ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the birth and development of the Aegean issue, and examines the response of the United States during the first Aegean crisis. The immediate cause of the 1976 crisis was the dispute over the ownership of mineral rights in the floor of the eastern Aegean. But the dispatch of a Turkish research vessel into Aegean waters stimulated a wide range of tangible and intangible issues dividing the Greeks and Turks. Two years after the great crisis in Cyprus, the United States was confronted with untying the Aegean knot. The tough lessons of inertia made the U.S. government adopt a much more cautious stance in this crisis. The United States did not seek to cut the knot, but rather loosen it as much as a face-saving way out of it would be possible. The outcome was a tentative stability. Still, Kissinger’s diligence was not enough to dispel resentment at both ends of the Aegean, and, despite U.S. damage-limitation exercises, bilateral relations with Greece and Turkey remained precarious for a long time. The compromise of the 7:10 ratio of U.S. military assistance to Greece and Turkey is indicative of the complexities of the guardian’s dilemma.
