These assessments did lead Britain to continue maintaining, for a time, a military presence in the Mediterranean that served as a unifying factor in the Sea. Now, the British presence is considerably less-though two Sovereign Base Areas (SBAs) are maintained in Cyprus, protected by the 4,000-strong British Forces Cyprus-and the United States has taken over as the principal external provider of security and unification. But a legacy of fragmentation exists-the national policies of all the NATO Mediterranean states are still very strong, and as the Alliance considers the question of regional security in the area,
the challenge is how to make the allies work together before they, again, risk drifting apart.
