Cyprus: Diplomatic History and the Clash of Theory in International Relations 9780755619641, 9781848854161

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To myparentSy David and Tina, my wife, Kalypso, my children, Alice and David, and my sister and brother, Leila and Adrian.

ABBREVIATIONS

AKEL AKP

CFSP CIA CRO

EAM EDES ELAS EOKA ERRF ESDI/P EYP FO FCO ICC

ICJ

IRD KYP

NATO SBA TMT

Progressive Working People's Party Justice and Development Party Common Foreign and Security Policy Central Intelligence Agency Commonwealth Relations Office National Liberation Front National Republican Greek League Greek People's Liberation Army National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters European Rapid Reaction Force European Security and Defence Initiative/Identity/Policy/ Personality Greek Intelligence Service Foreign Office Foreign and Commonwealth Office International Criminal Court International Court of Justice Information Research Department Greek Intelligence Service (original name) North Atlantic Treaty Organization British Sovereign Bases Turkish Defence Force

KEY DATES

1191 1192 1473 1489 1571 1878 1914 1931 1950 1955 1960 1963 1964 1967 1973 1974 1977 1983 1990 1996 2002

2003

Richard Coeur de Lion, England's French King, captures Cyprus, then sells it to the Knights Templar. Guy de Lusignan acquires Cyprus. Venice becomes protector of Cyprus. Venice introduces direct rule. Ottoman Turks capture Cyprus. Ottomans lease Cyprus to Britain. Britain annexes Cyprus. Cypriots burn down Government House. Election of Makarios III as Archbishop. EOKA campaign to free Cyprus and unite with Greece begins; BritishGreek—Turkish Conference blows up; anti-Greek riots in Turkey. Cyprus gains nominal sovereignty over most of its territory. Archbishop Makarios introduces his 'Thirteen Point Plan', with British support, to amend the constitution; 'communal troubles' begin. War between Greece and Turkey averted by Soviet and American pressure. War between Greece and Turkey threatens; Greece withdraws General Grivas and 12,000 men. 17 November demonstrations in Athens: Brigadier Ioannides takes over behind the scenes. General Grivas dies; Turkey invades Cyprus and occupies thirty-eight per cent of the island. Archbishop Makarios dies. Turkish Cypriots declare 'Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus'. Cyprus applies to join the European Union. Imia incident: threat of war between Greece and Turkey. Kofi Annan presents plan to the leaders of the two main Cypriot communities. (December) Copenhagen Summit. (February) Britain offers half its Cyprus territory to Cyprus if the 'Annan Plan' is accepted; Tassos Papadopoulos elected President of Cyprus.

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(March) Talks on 'Annan Plan' fail. (April) Cyprus signs EU accession treaty. Rauf Denktash eases travel restrictions to the South: Greek and Turkish Cypriots cross the dividing line. (May) Massive increase in Turkish violations of Greek airspace. (June) David Hannay, Britain's special envoy for Cyprus, steps down. (July) Rauf Denktash declares that the 'Annan Plan' is unacceptable. (December) Talks on EU constitution collapse. 2004 (January) Turkey urges resumption of Cyprus negotiations. Elections in occupied Cyprus lead to inclusion of pro-negotiation party in coalition. Greek Prime Minister cites Cyprus developments as the main reason for holding Greek general election two months earlier than necessary. (February) Following intense American pressure and meeting in New York, the Cypriot sides resume negotiations on the Annan Plan, to be put to referenda on 24 April. (April) President Papadopoulos advises Cypriots to vote against the Annan Plan. They do. Russia vetoes Security Council resolution intended to strengthen the Annan Plan. (May) Republic of Cyprus joins the European Union. (October) European Commission recommends opening of EU accession talks with Turkey. 2006 (July) President Papadopoulos and the Turkish Cypriot leader, Mr Talat, agree on a 'new set of principles'. (November) European Commission criticizes Turkey for not normalizing relations with the Republic of Cyprus. (December) EU suspends work in eight policy areas regarding the entry negotiations with Turkey. 2008 (February) Dimitris Christofias of AKEL wins the presidential election, taking office on the 28th of that month, and almost immediately opens talks with Mr Talat. (December) Former President Papadopoulos dies.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to Robin Cosby for intellectually creative and difficult technical work, to Zoran Ristic for some solid assistance and to my brother Adrian for his painstaking proof-reading. I am also grateful to Captain Tassos Politopoulos (retired) of the Hellenic Navy, for some incisive and true views on the whole merry-go-round of the Cyprus situation, and to Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of international law at Princeton University and UN Special Representative for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, for his comments on chapter eight, without which I might have put more noses out of joint than usual. Last but not least, I am particularly grateful to my editor at I.B.Tauris Dr. Lester Crook, who painstakingly managed to achieve the impossible, by helping me to simplify and clarify what was originally a text suffering in places from a degree of convolution.

FOREWORD

Cyprus is a fairly small island that historically seems always to have been at the centre of great power conflict. Its history, therefore, seems an excellent one for testing a variety of theories of international relations. And that is what this book sets out to do. Written by William Mallinson, an acknowledged authority in the field, it provides the reader not only with an up-to-date account of developments on the island but also an examination of the ways in which these might - or might not be interpreted. Mallinson is an expert on many subjects from languages to public relations, but primarily he is a trained historian. So international relations theory is very critically examined indeed. International historians and international relations specialists work on closely related areas intellectually. Yet their perspectives are bound to differ. The historian focuses on the past and should be very wary about providing any comment on the present or the future. He is like a detective: someone who inspects a crime and has to trace who was involved, what the chronology of events was, and what motives were at work. He has to understand the context — personal, political, social, economic, religious and ideological - and then conclude how the crime could have taken place and who was responsible. The difference is, of course, that in most cases he knows perfectly well before he starts his investigation, who was guilty. His task has been to show why and how the crime took place - a bit like Peter Falk in Columbo. But the task in hand is always exciting and entertaining. (My old doctoral supervisor, A. J. P. Taylor, always claimed that history was simply part of the entertainment business - although few historians, alas, can entertain the way he did.) The international relations specialist is not at all like a detective. His focus is sometimes on the past, when he becomes a sort of criminologist, categorising crimes for theory's sake, rather than investigating individual ones, like the historian. Rather, his focus is on the present and the future: he is interested in the shape of things to come. So he tends to be a generalist and a soothsayer. He does not have archives at hand to provide documentation. He doesn't know the end of the story he is writing. He often has to go in for model-building, therefore, picking and choosing among the historical literature to test his hypotheses, and will not be in a position to do much original work in historical archives himself. In any case,

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the archives will not yet be open for his period - and there are no archives for the future. So historians have the better of him. They also have the better of him in the sense that they do not have to seem relevant. They can study the past for its own sake, all centuries being, in the words of Ranke, 'equal in the eyes of God/ Their discipline has also long ceased to be relevant to the education of statesmen or gentlemen. But since statesmen have to be trained in something, international relations theory seems to be the best substitute for a relevant education. And with it come the great 'paradigms' of international relations: the realist paradigm, the structuralist paradigm and the behaviouralist paradigm. It is not my job to explain these here, but Mallinson will do so in the course of his most challenging book. He will also examine whether these theories can stand the test of being applied to the frustrating but fascinating history of modern Cyprus. Mallinson's book is without doubt a controversial one. It expresses strong views and takes aim at large targets. His views will not convince everyone. But no one interested in Cyprus or its international history and relations can afford to neglect it. It demolishes some of the more fanciful theory surrounding the island's international situation and demolishes the idea that Britain's part in the island's history has been an honourable one. So please read on. This is a work that can be recommended to anyone interested in Cyprus, history or international relations. Alan Sked, Reader in International History, London School of Economics and Political Sciences

EXEGESIS AND RATIONALE

Something can be understood morefully, if seen in the course of time.

Aristotle

Introduction This book uses the most recent diplomatic documents available on Cyprus to illustrate the latest state of the practice and theory of international relations. Diplomatic history is its intellectual underpinning. It therefore sets out to establish a single framework for the following: an analysis and evaluation of the latest diplomatic documents on Cyprus excavated from the British National Archives; a critique of the subject of geopolitics; and a novel approach to analysing relations between states, which I term 'geohistoricaF, the latter unashamedly advocating that only deep knowledge of history and the mental strength to draw lessons from its study can provide an adequate intellectual basis to comprehend the causes of, and reasons for, problems between states: causes and reasons that transcend the still-expanding multiplicity of competing theories with which we are confronted. In short, the book tells a story from a geohistorical viewpoint.1 In a nutshell, if one knows the history of foreign policy formulation, which one ascertains from the files, then one can know how foreign policy formulation works today, rather than have to rely on vanity memoirs and newspaper reports alone. I have chosen Cyprus as a vehicle and case-study for scrutinizing the subject of geopolitics, because it has become over the centuries a piece of geopolitical realestate par excellence. Its perceived strategic importance — in other words its physical location — has made the island a cat's-paw of Great Power diplomacy, and the object of international relations analysts ranging from realists to idealists, with their many refinements and offshoots.2 It can be considered to be both a focus and a marshalling yard of great power rivalry, despite - or perhaps increasingly because of - its EU membership. The book synthetically scrutinizes the main international relations theories, and juxtaposes them with the truths, partial truths, and lies that emerge from the quagmire of diplomatic documents, using the diplomatic history of Cyprus as the medium and the example, simultaneously. The book should therefore serve

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as a bridge between the study of history and of international relations, given that Cyprus' position vis-a-vis the Middle East, its European status, and Greek- and Turkish-influenced religious and linguistic mix, have made it a veritable microcosm for the biting of geostrategic fingernails of ambition since at least the time of the Romans, followed by the Byzantines, Richard the Lionheart, the Lusignans, Venetians, Ottomans, British and, today, a whole host of interested parties, including Britain, the USA, France, Russia, Greece, Turkey and Israel, not to mention the Cypriots themselves. In this book, using Cyprus as the medium, we shall seek to establish links between the influence of theory, and the extent to which it influences practice (and vice versa) and whether theory is simply a way of explaining and/or justifying foreign policy. By the end of the book, we shall see that the answer lies in a combination of these, transcended by a geohistorical approach, whereby the most basic and immutable characteristics of that curious biped, homo sapiens, may well provide us with the answer, an answer that many are nevertheless loth to grasp, owing to the warped ambition and lust for power that can stem from insecurity. Cyprus, and the fascinating primary sources we have amassed, will teach us. Before looking at the subject of geopolitics and then the geohistorical approach, let us turn to the book's backbone, the primary sources. The Diplomatic Documents Diplomats, especially those posted abroad, rarely have time for international relations theory, being far too busy with the day-to-day mechanics of relations between states, involving at base the pursuit of national interests.3 Conversely, few international relations theorists have adequate understanding of the realities of diplomatic work, since only a minute number have been professionally trained diplomats. Even the likes of Kissinger, with their numerous publications on international relations and even diplomacy, display scant regard in their lives as politicians and/or academics for the professional workings of diplomacy, as opposed to high-level international political dealings. To gain insight into the workings of relations between states, it is therefore to diplomatic archives that we need to turn, before we even begin to theorize seriously about the very relations that diplomats are meant to be managing, maintaining, improving or manipulating, as the case may be. It is through this spectrum that one can begin to understand the forces that lie behind the 'nitty-gritty' day-to-day work, the reporting, negotiating, propaganda, policy formulation, pursuit of national interests, and, often ignored, relations within states. Much of the primary source material used for this book is in the form of diplomatic documents: annual reports, internal memoranda, position papers, telegrams and diplomatic despatches. They enable us to see how events occurred at the time of writing, and how they were manipulated. They betray one obvious but oft-ignored factor, that of continuity, whether we mean diplomatic analyses or day-to-day actions and reactions. They are connected by the factor of perceived national interest, with genuinely moral considerations rarely, if ever, part of the picture, although we find a smattering of hypocritical moral indignation in the case of Cyprus. The

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3

documents often betray a sense of detachment bordering on superciliousness, perhaps a disguise for suppressed and oppressed emotion, the latter sometimes bubbling to the surface. The documents are essentially human, a fact that cannot be concealed by the formality, conventions, drafting rules and diplomatic frameworks which serve as the background to the writing of the various documents. Human weaknesses, as well as strengths, emerge. For example, a study of the documents about the invasion of Cyprus in 1974, and of those for the following year, reveals that the Foreign Secretary and later Prime Minister, James Callaghan, did not tell the truth about his foreknowledge of, and worries about, the impending Turkish intervention in, and invasion of, Cyprus.4 The documents reveal how the British government wished to divide the two main communities in Cyprus,5 while another shows how the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) admitted that Britain did not need its bases in Cyprus, and wished to give them up, but was unable to do so because of the 'importance of working with the Americans'.6 Whatever the consistencies and inconsistencies of policy formation that emerge from the documents, they display a continuity of method, particularly in that they are predicated on perceived national interest, even where there is internal disagreement. Thus in 1947, while one faction in the Foreign Office (FO) was advocating giving Cyprus to Greece to strengthen the latter in its fight against communism, another wanted to hang on to Cyprus, claiming that Greece was likely to fall to the communists. Both factions had the perceived British national interest at heart. Such documents, even when displaying flawed argumentation, and the occasional hint of snideness, are nevertheless well ordered, steeped in a tradition of coherence and continuity that placed Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service head and shoulders above most of its rivals. Things are not the same today. Britain's socio-economic decline is reflected in the lowering of standards in its diplomatic service. Diplomatic primary source documents are the raw material of many a historian seeking to scrutinize and understand how and why events occur. When one begins to think about their implications, one starts to think by default about relations between states, and how diplomacy (and of course diplomats are not the only power brokers by any means) functions as the nuts and bolts of international relations. One sees how, albeit subconsciously, some international relations theory is sometimes practised by default, simply because of the plethora of think tanks that support (subtly) various government positions through their publications, positions which are then espoused by politicians and acted on by diplomats. Some politicians even write articles for quasi-academic journals such as International Affairs or Foreign Affairs, thus rubbing shoulders with respected academics, and gaining apparently intellectual kudos, as well as acceptance of, if not outright support for, unpopular policies. Although many of the diplomatic documents are written by professional diplomats, they reflect, especially in the case of Cyprus, a marked tendency towards political realism, particularly since their main concern is interest, in other words acting in the perceived interests of the country they represent. They therefore tend to consider international relations in a state-centric manner, particularly since they themselves represent the state. This is so, even if they have not themselves studied

r

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international relations theory. They tend to be political realists if they are flexing their state's muscles, or practitioners of Bismarckian Kealpolitik, if they are being more moderate. In this connexion, utilitarianism, as a helpful and subtle underpinning for political realism, provides a useful background for considering the British documents, since it is this philosophy, or way of thinking about the world, that comes through in British foreign policy formulation. The concepts of 'the greatest good for the greatest number' and 'the end justifies the means' provide justification (false or otherwise) for unpopular decisions. In the case of Cyprus, this comes through in various position papers. In cynical hands, utilitarianism can be destructive. For example, the killing of hundreds of thousands can be justified, provided that the killings help the majority. Here, Hiroshima and Nagasaki come to mind, where the lives of a million American troops were apparently saved through the killing of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians. At a different level, many British politicians and diplomats preferred to hang on to Cyprus, against the wishes of the majority of the island's people, because they believed that British control was necessary in the fight against communism. How true this reason was is for the reader to decide by the end of this book. British diplomacy is well known for its pragmatism and flexibility, fitting well into a utilitarian world, relying as it does on the senses, with an aversion towards abstract ideas. Precision, it has been written, is inimical to British mental habits, since precision implies commitment,7 which is antithetical to the foundation of, and practice of, British foreign policy, which tends more towards a 'wait and see' attitude. Behind this lies Palmerston's pragmatic statement to the House of Commons: 'We have no eternal allies and no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow'.8 This still comes across in the scrutiny of British foreign policy documents, particularly in the case of British possession of land on Cyprus (the Sovereign Base Areas, or SBAs), where the FCO studiously avoided bringing to the fore the precise responsibilities of Britain's sovereignty in the face of the UN Charter, the FCO privately admitting that the Charter overrode, for example, the Treaty of Guarantee, but doing its utmost to play down the question. Precision was dangerous. Hence the importance that the British attach to 'informal' meetings. The more the formality, the more the commitment, and the more difficult the escape route. It is not surprising that Britain still shies away from having a written constitution or a legally enforceable Bill of Rights, preferring the informal path and Acts of Parliament. This phenomenon can be regarded as a strength ('the British don't need pedantry'), and proves useful at the international level. In this context, the diplomatic papers on Cyprus, and particularly those on the 1960 treaties (see Chapter 5) make interesting reading. As we shall see, some of the papers are perfect examples of political realism, even if some may conclude that Britain is no longer strong enough to practise power-politics off its own bat. The documents show how Britain's - and indeed other countries' - obsession with the Dardanelles continues to this day, and how Britain's imperial naval

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strategy perpetuates itself, even without a powerful navy, thanks to Britain's 'piggybacking' of the US in matters of military strategy, especially regarding Cyprus. Winston Churchill wrote that 'for four hundred years the foreign policy of England has been to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating Power on the Continent'.9 This is still true today: Britain fears a truly united Europe, and therefore periodically joins countries such as Poland in promoting pro-US and nonCommunautaire foreign policy, the most obvious recent example being that of the Iraq war. British foreign policy is atavistic, in the sense that the imperial mentality still rears its atavistically ugly head from time to time, over places like Cyprus and Diego Garcia. Whatever lip-service might be paid to an 'ethical foreign policy' from time to time, this tends more often than not to be a smokescreen to mask self-interest. Few in their right mind could, for example, say that the attack on Iraq, surrounded as it was by lying, was humanitarian by any stretch of the imagination, particularly since it led to the violent deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Political realism was the order of the day. Realist and utilitarian theory provided the respectable background to the mass killings. When one looks at the Cyprus papers, the other major concern that shines through (apart from Europe) is Britain's fear of its bugbear, Russia. One sees in the recently released papers a replication of Britain's obsession with Russia's attempts to build up its power in the Mediterranean, hence the Crimean War, and today, British support of Turkey's application to join the EU, in line with US policy, but at odds with that of Franco-German 'Old Europe'. Cyprus is very much a strategic tool for the Anglo-Saxon alliance in this respect, particularly poignant now, with Russia beginning to reassert its authority after considerable bear-baiting by the US, Britain and the formerly communist East European nouvelles arrivees on the EU stage. Strategy is, indeed, the name of the game, as revealed by the documents. Before we return to our geohistorical theme, let us turn to 'geopolitics', taking the bull by the horns, since this 'primitive form of IR theory', as Christopher Hill calls it,10 seems to have spread its tentacles to virtually every corner of international relations practice and theory. The crude theory of geopolitics is perhaps the closest we have yet been to theory transmogrifying into practice, usually in a violent manner, as for example with German National Socialist power. Geopolitics The proponents of geopolitics are closely connected to the realist school of international relations (see Chapter 3), particularly since the acquisition of resources is part of the objective of acquiring and projecting power. Before attempting to comment constructively on geopolitics, let us consider some of the criticisms, enunciated cogently by Christopher Hill.11 His first observation is that when policy-makers took up geopolitical thinking, a number of the factors involved (for example the obsession with trying to control/ possess the 'world island' - see Chapter 3), then became self-fulfilling prophecies. 'All revealed the obsession of the times with a neo-Darwinian view of international relations of struggle and survival, which reached its nadir in fascism.'12 Here, again,

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we perceive the incipient connexion with the realist school. As we shall see, the likes of Kissinger brought geopolitics back into fashion, despite the horrors of the Second World War.13 In spite of the alleged14 end of the Cold War in 1989, the word 'geopolitics* is still on the lips of an enormous number of academics and politicians, particularly with the increasingly desperate struggle for the world's resources, oil in particular. At an extreme, oil pipelines almost become geopolitical maps. Old-style borders, encompassing culturally and historically homogenous groups of people, become less relevant in the eyes of the 'geopolitician', or, as Hill writes: 'The random way in which frontiers are superimposed on the world means that states vary enormously in size, mineral wealth, access to the sea, vulnerability, and cohesiveness/15 It is no exaggeration to say, in this context, that certain modern Arab states were created simply because of the location of oil and, therefore, for geopolitical considerations; and that the Iraq War, just like Hitler's attack on Russia, was essentially geopolitical. It certainly fitted in with Haushofer's theories about the soil, and with the Drang nach Osten. Similarly, several of the new statelets that exploded into existence (or partial 're-existence') in the early 90s were strongly supported by the US for geopolitical reasons, namely to control a perceived vacuum, while Russia took stock of its position. Despite the protestations of the inventors of the term 'soft power' (essentially using economic clout to achieve foreign policy objectives), it seems clear that 'applied geopolitics' can be synonymous with military politics (and, therefore, 'geo-killing'), since the simplistic division of the world into geopolitical regions and the realization of the interests of strong powers often relies on going to war unilaterally. Here, since we are really talking about military strategy (a vital component of applied geopolitics), it is worth trying to give a more precise, and less 'ornery', view of geopolitics: for Greek academic Ioannis Mazis, it is an x-ray of reality and, thus, the study of the distribution of power internationally, with the four kinds of power being military, economic, political and cultural/informational. This, in turn, implies the existence of geostrategy, or 'political intervention to transform or intensify the results of geopolitical analysis'.16 Here, Mazis at least provides us with a distinction between 'geopolitical' and 'geostrategic', a distinction lacking in the political vocabulary of most politicians and diplomats - a reflection, perhaps, of their tendency to latch on to fashionable terms without fully understanding their implications. In this connexion, it is significant that, of the various theories and paradigms which we shall look at in Chapters 2 and 3, it is the terms 'geopolitics' and 'geostrategy' that we hear a great deal on the lips of those with a personal stake in international relations practice. Perhaps this is because the terms provide an (albeit simplistic) intellectual link between theory and practice. There is, after all, considerable disharmony between international theory and diplomatic practice,17 hence the use of a term invented by theoreticians, but welcomed by 'little-time-tothink' practitioners. How original is geopolitics? The term certainly sounds impressive, but what it seeks to describe, analyse, evaluate and, often (in terms of geostrategy) advocate,

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is in fact old. Since the invention of maps, strategic and geopolitical considerations have been important in relations between states (whether pre- or post-Westphalian concepts), especially in war. Although many wars were dynastic and religious, land, resources and trade usually lay behind the outward reasons given. Just as the Crusades degenerated into land-grabbing, with defending the Cross as the excuse, so was Bush's 'humanitarian' and 'moral' attack on Iraq simply about oil and military control. The Dardanelles, referred to above, have always been a strategic and geopolitical obsession, since at least Homeric times. The very acquisition of Cyprus by Britain in 1878 (see Chapter 3) was unashamedly strategic and geopolitical, even if the latter word was not yet in fashion. Napoleon Bonaparte had already stated the obvious: 'Any state makes its politics suit its geography'.18 Emulating this view, the hard-nosed geopolitical realist Zbigniew Brzezinski described geopolitics as a 'combination of geographic and political factors which determine the position of a state or region, with emphasis on the impact of geography on politics'.19 These ideas can also be deduced from Thucydides, especially when one considers the (strategic) location of Corinth. There is nothing new in geopolitics, other than the word and various semantic refinements and sub-divisions, to take into account modern technology and new resources. Its cold and inhuman way of approaching relations between states may be accurate and an honest reflection of the outcome of human characteristics and motives; yet it paradoxically ignores the true ingredients of international relations: the human factor itself. This, perhaps, explains why, like single-factor explanations such as globalization or the simplistic 'clash of civilizations', geopolitics has its lure, but could soon be a mere curiosity.20 Like so much international relations theory, geopolitics appears as an escape route from admitting the truth about relations between states, a truth which is based on human behaviour, particularly fear and greed. Let us now turn to geohistory. Geohistory Far from packaging thoughts, ideologies, paradigms, approaches, concepts and events into personal interpretations of history to suit one's own wishes, geohistory accepts history as a neutral continuum that remains perforce entirely unaffected by any interpretation. The past is the past, which blends into the future as we write. Events alone can of course be interpreted, although the very act of interpreting does tend to create dispute in the form of what we can term 'different colours'. We can nevertheless say that the same things have been happening, and will continue to happen, however we choose to package and interpret them, simply because they are predicated on immutable human characteristics. It is not that history repeats itself, but rather that the similar behaviour of the human species simply manifests itself ad infinitum with different colours, to suit our own selfish desires, new technology and allegedly new ideas. Therefore, it can be argued that Hegel and Marx, for instance, were banging their heads against the wall in using (their view of) history to argue in favour of, for example, German superiority, or materialism and production. In this sense, they - and numerous others - are twisting events to suit their wishful thinking. But history transcends mere analysis, since it is simply

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the past up to now, and is neutral by definition. As we said earlier, only definitely known (historical) events can be used as examples, to then be analysed and evaluated. It is from past behaviour that we learn more, rather than from trying to dissect and exploit the past to prove what we want. International relations, as a subject of serious study, is even newer than the term 'geopolitics'. Its advent was inevitable: as people moved ever faster with the industrial and technological revolution, political theory, which is at least as old as Socrates, and considers the single state ab initio^ developed into international theory, which placed the emphasis on relations between states. Out of improved shipping technology came the voyages of discovery and the likes of Bodin and Grotius, with the beginnings of international law (although, even here, one could argue that international law existed in the Greek, and especially in the Roman, world). In any event, by the end of the First World War21 (in reality the Third World War) and with the surge in mass emotion that so often comes after mass killing, international relations theories began their steady and inexorable march. Some of these theories justify themselves by reference to past people and events. Where would modern political realism (see Chapter 2) be without Thucycides, Machiavelli and Hobbes, whether or not they were true political realists? The more international relations theories that have been invented, the less likely it becomes that there can ever be one international relations theory.22 One could even argue that coagulation is setting in, with desperate attempts to find something new. Huntington's simplistic 'clash of civilizations' (see Chapter 8) is a case in point. Fukuyama, with his curious theory about the end of history, has now desperately turned to 'masculine values and biology'.23 Lebow is turning to the importance of the spirit in his new theory of international relations, referring to Socrates,24 almost reinventing the latter. International relations theories are condemned to remain but theories, necessary perhaps as an intellectual tool of respectability and as a starting point to attack other theories. There is however an argument for attempting to bridge the study of (international) history and theory. Many historians have a low regard for the sort of work theorists do, just as many theorists tend to look down on historians as mere fact-mongers.25 Historians, however, need to understand why international relations theories abound, simply because much of the content of history, namely the events so faithfully recorded by purist historians is itself created by, or result from, the very theories that some historians decry. To elaborate, international historians and purist international relations academics do not as a rule take each other into account when researching and writing, although the IR person certainly needs at least a grounding in history (and, hopefully, literature) to understand the (geographical) areas that he sets out to analyse and evaluate. The purist historian is interested in recording and establishing the veracity of facts. Once he is reasonably satisfied with the reliability of those facts, he sometimes sets out to analyse and evaluate them. This involves, obviously, an interpretation and therefore, sometimes, the kind of evaluation that is akin to judgement. With the fairly recent advent of international relations as an academic subject (1919), the

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historian has seen the evaluative part of his role being 'encroached upon' by the IR field. The study of relations between states (or IR) is today therefore shared among historians, IR people and political scientists, with sociologists, psychologists, communication theorists, anthropologists, and various 'communication experts' jumping on to the bandwagon. A purist historian can understandably look askance at these other subjects in terms of his exacting work, since the word 'relations' is more of an abstract than a concrete term, and therefore open to all kinds of speculation, which can detract from mental precision. The historian therefore remains in an ivory castle at his peril, running the risk of simply being exploited by other academic and quasi-academic subjects. In fact, since he does perforce himself analyse and evaluate, as well as simply establish veracity, he needs to be aware of the many approaches and theories that abound in international relations, to provide him with an insight into attitudes which can, themselves, influence the making of history. Similarly, the IR theorist needs to recognize that without the painstaking task of establishing how history occurs, he can himself end up in an ivory castle, ignored by the practitioners of international relations, who often have little time for theory. The historian's, especially the diplomatic historian's, lifeblood is the file, in the original form. By scrutinizing files over a number of years (files generated by the practitioners of relations between states, among others), he establishes coherent trends and understands policy formation better even than the IR academic can. He sees drafts, and how they are altered; he can even analyse the handwriting. Here, no computer can help, since the material released by governments on to the Internet is selective and often in print, without marginal comments. Even archives reproduced by governments in the form of books are insufficient, since they are inevitably selective, and often do not include the arguments between officials and departments, or more selective information. The diplomatic historian is therefore - or should be - indispensable to the IR academic who, armed with the historian's work, has the ingredients for his thinking. Most important, policy formulation can only be understood by looking at developments over a number of years, or even centuries, in the form of the primary sources. Thus a serious IR person avoids history at his peril. Yet it is equally true that the historian needs to know what the theorist is thinking - and he will not obtain such knowledge from primary sources alone. He will need to read contemporary articles to understand how theorists have influenced practitioners. The IR theorist should ideally say to himself: 'What is this life if, full of care, one has no time to stand and stare,' using the facts established by the historian. On their own, theories tend to be based on models, often rather mechanistic ones. If they become too involved, or ignore detailed historical data, they can become coagulated, and catapult themselves out of sensible debate. History can and does bring theories back to earth, and helps IR theoreticians, bombarded as they are with the fast flow of computerized information and press reporting, to 'stand and stare'. Owing to the release of documents 30 years after the event, one often comes across press reporting and analyses from the 1960s that were clearly warped or

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biased, even if at the time the writer believed the facts to be true. It was only 30 years after the event, for example, that the journalist and IR analyst were able to discover the real motives of the British government in preparing a conference on 'security problems in the Middle East, including Cyprus*: to divide Greece and Turkey, and therefore hang on to Cyprus. The historian, slightly cynical and exacting, having seen and understood the previous history of policy formulation, is less likely to fall into the trap of risky assumption and theorizing. To come closer to geohistory, one needs to accept that only history can teach us about relations between states. Aristotle was correct in writing that something can be understood more fully, if seen in the course of time.26 Seeking constants in history, or indeed in any area, is a risky business. Yet there is one constant in history, which lies at the basis of geohistory, and is indeed its starting point: human nature. It has remained constant throughout the millennia, thereby opening up the possibility, indeed probability, that ancient lessons and observations can be of modern significance.27 In an albeit cynical way, A. J. P. Taylor saw this, writing that we learn from history how to repeat our mistakes. It follows that if the basic human characteristics remain essentially the same throughout the millennia, then mistakes will necessarily continue. If, on the other hand, one adopts a less Malthusian and more optimistic approach, then one can study events, good, bad, and ugly, and set out to ensure that what led to the bad ones cannot recur, or at least to create conditions which make them less likely to recur. This is where the IR theorist can help, but only provided that he studies history. This requires the recognition that the basics for understanding international relations are simple human characteristics, such as greed, fear, ambition, anger and pride, as well as virtues such as unselfishness, charity, humility and a simple desire to help others as well as oneself. Montesquieu was nevertheless correct in his observation that in the context of the state, greed masters everyone, while virtue vanishes.28 For thousands of years, man has been obsessed with possession and territory, often a result of his need for security. The further back we go, the more obvious it becomes that the strong rule the weak (at least while they remain strong). However, since the emergence of new forms of government, of international law and of the widespread concept of the equality of human beings, the idea of the stronger ruling the weaker has become outdated, in theory if not in practice. This is a lesson that has not been learned by the practitioners of political realism/power politics who, rather than learn how to avoid the 'power' wars of the past, seem bent on repeating the mistakes of past warmongers. Should the realist point to the Pax Romana, it can be pointed out that, in the days when subjugation of one people by another was often accepted as natural, even without fighting, so was the Pax Romana acceptable. Today, any such idea is anathema, based as it is on power, since the concept of equality among people - and among states - takes precedence. Thus naive attempts to emulate, for example, the Romans, cause more, not less war, as recent history demonstrates. For better or worse, geopolitics simply ignores, or treats very scantily, the 'basics of the human being', concentrating by implication on the very factors

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which stimulate greed and desire: resources and land. People are reduced to being simply consumers. The more theories that are invented, the more the practice of international relations becomes coagulated and divorced from reality (in other words from the realities of greed, fear, insecurity, ambition and pride) and the more international relations theories appear surrealistic. Cyprus, however, enables us to bridge the gap between theory and history by providing not only a good example of the greedy and ambition-laden side of geopolitics and political realism/power politics, but also a litany of basic facts which underline how the island has been treated as a piece of real-estate (in Kissinger's cynical terminology). Thus, in understanding the ways that some power-mongers think, one can better understand Cyprus and the state of relations between states. Cyprus brings us close to the realities of both practice and theory. This will become increasingly apparent, as we move through the book via the documents. Geohistory transcends theories, not by ignoring them, but by recognizing the need to avoid trying to impose perfection in an imperfect world. Geohistory includes in its panoply of considerations the fact that lying and skulduggery are very much part and parcel of the real - as opposed to the theoretical and would-be - world of the realists, idealists, behaviourists and the rest. It does not spit at them, but neither does it depend on them, other than to understand that the various theories are themselves the result of human nature, and, as such, part of geohistory. The Power Fetish In studying the diplomatic history of Cyprus, one sees that the objective of pursuing 'the national interest' is inextricably bound up with that of power, in all its manifestations. Nietzschean thinking, with its obsession with power, suggests that history is full of blindness, madness and injustice. Here, one could justifiably substitute the word 'mankind' for 'history', since history itself is a neutral process of events, whether good, bad or ugly, and in this sense, history as a subject is simply the past, and not something to be judged per se. The 'blindness, madness and injustice' (as well as the more positive factors) are of course part of the content of history, and manifest themselves consistently, to the point of permanence. Thus behaviour that we might deem to be 'irrational' becomes rational by its very constancy. One could argue that serious disagreement among diplomats and politicians leads to 'blindness, madness and injustice', perhaps at the point at which war becomes an extension of politics. In other words, an excess of logic leads men to behave worse than the worst beasts. Far from being irrational, however, acts such as Churchill's bombing of Dresden, the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the extermination of Armenians, Jews, Gypsies and German communists, and even the genocide of the Red Indians, were coldly calculated occurences, labelled irrational by some, in self-denial of the cruel and greedy side of human nature. One of the inevitable characteristics of diplomatic documents is that through their diplomatic style and (usually) high standard of English, they create an illusion of common sense, detachment and rationality that can from time to time belie reality, in the sense that they

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can detach the researcher from the raw 'nitty-gritty' of events and the smell and sight of blood and spilled guts. Theory, when used judiciously, is needed to bring this out, since practitioners are, in contrast, merely trying consciously to achieve their objectives, to the exclusion of moral considerations. Interests become sacrosanct. Mass human and state behaviour can be better understood, as we have said, through study and analysis of diplomatic documents over the years. This we shall set out to do in the case of Cyprus, revealing in the process the human weakness of insecurity, which is, in the opinion of this author, one of the main ingredients of the thirst for power, along with ambition and greed. This will come up time and time again when considering the diplomatic history of Cyprus. For now, suffice it to say that Britain acquired Cyprus to increase its power in the Mediterranean and, therefore, in the Middle East. It can be posited that Vico and Guicciardini are much closer to our sketch of geohistory than Nietzsche, Hegel and Marx. Let us mention the latter briefly within the context of power, particularly given the political realists' and the extreme geopoliticians' obsession with power. Nietzsche's thinking hinges on his idea of the Ubermensch, much exploited by the Nazis.29 Hegel, on the other hand, with his coldly logical and allegedly rational approach to history, his sense of inevitability, and his concept of the ideal state as German,30 is intellectually rumbustious in his historicism. Like Nietzsche's, his ideas were also exploited by the Nazis. He appears to exploit his view of history to promote his ideas of rationality and divine Germanic perfection. Marx, also a 'history fetishist', but essentially materialistic, exploits history by replacing God and religion with society and economics. The essence becomes production, and who controls it. Both Marx and Hegel are categorical in their view of history, the former with his rather simplistic stages of communalism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism and his nirvana, communism, and the latter with his apparent glorification of war, as a prerequisite for cleaning the stagnant waters of humanity. Yet why mention these political thinkers, obsessed as they are with the concept of power? Because it is thinkers like these whose ideas influence, subliminally or more patently, policy formulators, whether politicians or professional diplomats. Even if they have passed away, they have bequeathed a mass of followers and interpreters. Looking now at Cyprus, and relating it to theory, it is clear that the country is to some extent a victim of political realism (power politics), epitomized, for example, by Kissinger's intrusive interest in the island: the very same Kissinger who played an important role in making geopolitics fashionable again, and who admired the power politics of Metternich. A quote about him from a diplomatic document speaks volumes: Frank regarded Kissinger with considerable misgivings. He thought he was far more in the mould of Metternich than a man with a full understanding of the inter-dependence of a modern world. He was interested in where power resided and the exercise

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of power. Frank clearly feared that this nineteenth-century approach was affecting White House thinking and perhaps the attitude of the President in particular.31 Thus we see a direct correlation between documentary evidence and international relations theory. The usefulness of the primary source documents is that their consistent study can reveal the influence of great political thinkers and 'historicists' like Nietzsche, Hegel, Marx and others, but at the same time bring us back to earth. The ineluctable chronology of connected events with which the analytical researcher becomes acquainted comes alive through juxtaposition. The documents are themselves history. In contrast, Nietzsche, Hegel, Marx and others, despite their rarefied intellectual approach (often based on pre-Socratic philosophy, but only clumsily applied to a more modern world), appear to relate their accumulation of facts to their concept of history, thereby raising history to an unreal philosophical pedestal, implying by default that history is itself a philosophy, rather than what it really is: that which has gone before. Yet, while history per se is separate from theory, the actual study of history will be enhanced by understanding the way that the perpetrators of history think. This is a geohistorical approach. Returning to the primary diplomatic sources, it is through Guicciardini that events can be more readily understood, without having to negotiate the labyrinthine thought processes of, for example, Nietzsche.32 The former's view that things have always been the same, that the past illuminates the future, and that the same things return with different colours is certainly more down-to-earth and realistic than the idealism of Marx or Hegel. In looking at documents over a period, particularly those relating to the international relations microcosm of Cyprus, one really does see the same things returning with different colours (the colours often painted on to suit current trends), and the past illuminating the future. For example, a reading of British policy documents on Cyprus for 1964 literally paves the way for the Turkish intervention and invasion of 1974. Of course, one can take it further back: in 1955, when Britain got the Turkish government involved in Cyprus, the documents from then on show increasing Turkish involvement (in an island over which they had no rights, according to the Treaty of Lausanne). The fascinating aspect of studying past documents chronologically is that in 2010, a researcher can predict in 1955 something likely to occur at some future date (in this case 1974). Like a Racine play, you know what is likely to happen, but are drawn to how and when it will happen. You realise that time perse is irrelevant, while chronology is crucial. Vico's view of Mankind is also relevant here. Unlike the rationalism of Descartes, he postulated that perfection could never exist on Earth. Science could never explain the essence of a thing, but only how it is made. His belief in God and God's plan for Mankind must be anathema to many of the behaviourist school, with their insistence on the methodologies of natural science to explain behaviour. But for Vico, Nature was of God, and not the antithesis. He believed that history was cyclical, with civilisations passing from anarchy to order and vice versa. The study of history was necessary to understand Mankind,33 which meant a deep study of human characteristics, so often missing from the many current international

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relations theories. In his way, Vico brings us down to earth, by stressing the human factor. The point of making these references to thinkers with an interest in history is to demonstrate the degree of their usefulness in studying the diplomatic documents on Cyprus. In terms of understanding the facts and opinions contained in the papers, the thinkers clearly provide food for thought, and all the more so, because while the diplomats and most of the politicians involved in writing the documents were not themselves political thinkers, (particularly since technology has meant that the space to think has become increasingly subservient to the need for action), they may well have nevertheless been subliminally influenced by various thinkers, not to mention by fashionable ideas, such as 'humanitarian intervention', which are sometimes cynically used to disguise unilateral attacks on countries. Conclusions As this book will set out to demonstrate, out of an area the size of Cyprus, geohistorical analysis and evaluation can aid understanding not only of Cyprus itself, but by default of the whole state of relations between states. Cyprus, in this sense, becomes a microcosm: a microcosm of both the current practice of IR, given its status as a cat's-paw of interested alien powers such as Britain, the US, Israel, Turkey and (but not alien) Greece, and also of the state of theory; in other words, thinking about relations between states, the case of Cyprus is most emphatically an object of political realism/power politics. Yet much knowledge can be gained and lessons learned from areas even smaller than Cyprus: take, for example, the tiny Greek island of Gavdos, to the southwest of Crete. In May 1996, the Turkish General Staff stated that Gavdos (and other islands and tiny rocks around Crete) must not be used for a Nato exercise, due to 'its disputed status of property' (sic).34 In 2007, I asked various governments, including the Turkish one, the following question: 'Does your government consider the Isle of Gavdos (south of Crete) to be part of Greek territory? If not, why not?' The Turkish embassy passed me from official to official, but never replied. None of the replies that I received from the British, Italian, French or German governments actually stated that Gavdos is a Greek island.35 Most embarrassingly for these governments, however, the European Commission had actually already stated in 1999 that the islands of Gavdos (and Gavdopoula) are under Greek sovereignty in accordance with the arrangements of the Treaty of London of 1913.36 From taking our geohistorical look at Gavdos, then, we can draw the following tentative conclusions: EU governments do not have a co-ordinated view about Greek sovereignty of Gavdos; EU governments are loth to irritate the Turks, when it comes to Greek-Turkish relations; and individual EU governments' embassies and foreign ministries are either unaware of, or do not follow, European Commission policy. At another level, the position of a minute Greek island suddenly gains strategic and geopolitical significance affecting Nato; above all, it casts our minds back to the Ottoman Empire and how Greece regained Crete. In short, it provides us with a geohistorical continuum of international human behaviour, bringing in strategic ambition, greed, pride and fear. An extreme hypothetical

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parallel example of the Gavdos story would be for the Austrian government (in its theoretical capacity as successor to the Hapsburg Empire) to lay claim to an islet off the Croatian coast; or more absurdly, for the United Kingdom, as the successor state to England, to lay claim to Calais. In any event, if even Gavdos can be seen as a gauge of the state of relations between states, then with Cyprus, as we shall see, the gauge is far bigger and more complex. In this book, we shall try to avoid as much as possible the linguistic bulimia that has arisen from international relations theory, such as 'roadmap', 'window of opportunity', 'international community', 'actor', 'period of time' and 'extraordinary rendition', words and expressions which suggest that 'most people are other people, their thoughts being someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, and their passions a quotation'.37 In seeking to consider history as the key to understanding Cyprus within an international relations context, we suggest that a solid intellectually credible link between geography and politics is the human factor, and, therefore, the full range of human strengths and weaknesses. In short, we shall try to elevate the Cyprus question (or reduce it) to the simple neutral continuum of history. We shall look in the next chapter at the main international relations theories, in a necessarily synoptic way, simply to put down a marker for the theory which we shall be relating, throughout the book, to the reality of the diplomatic documents about modern Cyprus. 'Perhaps we'd have fewer wars if everyone wasn't so eager to convince someone else of his own particular truth'.38

THINKING ABOUT THEORY

Where is the wisdom lost to knowledge, where is the knowledge lost to information and where is the word we lost in words?

T.S. Elliot1

Introduction This book considers the modern diplomatic history of Cyprus by examining recently released archival material to expose the backstage diplomatic squabbling and power politics that surround — and permeate — the island, and which have resulted in a failed meta-colonial cratocidal2 constitution, three Graeco-Turkish war alerts and a Turkish occupation of over one third of the EU member that continues today, in defiance of international law and the Grotian legal tradition of trying to control Man's worst excesses, whether on land (war) or at sea and in the air (trade). We shall now set out to summarize and put into the book's context the main international relations theories that we shall encounter from time to time in the book. The historian's task is, strictly speaking, to scrutinize and analyze in order to establish veracity. Consequently, he is not as a rule involved in philosophical and theoretical issues forming the basis of the 'paradigmatic debate' on which international relations specialists focus.3 Indeed, were the historian, particularly the diplomatic historian, to be asked to take international relations theory into account, he would soon become confused, as he saw his painstaking work and the necessary precision of his approach being impinged upon by a maelstrom of peripheral ideas that often clashed with each other. This book, however, recognizing the undeniable impact of international relations theory on the interpretation of international and, therefore, diplomatic history, departs from purist historiographical convention by also considering the Cyprus conundrum through the prism of various competing theories, in which a critique of the geopolitical approach will figure largely. To avoid accusations of invading and pillaging the territory of international relations theory, we shall adopt a pragmatic approach, rather than use the various methodologies and classical axioms distilled from cognate disciplines and ancient writings respectively, which

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sometimes lend legitimacy to, and thereby transmogrify, opinions into theories. Let us set our viewpoint firmly, so as to avoid any misunderstanding, by quoting from Giambattista Vico: It is true that men themselves made this world of nations [...] but this world without doubt has issued from a mind often diverse, at times quite contrary, and always superior to the particular ends that men had proposed to themselves.4 This quote explains simply why, however hard and desperately people hunt for and create explanations and justifications for international behaviour, they will never find their pot of gold if they adopt a strictly rational approach, for the simple reason that the human being cannot be reduced to a series of patterns and numerical formulae. The Maelstrom of Theories Just as international relations theory has made an impact on the broad study of international history, so political science has affected the study of international relations, to the extent of even merging with the latter, mainly through the medium of normative theory,5 the latter being a term, taken, like so many others, from cognate disciplines, such as, in this case, philosophy. International relations has in fact become international politics,6 just as the study of public relations has merged with that of communication, with its ever-increasing amount of theory.7 Both international and public relations are subjects which exploit various disciplines to fashion their respective intellectual underpinnings. Although the social sciences were themselves embryonic when some of the earlier international relations theories, classical realism in particular, were being expounded, they began, much to the chagrin of the classical realists and the 'English School', to make inroads, despite being virulently attacked. Friedrich von Hayek, for example, considered the word 'social' to be one of those 'weasel words which drain the meaning from the concept to which they are attached', referring to the term 'social science' as the application of untested speculations to political topics.8 Susan Strange, herself a professor of international relations, likened social scientists to 'peasants who believe there is a pot of gold buried at the end of the rainbow, despite their repeated failures to track it down'.9 Lin Yutang offers a deeper insight, in writing that putting human affairs into exact formulae shows a lack of sense of humour and therefore a lack of wisdom.10 More devastatingly, he writes: Man's love for words is his first step towards ignorance, and his love for definitions the second. The more he analyses, the more he has need to define, and the more he defines, the more he aims at an impossible logical perfection, for the effect of aiming at logical perfection is only a sign of ignorance.11 Although Lin Yutang was writing before the Second World War (the Fourth World War), his ideas presaged much of the later criticism levelled at social science. In

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particular, he believed that the human mind was elusive, uncatchable and unpredictable, and could not be reduced to mere mechanistic laws. He saw idealism and realism as the two main forces of Mankind. To this simple but pithy formula, we can add political ideology, perhaps the most potent hidden ingredient in international relations theory. Certainly, the anti-communism of Strauss, von Hayek and others was instrumental in motivating their classical realism, just as the critical theory of the 'Frankfurt School' was influenced by Marxism. Like any approach to international relations, the social science, also often known as the behaviourist approach, has attracted plenty of criticism, not only from the classical realists, but also from the 'English School'. This body of theorists, which included the renowned Hedley Bull, with its emphasis on 'international society' based on a classical approach, dismissed the behavioural approach of the 'American School of scientific politics'.12 With the fall of the Berlin Wall, hard-nosed realism, or power-politics theory, temporarily went backstage, but now seems to be re-emerging with a vengeance, and with heavy political over- and under-tones, in the shape of the 'neo-cons' who, despite the Obama victory, are still in the picture, while those who are not, are waiting in the wings. The basic theory, which sees the world as anarchic, with the state as the only safe reference point, has its modern origins in Leo Strauss, followed by Reinhold Niebuhr and others. It is significant that Strauss taught Paul Wolfowitz, one of the chief architects of the attack on Iraq.13 For all its intellectual bombast, the Strauss school of thinking is not averse to some 'over-interpretation' and even misrepresentation in its quest to show that state power-projection is the answer. For example, Strauss writes that Machiavelli 'ostensibly seeks to bring about the rebirth of the ancient Roman Republic', and that he was a restorer of 'something old and forgotten'.14 This is intellectual chicanery, since although Machiavelli is known to have admired the order of the Roman Empire, he was only trying to unite Italy, not advocate international power politics and a new Roman (or Florentine) conquest of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Poor Wolfowitz. Strauss, like many other theorists, appears to be reinventing the wheel, albeit a warped one. Although they have not used 'behavioural methodologies', they tend to put words into the mouths (or, rather, the pens) of respected classical writers, such as Thucydides, Machiavelli and Hobbes. Yet Thucydides was more of a recorder than an interpreter of Athens' power politics, and as such not himself an advocate of force per se. One could even argue that he bewailed the use of force in certain circumstances. This is clear from an unbiased reading of the Melian Dialogue. Hobbes, particularly because of his book 'Leviathan', is also used by the realists to justify their theories. Yet Hobbes is concerned more with the internal organization of the state and in justifying his version of absolutism, than with indulging in power politics at the international level, to which he makes but scant reference.15 If the clash between realists and behaviouralists is not enough, the subject of international relations has been much enriched by: structuralism, a perspective which lays more emphasis on total structure than individual states (thus, a structuralist might see the Cyprus problem as a result of a post-colonial system);

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modernization theory, which argues that all states eventually pass through the same stages (a modernization theorist might therefore say that Cyprus had passed the colonial stage, but was still not completely its own master); dependency theory (for some, a sub-division of structuralism), which challenges modernization theory's assumptions that all states pass through the same stages, by emphasizing the exploiter-exploited relationship (a dependency theory advocate would see Cyprus as an internationally exploited island); world systems analysis, which organizes the world into core, semi-peripheral and peripheral states16 (a world systems analyst would see Cyprus as peripheral in terms of the influence of its government); positivism, which seeks to explain by establishing patterns, and is, therefore, close to behaviouralism (a positivist might seek to find instances of foreign interference in Cyprus' affairs, and conclude that the Cyprus problem should be understood on the basis of a series of foreign interventions); constructivism, which seeks to show how ideas and preferences play a leading role in shaping the world (here, a constructivist might see Cyprus and its situation as the result of an artificially created state, catering to a number of different stakeholders, including the Cypriots themselves); post-modernism, which questions the fundamental assumptions of most international relations (and other) theory and is closely connected to critical theory (a post-modernist might question the very make-up of the Cypriot state as an artificial, but selfish, socio-political construct); normative theory (see above), which, by introducing a specifically moral and political content to the study of international relations, threw the cat among the pigeons (a normative theorist would likely see the Cyprus problem as the result of a lack of ethics in policy-formulation); pluralism, which says that the state is but one of many factors making up the whole, and that the 'state-centrism' favoured by realists is misguided (a pluralist might see Cyprus as the result of a compromise between different groups, both internally and externally); and functionalism, which stresses the role of international co-operation as pre-eminent, thereby placing far more emphasis on the United Nations than, for example, a realist (this is particularly relevant to Cyprus, whose government lays great emphasis on international law and the United Nations). That all the above have been flavoured with the main ideologies of conservatism, liberalism and socialism is also self-evident; and to further enrich the picture, we have the 'English School' categorization into three 'traditions', the Hobbesian, which is realist, and emphasizes that power is dominant in the clash of sovereign wills; the Grotian, which seeks to inject effective international rules into an anarchic state system; and the Kantian, which stresses the power of the individual. Certainly, one can see Cyprus through all three 'traditions': the Hobbesian would say that Cyprus' situation is the natural result of a clash of political and strategic forces; the Grotian would say that its problems were due to the fact that international law had been breached; and the Kantian might emphasize the role of individuals such as Archbishop Makarios in shaping the island's destiny. These approaches, naturally, have their variants and sub-variants, apart from overlapping in differing measures with each other. At a recent heavyweight aca-

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demic seminar entitled 'Are Dialogue and Synthesis Possible in International Relations?', part of the conclusions read: Historically, international relations as a discipline has come to view dialogue and synthesis as incompatible objectives. [...] As a community of scholars, however, we are equally compelled to compete, - an important reason why we prefer debate over dialogue and pluralism over synthesis.17 Here we see international relations described as a discipline, while others, such as Berridge, insist that it is a subject that uses disciplines. Although some books do clarify to some extent the plethora of definitions and approaches, contradictions can still be found between those very books. Paradoxically, it is a recent good book on foreign policy that succeeds in clarifying some international relations theory en passant, almost by default.18 Nonetheless, some other experts write that 'changes in the real world [as opposed to the theoretical one?] and new rankings of our values and priorities [normative and constructivist influence?] will always produce competing sets of theories about International Relations'.19 Interestingly, the same is true in the attempt to elevate public relations from being a business and government activity to a serious academic discipline.20 An increasing number of practitioners prefer the term 'communication' to that of 'public relations', one reason being that communications theory is reasonably well developed, falling broadly into five categories, all of which have something to offer, and which could well be synthesized one day: mechanistic, pragmatic, psychological, interactionist and dramatist. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that someone will try to equate the term 'international relations' to 'international communications', or that the subject of international relations could catapult itself out of rational debate. This is because even a minimalist definition of international relations, such as 'relations between states' is not sufficiently precise for many, although its main component is diplomacy, or the conducting of relations between states, and the foreign policies of those states. The fundamental problem may not be so much competing ideological 'worldviews', but rather the sloppiness of terminology and categorization, particularly in distinguishing the difference between 'schools', 'theories', 'paradigms', 'perspectives', 'approaches' and simple 'ideas'. Let us look briefly at how some respected academics have tried to simplify matters. Geoffrey Berridge (who equates international politics with international relations and insists that it is a subject rather than a discipline), writes that there are three contending approaches to the field: realism, pluralism and structuralism.21 The Penguin Dictionary of International Relations states that with the end of the Cold War there are four competing paradigms: neorealism, neoliberalism, criticaltheory and postmodernism.22 Stephen Walt writes of three traditions: realism, liberalism and radicalism, but then produces a diagram entitled 'Competing paradigms', in which he again lists realism and liberalism, adding constructivism.23 Is the reader of these works meant to assume that a paradigm is a tradition, and that radicalism

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is constructivism? Alan Sked offers a clear explanation from a historian's standpoint, referring to three schools: the realist, behavioural and structuralist, but then refers to them as paradigms, nevertheless sensibly stating that they all overlap and that it is not therefore easy to choose any particular one, especially since in order to choose, one needs to be acquainted with a host of disciplines such as history, politics, sociology, economics, law, psychology, anthropology and philosophy, 'to name but a few'.24 To further enrich (and complicate) thefield(s)of international relations theory, modern theorizing about international relations has moved from the emphasis placed on biology by social Darwinism to (following the Fourth World War) physics, and now, apparently, back to biology.25 Fukuyama, perhaps realizing that the 'end of history' is, after all, a superficial and jejune idea, is now apparently arguing that 'masculine values', 'rooted in biology', should play a central role. He writes that 'female chimps have relationships, while male chimps practice Realpolitik\ and that because (he claims) the line from chimp to modern man is continuous, this has significant consequences for international politics,26 particularly since the penitent Fukuyama is now treading dangerously close to some of the ideas of Adolf Hitler's 'Mein KampP. He thus introduces international relations theory to the realm of the farcical. Perhaps he sees himself as the missing link. Thinking about Theory The connection between international relations theory and science, whether politically contrived or natural, has been developed mainly in America, a reflection perhaps of the generally materialistic way of life in the US. It can be reasonably said that 'crude scientism' is a characteristic of modern international relations theory, and that the only sensible way out of the labyrinth is to 'offer empirical, philosophical, and political arguments against scientific imperialism'.27 For this author, however, 'geohistory' provides the intelligent ingredients for the most solid approach. We can see that since its post-war idealistic beginnings in 1919 at the University of Aberystwyth (four years before public relations was introduced at New York University), the study of international relations is no longer what it was. We are bound to ask to what extent events influence international relations theory and vice-versa. If one accepts Fulbright's contention about the 'military-industrial-academic complex',28 then there is certainly a case for saying that theory, especially realism, influences relations between states, since some of the chief promoters of power politics are realists, as we shall see. Conversely, however, events can influence theory, in that they provide explanation, or more often justification, for theories. For example, the fall of the Berlin Wall gave a temporary fillip to some post-modernist thinking and a temporary hope that realist thinking would modify in some way. Similarly, the attack of 11th September 2001 revived the realist school, in the shape of people such as Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz. A third possibility is that both the theory and practice of international relations are inextricably interwoven, existing in a Steppenwolfish love-hate relationship, feeding each other through think tanks, international conferences and lumpenanalysts.

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This gives rise to another question: can individuals alone create events, whatever the prevailing climate, or are they merely products of that climate? In this connexion, as we now turn slowly but surely towards the Cyprus conundrum, let us consider the case of the Permanent Under Secretary of the Foreign Office, Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, when he wrote in 1955: I have always been attracted by the idea of a 3 Power Conference, simply because I believe that it would seriously embarrass the Greek Government. And if such a conference were held, I should not produce any British plan or proposal until a GreekTurkish deadlock has been defined. [ ...] And I repeat: [...] until a Greek-Turkish difference has been exposed.29 The question arises that had Kirkpatrick not supported a 'divide and rule' policy, but had tried to placate Turkey by guaranteeing Turkish Cypriot security, promoted Greek-Turkish relations and then advocated the cession of Cyprus to Greece, as other diplomats had, then the Cyprus conundrum might not exist today. Crete, for example, had been incorporated into Greece without any serious difficulties.30 We are, of course, dealing here with hypotheses, and an absolute answer cannot be given. Yet the question remains valid, as valid as the extent to which theory influences individuals in positions of responsibility. Had Strauss not taught Wolfowitz, would the latter have behaved as he did? Connected to the question of individuals' ability to 'shape history', a new idea has been thrust upon us, one that places the emphasis in international relations on spirit, appetite and reason, therefore claiming, for example, that the First World War (the Third World War) was caused in large part by the quest for 'standing and honour', while the Cuban Missile Crisis' solution was influenced to a considerable extent by Moscow wishing to be recognized as an equal superpower.31 This embryonic theory ignores, however, the harsh reality of economic and strategic interests of large powers, that lie behind human behaviour. It is merely addressing something rather obvious, namely the propensity among some leaders and elite groups towards national pride, which comes into play when perceived interests clash. One of the numerous examples is the nationalistic rhetoric of Margaret Thatcher that accompanied Britain's budget battle with the European Community in the eighties. Another question that arises is the extent to which learning teaches understanding, since if you are simply trying mechanically to gain knowledge in order to apply it, you may not have time to properly reflect on the knowledge before acting. In other words, in order to think properly, one actually needs time not to think, for ideas to come naturally. In looking at Cyprus' diplomatic history, we shall adopt a pragmatic and classical historical approach, which will at the same time bring various theories - but let us name them approaches - into sharper relief. In short, we shall look through a classical prism of history. However puerile and sententious it might at first sound to some international relations theorists, the contention that only history exists might have more validity than first meets the eye: the 'present', after all, transmogrifies into the past

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as it occurs, while the future exists only in the mind. Certainly, the study of the past is the only essential way of handling what we think of the future, and of trying to (ugly phrase!) 'manage the future' to suit our own interests. History even teaches us how to repeat our mistakes. The better one understands how and why events occurred — usually by juxtaposing older and newer events, and establishing connexions between them- then the less difficult it is to make decisions. Many maintain that history repeats itself; but it would be more accurate to maintain that historians repeat themselves, while precise replication of events is impossible, since the only constant of history is a never-ending continuum. The conundrum is, however, capable of solution if one accepts that history simply shows us that the same basic human characteristics, whether individual, corporate, racial, nationalistic, institutional or diplomatic, tend to remain remarkably constant, modifications notwithstanding, even if they often remain submerged before reasserting themselves. Negotiating the labyrinth of history becomes uncannily like studying 'future history' (a near oxymoron!), even though it does not exist. Let us repeat that one of the earliest known diplomats and historians of the Renaissance, Guiccardini, wrote that the world has always been the same, that the past illuminates the future and that the same things return with different colours.32 Long before Machiavelli, Hobbes and Thucycides (whether or not they were international relations realists) were writing, well before even Plato was, Heracletus had already written that 'strife is justice'. However, he also wrote that 'everything flows'. Cyprus is hardly an exception to such tenets, whether those of Heracletus, Guiccardini or the Platonist Vico, having been invaded several times and squabbled over by larger competing powers for centuries, the same international tendencies continuing as before, with Cyprus as an object, hostage and victim of the atavistic power-politics of large powers biting their fingernails of geostrategic ambition; an object, however, not only of the practice of international relations, but perhaps also of the theory. Conclusions We have briefly described the main international relations perspectives and theories, relating them to Cyprus, and then looked at them critically, noting that there is no single international relations theory. All the theories are useful in that they provide analysts with a starting point from which to explain the Cyprus problem, or to advocate action. One can see that no single international relations theory is sufficient to understand Cyprus' international position, and that there is considerable overlap between theories. For example, one could say that Cyprus is an object of power politics and of dependency theory, with a bit of constructivism thrown in for good measure. As we have argued, however, the geohistorical approach is the most detached and simple way of understanding Cyprus, and therefore of finding answers to its problems, taking into account the various theories, but only when they clarify thinking within the geohistorical context. In this connexion, let us again stress that geopolitics is, as we have stated using an expert's words, simply a primitive form of IR theory. As such, it has developed into a kind of Big Brother, overseeing more subtle and refined theories, but promoting the worst excesses of

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crude political realism/power politics. This is particularly relevant to Cyprus, as we shall see throughout the book. Before we move more specifically into Cyprus' and Greece's history, criticize geopolitics, and relate Cyprus' history to other theories, let us conclude by pointing out that any historical analysis of the Cyprus problem is limited by several factors. First, key documents have not been released by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, despite the Thirty Years Rule, sometimes on the grounds that to do so would damage relations between Britain on the one hand, and the USA and Cyprus on the other (see Appendix); second, the United States government withheld between 1999 and 2002 distribution of its already printed

Foreign Relations of the United States, Greece, 1964 to 1968?2* then releasing a carefully

re-edited and partially truncated version; third, the Greek government refuses to release crucial documentation, even as far back as 1955, on the Cyprus question (see Appendix); fourth, Soviet primary source material has not been consulted, and neither has Ottoman and Turkish. Thus, one can claim but a good attempt at objectivity, an attempt strengthened, however, by the fact that the British documents are crucial, since Britain was, and still is, in a backstage fashion, one of the key stakeholders in Cyprus. While some of the documents are revealing and frank, it is important to recognize that they can be constrained by the 'in-house professional consciousness' of the writers. Before bringing the Cyprus affair up to date in terms of verifiable diplomatic history, let us set the geopolitical scene for Cyprus and its region, the Eastern Mediterranean.

GREECE, CYPRUS AND THE POLITICS OF GEOGRAPHY

Geographical heterogeneity becomes geopolitical homogeneity.

Gearoid O'Tuthail1

Introduction Just as Rudyard Kipling asked how one could know England, if one only knew England, it is difficult to view the Cyprus conundrum in isolation, especially since the increasing internationalisation of the issue has placed it firmly - with its linguistic and cultural cousin, Greece, and to a lesser extent, Turkey — in the cold calculations of the strategic armchair warriors of nineteenth century imperialism, the Cold War and the current era. Before applying the concept2 of geopolitics to Greece, Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean, we need to scrutinize it. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines geopolitics succinctly as 'the politics of a country as determined by its geographical features; the study of this'.3 Another book describes it as a method of foreign policy analysis which seeks to understand, explain and predict international behaviour primarily in terms of geographical variables, such as location, size, climate, topography, demography, natural resources as well as of technological development and potential.4 According to one respected international relations expert, 'we may recognise geopolitics as a primitive form of international relations theory',5 while another sees it as a concept.6 Thus, we already have the terms 'politics of a country', 'method of foreign policy analysis', 'a (primitive) form of international relations theory, and 'concept', to define the word 'geopolitics'. The latter is probably the least polemical term to use, although all can be accurate, since they depend on the Weltanschauung of their respective describers. To understand the content of geopolitical thinking, one needs to consider the 'invention' of the term. Although Rudolf Kjellen, who linked the Rhine, Danube and Vistula rivers to the fate of Central Europe, is suggested to have been one of the first to use the term,7 Halford Mackinder, not known to have actually used it, is considered to have been the most influential early exponent of modern geopolitics. He was obsessed with German power and the possibility of a German alliance with

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Russia, which controlled, indeed constituted, much of Mackinder's 'pivot' area of the 'world island' of Europe. He was concerned with the general physical control of the world. In advocating his ideas, he referred to the importance of teaching the British masses, who were 'of limited intelligence', to think imperially.8 Here, there were shades of Rudyard Kipling's ideas of race in his reference to the 'white man's burden', that burden being the task of bringing order and superior British civilisation to unruly blacks, browns and yellows. In a not dissimilar vein, President Theodore Roosevelt attempted to justify US intervention in the affairs of other states if they manifested 'chronic wrongdoing' (shades of today). He was influenced by Alfred Mahan, to the extent of building up US sea power. Conversely, Mackinder stressed the importance of land power. Although at the time his ideas on 'land control' were not followed, they attracted the Germans, in particular Karl Haushofer, who used the term 'Geopolitik'. Haushofer is held to have been responsible for inspiring Hitler in his idea of 'Lebensraum'.9 He was attracted by Mackinder's ideas about white superiority and the connexion of politics with the soil. Although he partially bewailed the way in which his ideas had been taken over by Nazi ideology (committing suicide with his wife in 1946), it is hardly surprising that they were lapped up so avidly by the Nazis and fitted into their thinking. Sentences such as 'Germany must emerge out of the narrowness of the present living space into the freedom of the world'10 were certainly inspiring to some. Thus, it is hardly surprising that modern geopolitics has its origins in both imperial and totalitarian ideology. Nor can one avoid the racial background which forms part of the picture. In the case of Mackinder, who influenced Haushofer, there were Darwinian undertones about whites being superior, which of course found more extreme expression in Nazism. It was, however, not only certain Germans who stressed racial superiority, but also imperially-minded Englishmen. Sir Francis Younghusband, the leader of the British invasion of Tibet in 1904, wrote: 'Our superiority over them [Indians] is not due to mere sharpness of intellect, but to the higher moral nature to which we have attained in the development of the human race',11 while Sir Charles Dilke (in 1869) saw America as the agent of Anglo-Saxon domination and predicted a great racial conflict from which 'Saxondom would rise triumphant', with China, Japan, Africa and South America soon falling to the allconquering Anglo-Saxon, and Italy, Spain, France and Russia 'becoming pygmies by the side of such people'.12 This politician, a liberal into the bargain, wrote that the power of English laws and English principles of government were essential to the freedom of mankind. Thus, we see here both some of the origins of the US-British 'special relationship', and a superior attitude leading to what we today describe as 'racism'. The reason that we digress briefly into the superiority complex inherent in many in Victorian England is to make the point that Cyprus was rented from the Ottomans by Britain at the very height of Britain's imperial power, when superior attitudes abounded, attitudes which have not entirely disappeared, particularly if we consider some of the statements by British and American politicians

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about the export of Western values. It also connects well to the origins of modern geopolitics. Those readers of this book who were privileged enough to attend British 'Prep' and 'Public' schools up to at least the '70s and '80s respectively, may well remember not only rather simplistic 'imperial' history books, such as 'Little Arthur's History of England' and 'Our Island Story', but fellow schoolboys using terms such as 'Philistine', 'Arab' and 'Jew' in a derogatory fashion, along with such terms as 'Dago', 'Wog', 'Hun', 'Frog' and 'slit-eye'. Today it is the Arab races who are often demonized by 'Westerners', using such ploys as President Bush referring to 'a new Crusade'. Certainly, caricaturing Arabs and Muslims has taken over from that of Jews. Yet it must be remembered, in the context of our look at the origins of the term 'geopolitics' and its connexion to Nazism, with its anti-Jewish aspects, that Germans were not alone in their vilifying tactics. In France, there was the 'Croix de Feu'; in Britain (perhaps 'England' is more germane), Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts were particularly vituperative, while Winston Churchill, future bewailer of the apparent setting of the sun on the British Empire, wrote in 1920 about the 'schemes of the International Jew', referring to 'a sinister confederacy' and calling them 'a world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society'.13 As regards the US, Henry Ford's book The International]ew, is too well known to require further elaboration and we do not wish to digress. Whatever the polemics about race and empire, it is clear that a geopolitical approach was being promoted by major powers up to the Second (Fourth) World War, and used to justify their policies, albeit in different ways. It can be argued that the modern 'geopolitical mindset' grew out of the rivalry between Britain and Germany, which began to manifest itself at the height of British and later German imperialism and led to the Great War. Although this rivalry was - at the very least - an important underlying cause of the war, it is not easy to prove that 'geopolitical mindsets' were also an important cause. The debate would centre on whether geopolitics was the chicken and economic rivalry the egg, or vice versa. It is however reasonable to assume that war and geopolitics are closely interwoven mentally, since Mahon's, Mackinder's and Haushofer's policies clearly had a great impact, and since the realization of their thinking entailed the use of force. It is important at this state to again state that geopolitical thinking is far older than the term. Even only a cursory knowledge of the Trojan War demonstrates this, a war fought not only for honour but also for the Dardanelles. Often, past wars have connexions to modern wars: for example, the Crimean War was also fought mainly over control of the Dardanelles. The British stepped in (with France and Sardinia14) to prevent Russia from occupying Constantinople and from strengthening her naval presence in the Mediterranean. In other words, the 'geographical position' of a territory, along with size, technological development, topography and demography have always been vital considerations in many a war. The position of Corinth, for example, was crucial in the Peloponnesian War, just as, today, the British and US governments have claimed, and still claim, that Cyprus is crucial to their Middle East strategy. The

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term 'geopolitics' is simply, like so many other terms, an explanation, or justification, of power politics. Cyprus, being at the epicentre of a whole Middle Eastern and meta-Cold War geopolitical merry-go-round, is a microcosm of a great deal of macho-diplomatic posturing and of international relations theory. The 'New' Geopolitics Curiously, the term 'geopolitics' was not killed off by the horrors of the Second (Fourth) World War, but slithered on, helped by phrases such as 'Iron Curtain' (popularized by Winston Churchill), and 'domino theory', with their connotations of territory. Although the British tried to emphasize the term 'political geography', 'geopolitics' simmered on. It was the 'arch-priest of the rational use of power',15 Henry Kissinger who, perhaps paradoxically for a German Jew who had emigrated to America in 1938, as many other future academics and government leaders did, 'almost single-handedly helped to revive the term 'geopolitics' in the 1970's, by using it as a synonym for balance-of-power politics'.16 Immediate post-war political realists such as N.J. Spykman17 had a head start on Kissinger, but the latter continued the 'new' tradition. The concept of 'geopolitics' and the theory of political realism/power politics are inextricably intertwined, since the more emphasis one lays on the use and projection of power in theorizing about or practising international relations, the more attractive becomes the term to those who wish to use force. Power projection is indeed a thinly disguised euphemism for force. With its colonial and imperialist beginnings, the term 'geopolitics' has weathered the storms of Nazism, and is now often used synonymously with 'geostrategy' (although a purist would argue that geostrategy is a subset of geopolitics). Thus, politicians and/or 'think-tankers' often speak of 'geopolitical considerations' and 'geostrategic considerations' as if they were one and the same. The next logical extension is of course the term 'geomilitary' which, although possibly being used here for the first time, would likely appeal to the more rumbustious kind of political realist, whatever his putative denials of resuscitating imperialist policies. Thus, it could be argued that Turkey's invasion of Cyprus in 1974, supported by the archgeopolitician and power-politician Henry Kissinger, was geomilitary in nature. With such a 'primitive form of international relations theory'18 as geopolitics, it is hardly surprising that simplistic earth-labelling bromic sloganizing and the current hegemonic infatuation in certain quarters with the idea of 'The West' taming 'The Rest' go hand in hand. This 'world management' syndrome can be dangerous in the wrong hands, as we have seen in the past. Simplistic terms such as, 'road map', 'rogue-state', 'sharing core values', 'international community', 'geostrategic' and the like tend to lend respectability to what can be seen as a semantic smokescreen for aggression and unilateralism. Kissinger, political realist and geopolitician, known for having said that the Cyprus problem was solved in 1974 (by the Turkish invasion), had already written in 1957 of Cyprus as a 'staging post' for the Middle East.19 Let us now turn to the history of the area around Greece and Cyprus, and how it has been characterized by 'geoconsiderations'.

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31

Meta-Imperial Hub of the Eastern Mediterranean Cyprus is the only country of the European Union which does not have complete sovereign control of its own foreign policy, as the 1960 treaties establishing the republic illustrate. This is a clear example of what Guiccardini meant when he said that the same things return with different colours. Here we are talking about control by outside powers. The answer to understanding why can be found in a classical historical approach, the main theme of which is today's British obsession with Russian power, which still lurks under the surface. Long before British preoccupation with Russia, Cyprus had already been a treasured location for powers including Rome, Constantinople, the Franco-English (Richard Coeur de Lion, briefly), the Franks, Venice and Ottoman Constantinople. Although the early Russians were hostile towards the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, by the end of the tenth century they had been conclusively converted to Christianity and were allies of Constantinople. After the Great Schism of 1054,20 the Russian and Greek-speaking worlds began to develop a common interest in combating the power of Islam. The spread of the Ottoman Empire into the Caucasus, following the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 (the Chechen problem is part of that heritage), came before Russia had fully developed its military potential; but when it did, the push southwards, often under a Christian Orthodox, as much as a territorial (strategic) banner, began. From at least the times of Ivan the Terrible, the Caucasus and then the Balkans were to varying degrees areas of Ottoman Moslem and Russian Christian conflict. The old Byzantine alliance with early Russia manifested itself in its most overt form under Catherine the Great, when she sent an expedition to free Greece, in 1769-70. Although the expedition failed to retake the Greek mainland, some Greek islands were taken into Russian possession. Most important, however, was the Treaty of Kiiciik Kainardji of 1774, through which Russia gained the right to protect Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire and, worryingly for future British imperial strategy, rights of navigation in Ottoman-controlled waters. A few years later, a commercial treaty enabled Greekowned ships to sail under the Russian flag, thus ensuring the development of the Greek commercial fleet free from Ottoman interference, well before Greece gained its freedom. The British Connexion Although Britain's main concern at the time was with the containment of French revolutionary power, in 1791 William Pitt the Younger denounced Russia for its supposed ambition to dismember Turkey:21 Catherine the Great had indeed wished to make her grandson the emperor of a new Byzantine empire. By now, Britain was moving into its imperial heyday and therefore beginning to behave 'geostrategically'. Thus, by the turn of the century, but particularly after the Congress of Vienna, Russia was fast becoming Britain's main bugbear (notwithstanding the hackneyed theme of'Splendid Isolation'). Whatever latent rivalry existed with France, as it still

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does today, it was potential Russian influence in the Mediterranean and rising Prussian - and later German - power that helped Britain to move closer to the French. Here we can already see the seeds of Mackinder's obsession with the Russian-German alliance, which he believed would threaten the British Empire. Britain's concomitant support for the Ottoman Empire can be traced to this period: it explains Britain's equivocal attitude towards Greek independence. Britain's essential aim was to ensure that Russian influence in a putatively independent Greece would not threaten her Mediterranean interests. Britain feared a Russian-Turkish war in which Russia would strengthen its position yet more vis-a-vis the Ottomans, as it had already done, for example, with the treaty of Kiiciik Kainardji. The British government therefore decided that the best hope of extending some control over Russia in the event of a Russian-Turkish war was an agreement. This materialized in the form of an Anglo-Russian Protocol of 4th April 1826, whereby Britain would offer mediation with the object of making Greece an autonomous vassal-state of the Ottoman Empire.22 Significantly, however, if this could not be achieved, then the two powers could intervene jointly or separately. This seeming detail was to prove crucial to Greek independence, since Russia did indeed increase its pressure on the Ottomans, and pushed reluctant France and Britain to take more active measures in favour of the Greeks. In September 1827, Russian pressure forced Britain and France to agree to sever seaborne supplies to the Ottoman forces in the Peloponnese and several Greek islands. The Battle of Navarino took place the following month, when the Turko-Egyptian fleet was destroyed, thus opening the way to Greek independence. Whatever the controversy surrounding the opening of hostilities (the British-French-Russian fleet was intended to be neutral), Britain's policy of containing Russia proved unsuccessful, at least in the Greek context. It is also known, however, that Admiral Codrington, the senior commander of the joint fleet, was a Philhellene. When news of the Ottoman defeat reached London, the Foreign Secretary, Wellington, called it an 'untoward event', while pro-Ottoman Metternich described it as a 'dreadful catastrophe'.23 Perhaps far more than Britain at the time, Metternich was an exponent of realism and geostrategy par excellence^ and did not mince his words: of the Greeks, he had said that 'over there, beyond our frontiers, three or four hundred thousand individuals hanged, impaled or with their throats cut, hardly count'.24 He had also spoken of the Neapolitans as a 'halfAfrican and barbarian people'.25 It is hardly surprising that he wished to eliminate the influence of Capodistrias, a Foreign Minister of Russia, and a Greek (who became Greece's first president). Capodistrias, with his pro-Greek independence views, and his being seen as the leader of the pro-Russian faction in Greek politics, remained a thorn in the side of British imperial plans well after his assassination in 1831. One could argue that the British still fear latent 'Capodistrianism' today. The Russian Obsession Britain's preoccupation with Russia can be directly connected to now, even if, in Guiccardini's words, 'the colours are different'. Britain's increasing concern about Russian power is best epitomised in Sir Edmund Lyons' infamous statement in

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1841: A truly independent Greece is an absurdity. Greece can either be English or Russian, and since she must not be Russian, it is necessary that she be English.'26 A parallel can be drawn here between Lyons and Winston Churchill, given that the latter agreed with Stalin, in the infamous postage stamp agreement, that Greece would be '10 per cent Russian and 90 per cent English'.27 Here we see the atavistic continuation of British imperial 'geostrategy' which, as we shall see throughout this book, continues to this day vis-a-vis Greece and Cyprus, despite new euphemisms and semantic diversions. Britain had still to extend its empire further, particularly in Africa, but it had already possessed28 the Ionian Islands since 1815. The year of 'European revolution' of 1848 (when Metternich went into exile in London) saw the upsurge of further Greek independence movements, not only in Ottoman-controlled parts of the Greek-speaking world, but in the Ionian Islands. Rather than respond favourably, Britain raised claims to two islets off the Peloponnesian coast, claiming that they were also 'Ionian' (which in fact they were!). By far the worst case of imperial heavy-handedness, however, was the notorious Don Pacifico affair of 1850. Don Pacifico was a Gibraltarian Jew whose Athens house had been damaged during rumbustious Easter demonstrations. To try and enforce compensation, the British blockaded Piraeus, accepting, but then refusing, French offers to mediate. King Otto finally yielded, but only a paltry sum was ever paid in compensation.29 Subsequently, anti-British and pro-Russian sentiment increased, to the consternation of the British. Matters began to come to a head when the Tsar brokered a reunion between the Church in Greece and the Patriarch in Constantinople (relations had broken off in 1821 owing to Greek suspicions that the Sultan was using the Patriarchate as a political tool). Ottoman weakness (two wars with the Egyptian vassal Mehmet Ali) and Russian pressure on the Ottomans vis-a-vis Christian Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman Empire led to the outbreak of the Crimean War, pitting the British, French and Sardinians30 against Russia. When 'irregular' Greek forces tried to wrest Thessaly from Ottoman occupation, the British and French occupied Piraeus (May 1854 to February 1857), essentially to prevent Greece from helping Russia. Cyprus - Key of Western Asia In 1877 and 1878, fear of Russia came into its own. The conclusion of the Crimean War, fought to preserve British hegemony in the Eastern Mediterranean by combatting Russia's attempts to weaken the Ottoman Empire,31 only checked the application of Russian designs temporarily. Defeating the Ottomans in 1877, Russian forces approached Constantinople. The terms of the resulting Treaty of San Stefano were so advantageous to Russia, including, for example, the establishment of a large and independent pro-Russian Bulgaria, that the British intervened diplomatically, with words and gunboats, actions which led to the 'Great Eastern Crisis' and Congress of Berlin in 1878. On 5th May, Benjamin Disraeli wrote to Queen Victoria:

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CYPRUS If Cyprus can be conceded to your Majesty by the Porte, and England at the same time enters into defensive alliance with Turkey, guaranteeing Asiatic Turkey from Russian invasion, the power of England in the Mediterranean will be absolutely increased in that region and your Majesty's Indian Empire immensely strengthened. Cyprus is the key of Western Asia.32

Although the purpose of the Congress was to re-establish stability in the Balkans in the face of Russian power and a crumbling Ottoman Empire, Britain realised that this empire was no longer a 'genuine reliable power',33 and that she would need to combat not only Russia, but also to watch over Anatolia. Britain therefore leased Cyprus from the Ottomans as a place darmes, to guarantee Asiatic Turkey against Russian attack. The main objectives were to check the Russians and to 'prop up some sort of Turkish state in Asia Minor' - much the arrangement which still existed in the middle part of the twentieth century34 and today, at least in financial (IMF) and (US-sponsored) military terms. As we have already noted, little has altered in over one hundred years as regards Cyprus. The same British desperation to keep Russia at bay, once alone, and now with the US, is still there, as many of the papers we shall examine will show. The manner in which Britain gained this new foothold in the Mediterranean was not without controversy, since Britain had negotiated secretly with the Ottomans, delivering an ultimatum to the Sultan to the effect that to retain Britain's goodwill, Cyprus must pass into British control. In France, there was alarm and resentment that Ha perfide Albion''had not acted straightforwardly.35 France had, of course, its own designs on Cyprus, as had even the German Confederation in 1849. At any event, although the French were furious, they were pacified by British assurances that they would turn a blind eye when France occupied Ottoman Tunisia in 1882. Nevertheless, this did not prevent French pressure on the British vis-a-vis Cyprus, resulting in an agreement that Britain would not give up Cyprus (annexed in 1914 when the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers) without first consulting France.36 Only six months later, in December 1916, Britain and France, worried at the neutral stance of King Constantine and the political instability engendered by Venizelos' government in Thessaloniki, landed a small force, which marched on Athens. Beaten back by the Greek army, and with seventy-one casualties, they declared a blockade of Greece and recognised Venizelos' government. The King departed from Greece, leaving his second son Alexander as 'temporary King'. The political farrago led to Venizelos joining the allies in July 1917.37 This episode again demonstrates what can be considered intrusive and imperious behaviour towards Greece, although it needs to be borne in mind that the country was still a protectorate, and was to remain one, de jure, until 1923. As regards Cyprus, Britain had discussed ceding it to Greece at the end of 1912, in return for a naval base on Cephalonia.38 In 1915, Britain offered to cede the island, if Greece joined her in the war,39 but as Greece prevaricated until 1917, Britain did not grant Greece's request, at the Versailles negotiations, to cede the island.

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The story of the demographic tragedy that befell Greece is well known and has been well covered: suffice it to say here that from an apparent position of strength and as a member of the winning club, gaining one victory after another in the newly emerging Turkey, the Greek armed forces went 'a bridge too far', and were pushed back. Nearly every Greek-speaking Orthodox Christian in Asia Minor was expelled (1,300,000) or killed in what is known today as the 'catastrophe'.40 What had begun as a Greek campaign supported by the British, French and American governments ended up in a socio-economic disaster and a smug but hostile Italy,41 which remained in possession of the Dodecanese, which it had taken from the Ottomans by force in 1912. The 235,200 Greek population42 of Constantinople was spared, since the city was under international jurisdiction and protection. Today, Turkish policy and the Cyprus problem has resulted in a rump of some 2,000 Turkish citizens of Greek decent remaining in Constantinople, contrasting with the over 120,000 Turkish-speaking Moslems in Greek Thrace. Notwithstanding the secret double-dealings of the period, Britain decided to hang on to Cyprus. The Treaty of Lausanne stipulated that Turkey would have no rights in territories under her former jurisdiction, meaning that, from 1923, she had no right to interfere in the island's affairs. In 1925, Cyprus was declared a colony of the British Crown. The novelty of British control had by now begun to wear off, and the calls for enosis (union) with Greece that had begun as early as 1821 (the beginning of the Greek Revolution), reiterated in 187843 and 1907 (Churchill's visit),44 began to gather pace, culminating in the burning down of Government House in 1931, following the arbitrary rejection by London of a vote against a five per cent levy on officials' salaries of over £100 a year. Apart from the pent-up frustration among Greek Cypriots, a Turkish Cypriot had voted against the tax with the twelve Greek Cypriots, becoming known as the 'Thirteenth Greek'. The challenge to British authority and the British government's fear of this incipient and potential Greekand Turkish-Cypriot common front led to the revocation of the colonial constitution and the severe curtailment of civil liberties. Thereafter, owing largely to the Greek Prime Minister, Venizelos', keenness on maintaining good relations with Britain and Turkey, enosis went largely underground. Before looking in the following chapter at the political geography of the Greek Civil War and how this affected Greece and Cyprus, let us now make a tentative foray into the jungle and attempt to view the story thus far through the prism of international relations theories. We are not attempting to assess the reliability or otherwise of various theories, but rather to provide thought at a basic level. Theoretically Speaking... Whether we are thinking about classical, neoclassical and strategic realism, or neorealism, and its various subdivisions (and it is not this book's intention to focus on the analytical fine-tuning of these subdivisions or their variants), all focus on the power of the state as the main factor in international relations. From this perspective, the position of modern Greece and Cyprus is the result of an anarchic

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world where strong interested powers have bargained over both countries because of their allegedly strategically important position, in relation both to the Dardanelles and to 'Western Asia' (as Disraeli put it).45 The justification behind this rather unseemly bargaining is 'balance-of-power' politics, a sensible-sounding panacea for realists concerned with maintaining stability in an anarchic world. Russia, Britain, the Ottoman Empire, Austro-Hungary and, to a lesser extent, France, have been the main bargainers, with Italy jumping on to the bandwagon with gusto and some braggadocio after 1912. Thus, the 1878 Congress of Berlin can be viewed as a realist attempt by Britain to check Russian advances and perceived threats to its naval control, in the name of the balance of power. To this end, after 1878, Britain wished to maintain the Ottoman Empire as a serious power, even after it had become apparent that it was fast dying. Therefore, after 1923, Britain was always keen, as she is today, to ensure that the remains of the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) stayed powerful enough to be used against Russia and, if necessary, Greece. Greece and Cyprus were, and still are, instruments of that policy. Hence the British need to ensure that Turkey does not weaken militarily. This will become obvious through the documents that we shall examine. Looking now at Greece and Cyprus through a normative prism, we can witness the subtle insertion of ethical and political issues into the question, issues such as justice, injustice, war, peace, and interfering with sovereignty. Thus, while a realist might explain and justify the several instances of interference with Greek sovereignty that we have seen by claiming that Russia had to be kept at bay, a normative analyst might criticize the infringements of sovereignty that have occurred, and consider whether those infringements could be justified. He would pay particular attention to the human aspect and, therefore, to the individual decision-makers. He would consider the rights and wrongs of the British colonial tenure of Cyprus, and whether or not Cyprus should be allowed to be its own master. Unlike a realist, he might sharply criticize British 'divide and rule' tactics on Cyprus, or the conduct of specific individuals in the Colonial Office as measured against internationally accepted norms. The chief problem here is that different people and systems have different norms. For example, in Eastern Turkey, even today, a brother will kill a sister if she has 'shamed the family' by 'going with another man' out of wedlock, while this would clearly be considered barbaric in Greece. In the case of Greece and Cyprus, then, the normative approach can be beset with complexities and contradictions, given the differing customs, beliefs and traditions involved. In other words, it is invalid in some circumstances. A structuralist might consider Greece and Cyprus as necessary parts of the overall structure of relations between states, aiming to explain events as a function of, for example, Greece's position in the international order (although some would argue that it was more a case of disorder!) of treaties signed after 1878, such as the Treaty of London and the Treaty of Lausanne. He might then argue that the positions of Greece and Cyprus resulted from dependence on the interests of larger powers. In doing so, he would be advocating — inadvertently or otherwise — 'dependency theory', which is connected by some to — or is a sub-division

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of - structuralism. He would emphasise the 'exploiter-exploited' relationship, an approach which finds its origins in the Frankfurt / Marxist School. Greece and Cyprus constitute rich terrain for this approach, since, historically, various powers have competed, and still are, for the upper hand in Greece, Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean. Britain could be seen as having behaved hegemonistically. Here, Sir Edmund Lyons' famous statement of 1841 and the Don Pacifico affair (see above) come readily to mind. Similarly, the effort to maintain the Ottoman Empire and support a rickety and inherently unstable Turkish polity in the name of balanceof-power politics, maintaining the status quo by keeping Turkey powerful, is also connected to this approach, since richer, more powerful countries are involving themselves in the politics of lesser states for their perceived strategic advantages. Connected to this is world systems analysis, with its division of the world into core, semi-peripheral and peripheral states. Modern Greece could well be depicted as having moved from peripheral to semi-peripheral status today.46 The limits to its freedom of action would be seen as a factor of the degree of its 'peripherally' visa-vis core states, while some would view Cyprus as a mere cog in the system, with limited influence over its own destiny. Unlike the idea of categorising states, pluralism considers the state to be but one of several 'actors' that make up the whole: multi-national corporations, educational bodies, the plethora of interest groups of various kinds, and international organizations, to name but some. Thus, the positions of Greece and Cyprus and, indeed, the Eastern Mediterranean, could be considered as originating in a combination of the power-politics of, for example, Russia, France, Britain and the US, United Nations politics and the profit motives of groups of shareholders of major arms manufacturers, the latter justifying their actions by citing the need for positive balance or, secretly, positive balance-sheets. Departing from views of a world made up of states and other 'actors', in various categories, whether vertically or horizontally organized, the constructivist approach would point out that all the good and ill that Greece and Cyprus have experienced is an expression of ideas, preferences and desires, as opposed to material, physical factors. In this sense, 'mass attitudes and aspirations' have 'constructed' events. The weakness of this approach, at least as regards Cyprus and, indeed, the colonial and meta-colonial history of much of the Eastern Mediterranean, is that many of the ideas, views, theories, and preferences which actually amount to policies, emanate themselves from thinking based on material considerations of self-interest which, of course, connects to state-centred realism. For example, the neo-conservative agenda of the Bush administration, with its emotionally bombastic elements of 'born-again' Christian fundamentalism, linked to Zionism and Christian Zionism (see later), influenced policy formulation.47 Paradoxically, then, we see how a constructivist approach can by default identify a neo-conservative approach. Positivism, in contrast to identifying the ideas, preferences and desires by which people shape international relations, lays the emphasis on establishing patterns, and is therefore close to behaviouralism, often equated with the social science approach. The approach does not analyse particular 'behaviours', but rather the

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dynamics between those 'behaviours', and, therefore, how one affects the others, leading to a particular outcome. In the case of Greece and Cyprus, a positivist would attempt to look at the behaviour of individuals and governments in say, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, the US, Britain, and Russia, and try and establish actions and reactions during various crises. He would note that, in each crisis since 1960, Britain had immediately consulted and joined the US, while the Soviet Union / Russia had made various diplomatic threats, with Greece trying to co-ordinate a common position with Cyprus, both of the latter then reacting to Turkish threats, having themselves already approached Britain, the US, and Russia. Out of the various exchanges, the positivist would try and establish a consistent pattern. The weakness of such an approach is that the data needed for such attempted analyses and evaluations is often hidden in state secrecy, so that the positivist tends to be restricted to media reports and academic papers, while the backstage remains out of reach and in the realm of speculation. Another problem is immoral behaviour. It is not easy for a positivist to incorporate lying into his carefully contrived equation, even more so if the lie is exposed after the publication of his study. The attack of 2003 on Iraq is a telling example. Similarly, much of the evidence of Britain's backstage collusion with Turkey in the 1950's, Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick's keenness to expose (his perceived) differences between the Greeks and Turks, and the decision by the US and UK not to prevent a Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1964, did not emerge until the 1980's and 1990's. Consider how many erudite academic papers must have been written on (unknown) false premises! Purely historical analyses do not suffer from this problem, since they only deal with established facts. Rather than trying to establish behavioural patterns, a modernization theorist would set out to prove that Greece, Cyprus and Turkey are merely going through stages, and that in, say, twenty and forty years respectively, they will have reached the (current!) stage of the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany. They might also suggest that it would then be possible for Greece and Turkey to resolve Turkish claims to Greek territory in the same ways as France and Germany resolved their dispute over Alsace and Lorraine. This theory is of course strenuously contested by dependency theorists (see above), since they would argue that the advancement of developing countries is hampered by the behaviour of 'core states'. Critical theory, in contrast to much of the foregoing, tends to view some theories as formed subjectively, and as representing the interests of particular groups. As such, they view most theories as inherently political, and concentrate on liberating theorists from their conceptual prisons, and on seeking alternative approaches. A critical theorist will therefore see knowledge as contaminated by the political self-interest - conscious or unconscious - of the learner. Critical theory could be broadly described as the attempt to throw off the chains of conventional theories by 'deconstructing' and looking for ways to reconstruct them. A critical theorist might view the Cyprus conundrum as the result of competing theories, none of which has improved matters, due essentially to the contention that every approach is based on clashes of academic and political self-interest, rather than on the resolution of problems per se.

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The postmodern approach, while often equated with the critical one, is more esoteric for some, in that it goes further, by questioning the very concept of knowledge. A radical postmodernist will not merely attempt to deconstruct and then rebuild in a new and 'free' fashion, but simply try to destroy the whole basis of thinking lying behind theories. Such an approach can be healthy, in that it can indeed expose humbug and the danger of pre-conceived notions and bias as they affect international relations. The problem remains as to where to go from there (assuming that one must). In other words, in exposing, usually by textual analysis, theories attempting to promote unilateralism, one can be left with an empty feeling, wondering how to be reborn as an enfant sauvage and start all over again. The trouble there is that even the enfant sauvage would soon begin to meet other people and form his or her own opinions, without yet knowing the delights of the postmodern approach. As regards Cyprus, a radical postmodernist might say that everything that has happened to, and within, the island reflects false premises, robotic thinking, hypocrisy, intellectual chicanery, sophistry and greed, and that to even begin to approach the problem, one has to destroy all pre-conceived notions. It is said that one of the first things that the Dadaists did at their exhibition in Berlin was to destroy their own paintings. Can one then start functioning again, and if so, how, and on what premise? Does one need a premise? Is not the need for a premise itself a manacle? Functionalism, the last approach with which we shall deal here, is more practical and comprehensible, and we have left it until last because the current government of Cyprus has stressed the importance of a functional solution to the Cyprus problem. It is a clever word to use, since, apart from the word's connotations of a solution that is practical and workable, it is a theory that promotes the idea that common needs can unite people across boundaries,48 while avoiding where possible the difficult issues of high politics. In seeking areas of common need and, therefore, of common interest, it emphasizes international co-operation. In avoiding difficult areas, however, such as restitution of property or claims on territory (viz. Cyprus and Greece), one could argue that it actually allows difficult issues to simmer and become more unsolvable. A counter-argument would be that finding areas of common interest might create a favourable climate in which to approach seemingly intractable problems. In the case of Greece and Cyprus, however, it can be seen that finding areas of (apparently) common interest has not worked, at least vis-a-vis Turkey: the much heralded 'earthquake diplomacy' of former Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou, Jr. (in which he even performed a Greek dance for his Turkish homologue) and Greek support (even if only tactical) for Turkey's entry into the European Union, has not resulted in a softening of Turkey's stance on Cyprus or of its claims to Greek islets and continental shelf.49 Thus, although a functional approach is a good idea, and can lead to the creation of bodies such as the World Health Organization, when it boils down to bilateral relations, it can have its limitations.

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Conclusions However one looks at Cyprus (and its region), whether in terms of the theory or the practice of international relations, it appears that a molehill has become a mountain. Some would consider it to be a geopolitically poisoned pimple, and others a rugby pitch where the game is played with too many referees from outside. A modernization theorist might see Cyprus at the same stage of sovereignty as Greece in 1850, equating the Ionian Islands with the British Sovereign Bases. A cynic could say that Britain's elginistic50 attitude is born of a need to keep Cyprus to herself, like a jealous lover, only sharing the spoils when she has to, for example with the US. The 'theoretical prisms' through which we have glimpsed Cyprus and its region are now considered part of international relations theory. Although most of them provide some interesting approaches to thinking and, in some cases, taking action, the very fact that they often compete with each other tends to detract from intellectual cohesion, in that an agreed synthesis has so far proven elusive. On the other hand, trying to understand them can aid precision and clarity at best, but further confuse the issues, at worst. Perspectives from other fields can help. For example, the interactionist perspective of communication, which promotes the idea that communication creates the self, is not as odd as it might at first seem, especially if one quotes from Somerset Maugham: We can only guess at the thoughts and emotions of our neighbours. Each one of us is a prisoner in a solitary tower and he communicates with the other prisoners, who form Mankind, by conventional signs that have not quite the same meaning for them as for himself.51 This might appeal to a follower of Umberto Eco, who could take Maugham's words a stage further by saying that meanings of words are created by listeners, who over the centuries develop and alter their interpretations. If we apply this idea to Cyprus, we have to adopt an approach which considers particular individuals' roles in the affairs of the island and its area, such as Catherine the Great, Disraeli, Metternich, Kissinger and even Condoleezza Rice. This is where perhaps the most telling, albeit cynical, observations can be made, using the dramatist perspective.52 Viewing life as a stage and our attempts to present ourselves - publicly - in as good a light as possible, a dramatist looks at the difference between front- and back-stage behaviour, and how people can end up believing their own lies (in psychology, a form of cognitive self-dissonance combined with rationalization). Again, Somerset Maugham, presumably inadvertently, lends weight to this in commenting on a man who died while trying to save a dog: Like a man who cherishes a vice until it gets a stranglehold on him so that he is its helpless slave, he had lied so long that he had come to believe his own lies. Bob Forrester had pretended for so many years to be a gentleman that in the end, forgetting that it was all a fake, he had found himself driven to act as in that stupid, conventional

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brain of his, he thought a gentleman must act. No longer knowing the difference between sham and real, he had sacrificed his life to a spurious heroism.53 It is, for some, fairly plain to see that many of the policy formulators and executors are merely playing a role in which they purport to believe, and are going through the motions. They have grown into their masks. Some of the linguistic bulimia and sloganizing of people such as President Bush, Jr., Condoleezza Rice (a constructed mascot if there ever was one) and Tony Blair is symptomatic of hiding in a role. Even modern career diplomats have succumbed.54 Phrases like 'window of opportunity' (opportunity), 'period of time' (period), 'owing to the fact that' (because), 'in the space of (within) and 'roadmap' (plan), riddle the speech, written and oral, of many of those charged with running our affairs. They can also riddle their thoughts. Within the context of the dramatist perspective, the real riddle is whether their thoughts are the chicken or the egg. A meta-postmodernist, on the other hand, might suggest that thinking in terms of chicken and egg is too restricting. Notwithstanding the above griping about theory and people's behaviour, it is to the obvious that we must now turn, and to the (physical) location of Greece and Cyprus, to continue in our attempt to understand Cyprus and its region. The politics of geography is our link, with its concentration on strategy and resources and, in the minds of many, on military strategy. The importance of Cyprus' location, just as that of Greece and Turkey, has been created by the ambitions of people, not only by their location per se. Let us now slice through the Gordian Knot of theory by thinking of Alice. Alice said: 'The question is whether you can make words mean different things'. Humpty Dumpty replied: 'The question is which is to be master, that's all'. We turn now to the Greek Civil War and the geohistorical continuity of Britain's obsession with Russia, which was one of the underlying causes of the civil war.

GEOHISTORY AND THE GREEK CIVIL WAR

Instead of making Greek resistance more moderate [...] we drove it to extremes.

Francis Noel-Baker

Introduction We have seen how Britain's worry about potential Russian power in the Eastern Mediterranean and its imperial geostrategic lust occasioned it to try to keep Greece under its thumb and to obtain Cyprus. Understanding of Britain's current elginism1 vis-a-vis Cyprus can be enhanced by considering Britain's role in Greece towards the end of the Second (Fourth) World War and during the Greek civil war. What emerges from a consideration of primary and secondary sources is a continuation of Britain's fear that Russia2 would gain influence in Greece, and that this fear, bordering on the irrational at times, was one of the roots of the growing Cyprus crisis as well as of the gestating and impending Cold War. We shall also consider to what extent British foreign policy formulation was consistent; Britain's attitude towards Yugoslavia, as juxtaposed with that towards Greece; similarities and differences between Greece and the Netherlands in the immediate post-war years; the handover of Greece to the US; and, of course, Cyprus. The Civil War Even before the civil war, at least 500,000 Greeks, mainly civilians, had already lost their lives during the Second World War.3 To this figure was to be added another 80,000 up to the end of 1949,4 when the remnants of what had once been EL AS5 came down from the mountains to surrender to the US - and British - sponsored Greek government, or escaped to the communist world. What had led to such a pass, when, until the end of 1943, ELAS had been openly supported by the British? During the later stages of the war, Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE) had begun to operate clandestinely in the Balkans, including Greece, and to become aware of ELAS' influence, as of that of the smaller EDES6 and various other groups. ELAS (and its political organisation, EAM7), although not a

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communist organization, housed several leading communists as well as left-leaning republicans, while EDES' leading figure, Napoleon Zervas, moved, perhaps expediently, from being a republican, to the monarchist cause, allegedly because he considered communism to be a greater evil than monarchy.8 EDES' titular head was Plastiras, the pro-British general who had fought the Bolsheviks in the Ukraine9 and who would become the British-sponsored Prime Minister in Spring 1945, only to resign that summer following the publication of a letter he had written from Vichy France, apparently offering to form a pro-German government in Athens.10 Thus the situation that Britain found in Greece was, to put it mildly, complicated, and to its possible consternation and embarrassment, ELAS attacked and neutralized, but did not kill off, EDES. What were Britain's objectives in such a delicate and complex matter? We can do little better than consider a 'top secret' War Cabinet paper of June 1944: Russia's historical interest in the Balkans has always manifested itself in a determination that no other Great Power shall dominate them, as this would constitute a strategical threat to Russia. [...] Russia's scheme in 1878 for a 'big Bulgaria' with access to the Aegean led to Great Britain and Austria combining to checkmate Russia's extended influence in South-East Europe. [...] whereas in the nineteenth century we had Austria-Hungary as an ally to counter these Russian measures, there is no one on whom we can count to support us this time.11 Thus we see here, in the person of Anthony Eden, Britain's continuing obsession with Russian power in the Eastern Mediterranean, notwithstanding that the Soviet Union was an ally. In any event, the paper then considered various options, coming out in favour of the following as the 'only feasible' one: [...] to focus our influence in the Balkans by consolidating our position in Greece and Turkey and to bring about and utilize Turco-Greek friendship as a fundamental factor in South-East Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean; and (ii) while avoiding any direct challenge to Russian influence in Yugoslavia, Albania, Roumania and Bulgaria, to avail ourselves of every opportunity in order to spread British influence in these countries. The paper also admitted that the Soviets were more interested in supporting antiAxis movements than in communizing countries per se: It is doubtful whether in actual fact there is any deliberate 'communising' of the Balkans at the present moment. [...] Nor can any accusation be levelled against the Russians of organizing the spread of communism in the Balkans. The Soviet Government's support of the Communist elements in these countries is not so much based on ideological grounds as on the fact that such elements are most responsive to their own influence and are the most vigorous in resisting the Axis. Furthermore, if anyone is to blame for the present situation in which the Communist-led movements are the most powerful elements in Yugoslavia and Greece, it is we ourselves.

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Significantly, the Soviet Union had already agreed to let Britain 'take the lead in Greece,'12 and in October this was to be re-confirmed in the so-called 'percentages agreement' between Churchill and Stalin, whereby Greece would be 90 per cent British.13 Thus Britain certainly had a reasonably free hand in Greece, and knew this to be the case. What was it, then, that poisoned matters to such an extent that at the end of 1944, the British would be fighting EL AS and bombing Athens? British atavistic disquiet about Russia apart, the question of the king seems to have poisoned the socio-political atmosphere, at a time when it appeared that EAM might be subsumed into a reasonably representative government in Greece. The question of the monarch had always been laden with a degree of controversy in Greece. Greece's first King, Otto, was necessary for the modern Greek state's international recognition. Following the post-Napoleonic era, the Powers were keen to ensure that Greece (whose fight for freedom had been inspired to some extent by the ideals of the French Revolution) was in the Royalist camp. When Otto went into exile, he was replaced by George I, who was assassinated in Thessaloniki in 1913. His son, Constantine I, quarrelled with Venizelos, leading to two governments in 1916 (see previous chapter), in Thessaloniki (Venizelos) and Athens (the King). The latter was forced to leave Greece, following Venizelist, British and French pressure, to be replaced by his second son, Alexander, who died from a monkey bite in 1920. Constantine returned, only to be overthrown by a coup, and was succeeded by his first son, George, who nevertheless had to live in exile when a republic was declared in 1924. Returning to Greece in 1935, following a rigged plebiscite,14 he then sanctioned the Metaxas dictatorship. The question of the king's return from wartime exile therefore caused considerable divisiveness: in 1943, the head of the British Military Mission, Myers, was removed from his position, possibly for revealing the extent of the feeling in Greece against the future return of the king.15 Although he was removed on Foreign Office advice, Churchill was the likely instigator, as he was 'closely wedded to the King's cause.'16 Following the war, Myers had considerable trouble getting his book on the causes of the Greek civil war published. It was not until 1985 that a full edition was published, the original script having been 'lost' in the Foreign Office in 1945.17 In December 1943, in a 'Most Secret' telegram, the British Ambassador to Greece recorded that the Greek Prime Minister in exile's (Tsouderos') secret analysts in Greece had advised that the return of the king 'was not in Greece's best interest.'18 Early the following year, there was an anti-monarchist mutiny among the Greek forces in Egypt, followed by Tsouderos' resignation. There was little enthusiasm in Greece for the return of the king,19 to put it mildly. Churchill's and the Foreign Office's obsession with the king was undoubtedly to become an important ingredient of the Greek civil war, contributing, as it did, to polarization between Left and Right and causing much bitterness. The civil war was sparked, apparently, by ELAS' refusal to disarm, the resignation of the EAM Ministers from George Papandreou's government and an EAM demonstration in central Athens (the police had withdrawn permission shortly

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before the demonstration). Rogue units of the police opened fire, killing around fifteen demonstrators. The whole event remains controversial to this day. Fighting ensued between the embryonic Greek army and its British military proteges, led by General Scobie, on the one hand, and ELAS on the other, with the British bombing the suburbs of Athens. The moderate To Vima wrote: Greece, like Cyprus, is needed as a base on the road to British imperialism^..] the danger to Greece does not come from the North [...] these were massacres instigated, encouraged and directed by Scobie [...] future historians have already placed Churchill with Xerxes, Mussolini and Hitler [...] Plastiras was made a British puppet because Churchill wanted him to fight social progress and democracy [viz. Churchill's support for the King]. The Scobie-Plastiras dictatorship [Papandreou had resigned] protects war criminals [...] The Tory war against the Greek people is part of a general Balkan Tory plan [...] British troops were sent to Greece to guarantee law and order. Instead they started civil war [...] Yet even the Germans themselves, even the Nazi beasts, never went so far as to bombard the popular quarters of Athens. Today it is the British who are murdering the poor people of Athens; it is General Scobie's aircraft which are burning them up.20 Despite London's knowledge of how divisive was the question of the king's return, Churchill persisted, visiting Athens to persuade Archbishop Damaskinos to act as Regent pending a plebiscite. An agreement to stop the fighting was agreed in February 1945, but by now the parties had become so polarized that the agreement began to break down, due mainly to right-wing extremism and revenge.21 A British Foreign Office official, in typical understatement, wrote that a number of EAM complaints about the activities of the National Guard and right-wing organizations had 'considerable justification.'22 Many of the anti-communists (for the whole civil war had by now transmogrified into an ideological Right-Left confrontation) had collaborated with the German occupiers (see below), which did not help matters. Perhaps exaggeratedly, but nevertheless pithily, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece wrote: 'Greece is the only country in Europe in the camp of the victors where fascist collaborators with the occupier, quislings and traitors are once again thwarting democracy.'23 The left-of-centre parties had however made the mistake of boycotting the March 1945 elections, which therefore ushered in an extreme right-wing government. Confusingly, following the British Labour Party's landslide general election victory in July 1945, a leader of a Labour Party delegation said of Greece: The aim was to have elected a truly democratic government, even if that meant the rise of EAM and ELAS. In no circumstances would a Labour government help to uphold royalist or other regimes that did not enjoy the support of the people.24 Yet the Labour Party reneged on coming to power, with the obsession with 'Russian influence' taking precedence. Indeed, the British Ambassador in Athens, Leeper, wrote that the Greek problem during 1945 became largely one of Anglo-Russian

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relations.25 Thus here we see the hand of geopolitics in the form of what we shall term a geomilitary power-political approach, atavistic into the bargain. The plebiscite on the return of the King, in September 1946, further inflamed the situation, held, as it was, in 'anomalous circumstances/ The dubious result26 was in favour of the King, who returned to be confronted with what was becoming a full-scale civil war. British involvement was by now becoming a liability, both financial and political, for the British government, which handed Greece over to America in 1947, an act that coincided with massive military and financial aid to the Greek (and Turkish) governments, in the shape of the so-called 'Truman Doctrine'. This, along with Yugoslavia's closing of its border with Greece, hastened the defeat of the communists. Thus 1949 brought an end to the fighting, if not to the recrimination, which continues even to this day. Most Greek schoolchildren's history curriculum hardly mentions the post-1944 period; schoolchildren have a vague idea that there was a fight between the communists and the 'forces of good,' in a not dissimilar fashion to that of post-war American schoolchildren having the idea that the civilized whites fought against the uncivilized Redskins. Whatever view one forms, it is however clear that it was by and large a case of Greek killing Greek, a somewhat embarrassing notion to put to schoolchildren, particularly since we are considering something more recent than the Peloponnesian Wars. Yugogreece During the civil war, many of the arms used by the 'Democratic Army,' formed out of the ELAS forces, came from Yugoslavia. A combination of increasing ideological tension between Tito and Stalin, combined with calls among the very considerable contingent of Slavo-Macedonians in the Democratic Army for an independent Macedonia, led Tito to close the border with Greece, hastening the end of the civil war. Thus, a civil war that had been 'fed' by Yugoslavia as well as by Britain and then the USA (but not so much by the Soviet Union) suddenly lost some of its hardware. Theoretically speaking, Britain should have supported the Greek and Yugoslav partisans equally, since they were fighting common enemies, the Nazis and Fascists. Britain's interests, however, took precedence over such simplistic thinking. Thus, we find the Foreign Office writing in 1944: It was clear that support for the Yugoslav Partisans would give us the best military dividend and that E.A.M. appeared to be the most promising resistance material in Greece. But it was pointed out that by supporting these movements we should inevitably produce the very situation with which we are now faced. In Yugoslavia at least we have obtained a military dividend, but E.A.M. in Greece has given us nothing but trouble and annoyance. [...] In Yugoslavia, Tito, by his own efforts and our own support, will probably emerge as the governing force whether or not as the result of the civil war against Serbia.27 Thus, the British, whatever the complexities of Yugoslavia, were clear supporters of Tito's communists, but not E.A.M.'s. An embryonic explanation lies in the

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above-mentioned Churchill-Stalin 'percentage agreement* of some four months later, when a 'fifty-fifty' was agreed for Yugoslavia.28 This idea must already have been in Churchill's mind. The most significant factor, however, is historical: Greece was simply considered more important to Britain than Yugoslavia, which had been the traditional zone of influence of the Austro-Hungarians and their Ottoman friends, with a usually hostile Russia supporting Serbia. In any event, Great Britain did not turn against her erstwhile left-wing allies, as she had done with Greece, but instead abandoned the royalists of Mikhailovich to their fate. One expert writes, perceptively, that Churchill was resolved to control the Greek resistance organization, in contrast to his acceptance of Tito's hegemony in Yugoslavia.29 Greece was simply more important to British imperial policy to control the Eastern Mediterranean. Perhaps rather critically, a British Member of Parliament, Francis Noel-Baker, wrote in 1945: Instead of making Greek resistance more moderate, more democratic, more truly representative of the mass of Greek opinion, we drove it to extremes. Instead of helping to strengthen EAM by encouraging non-communist elements to join, we tried to weaken its influence, to prevent it 'monopolising* the liberation movement, by aiding its political opponents. The 'nationalists' we tried to use were just those people with whom German propaganda was most effective. And Goebbels was working day and night to prove that all resistance to the Germans was communist inspired. Little wonder that so many of our 'nationalist' friends turned frankly quisling.30

To gain a more analytical perspective of the morass of international interference and lack of internal Greek cohesion, and of Britain's role, let us approach obliquely, by briefly juxtaposing the Netherlands with Greece. In doing so, we shall be able to compare two small countries that were occupied by the Germans, and to compare British policy in both cases. Dutch Courage and Collaboration In May 1940, the German armies met only a small amount of resistance, and were in control of the Netherlands in a few days, despite a certain historical antipathy towards Germany, personalised in a seventeenth-century epithetical poem: When the Mof [German] is poor and naked, He speaks a very modest language, But when he comes to high estate, He does evil to God and Man.31 The Dutch armed forces obviously realised the pointlessness of armed resistance, unlike the Greek army less than six months later, which not only drove the Italian invaders back into Albania, but continued to fight the German invaders for weeks, then being hampered by the defeatism of the small number of troops that Churchill sent to his only ally. As regards resistance during the occupation of the Nether-

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lands and Greece respectively, the Greeks, unlike the Dutch, developed a powerful movement, with, unfortunately, concomitant Nazi atrocities. During the war, some 200,000 Dutch died,32 compared to half a million in Greece, an even more significant difference, considering that the population of Greece was about two thirds that of the Netherlands. Although both countries had their share of collaborators, Greek co-operation with the German authorities, mainly by anti-communists, pales into insignificance when compared to the Netherlands, where 'political accommodation during the first phase of German occupation and rule had a lasting effect on wide circles of the Dutch population/33 A whole series of civil servants, industrialists and private individuals admitted after the war that their decision to collaborate with the German authorities was greatly influenced by events during the first months of the occupation. The collaboration of most of the press was quite often combined with a degree of political opportunism. As regards the role of the Dutch police in the deportation of the Jews, one expert writes that their co-operation sprang from 'a conformist authoritarian stance and of characteristics specific to the profession, rather than ideological affinity.34 Nevertheless, there were about 200,000 Dutch members of the National Socialist Movement and there was a Dutch Waffen SS Division. It was only towards the end of the war that collaboration ceased, both because of harsher rule by the Germans and the knowledge that Germany was losing the war. The immediate post-war period provides us with some interesting comparisons. It appears surprising that in Greece in September 1945, there were but 1,246 alleged collaborators in prison,35 whereas a year later there were 49,266 in Dutch prisons.36 It would be logical to assume that the Greeks would have had a more effective 'reckoning' with collaborators than any other country occupied by the Germans, particularly since they had fought hard, but the opposite appears to have been the case. The answer to the paradox lies in the beginnings of the Cold War and the British role in first supporting, and then turning against, EAM, and in the weakness of communism in the Netherlands. In effect, the Germans left Greece, and the British came (there was no fighting), officially as liberators, but in reality as supporters of a minority monarchist trend in Greece; they were increasingly seen as occupiers, supporting a minority government, especially after the above-mentioned Varkiza agreement, when the army, police and civil service were purged of those who had resisted the Nazis, purged 'under conditions of terror, intimidation, internal exile, physical and economic deprivation, imprisonment and torture/37 To top it all, members of the generally pro-German 'Security Battalions,' having been captured by ELAS and delivered to the authorities, were often simply released.38 One cannot, of course, place all the blame on the extreme Right-wing elements which took increasing control following the Varkiza agreements: towards the end of 1944, undisciplined elements of ELAS, taking matters into their own hands, had massacred suspected collaborators, hanging some from lamp posts.39 In Argolida, the Left Wing appears to have indulged in a reign of terror in 1943-44.40 The situation was, of course, not as clear-cut while the Germans were still occupying

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Greece. For example, the more disciplined Communist Party tried to rein in some of the more extreme Civil Guard members of the EAM.41 Meanwhile, matters were simpler in the Netherlands. A staggering 200,000 had been imprisoned following the German withdrawal, and by May 1948, there were still 10,000 so-called 'political delinquents' in camps.42 Although at the end of the war, the British army had plenty of troops ensconced in the Netherlands, the British did not interfere in Dutch political life, as they did in Greece. On the contrary, the British were sensitive to Dutch public opinion: We still have a very large army still in the country, much larger than is necessary for military purposes, and its presence, of course, only adds to difficulties for the Dutch. There have been many signs to show that the Dutch are in a mood to criticize the behaviour of the troops, and we are constantly hearing about looting or misbehaviour of one kind or another, some of which may have some substance to them and others none. Good public relations are therefore very important from our point of view.43 Far from the British helping Dutch right-wingers to fight communists, the army pulled out in an orderly fashion, without 'handing the Netherlands over to the Americans.' The Netherlands were, after all, much further from the Soviet sphere of influence than was Greece, and the conservative Dutch had no major problems with their monarch, as did the majority of Greeks. In the Netherlands, Britain's atavistic fear of Russian power manifested itself in a very different way, through propaganda alone. Despite the barrage of anti-communist propaganda from, among others, the Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD),44 much of it intended to frighten the Dutch government into making major military purchases, the campaign was in general fairly otiose, as the comments of the British Ambassador to the Netherlands testify: [...] their [the Communists'] efforts have run up against the very solid obstacles presented by the Dutch character and religious principles, and have made little headway [...] the clear cut nature of political divisions in Holland [sic] forces the Communists to be honest to a degree which they must find unwelcome [...] I think that the sanity of the Dutch and the discipline of their strongly anti-Communist Christian and Socialist trade unions would hold out and prevent the Communists from playing a decisive role.45 Another British Ambassador wrote that the Communists were not strong enough to cause any internal disorganisation sufficiently serious to affect the country's economic recovery.46 The British government was in fact trying to stimulate anti-communism in the Netherlands, but was in any case preaching largely to the converted, resulting even in resistance to the propaganda. As regards Greece, the IRD propaganda material was usually only taken by the extreme Right Wing press, 'to some extent slaking their unquenchable thirst for anti-Communist matter.*47 Interestingly, this was during the civil war, suggesting that the more moderate sections of the press, despite the Left-Right polarization,

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were not under the control of extremists. The Foreign Office, for example, bewailed the fact that newspapers such as Eleftheria (a Guardian-typo, newspaper), did not print IRD material. Newspapers were of course but one tool of the propaganda war. Atrocities by both sides were often exaggerated for political purposes. On balance, however, it is reasonable to assume that a major factor in causing the civil war was the persecution of the Left, combined with a leniency towards former collaborators that was unprecedented in Europe.48 Although the Dutch were far more organized and forceful in their treatment of collaborators than were the Greeks, there was an apparent curious anomaly, in that a Jew, Hans Hirschfeld, was head of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs during the whole occupation, while thousands of Jews were being transported to concentration camps. At the end of the war, he was dismissed 'with honour' from the Dutch Civil Service, nevertheless being appointed representative of the Benelux countries at the Paris Conference on European Economic Cooperation in 1947.49 Hirschfeld had stated that he regarded extensive co-operation between the occupying power and the Dutch administration as the only way to secure essential supplies for the population. The story is nevertheless intriguing, particularly in view of the robust Dutch punishing of collaborators, and the obvious fact that Hirschfeld was protected by the German authorities from the notorious 'Jew-hunts' carried out by the efficient Dutch police. The Greeks, unlike the Dutch, were not known for hunting Jews, but rather for protecting them. Yet bizarrely, it was a Jew, Rabbi Koretz, who encouraged the Jews of Thessaloniki to be transported to Poland.50 As for the first post-war Greek government, it passed a law waiving the right of the Greek state to inherit money and property of heirless deceased Jews; instead the money was handed over to a Jewish-controlled organisation called 'The Organization for the Rehabilitation of the Jews of Greece.'51 Comparing Dutch and Greek collaboration is of course not an easy matter, particularly since the socio-politico-economic condition of the countries was so different. Comparison is also rendered more difficult by the fact that much of Greece outside the 'strong-points' of Athens and Thessaloniki was occupied by the more benign Italians. Yet the comparison is useful within the context of our book, since it highlights by juxtaposition Britain's enormous effort to run Greek affairs, and fight their former anti-Nazi allies. One can hardly imagine British soldiers turning against the small band of Dutch communists who passively resisted the Germans. Yet we have seen that Churchill had agreed with Stalin that Greece would be in Britain's camp. One cannot therefore avoid the suspicion that Churchill's obsession with bringing back the King of Greece, Britain's atavistic and irrational fear of Russian influence, and its traditional penchant for interfering in Greek affairs, which it had done since the very inception of the modern Greek state, were vital factors that led to Greek killing Greek. It was Britain's handing of Greece to the USA and her skill at convincing President Truman to export his so-called 'doctrine' to Greece that exacerbated matters even more.52

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The Handover Britain was undergoing a severe economic crisis in 1947, and skilfully managed to bring in the US, helped, of course, by the death in 1945 of President Roosevelt, who was nothing like as robustly anti-Soviet as Truman. The US government regarded the Balkans as an area of British concern, and had deliberately avoided any involvement during the war;53 thus the British had carte blanche to involve themselves in their clandestine operations. Britain's leading position as 'outside meddler' was strengthened by the fact that the Greek government in exile eventually found its way to London. Thus, when the Cold War began in earnest in 1947, Britain was able to 'take French leave* of Greece economically speaking, but remained as the US's 'leading PR consultant' in Greece. The 'Truman Doctrine' that relieved Britain of its large military costs in Greece further encouraged the Left-Right polarization in Greece and led to renewed fighting, which continued for two bitter years. Slowly but surely, the Americans increased their grip on the country's institutions, particularly through Truman's newly created CIA. Once the civil war was over, Britain's rigid attitude vis-a-vis Cyprus both flummoxed and irritated the Greek government and brought them closer to the US, which had no official role in Cyprus and was also critical of Britain's rigid stance in opposing enosis. US influence, flavoured by the 'export' of McCarthyism to Greece, increased exponentially, to the extent that the CIA even set up its Greek equivalent, the KYP. In this anti-communist post-civil war ambience, there was an ugly side to US influence, compounded by the very make-up of the army which, unlike the more 'upper class' navy, was made up mainly of those of peasant stock, many with only a rudimentary formal education, and often rather bigoted. As late as 1963, American instructors were 'training' Greek gendarmes in covert techniques for counter-insurgency. A former British Naval Intelligence officer takes up the story: To demonstrate one facet of their undercover mission, I had been taken to a training camp to the north of the city [Athens], where American instructors were indoctrinating Greek gendarmes in covert techniques for counter-insurgency, including instruction in modern methods of interrogation, torture and killing. They were teaching that communists were sub-human, that they had forfeited their civil rights and that they should be exterminated like vermin. The pupils were being schooled in the use of extreme violence against communists as a weapon against the spread of left-wing dogma. I was shown some pigs with KKE (Communist Party of Greece) emblems on their backs and told with some pride by the instructor that his trainees would be told to kill those as viciously as possible, visualising them as 'commies' who had raped their sisters.54 The civil war had 'imprinted those officers who lived through it on the other side with a strongly anti-Communist view of the world, supported by an old-fashioned Hellenic nationalism [.. ..].'55 It was these Manichean children of McCarthyism who, at the first serious whiff of left-wing influence, were going to organize, with US condoning, the 1967 military coup. Unlike the Netherlands, post-war Greece could

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not be described as a typical West-European liberal democracy, but more as a US outpost of McCarthyist anti-communism. For the British government, a subtle but influential onlooker, its main concern was Cyprus. The Cyprus Connexion With the US acting as Britain's proxy in Greece, Britain concentrated on convincing the US of the strategic importance of Cyprus. The civil war suited perceived British strategic interests, in that it both distracted attention from Cyprus and allowed the British government to claim that it was necessary to hang on to the island to counter the communist threat.56 This of course began to make the Americans more equivocal in their view about Cypriot self-determination, at a time when the US (and the USSR) was encouraging Britain to give up colonies. The civil war was indeed the Foreign Office's excuse: In more normal circumstances, the early cession of Cyprus to Greece might well be a wise policy, justified by considerations not only of justice, but also of expediency. But present circumstances are not normal [...] so long as the internationally supported bandit war continues on its present scale, Greece's independence must remain to some extent doubtful [...] control of the island by a foreign power (USSR) would be a danger to us. Various telegrams from Athens in recent weeks have given very pessimistic estimates of the Greek Government's chances of victory.57 This argument was rather weak, since the massive US military support of the 'Truman Doctrine' was already being planned (the above-mentioned was written at the end of October 1947). And contrarily, the above-mentioned British Member of Parliament, Francis Noel-Baker, had written two years earlier that enosis would kill communist hopes of attaining power by civil war and check 'Russian imperialist plans in the border countries.'58 An FO official, arguing against hanging on to Cyprus, wrote that enosis would be 'the greatest possible contribution to Greek morale and British influence.59 Britain therefore used the communist threat as an excuse to continue Disraeli's policy. Things were simply 'returning with different colours,' and this time the colour red was masking Britain's continuing geopolitical obsession, although she was now using the 'special relationship.' Conclusions Whether by design or default, the Greek civil war helped the British government to hang on to Cyprus and to bring in the Americans in 1947. Before then, the American Military Mission had distanced itself from the fighting between ELAS and the British army. British argumentation for hanging on to Cyprus was expedient and contradictory. On the one hand, said some, enosis would strengthen the fight against communism. On the other, it would weaken it. Britain simply could not let go: Churchill's manic and emotional imperialism and then the Foreign Office's atavistic fear of Russia (even when they knew that the USSR was not interested in controlling Greece) combined into a deadly cocktail. As American influence increased

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in Greece, the British hung on more desperately to Cyprus, citing, as always, the anti-Communist argument and the need to control the Middle East. In addition, Cyprus was a useful tool for enabling Britain to be involved in Greek affairs, given the undoubted historical and cultural attachment of the Greeks of Cyprus to those of the mainland. As we shall see in the following chapter, Britain was to use Cyprus to bedevil Graeco-Turkish relations. To this we must of course add the poisonous ingredient of Churchill's obsession with the return of the King to Greece. His own words to General Scobie tell the chilling story of his arrogant and callous attitude, that was to help cause great bloodshed, when the Greeks should have been allowed to put their own house in order: You are responsible for maintaining order in Athens and for neutralising or destroying all E A.M.-E.L.A.S. bands approaching the city. You may make any regulations you like for the strict control of the streets or for the rounding up of any number of truculent persons. [...] it would be well of course if your commands were reinforced by the authority of some Greek government, and Papandreou is being told by Leeper [the British Ambassador] to stop and help. Do not however hesitate to act as if you were in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in progress.60 Only ten years later, Churchill wrote to an acquaintance: 'I must say, when I think of the risks I ran and the efforts I made on behalf of the Greeks, I feel they qualify for the first prize for ingratitude.*61 It seems that Churchill was trying to rationalize. The whole story of the Greek civil war is one of foreign interference, mainly British. It is perhaps a shame that in Greece, the British fought harder against their former Greek anti-occupation allies than they did against the Germans three and a half years earlier. This is a clear case of the cynical side of political realism. We now turn to consider the period between the civil war and the Turkish invasion, from a geohistorical standpoint.

FROM CIVIL WAR TO SEVENTY-FOUR: THE VICTIMS OF GEOSTRATEGY

While the situation is not at this moment getting worse, the potential for evil increases the longer the communities remain apart.

Ramsbotham to Seconde1 Introduction The twenty-five years between the Greek civil war and the 'Sampson coup' in Cyprus witnessed 96.5 per cent of the 82 per cent Greek Cypriot population of Cyprus voting in favour of enosis;2 Greece and Turkey joining NATO; increasing tension between the British and Greek governments over Cyprus; the outbreak of a vicious struggle by Greek Cypriot freedom fighters against the British colonial administration; the end of reasonable relations between Greece and Turkey, that have never since recovered; the Suez crisis; the forced exile of Makarios by the British (to the Seychelles); the gaining of qualified independence by Cyprus, with Makarios obliged to agree to an incipiently cratocidal constitution; the breakdown of the constitution and intercommunal riots, three serious threats of war between Greece and Turkey; a military putsch in Greece; the Six Day war; and the Yom Kippur war and the oil crisis. Behind the whirlwind of events in the Eastern Mediterranean, we can discern various factors resulting from the geostrategic considerations engendered by the Cold War. By 'geostrategic' we mean exploiting military, economic and, therefore, political power: in other words, using a geopolitical approach to achieve national objectives outside one's own country.3 The main factors which emerge are Britain's elginism vis-a-vis Cyprus, Britain's successful attempts not only to divide the two main communities on Cyprus, but also to exacerbate Greek-Turkish relations; British secret collaboration with Turkey vis-a-vis Cyprus; the Foreign Office's own misgivings about the Treaty of Guarantee; the British government's (secret) policy of not honouring that Treaty; and secret British-US agreement not to resist the Turks. Two connected factors are the all-pervading ones of suspicion of Soviet intentions and British suspicion of France. All these factors are present today (as we shall see

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later), again emphasising Guicciardini's tenet about the same things returning with different colours. Behind the whole geostrategic farrago lie oil and the concomitant obsession with controlling the Middle East, whatever claims some may make about different political ideologies being a primary cause of the Cold War. What does emerge, however, is that Greece and Cyprus can be seen as geostrategic 'collateral damage' during this period. What, then, of the above-mentioned factors? Elginism in Cyprus Here, we mean hanging on to something which is not morally yours, the word being coined from the actions of Lord Elgin, whose workmen hacked away at the Parthenon some two hundred years ago, following a dubious and unspecific agreement with the Ottoman authorities in Greece (the original agreement has never been found). Elgin made a huge profit from selling the 'marbles' (sculptures of battle-scenes made two and a half thousand years ago, and never surpassed in quality) to the British Museum. Despite immense international pressure on Britain to give them back to their rightful owners, Greece, all manner of legalistic excuses have been found to hang on to them. In hard geostrategic terms, Greece's cultural power is no match for Britain's economic and political clout. This is where an analogy can be made with Cyprus which, despite its apparent independence, has never been able to shake off the intrusive British pressure and presence, first as a colonial power and, since 1960, as an interfering one, possessing ninety-nine square miles of the island which it literally annexed in 1960 (although legally it would claim that it transformed their status from that of colony to sovereign British territory), numerous 'retained sites,' over-flying rights and various other 'freedom of passage' agreements, which render the concept of Cyprus as a properly sovereign state mildly fantastic. Insofar as elginism is a component of geostrategy, one of its ingredients regarding British policy is arrogance or, to put it slightly more charitably, superciliousness. The first governor of Cyprus, Wolsey, wrote: 'I don't like foreigners, I am glad to say. I hate their ways and customs but I could forget those; why I really dislike foreigners is on national grounds.*4 While that was in 1878, as late as 1956 a Colonial Office official, arguing against plebiscites, wrote: 'We, the British, are not enamoured of plebiscites.' Some of Margaret Thatcher's pronouncements about putting the greatness back into Britain, which calmer Englishmen considered to be somewhat over the top and jingoistic, are more recent examples of this ingredient of elginism: in short, national pride. Immutable characteristics such as pride, both personal and national, show here that a geohistorical approach is apposite for Cyprus. In the case of Cyprus, it is clear that despite heavy international pressure on Britain to give up the island, even from the USA, elginism won the day. In 1951, the British Foreign Minister, Eden, refused even to discuss Cyprus with the Greek Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, Averof.5 The intransigence of the British government was reflected in Eden's words: 'No Cyprus, no certain facilities to protect our supply of oil. No oil, unemployment and hunger in Britain. It is as simple as that.'6

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The difficult period between 1950 and the outbreak of hostilities in Cyprus in 1955 has been well covered in various books and papers.7 Suffice it to say that by 1955, a combination of Britain's perceived inflexibility, Greek government lobbying and the exigencies of the Cold War were bringing matters to a head. It is perhaps a paradox that Colonel, later General, Grivas, the leader of the anti-colonial fighters, EOKA, was even more anti-communist than the British government. At any event, the US, concerned that British intransigence could lead to instability in Cyprus and therefore the whole region, sponsored Greek and Turkish membership of NATO in 1952, and was obviously concerned at the possibility of conflict in Cyprus being exploited by the USSR, particularly through AKEL, the powerful left-wing party in Cyprus. The impending Suez crisis and the subsequent 'takeover' by the US of the West's responsibility for the Middle East led to the transfer of British electronic spying to Cyprus and thus to an argument for hanging on to the island. Collusion and Division Britain's reaction to Grivas' guerrillas, apart from suspension of civil liberties, the exiling of Makarios to the Seychelles and convincing the Americans of Cyprus' increasing strategic importance, given the Suez crisis, entailed the simple expedient of getting Turkey secretly on their side, helping them, and creating Greek-Turkish tension, which of course would radicalize the Greek and Turkish Cypriots. The evidence is persuasive. Even before the outbreak of hostilities on 1 April 1955, Britain was secretly colluding with the Turkish government. In February, the British Ambassador in Ankara, Bowker, wrote: Turkish representatives abroad [...] might be more active in their publicity about the Turkish attitude to Cyprus [...] Turkish propaganda should however be presented with tact [...] This has already been discussed in general terms with officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs [...] The Turks will no doubt wish to know what policy H.M.G. propose to follow.8 The die was cast: the next tactic was to involve Turkey in Cyprus (to support the continued British presence), by holding a conference on 'political and defence questions, as concerning the Eastern Mediterranean, including Cyprus.' Turkish involvement in Cyprus was in fact expressly forbidden by Article 16 of the Treaty of Lausanne, which stipulated clearly that Turkey renounced all 'rights and titles of any kind' in territories outside the frontiers agreed in the treaty, meaning that Turkey had no rights regarding Cyprus: hence the semantic chicanery in the title of the subject of the conference. The main instigator of the conference appears to have been the Permanent Under Secretary of the Foreign Office, Kirkpatrick, who wrote: I have always been attracted by the idea of a 3 Power conference, simply because I believe it would seriously embarrass the Greek Government. And if such a conference were held, I should not produce any British plan until a Greek-Turkish deadlock

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CYPRUS has been defined [...] And I repeat: I shall not produce any British plan until a GreekTurkish difference has been exposed.9

Britain and Turkey were now colluding regularly, hence Turkey's almost immediate acceptance of London's invitation. The Greek government took another three days (5 July) to accept, since they had to be convinced that Turkey would have no decisive role, which of course was nonsense. The American Secretary of State, Dulles, convinced the Greek Ambassador in Washington, Melas, that it had been agreed with the British that Turkey was only being invited as a witness. The truth was of course entirely different. On 7 July, Eden wrote that the Turks were behaving well, and that if Britain kept friendly with them, the Greeks would have to 'come along in the end/ He continued by stressing the importance of 'not being parted from the Turks/10 During the conference preparations, Eden told the Cabinet that Britain's aim would be to 'bring the Greeks up against the Turkish refusal to accept enosis and so condition them to accept a solution which would leave sovereignty in British hands.11 Britain's method of planning a doomed conference worked with a vengeance. When the conference blew up, there was an outbreak of rioting in Turkey, of which the Greek—speaking community of 100,000 bore the brunt. The British Embassy in Ankara reported that in Istanbul alone, twenty-nine Greek Orthodox Churches were completely destroyed, thirty-four badly damaged, tombs desecrated, and a monk burned to death. Neither police nor troops made any effort to protect property and restrain looters.12 Various sources have suggested that the riots were planned. A Foreign Office official had written a year previously that a 'few riots in Ankara would do us nicely,'13 while the British government was using black propaganda experts to support its Cyprus stance.14 The US State Department itself suspected 'co-ordinated planning.' Britain's success in bedevilling Greek-Turkish relations was undoubtedly helped by the naivety - or worse - of the Greek government itself in accepting the invitation to the conference in the first place. The Greek side of the story is, like the British one, certainly a dark one, evidenced by the fact that the Greek government to this day refuses to open its archives on Cyprus to the public.15 In any event, Britain now pushed home its advantage, having successfully kept the Cyprus question off the UN agenda through the ploy of holding the conference, and continued its clandestine collaboration with Turkey: almost one year after the conference, a Foreign Office official advised the British Embassy in Bonn (and other posts): [.. -1 we wish to assist the Turks as much as possible with the publicity for their case, but must at the same time be careful not to appear to be shielding behind them and to be instigating the statements.16

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Clearly, the British government thought the Turks incapable of promoting their case effectively, perhaps understandably, since it was largely the British who had helped to create the Turkish case in the first place. Cratocide The manic mixture of events in the Middle East, Turkish-inspired inter-communal rioting, US pressure on Britain to come to some kind of agreement that could not be exploited by the new revolutionary government in Iraq, and the increasingly pro-Soviet regimes in Egypt and Syria resulted in Britain freeing Makarios in 1957, but not allowing him to return to Cyprus.17 The UN then passed, to the chagrin of the Greek government, a motion calling for the British, Greek and Turkish governments, and representatives of the Cypriots, to meet. The story of the negotiations that led to what can only be described as an incipiently cratocidal constitution has been dealt with extensively. What emerges is that the Cypriots had very little say in the matter, Makarios not even being allowed to participate in the Zurich conference in 1959 where the Greek and Turkish governments struck a deal with each other and Britain, the bare bones of which entailed the three countries guaranteeing the security and independence of Cyprus. The president would be a Greek Cypriot, the vice-president a Turkish Cypriot, there would be separate communal assemblies, a joint national assembly, and 950 Greek and 650 Turkish troops stationed on the island. Most importantly for Britain, she would retain the two military bases. When Makarios was allowed to attend the final London conference, he was presented with a. fait accompli^ managing nevertheless to whittle down the size of the British military bases from 160 to 99 square miles. Having failed to introduce 'Thirteen Points' to make the constitution more balanced and workable, he later wrote 'The less bad thing was to sign.'18 He had been subjected to immense personal and political pressures to sign, even from Queen Frederica of Greece. The arrangement was clearly unbalanced: for example, while only 18 per cent of Cypriots were Turkish-speaking Moslems, the civil service was to be composed of 30 per cent Turkish Cypriots; the House of Representatives would have the same ratio and the army would have a ratio of sixty to forty. According to one writer, it was the world's first constitution forbidding majority rule.19 Comments by experts are revealing: '[...] the 1960 Constitution was unsound and seriously defective in terms of both political balance and functional capacity'; 'Political and constitutional communal segregation [...] Political, and to a great extent, constitutional, equality of a minority community of 18 per cent with a majority community of 82 per cent. The right of interference by outside powers is what in any independent sovereign state would be considered as a purely internal issue.'20 In short, the constitution was an extremists' paradise, the result of a complicated theoretical geostrategic 'solution' imposed by outside powers, that bore little relation to the realities of the history of the Cyprus problem. In terms of theory, we again see the preponderance of political realism, underpinned by geopolitical considerations that bore little relation to democratic principles of majority rule. In short, it was an arrangement shaped for external interests.

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The three crucial documents were: the 103-page Treaty of Establishment between Cyprus and Britain, transferring the sovereignty of Cyprus (minus the territories taken by Britain), an astonishing fifty-six pages being devoted to the British territories and Britain's use of other 'retained' sites in Cyprus and a host of other connected rights, such as over-flying rights; the Treaty of Alliance between Cyprus, Greece and Turkey, establishing a tripartite headquarters and the 950 and 650 Greek and Turkish troops respectively; and, most cratocidal, the Treaty of Guarantee, which Britain never intended to honour, as we shall see. That the constitution was unworkable was obvious to experts from the beginning. Indeed, as late as 1975, the Foreign Office was referring to an 'unstable constitutional agreement.'21 The fuse of the 1963 anti-Greek Cypriot riots that led to the initial separation of Greek and Turkish Cypriots was laid in the 1960 treaties, and its being lit was little more than a formality, given the obvious unworkability of the constitution. Extremists carried the day, using the now infamous 'Thirteen Points' of Makarios as a point of reference. The 'Thirteen Points,' although simply proposals for review, were seen and rejected by the Turkish government even before they had been discussed by the two communities. Particularly intriguing was the role played by the Foreign Office and the High Commissioner in Cyprus, Clark, in encouraging Makarios with the 'Thirteen Points,' even redrafting some of them.22 The amendments included the revision of the ratio of Greek to Turkish Cypriots in the public services and armed forces, abandonment of the right of veto of the president and vice-president, and unification of the administration of justice. The Foreign Office claimed years later that its intention was to promote acceptance of the amendments by Turkey.23 This seems curiously naive, given the obvious knowledge of British intelligence in Greece, Turkey and Cyprus that the Turkish government and extremist forces on both sides were spoiling for a fight. It is little wonder that certain documents are still withheld, more than forty-seven years after the riots. The strife and 'auto-ghettoization' of much of the Turkish Cypriot community that followed the abortive submission of the 'Thirteen Points' is still a controversial question, particularly since extremists on both sides had their own plans. Few, however, could nit-pick with the evaluation that it was the result of pent-up frustration on both sides of a problem that had only been papered over in Zurich and London, fuelled by extremism, simultaneous political crises in Greece and Turkey and the intriguing encouragement of the Foreign Office. The US, although it had no formal responsibility for Cyprus, now began to intrude, with British blessing. Initially, the British government went through the motions of trying to bring the communities back together. Lieutenant-Commander Martin Packard worked slavishly to achieve this, and when he seemed about to succeed, was suddenly flown out of Cyprus. In the meantime, the rumbustious American Assistant Secretary of State, Ball, had told Packard: 'Very impressive, but you've got it all wrong, son. Hasn't anyone told you that our objective here is partition, not re-integration?'24 In his book 'Getting it Wrongl Packard makes clear his considered view that following the fighting (during which a Soviet threat of

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support for Makarios in the event of outside intervention stopped the Turks from invading, following some Turkish bombing), the British and US governments now considered that the Sovereign Base Areas and other military facilities could more easily be protected in a divided than in a unified Cyprus.25 The abortive Ball/Acheson Plan, intended to divide Cyprus between Greece and Turkey under a NATO umbrella, having been rejected by Makarios, has since 1963 never been entirely off the agenda, in one form or another. It is reasonable to consider that, today, de facto partition is virtually complete and the British and US military facilities are NATO bases in all but name. Most interesting is that in 1964, following the establishment of a UN contingent on Cyprus and the recognition of only the legal Makarios government - to the irritation of Turkey - Britain and the US agreed that they would not react militarily if Turkey invaded. June 1964 was a crucial month. Following Turkish threats to invade, the American Secretary of State told the British Ambassador in Washington that they would tell the Turkish government that they had no right to invade Cyprus and declare part of it Turkish.26 Yet the following month the Americans made it clear to the British that there would be 'no question of using the Sixth Fleet to prevent any possible Turkish invasion. The British had already decided that their troops in Cyprus would withdraw into base if there were an invasion, and that they would not agree to the UN forces stationed there being used for the purpose of repelling an invasion.27 In August, during an attack on Turkish Cypriot forces by Grivas' EOKA, Turkey strafed Greek Cypriot villages and bombed them, using napalm, leading to scores of civilian deaths.28 Greece reacted by informing the UN that intervention might be the only answer if the bombing did not stop. Crucially, the Soviet Union supported the Greek demands, and the US was constrained to put pressure on the Turks, who were forced to give way. Soviet threats of intervention were clearly crucial in preventing a Turkish invasion. So fraught was British diplomacy at the time that the government even considered giving Turkey one of its bases on Cyprus to 'keep them sweet'. The same paper in which the move was considered also stated: The bases and retained sites, and their usefulness to us, depend in large measure upon Greek Cypriot co-operation or at least acquiescence. A 'Guantanamo' position is out of the question. Their future therefore must depend on the extent to which we can retain Greek and/or Greek Cypriot goodwill and counter U.S.S.R. and U.A.R. pressures. There seems little doubt however, that in the long term, our sovereign rights in the SBA.'s and Treaty rights in Republican territory will be considered increasingly irksome by the Greek Cypriots and will be regarded as increasingly anachronistic by world public opinion.29 Cat's-Paw From 1963, Cyprus became even more of a disputed cat's-paw of the international power brokers. The British view, close to that of the Americans, was that Cyprus must not be allowed to fall under Soviet or United Arab Republic influence. The Foreign Office even considered enosis as a way of ensuring the retention of the

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British Sovereign Territories. A Foreign Office brief included the views of the British High Commissioner in Cyprus that the only two solutions for peace and order were enosis or the establishment of a unitary state dominated by the Greek Cypriot majority. Six other solutions were considered: two-way enosis; condominium between Greece and Turkey; trusteeship; population exchange; separation of the two communities (partition/federation/fragmentation); and status quo.30 Here, theory can help us to interpret British policy regarding enosis and how to deal with Cyprus. We see here why 'dependency theory' has a following: Cyprus was being treated by Britain as at least a partially dependent territory, in terms of its own destiny. Britain was looking on the island as something to be manipulated to her perceived advantage. Even 'world systems analysis* is relevant, with Cyprus being treated as a peripheral state, if that. It is important here that we see that the diplomats and politicians were not consciously trying to follow dependency theory and/ or world systems analysis, but that their behaviour and policy-formulation nevertheless resulted in Cyprus being dependent, to a greater or lesser extent, and being treated as peripheral in terms of its own power. Thus, we see how Cyprus serves as an important ingredient of the interpretation leading to the above theories. Much has been written about the Cyprus problem in the 60s;31 suffice it to suggest here that the status quo which resulted from the 1963/64 crisis was a dangerous one, giving the extremists on both sides the opportunity to build up their defences and 'import' thousands of irregular troops. In the middle was Makarios, trying to preserve what independence Cyprus still possessed, successfully balancing the superpowers, and being reviled by extremist western Cold War warriors as 'The Red Priest,' a wholly unjustifiable propagandistic label. Unlike Ball (see above), the British High Commissioner admired Makarios: Makarios has the intellectual abilities, which would enable him to make his mark in a country of a hundred times the population. His mind is clear and agile [...] I do not believe he ever told me a deliberate lie.32 However skilful a politician Makarios was, the status quo suited in particular the USA, which was biding its time while the extremist forces built up on both sides of the divide, fuelled in particular by Grivas33 and the fanatic Turkish-Cypriot defence organisation, the Ankara-sponsored TMT. Turkey's anger at its inability openly to invade Cyprus, directed itself towards the Greeks of Turkey. Revenge in Turkey In 1964, there were still 12,000 Greek citizens and 60,000 Turkish citizens of Greek stock and religion in Turkey, living mainly in Istanbul, some having been there since ancient times. The Turkish government now vented its anger on these people, resulting in most of them being formally expelled (the Greek citizens) or being forced to leave (Turkish citizens of Greek stock). All manner of methods were used, such as closure of Greek schools, sacking Greeks from jobs 'reserved by law for Turks' and the prosecution of headmasters for showing a film depicting the

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Patriarch in Byzantine robes. Extracts from a letter by the British Consul General in Istanbul make depressing reading: The Turks are simply getting their own back for the sufferings of their compatriots in Cyprus [...] Sometimes Greeks are made to pay twice before being deported. This is little more than organised robbery and there are I am glad to say a few, but only very few, Turks who are ashamed of the Government in this regard [...] it [the campaign] reveals an ugly side to the Turkish character [...] Cyprus is an excuse but only an excuse for prosecuting such a campaign [...] the Turkish Government found it convenient for home political purposes to encourage the latent chauvinism of their people.34 Today, there are around two thousand known Turkish citizens of Greek stock left in Turkey. The Greek government did not reciprocate: there are well over 100,000 Greek citizens of Turkish stock in Eastern Thrace. Thus, ten years after the Foreign Office, under the emotional Kirkpatrick, had called a 'Three Power Conference,' to involve Turkey, 'seriously embarrass the Greek government' and 'expose' and 'define' a Greek-Turkish 'difference,' and collaborated secretly with Turkey, simply for elginistic motives, enormous damage had been done to Greek-Turkish relations, a result of the apparent status quo in Cyprus. It was the unstable Greek polity and the role of the Greek military that were to occasion the Turkish government, with the subtle 'blind-eying' of Kissinger, to invade Cyprus. By the time of the so-called Sampson coup, the Cypriot tails were wagging the Greek and Turkish dogs. By this time, too, Turkey was vital to perceived US Cold War interests: indeed, the Cuban missile crisis began ostensibly because of US missiles in Turkey pointing at the Soviet Union. The Colonels' Coup Like Britain's role in the Greek civil war, the USA's role in the coup of 21 April 1967 is still a matter of considerable controversy. That there was clandestine US involvement in the affairs of Greece (and indeed in other countries considered strategically important in the Cold War) is indisputable. We have, for example, the testimonies of former CIA agent Philip Agee35 and of former adviser to President Johnson, Eliot Janeway.36 The US had itself established the Greek security service, KYP (now EYP), and a respected US newspaper suggested that the Greek coup was organized with American help. The Greek anti-Communist establishment undoubtedly included plenty of informers. One can safely conclude that it was not so much a question of whether certain sections of the US government were involved in the coup, but rather how, and to what extent. The number of gaps in the published State Department documents speaks volumes, and tells us that the US still has much to hide. In the Cyprus connexion, the coup suited the anti-Communist Grivas down to the ground. Apart from his dream of enosis, he was a founder of the extreme right-wing Khi,37was a virulent anti-Communist and as such was useful to the US in efforts to destabilise Makarios, who was playing the Soviet card with great skill,

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and infuriating the Americans and Israelis by declaring his support for the Palestinian cause in the Six Day War. Shortly after the coup, Grivas (a fervent royalist) sent King Constantine an enthusiastic message saying that 'now was the moment to polish off the Communists' in Cyprus and asking permission to go straight into action. The King told him to do nothing of the sort and to abide by the orders of the Greek General Staff.38 Nevertheless, Grivas's build-up of Greek troops in Cyprus continued, to the consternation of the Turkish side, who were nevertheless able to invoke it as an excuse to act themselves. The mutual build-up of forces suited the US policy of partition and the still-desired double-enosis NATO-friendly solution.39 At any event, the simmering status quo erupted in November 1967, provoked initially by Turkish Cypriots, but capitalized on with a vengeance by Grivas.40 As in 1964, Greece and Turkey came to the brink of war, but the US could not afford to allow the potential destruction of NATO's south-eastern flank, to the benefit of the Soviet Union. The immediate result of the crisis was the return of Grivas and his forces to Greece, representing a partial victory for Turkey. This time, the Soviets were not as friendly towards the anti-communist Greek government as they were to Makarios' one; moreover, they were clearly against enosis with a right-wing and anticommunist Greece, since this would strengthen NATO's southeastern flank. Thus, they stuck to their traditional line. Even before the 1967 crisis, Pravda had written: The support given to Grivas by the government of Athens has aroused justified fears, both among the Cypriots and the Greek people, about the true aims of the ruling circles of Greece over the Cyprus question. As is well known, Washington, for the sake of strengthening the South-East flank of NATO, has more and more insisted that Greece should agree to the Acheson plan, which envisages the elimination of the Republic of Cyprus and the conversion of its territory into a military strategic base in the Mediterranean for the North Atlantic bloc.41 Low British profile Whether Britain's motives in promoting the 1963 constitutional amendments were noble or otherwise, the resulting debacle clearly embarrassed her government, with the Foreign Office promoting a lower profile on the Cyprus issue, and letting the US make the running, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, since the US had no formal legal standing vis-a-vis Cyprus. Thus, while Britain continued her clandestine anti-communist propaganda in Cyprus, through IRD,42 the government avoided any activity appearing to support any particular political party in Cyprus: This policy has so far been justified in that both the Americans and now the Greeks have been attacked in recent weeks for involving themselves in the internal affairs of Cyprus, while we have been exempt from criticism.43 British policy was nevertheless intellectually inconsistent: on the one hand, the High Commissioner was writing in 1969 that the importance of good Greek-Turkish relations was more important to the defence of Europe through NATO than British interests in Cyprus,44 while on the other, only three years later the FCO was

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writing that Greek Turkish 'collusion in an attempt to partition the island* could threaten the viability of the British bases.45 Thus, Britain's 'low profile' concealed this muddled institutional thinking and also suggests that the Americans were more interested in double-enosis than the British, who appeared to care for little other than their bases. The Americans even considered their erstwhile enemy, Grivas, as not necessarily antithetical to their interests regarding the bases, admitting that they might one day have to deal openly with him; they were already dealing with him secretly, through a middleman, as were the British.46 Matters became increasingly volatile. By the early '70s, Makarios, despite his international prestige, was on a tightrope, at loggerheads with the more fanatical side of the Greek Junta (but not the moderate Foreign Minister, Pipinelis) and with the Americans. In March 1970, an attempt was even made on Makarios's life, allegedly organized by Polycarpos Georghadjis, Minister of the Interior and Defence, who was then himself mysteriously killed.47 One of Makarios' reactions was to declare the Nicosia CIA head of station persona non grata. Rumours and conspiracy theories abounded, enough to grace the pages of a Le Carre or Ludlum novel, while Britain continued to keep a low profile. The British Ambassador in Athens wrote that the Greeks might be acquiring a taste for political assassination.48 In a particularly pertinent letter, the British High Commission in Cyprus wrote: Although Makarios remains supremely self-confident and believes that time is on his side, the threat of a Turkish invasion remains. The backdrop of inter-communal talks, which have been the symbol of the benign stalemate which has suited our interests so well in the past three years, obliges us to face the prospect that this stalemate may now be turning malignant.49 The death of Pipinelis helped the more extreme parts of the Junta, and enabled Grivas to return to Cyprus in autumn 1970. Although the inter-communal talks continued/ the Turkish Cypriot side simply took instructions from Ankara, whose policy then, as now, was to bide time and strengthen partition. The Turkish Cypriot leadership therefore tended to be as unaccommodating as possible, as the British noted. For example, the Turkish Cypriot leader complained to the British that they were favouring the Greeks by employing a disproportionately large number on the SBAs, when the opposite was true, as the British pointed out: The overall percentage of Turkish Cypriots employed by the Bases in relation to Greek Cypriots, is almost 27 per cent [...] It is tiresome that the Turkish Cypriots are behaving in this aggressive and pettifogging way. (Their obsession with percentages is perhaps illuminating in connection with the causes of the breakdown in intercommunal relations 1960-1963!51 The British government's position, irrespective of its private criticism of the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot position, was to 'stand back and hope for the best'.52 Cooperation between Britain and America was not as close as it had been, essentially because the British Prime Minister Edward Heath tended more towards Europe

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than the US. The US considered him to be a 'kind of British Gaullist, with a bias towards France and a receptivity to long-standing French arguments/53 The US Ambassador in London wrote that Heath was unsentimental about Anglo-American relations, blaming the rift with Britain on Heath's 'anti-American feeling/54 This cooling of relations had its effect on British-US co-operation in the Eastern Mediterranean, where trouble was brewing. Prelude to Invasion Although the USA and Britain had little choice, given Cold War considerations, but to see eye to eye on the British bases on Cyprus, particularly given the USA's own network of listening posts, there were serious policy differences on Greece. The USA was irritated at Britain's failure to vote for Greece at a Council of Europe meeting, which led to Greece's withdrawal from the Council. Official contacts between the USA and British embassies in Athens were only at a low level. Most irritating for the USA was Heath's refusal to allow the USA to use the SBAs to help Israel during the Yom Kippur War. This coincided with the Greek government refusing to allow the American government to fly supplies to Israel from Greece in October 1973. Eastern Mediterranean expert Vassilis Fouskas argues cogently that the Israeli factor was particularly important in Kissinger's thinking about Cyprus, and that the Turkish invasion of July 1974 is therefore closely connected. This is an inherently logical assumption, particularly given the Israeli-Turkish military agreement.55 We shall later see documentary evidence that Kissinger considered Cyprus particularly important to the Arab/Israeli dispute. Only the following month, the infamous 'Polytechnic riots' led to the 'replacement' of the junta by a more fanatical nationalistic and pto-enosis group of officers, orchestrated by the head of the Military Police, Ioannides. The previous more moderate government, supported in particular by the British and condoned by the Greek former Prime Minister in exile, Karamanlis, was no more.56 Instability in Greece, combined with Turkish political instability (still a chronic problem today), CIA involvement, and the Watergate crisis gave Kissinger and the CIA a particularly free hand in Greek (and other) affairs. When Grivas died in January 1974, Ioannides' position was greatly strengthened vis-a-vis Cyprus. It was now only a question of time before there would be a coup against Makarios. Although Kissinger had been warned of this, he delayed, simply asking the US Ambassador in Athens, Tasca, to tell Ioannides that the USA opposed 'any adventure in Cyprus.' This was a highly irregular and unprofessional move on Kissinger's part, since diplomatic protocol meant that Tasca could not directly and officially warn Ioannides.57 Kissinger's role will be considered more incisively later, within the context of his much-vaunted political realism and geopolitical theory. Before we look at the story of this chapter through a theoretical prism, let us now turn to the institutional and diplomatic pack of cards that collapsed so easily with the Turkish invasion, namely the 1960 Treaties, and Britain's attitude towards them.

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Paper Tiger Treaties It is reasonable to contend that the whole secret diplomatic bazaar around Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, involving at least the UN, the US, USSR and Britain, was - and indeed is — a product of what we have, admittedly snidely, but nevertheless pithily and pertinently, described as 'cratocidal treaties.' It is hardly surprising that the Foreign Office did its best to keep a low profile after the 1963/4 crisis: it realized full well how shaky were those treaties. An analysis of Foreign Office papers reveals an embarrassing truth: the Foreign Office did indeed consider the treaties to be shaky and confusing. In diplomatic dealings and in the drawing up of treaties, precision is vital, as Harold Nicolson stresses in his celebrated book on diplomacy.58 It was the very imprecision of the 1960 treaties, both as individual treaties, but particularly collectively (in terms of their relationship one to the other), that proved to be the fundamental cause of the collapse of the constitutional house of cards. Enough has been said about the unworkability of the 1960 constitution, which depended on the Treaty of Establishment, more than half of it being devoted to the interests of an outside power, Britain. The Treaty of Alliance, signed by Cyprus, Greece and Turkey, was necessary for international window-dressing, but was to prove to be irrelevant, farcical even, since in 1974 Turkey invaded its 'ally', Cyprus. Most dangerous of all was the Treaty of Guarantee. It was particularly important to Turkey, and understandably so since, thanks to British efforts, she now had a stake in Cyprus, and since she had been on the defensive since the involvement of the UN. The question of national pride (a factor often overlooked by international relations theoreticians, with their cold mathematical formulae and models) was also important. The seeds of the invasion of Cyprus were sown in Article IV, which states: In the event of a breach of the present treaty, Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom undertake to consult together with respect to the representations or measures necessary to ensure observance of these provisions. In so far as common or concerted action may not prove possible, each of the three guaranteeing powers reserves the right to take action with the sole aim of re-establishing the state of affairs created by the present Treaty. Ominously, it was the Turkish government which insisted on inclusion of the second sentence of Article IV, since it gave it more leeway that it would otherwise have had, to invade Cyprus in 1974. Thanks to documents released by the British government, some somewhat reluctantly, we can state with a fair degree of certitude that Britain had no intention of honouring the Treaty of Guarantee. We have already seen how Britain agreed with the US not to intervene in 1964. Internal FO documents paint an expedient and often contradictory picture. In 1965, the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO) wrote to the Cabinet Office that if Australia and/or New Zealand were threatened 'we would be immediately involved.'59 Not so with fellow Commonwealth member Cyprus, however: an internal Cabinet memo in January 1966 discussed the niceties of the word 'obligation'

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and 'commitment/ pointing out that the word 'commitment,' though legally more specific, was still usable, since even the North Atlantic Treaty stipulation that an attack on one member should be regarded as an attack on all, did not commit members automatically to the use of armed force.60 The Cabinet then wrote to the CRO, scrutinizing the difference between using the adjectives 'moral' and 'political,' to question the word 'obligation.'61 This elicited the response that perhaps the phrase 'general obligations arising from common membership of the Commonwealth' could be used.62 The point about this convoluted correspondence is that it shows that Britain was keen to avoid any precise military commitment towards Cyprus, seeking to hide in semantically amorphous argumentation. The FO already recognized the weakness of the Treaty of Guarantee vis-a-vis the UN Charter, Article 103 of which reads: In the event of a conflict between the obligations of members of the United Nations under the present Charter and their obligations under any other international agreement, their obligations under the present Charter still prevail. It is therefore hardly surprising that when the question of Cyprus was being discussed increasingly in international fora after the 1963/4 crisis, the FO admitted the weakness of its position, writing to posts: But the questions on Art. 103 of the Charter and the Treaty of Guarantee are very difficult and the answer is not always favourable to our case. Certainly we could not expect posts to handle an argument on these questions successfully.63 In 1967, during the second major crisis, the FO asked the Law Officers' Department whether, under the Treaty of Guarantee, Britain was under any obligation to take unilateral action 'in the current situation,' that is, a possible invasion of Cyprus by Turkish forces. The law officers stated that no such obligation was imposed by the treaty, since Article IV only obliged the parties to consult. They then added that in the event of consultation proving impossible, there was no obligation to take unilateral action, since the Article only reserved the right to act.64 Thus, they were saying that reserving a right does not entail actually being obliged to use that right. Semantically, they were correct, but one is then entitled to ask what is the point of reserving a right if it is not acted on. This interpretation therefore renders the article almost meaningless. Another way in which the law officers played down the obligation to prevent a putative invasion was by saying that because the treaty was signed between Britain, Greece and Turkey on the one hand, and Cyprus on the other, the essence of the Treaty was really merely to prevent enosis or partition. This reduced Cyprus' status to that of a second-class citizen, were she to invoke the treaty in her self-defence. For good measure, the law officers then went on to say that the British government would be entitled to reject a request from Cyprus to the UK to protect it from attack, on the grounds of numerous breaches of the treaty committed by the Cyprus government.65 Even here, however, they were treading on

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thin legal ice: first, two wrongs do not make a right, even less a legal one; second, some of the alleged breaches, such as appointing Greek Cypriots to posts reserved for Turkish Cypriots, were necessary because of the Turkish Cypriots' inability to participate in the government, which had become the victim of an unworkable constitution in the first place. As the FO had done in 1964, the law officers admitted in 1967 that the same problems existed vis-a-vis Article 103 of the UN Charter, writing that the Cyprus government's contention that the Treaty of Guarantee was completely overridden by Article 103 was 'not without force,' but also adding that the Treaty was contrary to Article 2.4 of the UN Charter, which reads: All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner consistent with the purpose of the United Nations.66 The law officers concluded their deliberations by stating: The threatened invasion of Cyprus and any forcible intervention in Cyprus undertaken by the other guaranteeing powers without the consent of the Cyprus government might well be held to be forbidden by the Charter and thus to be unlawful even though committed in reliance on the Treaty of Guarantee. But forcible intervention in Cyprus by the United Kingdom or Greece at the request of the Cypriot government and to protect it against Turkish invasion would not be contrary to the Charter.67 From the somewhat tortuous reasoning, three pieces of advice seem to emerge: that no obligation was imposed to intervene in order to protect Cyprus from a threatened (Turkish) invasion; that Britain was obliged to request consultation without waiting for an invasion; and that the Treaty of Guarantee was contrary to the UN Charter because it appeared to envisage forcible intervention in Cyprus without the consent of the Cypriot government. The treaty was, then, a paper tiger, but a dangerous one. When the law officers' advice was considered by the FCO, the whole question was swept under the carpet, despite the objections of a senior officer. The official policy was to 'avoid becoming involved in questions about the effects of the provisions of the Treaty of Establishment and Guarantee, and the extent of our obligations under them.'68 Had Britain not wanted to retain land on Cyprus at independence, the absurdly complicated and unbalanced set of cratocidal treaties would not have been necessary, let alone the legalistic pirouetting about the treaties and the bases. The following FCO quote typifies the confused policy-formulation surrounding the whole question of Britain's responsibilities: Although our right to the base areas does not legally derive from the Treaty of Establishment and our retention of them is not legally dependent on the consent of the Cyprus Government, it would in practice be difficult for us to retain them should the Cyprus Government choose to promote an active campaign for their removal [...] If

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As if the complexities of the Treaty of Establishment and the validity of the Treaty of Guarantee were not enough to cope with, the interrelationship of the three treaties proved to be an even bigger headache for policy formulators. When the Cypriot government tried to pin down the British government on the Treaty of Guarantee, the latter not only recommended that the 'issue be dodged,'70 but that British sovereignty over the SBAs did 'not depend on any of the Treaties of I960.'71 Given that over half the Treaty of Establishment was devoted to Britain's interests, it is fantastic, even legalistically, to try and claim that the SBAs did not depend on the treaties, as if there were no connexion, when the whole pack of cards was predicated on Britain's maintaining its territories, at least privately. The British government appears to have been so sensitive about its position that it adopted a Steppenwolfish position, whereby it expediently combined avoidance of the issue when it was in the wrong (viz. the UN Charter and the selectivity about obligations arising from membership of the Commonwealth) with the claim that the Treaties were a single package. [...] The abandonment of our position on the Treaty of Guarantee would thus undermine our position on the rest of the 1960 settlement. In particular, it might one day be found to have prejudiced our position on the Treaty of Establishment as well, c) Even though our title to the Sovereign Base Areas does not depend on the Treaty of Guarantee or the Treaty of Establishment, the express provisions in those Treaties concerning the Sovereign Base Areas may still be of value to us in ensuring our untroubled occupation and use of the Areas. Moreover, anything which called the 1960 settlement as a whole into question could expose us to pressure on our moral (as distinct from legal) right to hang on to the Areas, d) Whether or not we have a direct interest in maintaining the Treaty of Guarantee, we could not openly abandon it without gravely upsetting Turkey.72 The whole question of the treaties must seem academic to some, especially when one remembers that following the 1963/64 crisis, the FO was considering giving an SBA to Turkey (admittedly as a last resort) and also considering enosis and double enosis, all of which were expressly forbidden in the Treaty of Guarantee.73 So much, then, for the FO's and the FCO's74 policy formulation. It appears not to have been coherent, confident or consistent and, as we have seen, Britain preferred to hide under American coat tails when it could, even though the US had - and has - no international legal locus standi regarding Cyprus. Interests, of course, the USA did and does have, at least from the Suez crisis onwards. In Kissinger's own words (see Chapter Three), Cyprus was simply a 'staging post' for the Middle East. Here, the theory of political realism/power politics is much in evidence, as is the connexion to geostrategy, that nice-sounding subset of geopolitics. We have diplomats looking

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at Cyprus in a cold and clinical way, where people, and their rights, are simply not part of their geopolitical equation. Yet we also saw the inclusion of moral considerations in the above quote, and the distinguishing of moral from legal rights, and therefore the use of normative theory, even if it was subconsciously done. Soviet and French Interests As we shall see, Cyprus is still a mere staging post for some. Although the US and Britain undoubtedly bear the lion's share of responsibility for Cyprus' contemporary situation, given Britain's colonial and meta-colonial machinations and its special relationship with the US in foreign and defence policy (bar the brief Edward Heath interlude), we should not conclude this chapter without bringing up to date two of Britain's main foreign policy bugbears within the Eastern Mediterranean context, the Soviet Union and France. British fear of Russian influence in the Mediterranean was, as we saw in Chapter Three, undoubtedly a prime consideration in its attitude towards Greece and its acquisition of Cyprus. By the end of the Fourth World War, this fear of Russia had transmogrified into fear of the Soviet Union, in a Cold War context. 'Trumanism' continued, influencing particularly the Greek army and the likes of Grivas, who can be aptly described as McCarthyist Manichean-minded children, at least ideologically. The Soviet position was fairly unequivocal: in July 1967, Tass stated: The 'Acheson Plan/ like other similar projects for a NATO solution to the Cyprus problem, is intended in the long run to convert the island into a place d' armes for the aggressive North Atlantic bloc against the Socialist States, the Arab countries and the national liberation movement [...] no one may interfere in the internal affairs of the Republic of Cyprus. Only the Cypriots themselves, both Greeks and Turks, have the right to decide their destiny.75 In April 1968, a British diplomat in Cyprus reported the views of a Soviet homologue: [...] they wanted a peaceful settlement and the withdrawal of all foreign troops, including the bases and direct talks between the parties on the island. If Britain insisted on maintaining the Zurich and London agreements, talks could not begin. He suggested that we were using Turkey to maintain these agreements [...] we, and particularly the Americans, were giving very substantial aid to Turkey [...] He laughed at the idea of Turkey having any sincere regard for their minority.76 Thus, the question of enosis apart, the Soviet Union's position was close to that of Makarios, although the motives were certainly not identical. The Soviet Union had always been against any strengthening of the NATO powers in the Eastern Mediterranean, which it saw as working against the interests of its Arab client states, and in favour of Israel. It quite rightly saw the 1960 treaties as strengthening the US-UK-Israel position, and was concerned at the British electronic spying facilities on Cyprus, and the entry of the US into the equation. Soviet support for Makarios

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was a natural corollary of US-British collaboration. Makarios' motives, while not as strategic as the USSR's, were to maintain the independence and integrity of Cyprus, free of any foreign interference, including that of NATO, whose presence was in fact established on the island through the SBAs, de facto if not dejure. Since enosis was now in any case forbidden in the Treaty of Guarantee, Makarios could no longer openly support it. The Soviet Union was however naturally against enosis, since this would strengthen NATO. It would only have supported enosis if Greece left NATO, or, at a pinch, adopted the French position, by leaving its integrated military structure. This latter action had of course been achieved by Gaullist France in 1966. President de Gaulle himself thought that Cyprus was not properly a state at all and should be returned to Greece,77 while the French government irritated Britain by setting up a powerful broadcasting station on Cyprus, not far from the Eastern SBA. French involvement, just as in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, (see Chapter Three) was not of course entirely altruistic, its main objectives being to assert its independent position vis-a-vis NATO, the US and Britain, and to become a major arms supplier to Greece. In the following chapter, we shall see how the Soviet and French roles continued to be a thorn in the side of the FCO. However, let us conclude by listing the sub-headings of this very chapter and trying to draw together the strands into a coherent idea, to see how these headings fit into international relations theory. The sub-headings are 'elginism,' 'collusion and division/ 'cratocide,' 'cat's-paw', 'revenge in Turkey,' 'the Colonels' coup,' 'low British profile,' 'prelude to invasion,' 'paper tiger treaties' and 'Soviet and French interests.' Conclusions The theories we have considered in the preceding chapters can be used to look at the Cyprus conundrum, and indeed at the problems of the Eastern Mediterranean region. Realism and its variants play a significant role, in that the interests of powerful states have been imposed on Cyprus and, to a lesser extent, Greece, and that the power of the state is the main focus in international relations. Geopolitics, as the study and/or use of the international distribution of power, clearly also plays a central role here. Indeed, the Cyprus situation demonstrates the close relationship between political realism and geopolitics. Yet this approach is of necessity a broad brush, and cannot properly take into account local particularities or the ability of small states to balance, or juggle with, big power interests. Nor are cultural and educational aspects, or the power of individuals, given their due weight. The realist perspective, contingent as it is on geopolitics, divides the world into regions, hence yet another 'ism,' regionalism, with its simplistic dividing lines, which can never be clear-cut. Indeed, it is often the overlapping areas of regions that present the biggest problems. Where, for example, does the Eastern Mediterranean region end, and the Middle East begin? When powerful states begin to apply their interests outside their own countries, they tend to try and expand their interests not only in particular regions, but also actually to expand certain regions themselves. For

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example, we now have a region called the 'Greater Middle East/ Does Cyprus lie in the Middle East or Eastern Mediterranean, or both? Politically, perhaps, it is part of the 'West,' but geographically perhaps not. In the marketing plans of the US multinationals, Greece itself is sometimes considered part of the Middle East. A (geopolitical) region, its name and its 'borders/ depend on the point of view of the wielders of power, which are of course rarely in tandem. Then we have the complexities of sub-regions. We can, at any rate, view our chapter sub-headings of 'elginism', 'collusion and division','cratocide' and 'cat's-paw', as the outcome of realism/power politics, where notional regional business borders clash with traditional ones based on geographical features,ethnicity, language, religion and, of course, law. By inserting political and ethical issues into the question (a normative approach), the main problem lies in whose morals, ethics and human characteristics are the norm? Is there, indeed, a norm of international politics and ethics that can be readily applied? Here, perhaps, our heading 'revenge in Turkey' applies: in other words, the Turkish reaction to the international strife in Cyprus was symptomatic of Turkish characteristics, but could not be applied to various other countries, since they might react in a different way. A structuralist might argue that our headings 'cratocide' and 'paper tiger treaties' reflect a necessary compromise resulting from the overall structure of relations between states. They might explain the treaties as a function of previous treaties, while a functionalist might criticize Britain's secret collusion with Turkey and the USA as going against the grain of the ideals of the United Nations. Whether, however, one is explaining or advocating through such prisms, they do not explain unexpected events or the human factor, in other words, greed, hope, national pride and related traits. One can level the same criticism at pluralism, while positivism, although it emphasizes people's preferences and desires in shaping international relations, does not look sufficiently at individuals' traits, yet still tries to establish patterns, a dangerous game, since the human mind cannot be managed like a computer, whether we are considering the individual or 'mass mind' (and the latter is but a vague concept). A positivist might explain the coup against Makarios (see following chapter) as part of a pattern resulting from the 'Colonels' coup.' Yet this would ignore a whole host of cultural and historical factors, as well as the secret machinations of other powers. Similarly, both dependency theory and world systems analysis tend to use broad brushes, painting over unpredictable events and local particularities. Modernization theorists, by arbitrarily explaining international relations through an inevitable process of (mainly) economic development, might claim that Turkey will be as strong as Germany in twenty years. On the other hand, who could have predicted that Argentina, once one of the world's richest countries, would tumble so fast later on? While recognizing that a whole book could be written on each theory's relations with Greece, Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean (and the analysis here is necessarily cursory), we can see that they have certain limitations both in their ability to

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explain and to advocate. We are merely attempting to provoke, and find a common approach that transcends, but does not necessarily negate, any of the above. One of the greatest problems is that most theorists are dealing with contemporary matters, but do not have access to the backstage realities of international relations, which are hidden in secret documents, some of which may - or may not - be released thirty or more years hence. Thus they are forced to assume and speculate. Even though they usually take history into account, sometimes cherry-picking, history is not their essential focus. How then to explain the events documented in this chapter? One of the characteristics of human nature is unpredictability, to the extent of saying that unpredictability is predictable: we know that something (but not exactly what) will happen, but rarely when. Indeed, if we knew when, then it would no longer be unpredictable. Within the panoply of traits of the human character lie those such as pride, fear, insecurity, sexual lust, aggression, frustration, hope, greed, kindness, selflessness and envy. These traits, as well as the unpredictability of human nature, whether individual, group, national or international, are essentially immutable. As such, then, they are constants. Unpredictability lies in the relationship between the various traits of character and how they relate to the environment in which they find themselves. The difficulty lies not so much in identifying various traits, but in knowing how they will manifest themselves: there are always factors beyond people's control, such as an earthquake, discovery of a new oil-field, illness, a new and very deadly nuclear pistol, or even an up-and-coming ideology. Behaviour per se can be predicted with some confidence, only its timing cannot: people and countries will always want and hope for something (even nihilists apparently hope for nothing), and, by and large, seek peace or war. Beyond that, prediction can be difficult: Mr. George Bush, Jr. and Mr. Tony Blair, for example, often ranted about peace and freedom, yet appeared to achieve war and captivity. Predicting what people want and feel is fairly simple, because it has always been so; but delving into their minds to know how they will want and feel is problematic, complicated by unexpected events and by their own complexities of character and personality, plus the forces which influence their very traits of anger, hope and other emotions. No number of paradigms and models will do more than skim the surface of trying to predict human behaviour, whether at individual, home, village, town, national or international level. Even explaining it is difficult, particularly since casuists will sometimes disguise justification in explanation. Why did an exhaustively trained American marine shoot an unarmed Iraqi toddler in the head? Was it merely anger? Was he obeying orders? Was he trying to improve the world? Was he simply evil? Trying to explain things in limited, rational terms can perhaps sometimes be misguided: some international relations theorists suffer from an excess of logic. Like many a scientist, they are enslaved into explaining in rational terms: if they try to escape from this on to some higher, less rational plane, then they still depend on

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the rational as a reference point (from which to escape), and will thereby run the danger of inadvertently indulging in humbug. Perhaps the answer lies in the basic and unavoidable, and in the immutability of the human condition: the human factor, so often ignored by theorists. Can change exist? Insofar as it means 'becoming what you are not/ it cannot, since even transformation depends on the original. Substitution, reshaping, addition, subtraction and many other words represent processes, which perhaps better describe what we so often blandly and imprecisely describe as change. Development is perhaps a word that encompasses the above words, something inexorable and therefore wholly predictable, but again not in terms of when and how. This inexorability nevertheless represents stability. Thus, we can say that we learn from history how to repeat our mistakes: the same traits continue, the same mistakes and successes. Should this appear too deterministic for some, then we have Guicciardini's above-mentioned dictum that things have always been the same, nothing changes and that things return with different colours. If we accept this knowledge, then perhaps it is possible to learn from history, but only if the immediate, short-term objective is subsumed into the long-term one. If things return with different colours, then the answer lies in the methods we use, the 'colours.' In the case of Cyprus, that laboratory and microcosm of power politics/realism, geopolitics and geostrategy, it is easier to understand 'elginism,' 'collusion and division' and 'the Colonels' coup' in terms of history and knowledge of human characteristics, than in terms of any single international relations theory, or amalgam thereof. In this sense, a geohistorical approach is useful. Then becomes now. Thus, if one goes backwards, rather than forwards, in explaining, and in seeking solutions (provided that we all agree on what the problems are), perhaps things will calm down. One final factor to which not enough attention has been paid is that of the traits of the theorists themselves: are they mainly privileged, educated people; entirely dispassionate in their thinking; and influenced by their own ambitions? Another book could be written about that, but the thought needs to be inserted, as it, too, fits into geohistory. We turn now to the Turkish invasion. We shall see that the same things continued to return with different colours. Then was and is now.

THE INVASION AND CALLAGHAN'S ACQUIESCENCE

Obviously the Turks will carry on until they have this line that they have figured out on the mapy and cynically, lets hope they get it quickly.

James Callaghan to Henry Kissinger, 14 August 1974.

Introduction Relations between the pro-American Greek junta and the independent-minded Makarios had always been uneasy, not helped by an attempt on the latter's life in March 1970, almost certainly engineered by extremist elements in Athens.1 By the end of 1972, there was no love lost between Makarios on the one hand, and Washington, Ankara and, to a lesser extent, London, on the other. Makarios relied to a considerable extent on his skilful exploitation of the Soviet factor and on his national and international charisma. Let us repeat the British High Commissioner's words: Although Makarios remains supremely self-confident and believes that time is on his side, the threat of a Turkish invasion remains. The backdrop of the intercommunal talks, which have been the symbol of the benign stalemate which has suited our interests so well for the past three years [1968-71], obliges us to face the prospect that this stalemate may now be turning malignant.2

Following the death of the urbane and moderate civilian Greek Foreign Minister, Pipinelis, the power of the more extreme head of the Military Police, Brigadier Ioannidis (one of the original planners of the military takeover) increased behind the scenes: General Grivas returned to Cyprus,3 to complicate life for Makarios: despite this, the latter was prepared to give him a place in his government, provided he had him 'under his thumb'.4 The British government, which had considered Grivas as its main enemy in the run-up to Cyprus' qualified independence (thousands of British soldiers had even failed to catch him), had by now adopted a more equivocal stance. There were in fact secret communications between the British High Commission and Grivas, via the latter's right-hand-man, Eliades, as

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we briefly mentioned in the previous chapter. In early 1972, the British High Commissioner told the FCO that a message from Grivas stated that should Britain help him achieve enosisy the British bases would be safe, because they 'would be used for the defence of the free world'.5 The British High Commissioner wrote: Not only is it possible that we may one dayfindourselves obliged to deal openly with Grivas, but it is already important at this stage to encourage him, so far as possible, to keep a relatively open mind about the future of the Sovereign Base Areas.6 As for various theories that Grivas might even have collaborated with the British, the British government, despite the so-called Freedom of Information Act, retains bits of various files, including one entitled: 'The Cyprus problem and General Grivas'.7 Thus for now we have to be satisfied with the mere certainty that by the early 70s, Britain was more flexible towards Grivas than hitherto. Former enemies are often rehabilitated: George Washington, Menachem Begin (connected to the killing of Count Bernadotte and others), Yasser Arafat and Gerry Adams are just a few examples of rebels and supporters of violence who have gained official respectability.8 Britain's policy was nevertheless to keep as low a profile as it could vis-a-vis the Cyprus troubles, justified within the FCO by a private admission that British direct involvement in helping Makarios present his Thirteen Points in 1963 had contributed to the intercommunal troubles.9 The two-stage Turkish invasion of Cyprus in the summer of 1974 can be seen as the culmination of the Ball/Acheson plan of 1964 (see previous chapter), which had attempted to impose a NATO-friendly double-enosis solution on Cyprus, and which was rejected out of hand by Makarios. The trigger - and immediate cause - of the invasion was the Ioannidis-inspired coup overthrowing Makarios, on 15 July 1974, which enabled Turkey to invoke the Treaty of Guarantee. But there was rather more to it than that. The main points to have emerged from the documents are: the British government's foreknowledge of Turkish plans through the Joint Intelligence Committee; its admission that legally, it was bound to take joint action with Turkey to restore constitutional order; its military dithering; its indignation at Turkish behaviour, leading nevertheless to acquiescence and final agreement with the USA's objectives; Kissinger's doublesided dealings and expressed procrastination to afford the Turkish government and military the time needed to fulfill its objectives; attempts to keep Makarios out of the picture; fear — often used as an excuse to help Turkey — of the Soviet Union; pressure - bordering on diplomatic threats - on both the junta and the Karamanlis government not to defend Cyprus against the Turks; high level French irritation at British stonewalling in the face of the French government's efforts to become involved diplomatically; the US Ambassador, Tasca's, anger at the Turkish government; strong suspicions that the Greek Prime Minister, Karamanlis, did not wish Makarios to return to Cyprus; and British doubts about the viability of keeping the Sovereign Base Areas.

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Diplomatic 'Piggy-Backing' The putschists struck in Cyprus on 15 July. The British government, obviously rattled by a clear violation of the Treaty of Guarantee and intelligence reports of Turkish military movements, considered various courses of action. While President Makarios was in the very process of being escorted by the British to safety, the FCO legal advisers were writing that the Turkish request for joint action appeared to be a legitimate one, and that the Treaty authorized 'the Turks to take unilateral action,' if joint action were refused.10 As a guarantor power, Britain was clearly obliged to continue to recognize Makarios, since it could hardly apply its usual criterion of 'having effective control of a country' to recognize a regime that had taken over in violation of a settlement which it itself had guaranteed. Such legal constraints did not of course apply to the US, whose foreign policy was essentially in Kissinger's pocket, particularly since the Watergate scandal was coming to a head. Since Britain's intelligence services knew of a likely Turkish invasion (and had informed the FCO),11 so, of course, did the Americans. Communication between Kissinger and the British Foreign Secretary, Callaghan, was fast and furious. Kissinger told the latter on 16 July that he 'was concerned to avoid legitimizing the new regime in Cyprus for as long as possible' but that he 'was concerned to keep other powers from becoming involved in the situation for as long as possible.'12 In a typical bout of diplomatic 'piggy-backing,' Callaghan actually asked Kissinger to give careful thought to what 'might be done with President Makarios.'13 Earlier that day, Callaghan had agreed that Makarios could be flown to 'the Sovereign Base Areas,' suggesting that he then be put on a warship, rather than being flown to Britain.14 In the event, Makarios was flown to Malta, arriving there the same evening. Although Makarios wished to fly straight on to London, he was 'persuaded' to stay the night, not leaving until the next morning. Part of this persuasion included the specious and false reason 'that the aircraft had one or two problems.'15 Although not yet proven, it is likely that Britain and the US (or rather, Kissinger) were manically 'co-coordinating' their positions, and that they needed Makarios out of the way, even if only for a few hours. Certainly, he would have been an embarrassment if he had been in immediate contact with the United Nations, where Britain and the US were frenetically doing their best to avoid a resolution calling on Britain to exercise her right to intervene militarily. Perhaps trickily for the British government, the UN Secretary General, Waldheim, told the British Ambassador to the UN that 'the promise of British military power being deployed would lead to a swift Greek withdrawal and probably the collapse of the Nicosia regime.'16 The Ambassador reported in a telegram to the FCO that there were moves in the Security Council to try to get agreement on a resolution which would 'fall well short of what Makarios would like before he [Makarios] got to New York.'17 At the same time, in a 'Top Secret' memorandum, the Deputy Under Secretary of State at the FCO, Killick, wrote that the Ministry of Defence (MOD) thought that it would probably be militarily possible to restore Makarios to power, but that the MOD would probably want to 'put in a lot more' as an insurance.18 Killick also wrote, perhaps ominously, that 'continued support for Makarios in circumstances in which we

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could not effectively restore him to power would prevent us from establishing the working relations with the regime effectively in control which we would need in order to maintain the SBAs [Sovereign Base Areas]'.19 He continued: 'Makarios outside Cyprus might move closer to the Soviet Union and the latter would be in a position to exploit this situation in the Eastern Mediterranean area.'20 This suggests that at this early stage, the British government was in a quandary about what to do, yet was nevertheless using an alleged Soviet threat as a reason to support Makarios' return, if it had to. The Quandary Continues Despite the FCO's legal advice (above) that the Turkish request for joint action appeared to be legitimate, the British were keeping their options open. A crucial meeting was held at 10, Downing Street after dinner on Wednesday 17 July, attended by the British and Turkish Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers and high level officials. The Turkish Prime Minister, Mr. Ecevit's, view was that the Sampson coup constituted a violation of international relations, and that if the new regime were allowed to take root, it would amount to no more than an extension of the one in Greece; in other words, the situation was one of 'unnamed enosis? Mr. Ecevit then requested that Britain show its solidarity with Turkey by allowing the latter to send her armed forces to Cyprus through the British bases, failing which the alternative was unilateral action. Despite the legal advice (above) that if joint action were refused, Turkey could take unilateral action, this latter possibility was not raised by the British at this meeting; quite to the contrary, the Foreign Secretary refused to offer use of the British bases and pushed the Turks to support a meeting of the guarantor powers, including, therefore Greece. Despite several attempts, Ecevit stonewalled, claiming that he had had no luck when he had spoken to the Greek Prime Minister, Androutsopoulos, in Brussels. The British Prime Minister, Mr. Wilson, then pointedly asked Mr. Ecevit whether his problem in sitting down with the Greeks was a political one with his own parliament. Revealingly, Ecevit conceded that this 'was one factor.' Clearly, at this stage, the British were keen to go by the book and restore constitutional order as per the Treaty of Guarantee, while the Turks were stonewalling. Indeed, at the meeting, the latter refused even to recognize Greece as a guarantor power. Wilson rejected a Turkish request for a Turko-British statement condemning Greece (the Greek government had vehemently denied any involvement in the Sampson coup, and evidence suggesting the contrary had not yet emerged), stating that this 'would not be the right prelude to a tripartite meeting.' The meeting broke up at 12:30 on the morning of 18 July without agreement, let alone a joint communique.21 The British were simply not prepared to stick their necks out and play cricket according to rules of the treaties that they had signed. Kissinger's 'idiosyncrasies' and British Acquiescence Meanwhile, Kissinger was active on the telephone, one of his favourite diplomatic tools. In a revealing comment on his modus operandi, the British Ambassador to

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Washington, Ramsbotham, wrote after a telephone conversation with Kissinger on 17 July: My conversation with Kissinger was apparently not recorded in the State Department, and we have just received the somewhat bizarre request that we should give the gist of it to Sisco [the US Assistant Secretary of State who was to shuttle furiously from capital to capital, firefighting] before he leaves for London [...] I fear it is all too likely, given Kissinger's idiosyncratic methods of working, that he may not record the telephonic conversation he has with the Secretary of State. I hope therefore that you can arrange for the gist of these to be telegraphed to me as soon as possible [...] otherwise, improbable though it may seem, I fear there will be a danger of both the State Department, and this Embassy working in the dark with all the resultant risks of confusion and misunderstanding.22

This illustrates the danger of one-man shows in diplomacy; not only was Kissinger not a trained diplomat, but he often by-passed the proper channels of communication, thereby obfuscating his own privately agreed agendas. It is however the telephone conversation referred to above that reveals Kissinger's agenda: Kissinger seemed puzzled as to why we were working to move so quickly and in such absolute support of Makarios [...] it was surely a mistake to commit ourselves now to Makarios and thus narrow our options when it was far from certain that Makarios could return to power. Kissinger was also concerned at the line we were taking about the withdrawal of Greek officers in the National Guard. Whatever role they had been playing, they had at least acted as a force against communist infiltration in Cyprus. Kissinger was clearly suspicious that Makarios, returned to power in those circumstances, would not hesitate to regard the Russians as his saviours and allow an already strong communist party to gain further strength [...] he hoped we could agree to play the hand more slowly.23

This shows clearly that Kissinger was playing for time; trying to keep Makarios out of the picture; and, crucially, supporting the National Guard, when it had itself spearheaded the coup. He disagreed with the British view that the Greek officers in the National Guard should be withdrawn. Here, the reason was clear: to encourage Turkey to invade. Interestingly, unlike the FCO, which was of the view that Makarios outside Cyprus might move closer to the Soviet Union,24 Kissinger apparently thought the precise opposite, namely that if restored to power, Makarios would regard the Soviet Union as his saviours. Whether Kissinger genuinely believed this, or was using the 'Communist threat' argument to prolong the crisis, must be left to you, the reader. In any event, he now clearly had doubts about Sampson's credibility, and wanted Clerides (the President of the Cypriot Parliament) to take over from Makarios.25 All this was happening while Turkey was blatantly preparing to invade Cyprus, without any tri-partite talks. Kissinger's delaying tactics, before, during and following the invasion are brought into bizarre relief in a message he sent to Callaghan just after the Turkish landing on the night of 19 to 20 July:

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CYPRUS [...] here is the message you and I discussed. It is for your scrapbook. I was about to send it to you when our Ottoman friends cut loose [...] it is essential that we work closely together in all of this so that we do not set in motion any train of events before we have a precise view of what we want to achieve [...] if pressure from the outside should be brought to bear to restore Makarios, this will only solidify the regime in Athens.26

Apart from the obvious stalling tactics, the argument that Makarios' return would 'solidify the regime in Athens' is particularly specious, since it could equally be argued that Makarios' return would hasten the regime's downfall. In any case, firstly, Kissinger gave no reasoning to support his contention and, secondly, the regime was on the point of collapse, regardless of Makarios' position. As it was, Constantine Karamanlis, in 'exile' in Paris, must already have been making preparations to return to Athens. Two days after the Turkish invasion, Kissinger was, bizarrely, still doing all he could to allow the Turkish military as much breathing and attacking space as possible: on 22 July, he telephoned Callaghan at 5:00 p.m. (GMT), only nine hours before Sampson resigned, to say that the Americans did not want Sampson as the final outcome, but that before they turned on him they wanted to see what the 'general package looked like.'27 Even more blatantly, when Ramsbotham asked Kissinger on 23 July 'how he saw the next moves,' the latter replied that he would like to procrastinate until he could see clearly how the forces were balanced. By this time, notwithstanding the differences of opinion on Makarios' status, the British government was moving into tandem with Kissinger: Ramsbotham told Kissinger that the British government approach (to the impending conference in Geneva) was similar to the USA's.28 Even on the question of restoring Makarios to power, the British were not sticking to their guns, particularly since their High Commission in Nicosia had reported that the local repercussions of Makarios re-establishing himself in Cyprus as president 'would be extremely dangerous.'29 This judgment had of course been made while Sampson and the National Guard were still in control. Nevertheless, the British appear to have been happy to let the Americans make the running. French Irritation and Russian Games France quite correctly suspected that the Anglo-Saxon alliance was in full swing. The French Foreign Minister, Sauvagnargues, told Callaghan on the eve of the Turkish invasion that the Americans had told them that their main objective was to avoid unilateral Turkish action and the possibility of giving the Russians a pretext to invade. Despite this, according to Sauvagnargues, the Americans were against having a resolution in the Security Council asking for the withdrawal of the Greek officers. Even more to the point, Sauvagnargues told Callaghan that while the French felt that the Americans should exert strong pressure on the Greeks, they were not sure that they were in fact doing so. Particularly pertinently, Sauvagnargues said that the French Embassy in London had had some difficulty in obtaining

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information from the FCO in the previous two days.30 It appears, then, that the US, but Kissinger in particular, had a double agenda. The first was to pay lip service to the French and others, claiming that unilateral Turkish action must be avoided, while the second was to make it as easy as possible for Turkey to invade. It appears that the FCO colluded in this. We shall see this more specifically below. The French were duped by Kissinger: to tell them that the main objective was to stop the Turks acting unilaterally, while contriving to do the opposite, was simply 'double-track diplomacy', at best, or double-faced, at worst. As for the fear that the Soviet Union would invade Cyprus, this appears to have been more of an excuse than a genuine fear: Kissinger had already come to an agreement with Moscow. In fact, only two days earlier, Kissinger had told Ramsbotham that one need not worry about the possibility 'of a movement by the Russians [sic] and the non-aligned in the Security Council to condemn the Greeks/31 If Kissinger was equanimous about the mere threat of a condemnation, he is unlikely to have believed that the Soviet Union would come to the aid of Cyprus, unless it thought that Cyprus itself (as opposed to the British bases) would be forced into the 'Western camp/ The Soviets were against enosis, single or double, since that would have gone against their interests in the Eastern Mediterranean. Kissinger had obviously reassured the Soviet Union, but may well have deceived it about the actual extent of Turkish territorial plans. As a result of Kissinger's stalling tactics, the Turkish armed forces were able to continue their advance with impunity after the so-called ceasefire, agreed to take effect on 22 July. For the Turkish government, and for Kissinger, the ceasefire was somewhat academic, and the Turkish attack even continued during the AngloGreek-Turkish talks in Geneva, from 25 to 30 July. On 25 July, the British High Commissioner in Nicosia, Olver, was reporting about Turkish reinforcements, and the Turkish consolidation of various areas, adding (perhaps a touch naively, given Kissinger's position), that 'the results of such flagrant violations could be politically very serious/32 The US Ambassador in Athens, Tasca, was already 'highly incensed at Turkish duplicity,' describing Turkish conduct as 'outrageous,' particularly since the Turkish government had inordinately delayed clearance for Sisco's flight to Ankara.33 The temporary agreement signed in Geneva to 'cease hostilities' appears to have been merely theoretical for the Turkish government: on 4 August, only four days before the next round of talks in Geneva, an angry Callaghan wrote to Ecevit: I am increasingly disturbed by reports from several sources reaching me from Cyprus that villagers [Greek Cypriot] are being evicted from their houses in the Kyrenia area controlled by you and your armed forces and that their men are being held as hostages [...] I can assure you that Her Majesty's Government will continue to exercise their influence to ensure that both communities are treated with humanity. Otherwise I fear that we shall get nowhere at the next round in Geneva.34

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Pressure on Greece, British Indignation, further Stalling and the Big Attack As early as 20 July, following the Turkish invasion, Kissinger had instructed his Ambassador to tell the Greek government that if they carried out their threat to declare war on Turkey and announce enosis, the US would immediately cut off military aid.35 The most intense pressure, however, was applied on the new Karamanlis government, following the 'second' Turkish invasion on the night of 14 August: in a curiously Kissingeresque message to Karamanlis, Callaghan stated: The arrival of the Greek forces [in Cyprus], whatever their purpose, would increase the risk of further Turkish forces being sent to the island and of those already there moving yet further forward. It would almost certainly lead to murderous assaults on Greek Cypriots in the area now held by the Turkish armed forces. It would also raise the spectre of a disastrous extension of the fighting outside Cyprus, with little prospect of outside intervention to protect the interests of Greece.36 Diplomatically, this was a clear threat to Greece that if it went to the help of Cyprus, it would get no support, even if Greek territory were itself threatened. This, combined with the American threat to the previous Greek government, was tantamount to condoning Turkish aggression. It is not surprising that even today Greek governments, and especially the Greek media, are suspicious of American (and British) policies vis-a-vis Cyprus. The British did at least consider their military options, since they were fully aware of the duplicitous Turkish position at the Geneva talks. A top secret Ministry of Defence memorandum of 10 August to Callaghan stated: The Turkish army is looking for an excuse to continue operations f...] I have asked for an urgent assessment by the Chief of Staff of those forces which could be made available for reinforcement and the likely timescales but I believe that there could be no question of offering the extra 5,000 men postulated without reducing force levels in Northern Ireland and withdrawing units from BAOR [British Army of the Rhine]. The build-up would take, I would assess, up to a fortnight and I would not be surprised if the Chief of Staff would wish to include air defences in the face of the considerable threat from the Turkish Air Forces.37 The same day, British defence officials in Geneva, in a top secret telegram to the FCO, reported that Callaghan was 'most concerned at the hard line attitude being adopted by the Turkish delegation at Geneva and the strong indications that they would soon attempt a major breakout.' He continued: The [UNFICYP] force would have to be large enough and so armed as to give a good account of itself, but I have emphasised that deterrence is all we could hope for and that any question of holding the Turks is out of the question with the estimated Turkish force levels and in the face of Turkish air [sic] [...] Foreign Secretary has asked that Phantoms be held at Akrotiri [...] It would be most useful if I could have an idea of what reinforcements could be made available and in what time scale.38

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Notwithstanding all this backstage contingency planning, the negotiations continued in Geneva, culminating in the big Turkish attack on 14 August. Only two days before the attack, Kissinger had told Callaghan that he had told the Greek Foreign Minister, Mavros, to delay his desired visit to see him until 'this round of talks was over'.39 This was yet another sign that Kissinger was not interested in welcoming the Greek Foreign Minister to Washington at a time when the Turkish takeover of one third of the island was imminent. Such a visit would have made a major Turkish attack politically very difficult. American policy was not to use military means against the Turks, even 'in the event of a major infringement of the ceasefire line'.40 The Turkish government clearly thought, correctly, that they could break the ceasefire, and take a third of the island: It follows that, while the Turks could not justifiably claim to have American approval for their position, particularly now that they have startedfightingagain, they could reasonably gamble that American disapproval would not be so forceful as to compel them to stop.41 Extraordinarily, Callaghan asked Kissinger to ask Ecevit how far south the Turks were planning to advance; Kissinger claimed that he was 'unable to get through/ and that he had asked the US Ambassador in Ankara to ask on his behalf.42 Kissinger knew very well roughly how far south the Turks were planning to advance. At any event, the British government had clearly now finally succumbed to US policy, whatever its self-righteous indignation about Turkish behaviour. Extracts from a telephone conversation between Kissinger and Callaghan reveal the cynical collusion surrounding the 'second Turkish invasion' in the early hours of 14 August. Foreign Secretary Well, I was just thinking - 1 think in military terms, obviously the Turks will carry on until they get this line that they havefiguredout on the map, and cynically, let's hope they get it quickly. Dr. Kissinger Iagree[...] Foreign Secretary [...] You're not going to act, we're not going to act militarily and the UN is going to get out of the way. Dr. Kissinger O.K. Why don't we let the thing sit there for a day and see how it looks tomorrow morning.

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CYPRUS Foreign Secretary Now as regards Greece and Turkey, it is Greece who will need massaging because the Turks are too jingoistic, too close to Hitler for my liking. All right?43

More revealingly, at 11:30 (GMT) on the night of 14 August, when Callaghan asked Kissinger whether he would be prepared to attend a NATO ministerial meeting if he called one, Kissinger agreed 'as long as it was not held before Monday 19 August.*44 This blatant delaying tactic on Kissinger's part reveals above all how desperate he was to give the Turkish government as much time as possible to achieve its objectives. Britain was now toeing the US line. Callaghan was not even prepared to meet Karamanlis 'before he (Karamanlis) had talked to the Americans.*45 Britain was now clearly playing second fiddle to the US as regards Cyprus. To illustrate this more clearly, the following report of (yet another) telephone conversation, on 15 August, between Kissinger and Callaghan, reveals Kissinger's studiously and expediently dilatory approach: [...] I [Callaghan] expressed my concern about Turkey's intentions in the rest of the Aegean [...] Had the Americans thought what they would do in the event of Turkey trying to capitalise outside Cyprus [...] Kissinger said he would crack down on the Turks in those circumstances. I told him that I was not sure that we could wait until the Turks acted. If for instance they created a situation where the de facto position of the island resulted in enosis, whether double or otherwise, the consequences could only be unfortunate. An alliance between Makarios and Papandreou would result in a neutralist government in Greece. Kissinger said that he would ask his staff to do a study of the issues I had raised .46

The Day After Kissinger and Ecevit are well known to have said fairly recently that the Cyprus problem was solved in 1974. Given the confused and dangerous situation that exists today, it is unlikely that any level-headed and moderate observer would agree with Kissinger and Ecevit. As regards theory, and Kissinger's much vaunted political realism and his obsession with geopolitics, we see in the foregoing how realism actually works in practice. In this sense, the Cyprus situation serves as a good example of how human beings intent on pursuing the perceived interests of their state will often have a second agenda. That certainly applies to Kissinger. We also see how Britain gave in to US policy objectives with hardly a murmur. (In the following chapter, we shall see how British foreign policy was virtually subsumed in that of the US). As regards Cyprus, we can say that in terms of international relations theory, it was not only a victim of power politics, but an example of dependency theory in operation. Before we conclude this brief account, it is worth looking at some of the documents written after the Turks had consolidated their illegal occupation.47 The first point to emerge was Kissinger's continuing - but failed - attempts to keep

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Makarios out of the picture. At a lunch on 10 September, Kissinger told Edward Heath, the British Conservative opposition leader, that Archbishop Makarios was unlikely ever to be acceptable again in Cyprus; 'it was the fear that he might have sought Soviet support in addition to their own which had restrained the Americans from backing him more clearly in the first day of the crisis."48 By mid-November, however, Kissinger had given up trying to prevent Makarios's return. Not long before the latter's return, he wrote in a second letter to Callaghan: It is clear that Makarios is not in touch with the realities of the situation on the island and I am not sure that there is very much that we can do at this stage to open his eyes. As you indicate, Makarios will be consulting Caramanlis and Clerides in Athens after the Greek elections. We are told that Caramanlis is opposed to Makarios* return [...] I am not sure that Caramanlis will be in a position to prevent Makarios' return [...] Hopefully, Makarios can be convinced of the new realities on the island and the need not to compromise the fragile but essential Clerides-Denktash negotiations.49 Apart from the arrogant assumption that Makarios - of all people - was not in touch with the realities on the island, the negotiations were themselves little more than window-dressing. The British High Commission in Nicosia, reported in November: I understand that matters may be reaching a stage where Clerides feels he must challenge Denktash's status as interlocuteur va/abk in view of his invariable habit of referring proposals to the Turkish govt. / military and the almost total lack of response so far.50 Then, as now, it is obvious that the illegally occupied part of Cyprus had no independence vis-a-vis Ankara, and could only take any initiative with the permission of the Turkish government. As for the continued Turkish contention that they invaded to protect Turkish Cypriots, it is significant that after the invasion, Denktash admitted to the British High Commissioner that there was no provocation of the Turkish Cypriot community by the Greek Cypriots during the coup. The only Turkish Cypriot casualties that the British were aware of during the coup were 'one killed and two or three wounded by stray shots in the Kaimakli area, a highly confused northern suburb of Kyrenia, which was the centre of some fierce inter-factional exchanges during the coup.'51 Most damningly, the British officials closest to the machinations surrounding the Turkish invasion saw through the whole scheme: The prospect of Turkish military intervention continued to gather strength during 19 Jul. It began with an overnight flurry of telegrams reinforcing the view that Turkey was not prepared to tolerate or even negotiate about the continuance of the Government of National Salvation and was fast talking herself into military intervention to protect the allegedly beleaguered Turkish Cypriot community. That they were in fact in no danger and that Turkey had no genuine pretext for military intervention is well illustrated by Mr. Olver's telegram.52

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As for Kissinger, he continued to maintain a keen interest in Turkey, as well as in Cyprus. On 19 December, he wrote to Callaghan: I found Congressional feeling running strongly against a resumption of military assistance to Turkey. We [who, exactly?] have however succeeded in reaching an agreement with key members of Congress which will permit us to resume and continue military shipments to Turkey at least until February 5. This will permit a contact between Clerides and Denktash.53 Here we see more about the nature of Kissinger's relationship with the Turkish government, and evidence that the latter was cynically using the issue of arms supplies as a bargaining chip in the 'negotiations' between Clerides and Denktash. Here, too, further seeds were being planted for the future 'Annan' plan. Britain, the US and Kissinger were all pushing for a 'bi-regional federation/ an idea which would 'disappoint Karamanlis.' 54 Bi-regional federation or not, Britain's essential obsession was of course with the territory that it had taken from Cyprus in 1960, the Sovereign Base Areas. A meeting at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office well before the invasion had already referred to Graeco-Turkish collusion as a threat to the long-term viability of the bases.55 Just one month after the Turkish invasion, British doubts about their bases seem to have been far deeper: a brief for the Foreign Secretary's meeting with Kissinger stated: If Dr. Kissinger raises it [the subject of British tenure of the Sovereign Base Areas], he intends to be guarded. If necessary, he could say that, during the recent crisis, our presence in the Sovereign Base Areas proved on balance to be an embarrassment to us. If pressed to say what conclusions he draws from this, he could say that the future of the Bases will probably be discussed in the context of the Defence Review, but that action on this has of course been suspended until after the election. As Dr. Kissinger knows, we shall wish to talk to the Americans about plans on a worldwide basis before we talk to anyone else.56 Before concluding, a final mention of the French connexion is relevant here, in that the US and Britain were still worried about the future direction a Greek government might take, particularly in terms of arms sales, always a major factor to consider in international relations, especially since Eisenhower's warning in 1961 about the unwarranted influence of the 'military-industrial complex.' The British Embassy wrote in October: In some groups, notably the middle rank followers of the junta, views on external relations seem to have become so anti-American and anti-Western as to overlay fear of Communism. The Cyprus crisis can only have seemed to swell the numbers of those who so consider that Greece can stand alone - perhaps with France as arms supplier.57

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Conclusions British-American collaboration vis-a-vis the Cyprus crisis of 1974 is clearly not an example of honest diplomacy, depicting, as it does, not merely the duplicity and hidden agendas of Kissinger and Ecevit, but also major erosion of Britain's independence of action vis-a-vis the US, something that is particularly evident today. In this connexion, Britain's disinclination to work with the French is particularly apparent. Not only did the FCO refuse to let the French know what was happening at crucial moments (Britain was still smarting from the setting up of a French 'broadcasting station' in Cyprus),58 but worked essentially with the Americans, who had no legal locus standi vis-a-vis Cyprus. Despite previous US anger at Britain's refusal to send troops to Vietnam, the US got their quid pro quo when the British government leased Diego Garcia to the US for fifty years, giving in to the American insistence that Britain expel its own subjects from the island as part of the deal. (This contrasts vividly with Britain's enormous military investment in 'saving' the Falkland islanders a few years later). Like Diego Garcia, Cyprus was - and is - for the British and Americans simply a military strongpoint. The Cypriots were merely 'collateral damage.' Despite the British government's private admission that joint action was called for when the 'Sampson' coup took place, Britain preferred to hide behind the US at the end of the day, whatever its private indignation. One ingredient missing from the crisis was of course the 'Grivas factor.' It is indeed speculation, but it is nevertheless possible that the wily general would have been more circumspect had he still been around; but he had died in January 1974, rather unexpectedly, given the British High Commissioner's report, only one month earlier, that the Cypriot doctors with whom he had discussed Grivas' physical and mental condition were inclined to believe that he was genuinely suffering from cancer of the prostate, but that apparently this was not a disease which necessarily made rapid progress. In fact, they said that Grivas could have a good two years of activity yet.59 Clearly, predicting is a tricky business: in January 1974, the High Commissioner wrote: '[...] I should expect Cyprus at the end of 1974 to be much the same sunny, Western-inclined island that she is now.'60 A final comment can be made regarding the US's attitude towards the Greek government (s) during the crisis. At the beginning, Kissinger did everything possible not to put pressure on the Greek junta to withdraw the Greek officers from the Cypriot National Guard. His motive was clearly to add fuel to the Turkish government's rationale that it must invade. Then, when the Turks had landed, Kissinger, in an amazing transmogrification, pulled out all the stops to prevent the (new) Greek government from acting against the invasion. The story of the backstage double-dealings surrounding the invasion shows the realities of the political realism pursued by the likes of Kissinger, realities either too embarrassing, or unknown, to many international relations theorists. The invasion is a clear example of power politics that went over the top, since although it resulted in a continuous series of intercommunal talks with UN involvement, Turkey has at the same time, despite the UN having declared the occupation illegal, 'ethnically cleansed' northern Cyprus, importing close on 160,000 settlers, who currently

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outnumber the original Turkish Cypriots by a ratio of 2:1. In this sense, the talks have served as a useful public relations smokescreen for the advocates of power politics/political realism. To better understand the invasion and its implications for, in particular, British foreign policy, however, it is the year after the invasion to which we now turn. We shall see that human traits, such as greed, lust for power, ambition, pride, cynicism and simple lying are serious factors, too often ignored by theorists with their neat models, paradigms and perspectives, whose thoughts and ideas become restricted by their very own thinking. We turn now to the aftermath of the invasion and the intriguing question of James Callaghan's inability to tell the truth about his foreknowledge of the invasion.

7

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Although our preferred policy is for a complete British military withdrawal from Cyprus, we recognise that we cannot do so at present, given the global importance of working closely with the Americans.

South East European Department, FCO, 1975. Introduction The diplomatic history of Cyprus up to the end of 1976, as extrapolated, analysed and evaluated from British diplomatic documents, throws into ever sharper relief Britain's role then and today as the USA's junior partner and European proxy, particularly as regards defence matters;1 and Britain's anachronistically elginistic attitude vis-a-vis its clinging to its SBAs in Cyprus (3 per cent of the country).2 The main points to emerge from the quagmire of papers are: FCO soul-searching about British interests in Cyprus and an admission that British interests were minimal; an unfulfilled desire to give up the SBAs; the possibility of the USA secretly paying the British to keep the SBAs; British frustration at the French role in Greece; British opposition to a strong EEC role in Greek-Turkish relations; the readiness in the FCO to run the risk of straining relations with Greece rather than with Turkey; the FCO's scepticism about Turkish claims to Greek islands; the British government's readiness to help to supply arms to Turkey if the latter agreed to return to the conference table; British irritation at Turkish stalling; double-agendas and unsavoury forms of pressure; the British Embassy in Athens' suspicion of official Greek involvement in the publication of an article in the Athens News by the Committee of Greeks and Greek Americans, giving details about CIA personnel in Greece, including (accurate) addresses and telephone numbers; British realism — bordering on cynicism - about the intercommunal negotiations; Kissinger's obsession with Cyprus in relation to the Arab/Israeli dispute; his pro-Turkish leanings and negative attitude towards the French; the question of British nuclear (Vulcan) bombers stationed in Cyprus; and, last but not least, Callaghan's telling untruths about his knowledge of the invasion, and FCO attempts to blur the facts.

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The Sovereign Base Territories and the Americans In an extraordinarily frank vein, the FCO wrote in a paper on British interests in the Eastern Mediterranean that: Given our decision not to use military force in Cyprus and the relatively small amount of pressure we can bring to bear upon Cyprus, Greece and Turkey, this puts us in the invidious position of having responsibility without power. This has brought us no advantages whatsoever and it must be in British interests for us to work for a solution which will not involve Britain in any guarantee obligations or other lasting commitments over Cyprus. Such a solution is however remote and will be particularly difficult to achieve as long as we retain a physical presence in the Bases.3 In 1970, the FCO had already recognized that the SBAs, and even more, British sites and facilities, were hostage to Cypriot goodwill, 4 while two months after the Turkish landing on Cyprus, it had recognized the SBAs had been an embarrassment, 5 and proceeded to implement a large reduction of SBA staff.6 It appears clear that, without US pressure, Britain might well have given up the SBAs. The FCO wrote: The US Government are firmly attached to the view that withdrawal from our bases in Cyprus would have a destabilizing affect upon the Eastern Mediterranean, with implications for the Middle East [...] Dr. Kissinger in particular is anxious that we should continue to occupy this square on the world chess board, we do not any longer seek a world role. Although our own preferred policy is for a complete British military withdrawal from Cyprus, we recognise that we cannot do so at present, given the global importance of working closely with the Americans.7 Despite FCO recognition that the SBAs should be relinquished and its view that British strategic interests in Cyprus were now minimal, 8 Britain preferred to subsume its interests (or lack of them) into US global policy. At the end of April 1975, the American Ambassador in Nicosia went as far as to tell a senior FCO official that the US government should be prepared to contribute towards the cost of the SBAs if Britain were ever tempted to withdraw on financial grounds. While admitting that this view was not universally held in Washington, he thought that if ever the problem became actual, there would be no difficulty about producing the money, secretly if necessary.9 He was clearly under instructions from the State Department: no ambassador would ever stick out his neck so far on such an issue. Two and a half years later, the British were still waiting for an answer from the Americans about financing the British presence.10 The question of the bases irked those at the highest level, as the following somewhat tortured letter from the Secretary to the Cabinet to his FCO homologue intimated: There is a link between how long we expect to stay in Cyprus and the measures we might take to concentrate and economise [...] What are the arguments for and against

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discussing our problems frankly with the Americans? I am not suggesting that we should appear to go back on the assurances given to them last year, but they know that we do not want to stay there indefinitely and it seems that we could reasonably probe their attitude and whether they see any way of helping us, in the context of their own wish to expand their Over the Horizon Radar.[...] We all know how difficult this question of Cyprus is, and part of the difficulty is that there are separate political, economic, military and intelligence interests which have to be fitted into a jigsaw and if possible reconciled.11 Whether or not the US finances the British bases today is not known, but it is certainly possible that, in one way or another, they are, particularly since the US seems to have needed them more than Britain, particularly after the invasion. It is here, of course, that Kissinger's near obsession with the bases comes into play, along with his view of Israel's position in the Middle East: He [Kissinger] was also concerned with United States policy over Cyprus on the resolution of the Arab/Israel problem, and he regarded this as more important than Greek hostility towards the United States.12 The MOD appeared to be as keen as the FCO on getting out of the bases: a paper prepared for the Cabinet referred to the fact that although Ministers had decided that British forces should be withdrawn completely from Cyprus, the British government had, following strong representations from the US, told Kissinger that Britain would not in present circumstances proceed with its preferred policy of withdrawing from the Sovereign Base Areas altogether, nevertheless stating: 'Our policy should continue to be one of complete withdrawal of our military presence from Cyprus as soon as feasible/13 Thus it is undeniable that the FCO and MOD wished to stop interfering in Cyprus, and give the land back: Since it is unlikely that HMG would consider a military withdrawal from Cyprus while retaining sovereignty over the SBAs, any plan for a military withdrawal must take into account the need to transfer the sovereignty of the SBAs to the Government of Cyprus.14 Things were of course not that simple, with a senior FCO official writing that all sides would need to renegotiate the 1960 Treaties if British territory was going to be given away, and that the Turks might even try to take Akrotiri by force. Various options were considered, including leasing and splitting the eastern territory between the Greeks and Turks. Perhaps the most complicating factors were American interests and the intelligence gathering facilities: The Americans' recent serious difficulties over the use of their leased bases in Turkey and Greece for intelligence-gathering will not incline them to accept leasing as a reasonable alternative to sovereignty in the British bases in Cyprus. Dr. Kissinger has frequently spoken of the value of this 'real estate' and the necessity to keep it as a 'British square on the chequer board.' Under a leasing arrangement, Soviet and

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CYPRUS non-aligned pressure on the Cyprus government to dislodge the British garrison would be less easily withstood than at present. The Cyprus Government would be in a position to deny use of the intelligence facilities to the Americans, which is impossible while HMG is sovereign in the Base Areas. If intelligence requirements were to continue to be met, almost any surrender of territory would require a move of one or other of the intelligence installations from its present site to a new site in secure, 'sovereign'15 British territory [...] As long as any intelligence requirement is maintained, any surrender of territory would necessitate expensive construction of substitute intelligence installations [.. .].16

One curious aspect of the paper is that it stated that a NATO base on Cyprus would be resisted by the Greek Cypriots and Soviets. Yet a (secret) British map of Cyprus in 1972 pinpoints a 'NATO Communications station' at Cape Greco, in the SouthEast of the island.17 All the above being said, it is significant that the FCO deliberations were nothing new. Indeed, as we have seen, two years earlier, similar ideas and arguments had been thrashed out at length, with no firm conclusions,18 underscoring how intractable the problem really was from British officials' viewpoint and how Britain dared do nothing significant without American agreement. Whatever the polemics surrounding the question of Britain's anachronistic retention of part of another country (the British government continues to refuse to release various papers), it is clear that her emotional ties with America, a quasiautomatic need to hide under American coat-tails when expedient and a wish to serve US global interests even when they may not be in British interests were, and are now in yet greater measure, the order of the day. Extracts from a telephone conversation between the new American President, Ford, and the British Prime Minister, Wilson, just hours after the launch of the second stage of the Turkish invasion, make interesting reading within the context of the 'special relationship'. Prime Minister We don't see that there is anything that can be done in a military sense either by ourselves or through the UN or anything else. It's got to be a long diplomatic haul now. President I would agree with that and I think that Henry and Mr. Callaghan have pretty well agreed that we ought to let the dust settle. Prime Minister I think that's right as long as we can both keep together, not only bilaterally but in NATO, UN and wherever else we may be deploying our joint efforts.

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Prime Minister [...] We've both got the same inflation problem; dangers of unemployment and again, it's one of those things we've got to come as close as we can to one another about. President If we work together, I think we can do a great deal better.19 Such shoulder-to-shoulder bonhomie was certainly not replicated in the case of the British-French relationship, despite Britain having recently been welcomed into the EEC. We now turn to the French connexion. The French Connexion It was not only Britain's Disraeli (see Chapter Three) who had turned his beady eyes towards Ottoman Cyprus in 1878 and earlier, but Napoleon III, who is reported to have 'recognised Cyprus as an important observatory over the provinces of Turkey in Asia and Africa.'20 When Britain obtained it, France was irritated.21 In 1916, the Sykes-Picot agreement carving up the Middle East included a clause whereby the British government agreed to consult the French in the event of the former giving up the island (See Chapter Three).22 As for de Gaulle, he thought that Cyprus was not properly speaking a state at all, and that it should be returned to Greece, to the obvious consternation of the Foreign Office.23 In 1971, France took the same line as the USSR and the United Nations in supporting President Makarios against 'double-^ftr/j1/ while the British government, but especially the Ministry of Defence, was growing increasingly irritated at French plans, later realised, to install a 'broadcasting station' on Cyprus.24 Shortly before the Turkish invasion, the French government (see previous chapter) became increasingly suspicious of the Anglo-Saxon special relationship vis-avis Cyprus. The FCO annoyed the French by not providing them with information in the two days preceding the invasion.25 By this time, Kissinger had prevailed upon Callaghan to toe the American line, and thus part of Anglo-US strategy was to pull the wool over French eyes. It is likely, in this connexion, that the future Greek Prime Minister, Karamanlis, (who had been in self-imposed exile in Paris for over ten years) was in close contact with the French government during this period.26 When Karamanlis took over as Prime Minister on the fall of the junta, he almost immediately took Greece out of the integrated military structure of NATO (which led to some heavy-handed American pressure on Greece).27 France had of course done precisely the same thing ten years previously. Thus, given the post-invasion extreme Greek distaste for the role of Britain and the US in the whole Cyprus debacle (understandable, given the circumstances), Franco-Greek relations began to flower, to the consternation of the British and Americans. The British Embassy reported to the FCO in September 1974 (see previous chapter) that the Cyprus

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crisis 'can only have seemed to swell the numbers of those who so consider that Greece can stand alone - perhaps with France as arms supplier;'28 and in January 1975, the Ambassador in Athens wrote to the FCO: The conviction that we failed as a guarantor Power in Cyprus lingers. Our wider responsibilities there, together with the need to maintain tolerable relations with Turkey both intrinsically and in an Anglo-American context have made us less popular among Greece's western friends and allies than some less actively engaged, notably France [...] Over the EEC, France has again emerged as Greece's major champion and is losing no time in capitalizing on her advantage.29 Three months later, the FCO concluded that Turkey was more important to Western strategic interests than Greece, and that this conclusion 'was diametrically opposed to that which the French appeared to have reached.'30 Within the EEC context, also, the French government took a line more favourable to Greece, and less favourable to Turkey, than that of the British, pressuring for a stronger demarche to be made with the Turks and Turkish Cypriots than the British seemed to want.31 As regards Greek moves to join the EEC, France was Greece's main sponsor,32 while the British Embassy in Athens reported, perhaps with a tinge of envy, that the French could do no wrong, and that the slightest thing they did was given wide and sympathetic coverage in the Greek media.33 The brief period of relative independence from the US and the more genuinely European 'communautaire' approach of the Conservative government of Edward Heath was now of course no longer, and had been replaced by the then Eurosceptical socialist Wilson government, which had even organised an a posteriori referendum on EEC membership. The strong socio-political emotions on the 'European question' and Edward Heath's defeat in the elections at the end of 1974 contributed to the re-establishment of the 'special relationship.' Thus, although the British government went along with joint EEC action to try and get the GraecoTurkish antagonists together again, they worked against Greek and French pressure to make strong or frequent demarches. What, however, of the British attitude towards Turkey? Briturkey As we shall see, the FCO was particularly critical - in private - of Turkey's behaviour and attitude towards the International Court of Justice (ICJ), protection of property, residents in the occupied zone, constitutional changes, and of its negotiating tactics. Despite this, the British government was not prepared to do anything that might upset Turkey inordinately, the reasons being essentially strategic. Extracts from an FCO paper set the tone: [...] our primary role in the area is to maintain the pro-western alignment and membership of NATO of Turkey, and, to a lesser extent, Greece; [...] however hard we try to avoid it, issues may arise which do face the West with the choice of incurring serious Greek ill-will by building up Turkey's pro-western alignment, or further straining

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Turkish loyalty while keeping the Greeks sweet. We should aim to divorce Cyprus as much as possible from other issues affecting our relations with Greece and Turkey, although Greece particularly will be loth to do so. We should also recognise that in the final analysis Turkey must be regarded as more important to Western strategic interests than Greece and that, if risks must be run, they should be risks of further straining Greek rather than Turkish relations with the West ,34 Not long before the invasion, Turkey had started to question Greek sovereignty over parts of the Aegean continental shelf, certain Greek islets and Greek airspace, clearly part of a double-pronged military strategy against Greece, once the invasion had taken place. In this way, Turkey was, and is, able to play off one issue against the other, whatever efforts have been made to separate the territorial claims and the Cyprus issue. Having agreed in February 1975 to allow the International Court of Justice to handle the issue of the continental shelf, the Turkish government then changed its mind, to the extent that considerable doubt can be cast on its original commitment. Despite this setback, the Greeks agreed to hold bilateral talks, whereupon the Turks postponed them on the grounds that the Greeks wished to issue a communique beforehand. The British Embassy in Ankara summed up the Turkish approach succinctly and cogently, if a little cynically: Another example of perhaps typically Turkish thinking on this occurred when I was discussing this subject with Mr. Dag, a First Secretary who works to Siiylemez. Dag said that everything depended on bilateral discussions between the two sides and that after such discussions the matter would either be completely solved in itself or there would be an agreed approach to the International Court or there would be no progress at all. I asked Dag for his views on the likelihood of progress in bilateral discussion. He said that all that was needed for progress was that the Greeks should give in! I was left with the impression that reference to the International Court was still seen as something rather irrelevant and that the Turks hankered firmly, however unrealistically, for a bilateral solution. This is perhaps not surprising, as they can presumably not have much confidence in winning their case at the Court on its merits alone. In other words, the agreement in principle earlier this year to refer the matter to the ICJ was probably seen by the Turks as a convenient means of cooling the situation at that time, not as a means of actually finding a solution to the problem.35 In fact, the Embassy in Ankara had already suggested to the FCO three months previously that Turkish officials were 'spinning things out in the hope that they could avoid actually going to the Court more or less indefinitely/36 The same is true today. Thus, it is clear that, then as now, Turkey never intended to allow the ICJ to deal with the matter, but rather to use it as a means by which to try to force the Greeks to negotiate bilaterally, and then to obfuscate when put on the spot. To its credit, the FCO did inform the Turkish government that it regarded the Greek proposal to refer the Aegean to the ICJ as a 'conciliatory and constructive move.' 37 The British government supported the Greek position on the continental shelf:

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CYPRUS The British Government's view of the Continental Shelf issues is much closer to the Greek than the Turkish view (in particular Britain supports the entitlement of islands to have a Continental Shelf).38

In international relations, private truths are only admitted in a state's public policy if they correspond to that state's interests. Supporting the Greek position or opposing the Turkish one as regards the Aegean or, indeed, Cyprus, was simply not considered to be in Britain's interest, essentially because of US pressure. Britain tended rather to subtly reinforce the Turkish stance(s) in certain fora. For example, in discussing the wording of EEC statements with its partners, the FCO preferred to delete references to 'The President of Cyprus,' preferring the phrase 'Government of Cyprus' without reference to President Makarios,39 for whom the Turks had an 'obsessive hatred,' according to the British High Commission in Cyprus.40 The British government was naturally itself somewhat sensitive about the plucky Makarios (who had survived enforced British exile and imprisonment, assassination attempts, a military coup and a Turkish invasion), given his pointed and insistent arguments that the British government had not met its legal obligations vis-a-vis the invasion and occupation.41 On the question of illegal citrus fruit and potato exports from occupied Cyprus, the British government was also somewhat expedient.42 Turkish Pressure Although it might seem both churlish and childish to intimate that the British government was cajoled by American pressure and Turkish intransigence into barking without biting, particularly on the Cyprus question, it does appear obvious that it was nudged into an ostrich-like position, at the deep root of which lay US insistence that it keep its territories on Cyprus. One example of 'John Bull's demise' was Britain's disinclination to do anything more than just complain to the Turkish government about the treatment of Greek Cypriots and their expulsion. The Turkish government was particularly keen at the beginning of 1975 both to circumvent a ban on arms exports from the US and to gain as much recognition as it could for the 'independence' of Northern Cyprus. On the arms question, the amoral Kissinger managed to resume and continue military supplies until 'at least February 5,H3 while in March, Callaghan advocated supplying Turkey with arms in return for an agreement to go back to the conference table.*44 As late as October, the FCO was writing in a (defensive) brief for the visit of the Greek Prime Minister to London: We do not think the supply of arms from Britain to Turkey will affect Turkey's position in Cyprus. Our attitude to this question however might well affect Turkey's attitude to NATO.45 What, however, were the Turks doing to elicit such a helpful British attitude? They began to harass the British population of occupied Cyprus. In July 1975, the British High Commissioner in Nicosia, Olver, wrote:

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I attribute the continuing difficulties that we are having in part to bureaucratic inefficiency and the difficulty experienced by the Turkish Cypriot authorities in obtaining co-operation from the Turkish military, and in part to the fact that most of those concerned have Greek names.46 Back in London, the FCO wrote: In the last resort, we cannot allow this small community (numbering no more than 200 people) to be used as a constraint on our freedom of action. It may therefore be necessary at some stage to take the decision that their interests must be put at risk or even sacrificed.47 Clearly, these British subjects of Greek extraction were not as lucky as the Falkland Islanders. Britain did of course have a red line: that of giving official recognition to the Turkish Cypriots, as a separate entity. In a typically informal British manner, the British government did however afford de facto recognition, to keep relations positive with Turkey. Britain, or rather the USA, feared an internationally recognized sovereign state in occupied Cyprus, because a new international border would administer the coup de grace to the incipiently cratocidal 1960 package of treaties upon which British tenure of its military territories so closely depended. This would have put the cat among the pigeons, and possibly created a pro-Soviet and anti-NATO (Greek Cypriot) Cyprus. As the FCO had already privately admitted (see Chapter Five), an abandonment of Britain's position on the Treaty of Guarantee could call into question the 1960 settlement as a whole and expose Britain to pressure on its moral (as distinct from legal) right to hang on to the areas.48 Thus Britain, given its US-inspired strategic interests in having to hang on to the SBAs against her own inclination, would do whatever possible to meet Turkish demands, as long as the SBAs remained sacrosanct. In the face of Turkish and Turkish-Cypriot threats of a unilateral declaration of independence (with its concomitant implication of the end of the 1960 arrangement on which the SBAs depended), Britain even asked the Greek government to make parallel representations to the Turkish government, to stress that a declaration of independence would be a breach of the Treaty of Guarantee.49 Then, as now, Britain would not budge on anything that would affect the Treaty of Guarantee, especially since President Makarios was being highly critical of Britain - with considerable justification - for not meeting its treaty obligations.50 Instead, Britain opted for the softer option of affording whatever de facto recognition it could, even in those 'early days' of the illegal occupation, as long as it fell short of diplomatic recognition and recognizing sovereignty. Turkey and the Denktash administration harassed and expelled not only the Greek Cypriots but, for a while, the British residents. One ploy to try to force the British to recognise the 'Turkish Federated State of Cyprus' ('TFSC') was an

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attempt to involve the British government in a £5 'search fee' which British residents of occupied Cyprus were asked to pay to (re-) register their properties.51 Then there was the question of British properties being 'taken over and persistently looted/52 The British Prime Minister, Wilson, even raised the problem with the Turkish Prime Minister, but received a stonewalling response.53 Whatever private official British anger and frustration existed, perceived strategic interests took priority. Kissinger, the chief backstage enabler of the Turkish invasion and occupation, impressed upon the British Ambassador to the US that Turkey's role was crucial to US-Soviet relations over the Middle East. If Turkey's security was undermined, there would no longer be any barrier between the Soviet Union and Syria.54 Here, Kissinger was concerned about Israel's security. Before turning to British views on Turkey's negotiating practices vis-a-vis the inter-communal 'Vienna' negotiations that resumed at the end of April 1975, a look at Britain's predicament vis-a-vis the thousands of Turkish Cypriots who had fled to the Western (Akrotiri) territory suggests, again, that if anyone had to be irritated, it was the Greeks rather than the Turks. The Greek Cypriot leadership was understandably anxious that the Turkish Cypriots would leave the SBA following an agreement between it and the Turkish Cypriots.55 The British, however, proceeded unilaterally, and the Turkish Cypriots were flown to Turkey at the end of January 1975, thence returning to occupied Cyprus. Significantly, 2,577 of the 11,967 Turkish Cypriots returned to their homes in the free part of Cyprus.56 This contrasts with the fact that, far from allowing Greek Cypriot refugees back into their homes, the Turkish army was busy expelling them. Understandably, the Greek Cypriot government was furious, accusing the British of promoting partition, which was contrary to the Treaty of Establishment.57 Particularly irritating for the Greek and Cypriot governments was that Britain had acted in a biased fashion by not insisting that the Turkish government respond by allowing Greek Cypriot refugees to return to their homes.58 Britain did at least later give up some 'retained sites' in the occupied zone to help displaced Greek Cypriots, to the anger of the Turkish government.59 What, however, of private official British criticism of Turkish negotiating practices at the inter-communal and connected negotiations? Having their Cake and Eating It

Between 28 April and 10 September 1975, four rounds of 'inter-communal talks' took place, mainly in Vienna, the fourth round failing because Denktash failed to submit concrete proposals agreed in the previous round. 60 The talks were naturally complicated by the declaration of the 'Turkish Federated State of Cyprus' ('TFSC,') as can be inferred from a letter from Olver: One implication of the current Turkish Cypriot constitutional moves, and specifically of Denktash's confirmation to me that they regard the posts of President and VicePresident as having lapsed, is the extent to which the whole 1960 Treaty apparatus be held to have lapsed [...] we [...] continue to regard the 1960 constitution as still in

AFTERMATH: LYING AND THE SELLING OF SOVEREIGNTY 101 practice operative, despite the various derogations by both Greek and Turkish Cypriots since 1963. But the Turkish side is in effect saying increasingly openly and firmly that the 1960 constitution is defunct. They are, of course, freely having their cake and eating it by applying the view only when it suits them.61 More incisively, however, an FCO legal adviser wrote: It is not, however, open to the Turkish Government to pick and choose between the various parts of the 1960 Treaty apparatus as it suits their purposes [...] the Turks cannot rely on the collapse of the Constitution in order to justify intervention for the purpose of re-establishing the state of affairs established by the basic Articles of the Constitution and, having intervened with that aim, then ignore that aim because the Constitution has lapsed.62 The British Ambassador to the UN was blunt in his evaluation of the Turkish negotiating stance: 'The Turks were uncompromising throughout.' 63 Denktash was, in any case, little more than a (willing) marionette of the Turkish armed forces: the UN Secretary General, Waldheim, told Callaghan that the Turkish armed forces in Cyprus had been taking the line that Denktash had no authority to commit them when he signed the communique after the last round in Vienna (Turkey had reneged on the agreement to protect Greek Cypriots in the occupied zone).64 Callaghan replied that 'it now appeared easier to get the Greeks to reach agreement than to get the Turks to do so.'65 By October 1975, it must have been clear to the British and others that the Turkish government was simply intent on sitting on its spoils, and stonewalling and obfuscating, while they continued to import illegal settlers and to create artificial and forced de facto partition. At the end of the month, Callaghan was recorded as telling the Cabinet that: The Greek Government were ready to accept in principle, subject to clarification of details, particularly on the boundaries. The Turkish Government response was less satisfactory: they were being deliberately vague about boundary adjustments [...] He could not exclude the possibility that the Turks were playing a double game with us in those negotiations since in parallel discussion with the Federal German Government they had suggested not a bi-zonal federation but three zones, the central zone to be jointly administered.66 Tick and choose/ 'having their cake and eating it' 'uncompromising' and 'playing a double game' sum up the attitudes of those British involved in negotiating with Turkey. No criticism of this nature was directed against the Greeks, although the latter were not averse, in their understandably indignant frame of mind, to exercising what pressure they could, as a telegram from Callaghan to Athens suggests: Mr. Karamanlis said that if, after the Cyprus situation, the EEC were to block the Greek application, Greece might then have to take certain decisions about her political orientation.67

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Britain backed Greece's application to the EEC. Despite Turkish anger at Greece's application, and concern that the latter would use EEC membership to isolate Turkey, the British were not at that time in a position to create further difficulties for Greece, particularly since their own position in the EEC was somewhat precarious (viz. the a posteriori referendum on its membership), and since France was championing the Greek cause. The Embassy in Athens wrote: The Greeks will try to use the EEC as a channel for polemics against Turkey and as a forum for enlisting support on Cyprus and other questions at issue with Ankara [...] I am sure that it is right to maintain a welcoming public posture and to allow the process of negotiation itself to bring home to the Greeks some of the harder facts of European life.68 So much, then, for the private official British approach to their (enforced) dealings with the Turkish government, brought on by the invasion. Before looking briefly at the question of Callaghan's memory in the aftermath of the invasion, let us turn to Greek affairs in 1975, specifically to what the British Embassy thought about the arrest of supporters of former junta strong man Ioannides, former Prime Minster Papadopoulos, political stability and anti-Americanism. Papadopoulos, Ioannides and 17 November Following the imprisonment of Papadopoulos and other former junta leaders in January 1975, suspicion and worry about the role of the army still abounded. A group of officers was arrested in February on suspicion of conspiracy. The British Defence attache wrote: The arrests [of thirty-seven officers] made were largely predictable as some of Ioannides' most fervent supporters are included. Our conclusion is that although army officers may be plotting to impose terms on the civil government, it is most unlikely that many of those arrested would ever be involved in such conspiracies, as they are too well known to the authorities. There is a growing suspicion that the affair was engineered by Karamanlis and Averoff as an excuse to arrest Ioannides' closest associates simultaneously and as a salutary reminder to the officer corps of the consequences of disaffection. The army is almost certainly not ready or organised to interfere with the civil government at this stage.69 The ambassador, for his part, thought that a serious weakening of the position of two of Karamanlis' key ministers (Averoff and Bitsios) would, even if they remained in office, 'make the pursuit of sensible but unpopular policies towards the West much harder' and that Greece 'might be tempted to cling rather desperately to the EEC as her only Western lifeline.'70 Here, the Ambassador was reflecting London's view (which it still holds) that NATO was a more important 'Western lifeline' than the EEC, where, of course, French influence predominated. As we have mentioned, France's relations with Greece were excellent at the time,

AFTERMATH: LYING AND THE SELLING OF SOVEREIGNTY 103 perhaps enhanced by the general anger towards the US and Britain. At the end of November, the Athens News, caught up in the general media anger, published a letter from the 'Committee of Greeks and Greek Americans' which included the names, addresses and telephone numbers of CIA agents, along with information about their careers. A week later, the newspaper received another letter, this time from the 'Committee to keep Greece Greek' (the same committee?), listing ten members of the Soviet Embassy and alleging them to be members of the KGB. Although the Athens News refused to publish this second letter on the grounds that it was anonymous, the document received wide coverage after being distributed to news agencies and other newspapers. The embassy wrote: 'Neither letter appeared to be the work of amateurs, since recent addresses and telephone numbers were included; we do not preclude some official involvement in the exchange/71 'Official involvement' did not of course necessarily apply exclusively to Greek officialdom, although there were probably some disgruntled KYP (Greek Secret Service) members and perhaps some senior military intelligence people who would know the addresses. The 'appropriate staff of the American, French, British and Soviet (at the very least) embassies and their homologues in their home countries would also have had access to the addresses: 'certain staff at some embassies expend a fair amount of energy spying on each other's embassies (and on themselves) as well as on the government of their host country. At any event, the British Embassy alluded, perhaps a little exaggeratedly, to Greeks traditionally blaming others for their misfortunes, and was fairly scathing about the Greek press's criticism of US policy: The same paper ['Eleftherotypia'] had run a series of articles about the extent of the CIA's activities here and, in addition, claimed that Athens was to be the new CIA Middle East centre following the troubles in Beirut. [...] The trouble is that the Greeks tend to believe all this rubbish. [...] It would not be so bad if there was any attempt in other papers to be truthful, objective or even fair about the US Administration; but no paper really cares to risk losing its readership by giving sympathetic coverage to any of the constructive, generous or helpful actions of the US AdminisThe above-mentioned letter published in the Athens News listed, among others, the name, address and telephone number of the CIA head of station, Richard Welsh. One month later he was shot dead outside his home. Whether the drafters of the letter were involved or whether some other group read the letter (serendipitously for them) and proceeded, remains a moot point to this day, whatever the bizarre shenanigans surrounding the alleged demise of the 17 November group.73 Apart from the killing of Welsh, the other dramatic event at the end of 'the year after' was the 'Polytechnic trial' of Papadopoulos and others. The former junta prime minister seems to have impressed some people. The British Embassy wrote: During the Polytechnic trial last week [...] Papadopoulos [...] spoke without a note for over two hours, not only about the Polytechnic, but about the six years of his rule [...] Even some of Papadopoulos' staunchest opponents reluctantly admitted that his

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performance was one of the best he had ever given. In contrast with his usual style of speaking, his address to the court had great clarity of thought and was convincing in its delivery [...]. While one may quarrel somewhat with the content of the speech, one cannot escape the conclusion that Papadopoulos is still head and shoulders above any of the other junta figures.74 At the end of 1975, then, the dust of the 'Cyprus explosion' was still settling over Greece. That the US and Britain had been prepared to sacrifice the island's welfare is summed up cynically by Kissinger: Kissinger said that [...] Cyprus was a peripheral issue from the US perspective, when compared with the importance of Turkey to the security of the Eastern Mediterranean. In particular, Turkey's role was crucial to US-Soviet relations on the Middle East.75 1976 was to prove illuminating, at least from the viewpoint of the diplomatic historian and international relations specialist, in that it shows, among other things, how the FCO and the former Foreign Secretary and then Prime Minister, James Callaghan, handled the embarrassing truth.

Fact versus Fantasy Shortly before the first Turkish invasion, the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) had already informed Callaghan's Private Secretary about 'an invasion of Cyprus by Turkish Forces in the next few days in accordance with [their] the JIC expectation of the Turkish plan of operations.'76 Then, while the Turkish army continued to advance (despite a 'ceasefire'), and during Callaghan's frenetic talks with Greek and Turkish leaders in Geneva, the Assistant Chief of Defence Staff (Operations) informed Callaghan in a 'Top Secret' message of the 'likely Turkish plans' to take over more than one third of the island. The Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff in turn informed the FCO that Callaghan was 'most concerned about the hard line attitude being adopted by the Turkish delegation in Geneva and the strong indications that they may attempt a major break out.77 On 19 February 1976, Callaghan appeared before the Parliamentary Select Committee on Cyprus, accompanied by the head of Southern European Department of the FCO and two FCO advisers. The record shows that he directly contradicted his own knowledge: [Mr Rees-Davies]: [...] you recognised, did you not, that there was to be an immediate invasion by the Turks into at least northern Cyprus at the time and that that was imminent? [the initial invasion]. [Callaghan]: No.

AFTERMATH: LYING AND THE SELLING OF SOVEREIGNTY 105 [Mr Rees-Davies]: Events [...] still continued to indicate that there was a real danger of further advance, did they not? [Callaghan]: No, I do not think it was indicated at all.78 The sensitivity of the question of Callaghan's obvious foreknowledge had shown itself only a week before Callaghan's appearance before the committee, when the British High Commissioner in Cyprus, Gordon, had been interviewed by the Cypriot newspaper Simerini^ and ignored - or avoided answering - the charge that 'you [the British] knew that the invasion was to take place/ Callaghan thereupon instructed the Head of Southern European Department to instruct London to 'correct the untruth.'79 Although it is not for this writer to cast aspersions on Callaghan's integrity, some factors should be highlighted. First, during the invasion, Callaghan had succumbed to Kissinger's persuasion, and British foreign policy - or at least military policy - had become increasingly integrated with that of the US.80 The independence that Britain had begun to demonstrate vis-a-vis the US, and its increasing co-operation with and within Europe, had evaporated when the mildly Gaullist Prime Minister, Edward Heath, had lost the elections in early Spring 1974. To tell the truth would have suggested that Britain had essentially aided and abetted Kissinger's plans; it would have displeased the Americans no end, and embarrassed Callaghan and the FCO less than two months before Callaghan himself became Prime Minister. It is little wonder that the work of the Select Committee on Cyprus was considered 'unconstructive' by the government,81 particularly when Callaghan was being groomed for the premiership. Moreover, Britain had succumbed willynilly to American pressure not to give up the SBAs in 1974,82 although in 1976, as we have seen, various options were still being seriously considered. Even as early as 1964, the FCO had admitted to the then Prime Minister that British sovereign rights in the SBAs and her treaty rights in Cyprus would be regarded as increasingly anachronistic by world public opinion.83 Let us recall that the FCO even admitted that the Treaty of Guarantee was contrary to the UN Charter,84 and that Britain's moral position was not strong.85 In August 1976, the British Ambassador in Ankara, Phillips, wrote that given the history of Cyprus since 1960, ethnic separation might be better for all in the long run, and would enable Britain to give up the bases, if it wished. He concluded that if the Turks showed any inclination towards partition, whether preceded by UDI86 or not, 'we should not be reluctant to dismiss this as an alternative provided it was not intended by those concerned that development towards it should not be violent.'87 In plain, less diplomatic English, the Ambassador to Ankara was saying that it would be in British interests to encourage partition. Post-Operative Therapy - The Intercommunal Negotiations We have seen how the British Ambassador to Ankara subtly advocated partition as a logical path to giving up the bases. The chief factor that persuaded him about

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partition was his observation — eminently sensible, in the light of today — that it would occur willy-nilly, as can be read between his lines: [...] it is now two years since the communities began trying to negotiate a settlement. In that time, progress has been minimal and attitudes on both sides have hardened. And the Turkish Cypriots supported by Ankara have consolidated their hold on the north to an extent that makes them more than ever reluctant to yield anything near the minimum acceptable to the Greek side as a basis for settlement.88 This, and the Ambassador's other above-quoted views on the likelihood of partition, give the lie to claims that, from the British view at least, the intercommunal negotiations were really meant to lead to a fast-and-hard solution. Even if the two communities had reached a solution, the question arises as to whether the by now perhaps rather euphemistically called 'guarantor' powers would have sanctioned anything other than a NATO-friendly solution. This was all the more so, given Kissinger's influence. With the question of the SBAs, and suspicion of the Soviet Union, it is fully understandable why Britain emphasised the importance of the 'negotiations,' since they served as a useful public relations smokescreen to draw attention attention away from the SBAs and, perhaps more to the point, from Britain's responsibilities as the primary responsible power. In a fascinating letter, a First Secretary at the British High Commission in Nicosia, Perceval, wrote: In my view, the merit of the inter-communal talks is that there is no danger of their leading to a Cyprus constitutional settlement. There never has been any such danger, ever since the talks began in 1968 [...] The real, as opposed to the formal purpose of the 1968-1971 and 1972-4 series of intercommunal talks was surely to further the international and more specifically Western aim - negative but highly important - of preventing the Cyprus problem from starting a war between Greece and Turkey.89 In effect, the intercommunal talks were merely a vehicle - as they still are - to distract attention from the hard backstage power politics of the major stakeholders, who, therefore, supported them, in the knowledge that a real long-term settlement was unlikely. Long before the invasion, the Americans had already advocated a continuing modus vivendi as the only realistic solution.90 To enrich the scene, Makarios' rival, the Anglophile Cleridis, was accusing Makarios of having lost an opportunity by not agreeing to a 1973 constitutional model. This public posturing disguised harsh reality. Perceval continued: Substitution of the 1973 model for the 1960 constitution would, I fear, merely have given the combatants a new set of rules within which to resume their struggle. A 1976 model, I have little doubt, would do just the same. Cleridis knows this, but believes Cypriot Greek commercial dynamism would again enable them to dominate both parts of a federal Cyprus. Furthermore, he would stand an excellent chance of becoming the Greek Cypriot leader.91

AFTERMATH: LYING AND THE SELLING OF SOVEREIGNTY 107 Even more pertinently, a Cleridis supporter, Polyviou, had stated: [...] one should not be deluded into placing too much trust and confidence in the value and efficacy of Constitutions as such. However well balanced, they are not panaceas; and no Constitution in the world can artificially create social unity and political harmony if, in fact, the operative currents are flowing too strongly in the opposite direction.

Most pertinently of all, the cynical but perceptive Perceval wrote that one 'should not, in deference to the island's mythical sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, insist on re-complicating matters with constitutional structures/92 This is the context in which the failed and now defunct 'Annan Plan' can be seen. Conceived to maintain Anglo-American interests on Cyprus and to keep the island out of mainstream EU security structures (legal Cyprus, and for that matter, Greece, as a member of a future independent EU defence organisation, would be an Anglo-Saxon nightmare), it could well have led to further strife, just as the cratocidal 1960 constitution did. It is nevertheless clear that the intercommunal talks had to be permanently on the agenda, with lip-service being paid to a new constitution, while, in the meantime, the strategic realities of Anglo-American interests were - and indeed are - pursued. This scenario also explains why the legal government of Cyprus is correct in insisting on the letter of international and EU law. Even as the ink is drying on this paper, the backstage pressure is continuing to be applied on the Cyprus government to negotiate on the basis of a re-vamped 'Annan Plan,' with the US government (with no legal locus standi on Cyprus) leading the way, while Britain orchestrates the 'EU end.' Meanwhile, the 'post-operative therapy of the intercommunal negotiations continues,' thirty six years after the operation.93 We see also, in 1976, the Kissinger-inspired origin of the abortive Annan Plan, labelled by the FCO as the 'principles initiative,' and resisted - for a while - by the French.94 Its key similarity to the 'Annan Plan' was the third of the five 'principles': Simultaneously with agreement on territorial modifications, the parties will agree on constitutional arrangements for the establishment of a federal system on a bizonal basis with relatively autonomous zones which will provide the conditions under which the two communities will be able to live in freedom and to have a large voice in their own affairs, and will agree on the powers and functions of a central government.

9S

Although one can only speculate about the backstage pressures currently being applied, they are unlikely to be significantly different today, although the 'war on terrorism' is now wheeled out as the reason for hanging on to the SBAs on the USA's behalf, rather than the war on communism. Here there is a faint whiff of hypocrisy, since the basic Anglo-Saxon (to use a Gaullist term) strategy is still to keep the Russians out. 1976 is merely a repetition of today, with Kissinger's wellknown - but rarely scrutinised by academics - obsession with the defence of Israel.

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Kissinger, US Interests and Israel Although Kissinger's publications are too slyly and selectively written to be used to point ringers at him easily, some British documents do help to unravel the picture, showing that, contrary to the view that Kissinger did not focus on Cyprus at the critical period of the invasion in 1974 (because of Watergate), he was in fact very much on the ball.96 His interest in Cyprus as a tool for the defence of Israel is revealed in a high-level 'Secret and Eclipse'97 paper of January 1976: He [Kissinger] was also concerned with the effects of United States policy over Cyprus on the resolution of the Arab/Israel problem and he regarded this as more important than Greek hostility towards the United States, despite the effect of this dissension on the Southern Flank of the Alliance.98

Kissinger was of course to lose his job as Secretary of State once Jimmy Carter took up his post as US President, and was therefore, towards the end of 1976, doing all he could to ensure that his policies would remain in place. Hence his introduction of the above-mentioned 'principles.' His view on the importance of Cyprus to the defence of Israel needs to be seen in the context of his particular geopolitical mindset and his hard-nosed political realism.99 He had already written to the malleable Callaghan in 1974 of his Very strong belief that elimination of the SBAs in Cyprus could have destabilising effect on the region as a whole.' To this we must add US intelligence facilities, the USA's sharing of Britain's intelligence-gathering, and Kissinger's bias towards Turkey in general, of which the Turks were aware.100 The Turks seem to have concluded early on that American pressure would not be backed by anything stronger [e.g. sanctions]; this was no doubt a factor in their tactics at the second Geneva conference. It is certainly the case that Dr. Kissinger was concerned with the maintenance of Turkish goodwill as a bulwark between the Soviet Union and the Arab States as well as the continued use of the US bases in Turkey.101 To this we must add the US-sponsored military co-operation between Israel and Turkey,102 which Turkey could use as a strong lever on the US, in the knowledge that Kissinger was concerned with Israel's defence. Kissinger had his personal priorities. A fascinating telephone conversation between Kissinger and Callaghan (after the latter had become Prime Minister) provides us with an insight into Kissinger's negative attitude towards Greek and French policy. Kissinger telephoned the Prime Minister at home103 on 16 August 1976, while the UN was thrashing out a resolution condemning Turkey for sending an oil-exploration ship into Greek waters. Dr. Kissinger: [...] The Greeks are trying to run a resolution through with a lot of support from the Europeans [...] Prime Minister: I see. I'm out of touch with it really, Henry [...] I'm in Sussex. I'm on holiday really.

AFTERMATH: LYING A N D T H E SELLING O F SOVEREIGNTY 109 Dr. Kissinger: I'm sorry Prime Minister: No, It's all right. I am in touch all night. But I haven't been following this one in particular except in the newspapers [...] Is it the EEC countries who are being difficult or what? Dr. Kissinger: It's the French who are pushing a very pro-Greek line. Prime Minister: Ah yes. Well they would, of course. Yes, I see. And what about the others? Dr. Kissinger: We are not anti-Greek. We just don't see any point in humiliating the Turks right now. Prime Minister: No. There's certainly no point in doing that. On the other hand, the Greeks have been humiliated often enough. [...] Anybody with the French? Dr. Kissinger: You and the Italians. Prime Minister: We're with the French, are we, at the moment? [...] This problem of the Greeks and Turks is a difficult one because none of us likes to look as though we are opposing the Greeks. You know, we all go around saying that we want them very badly as part of the Community. Everybody goes on on these lines. Dr. Kissinger: But they do have a tendency to overplay their hands. Prime Minister: Well I know they always did from 1945 onwards, and indeed before then. Righto Henry [...].104 One barely needs to read between the lines of this extraordinary conversation, to see how essentially lackadaisical Callaghan was in his attitude, while Kissinger was, in comparison, obsessed with not upsetting Turkey. The conversation hardly represents a high point in British foreign policy formulation. Moreover, from the point of view of correct protocol, the US president should have telephoned Callaghan. Kissinger, however, never having been a trained, professional diplomat, was not known for correct protocol.105 The French EU Connexion Cyprus had at various times been an irritant in Anglo-French relations. Given the close contacts between Karamanlis, (who had exiled himself to Paris well before the coup) and the French government, it was hardly surprising that Greece emulated the French example of 1966, by pulling out of NATO's military integrated structure following the Turkish invasion. In the words of the British Ambassador to Greece, France had emerged as Greece's major champion over the EEC and was losing no time in capitalising on her advantage.106 British policy in the GreekTurkish question was diametrically opposed to that of France.107

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Britain's new-found108 objective was to keep the EEC out of any serious involvement in Greek-Turkish problems other than supporting the intercommunal talks. Thus, over the Aegean, although the FCO privately recognised the weakness of Turkey's case, as we have seen,109 it followed the American line. The FCO brief for the EEC's Political Committee in April 1976 stated: 'We do not consider that the Nine could have anything to gain or to contribute by any attempt to become involved between the two sides in any of the Aegean disputes.'110 In an interesting insight into Franco-German differences on the Greek-Turkish question, the same brief stated: It is becoming more difficult to keep the Nine together over Cyprus. The French have, since the Summer of 1974, seen themselves as the principle protectors of the Greeks. The Germans have always been sympathetic to the Turks, but their partisanship for Turkish views has increased considerably since the beginning of 1976 when Herr Leber visited Turkey.111 Despite the 'Greek love affair'112 with France continuing to flourish, at least at the high political level, lower down the ranks matters were not quite as rosy. According to a British diplomat, a senior French Foreign Ministry official, Villemur: [...] was preparing a study on the subject [agriculture] and was gravely handicapped by the extraordinary lack of statistics. He agreed [...] that when the Greeks produced what they said were the facts and what they said were the statistics that backed them up, it was difficult to see how we could double check. M. Villemur wondered if in fact certain statistics existed at all. The French had noticed that when they tried to extract statistical information the Greeks became very secretive [shades of today?!].113 Today, the 'love affair' is not so much in evidence, although a recent Franco-Cypriot military agreement has infuriated Turkey, and could herald a return to the 1970s. The French, as does the EU generally, appear to toe the Anglo-American line on Cyprus, leaving only Russia as the joker in the pack, a Russia whose priorities currently lie closer to home geographically, and which needs to have reasonable relations with Turkey in its efforts to slowly but surely make inroads into what is possibly the most lucrative arms market in the world, the Graeco-Turkish one. Add to that the right of passage through the Dardanelles, and it is easy to see why Russia will only react when it sees its interests directly threatened, as with the abortive Annan Plan, when it vetoed a UN Security Council resolution allegedly strengthening guarantees for the plan. Today, Russia tends to keep its cards close to its chest on Greek-Turkish problems, refusing even to answer questions about whether or not it recognises the indisputably Greek island of Gavdos as Greek.114 Nuclear Games Cyprus, abject object of external power games, has not even escaped the nuclear controversy. Once too sensitive even to mention, the recently released papers finally

AFTERMATH: LYING AND THE SELLING OF SOVEREIGNTY 111 confirm suspicions that Cyprus was used as a Cold War nuclear base: a Cabinet paper stated: the nuclear bomber force declared to CENTO115 with its associated medium range tactical support squadron, must be located in Cyprus in order to achieve maximum efficiency and to obtain the maximum effect on the regional members of the AlliThe Defence White Paper of 1975 stated, in its turn, that 'we will no longer permanently station Vulcans on Cyprus.'117 It is difficult to be certain about the current situation, given the official silence over nuclear 'details' and the suspicion on the part of many that most official pronouncements on Cyprus need to be taken with a pinch of salt, given the record of veracity on the part of various leading politicians and officials then and now (the most obvious current example being that of Iraq). Theoretically In this chapter, in particular, we have seen various strands of international relations theory being applied, in particular by Kissinger, the promoter of both geopolitics and of one of its main theoretical children, political realism/power politics. It seems clear that realism often involves immoral behaviour, and concentrates more on perceived interests of states, rather than on people per se. Although much has been written about realism, one is left with the sneaking suspicion that it is simply a way of justifying the pursuit of national interests. If one brings into play the insecurity that some people and states feel, then military force and economic control become priorities, simply to compensate, although a realist would hate to admit this. When large powers have competing interests in a region, then smaller powers can become mere instruments, if not totally, then at least partially. Cyprus is a case in point. Its condition is a direct result of larger powers trying to keep Cyprus as they want it, or at least trying to prevent it from becoming what they do not want. Hence the fear on the part of the realists that Cyprus could become completely independent, since Cyprus might decide to move towards Russia, and offer it a military base. Apart from seeing realism in practice in this chapter, we see that it can also provide a framework within which to understand Cyprus. But we have touched on more: in considering various legal disagreements, in particular those connected to the UN and the Aegean problem (as well as Cyprus), we see how the realist approach tends to fear the letter of the law, and promotes so-called 'political solutions' instead. In a sense, we are talking of realism versus Grotio-functionalism. The following extract from an FCO paper shows this: There is a similar dispute over the procedure to be adopted in negotiations: the Greeks wish to study the practice of other states and the principles of international law (which at present very much favour Greece) as a preliminary to substantive discussions. The Turks wish to stress the notion of equity as opposed to legal precedents

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and wish to proceed immediately to substantive discussions. In short what the Greeks want is a legal settlement while the Turks want a political one.118

We can infer from what we have read, that a strong political realist approach towards international relations, and here, towards the Cyprus situation, involves political, and therefore sometimes illegal, solutions to problems. We see a similar mentality with the 1999 and 2003 attacks on Serbia and Iraq respectively, both perpetrated without UN sanction. Thus, the out-and-out realist will fear a strong UN, while a functionalist will promote it. To the functionalist approach, we can also add a touch of constructivism, since ideas and preferences play a role. For example, many functionalists believe strongly, even if a little idealistically, in breaking down barriers and co-operating, as a way of weakening the less savoury powers of the state. We gain a more complete picture of the Cyprus situation, however, by combining the ideas of Guicciardini and Vico, since they are more down-to-earth than most theories, and include the human factor. On the one hand, relations between states, just as within states, depend on human factors such as anger, pride and fear, while the constancy of history teaches that the world has always gone from state to state, from confusion to order, and order to confusion, in an ineluctable manner that cannot be analysed like a chemical mixture, nor fully understood in a rational manner, as if it is a mere thing, even if its process can be studied. Its essence remains uncatchable. These same desires and preferences (here we do see an element of constructivism) that make up the result of human behaviour have always been with us, and probably always will, the past illuminating the future, with new names and images, while the essence remains. Conclusions The study of FO, FCO, Cabinet and Prime Minister's Office documents, not to forget Colonial Office and FRUS papers, is particularly interesting as regards AngloGreek relations and Cyprus, providing the researcher with a rich field from which to harvest, although there are many important lacunae (see Appendix). After sixteen years' study of British files on (mainly on Greece, Cyprus and Turkey), one does begin to develop a sense of deja vu^ as each year's batch of papers is released. One of the biggest problems is the question of how much to look at. Clearly, all the Greek and Cyprus files need to be scrutinised, as must many of the Turkish ones. Yet so must the Russian, US and French files (at the very least) be looked at, since they sometimes contain important references. Clearly, one person would have to spend a whole year just to see a fraction of the overall releases for a given year. In an ideal world, a large team of experts needs to spend two years studying the most pertinent government files in a whole range of countries, just to form a reasonably balanced picture of the 'Cyprus Game.' Given the lack of such an ideal situation, but nevertheless basing one's analyses and evaluations on the most directly pertinent papers, sixteen years is a reasonable period in which to form some reasonable views about the Cyprus and related papers released for 1977 and earlier. What emerges with almost irritating consistency for

AFTERMATH: LYING AND THE SELLING OF SOVEREIGNTY 113 a 'true Brit' is Britain's 'butler' relationship with the USA on strategic matters: even when Britain wished to give up the territories it had procured in 1960, Kissinger simply said 'No.' The fact that Heath (the only British Prime Minister to visit 'independent' Cyprus) lost the elections in 1974 obviously smoothed Kissinger's path. Another important factor is that Turkey knew it could invade and remain in Cyprus with impunity, since its leaders knew that Kissinger was behind them. This explains another recurring theme, that of Turkish intransigence.119 The origins of the 'Annan Plan' can also be seen in Kissinger's above-mentioned principles, which still appear to form the background to today's intercommunal negotiations. Current Anglo-American efforts to keep Cyprus (and Greece, if possible) out of mainstream EU defence structures also have their origin in the seventies, when, as we have seen, Britain and the US worked against any French-led EEC role, other than to glean support for the interminable intercommunal negotiations, the wellbroadcast panacea, the hidden aim of which was to prevent all-out war between Greece and Turkey, rather than a serious agreement, an agreement that could even threaten the existence of the SBAs. In other words, any agreement, such as the Annan Plan, would have to preserve the SBAs and US interests in the region, while clipping any 'wings of independence.' We can expect to see the same outside interests, the same strategic ambitions, the same de facto consolidation of partition, the same calls for intercommunal negotiations continuing, just as the same linkage to Turkish claims on Greek territories will continue, as long as Turkey knows that big powers will turn a blind eye. Political realism (or power politics) seems to be the order of the day. The US and Britain will continue to use Cyprus as a tool to weaken EU cohesion, by balancing it with their support for Turkey's alleged desperation to join the EU, (along with other 'tools,' such as 'New Europe's' disdain for Franco-German and Russian power). An increase in EU power led by France and a more assertive Russia are the only two factors that might contribute to a proper solution to Greek-Turkish and Cypriot problems, in line with international law. In the meantime, the balance of fear is exploited with massive arms sales, because Cyprus has been told that it is a vital part of the Middle East and, doubtless, of the alleged war on alleged terrorism. A dramatic way of calling the bluff of the strategic armchair geo-politicians would be to create a new international border by recognising the occupied part of Cyprus. Yet that could be even more dangerous, since there is no guarantee that Turkey would relinquish its claims on Greek territory or that the US would allow two genuinely independent states (and how independent would they be?) to start negotiating about relinquishing the SBAs. Thus, even such a technically illegal, yet 'politically realistic' solution, might not work. We are, then, left with the continuation of geohistory (a sane method of analysis), where the US-UK-Israel-Turkey axis will confront an EU-Russian one, spitting out their bitten fingernails of ambition on to Cyprus, while the tensions rise and fall. In the end, Cyprus could benefit, but essentially by default, when a stronger, oil-rich legal Cyprus simply allows the rest to come back to the fold and have equal rights under the acquis communautaire™ The only problem, as we have said earlier

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(but there is no harm in reiterating it) is geopolitics, a 'primitive form of international relations theory,'121 that seems to be the pseudo-theoretical justification for pure power politics, of which Cyprus is a victim. It is more a problem of strategy (now often called geostrategy for the sake of semantic braggadocio), but is best understood in terms of geohistory. Much of what this chapter has demonstrated is highly pertinent to current developments. Again, we cannot avoid Guicciardini's wisdom in saying that the same things return with different colours, and that the past illuminates the future. On the question of the EU, for example, the British government is keen to minimize any serious role for Brussels in a Cyprus solution, fearing, in particular, any possibility that Cyprus could participate as an equal partner in EU defence structures (or NATO ones), since this would render the SBAs yet more anachronistic than they already are, and anger Turkey which, now and then, is more important to 'BRITUSA.' We can also connect the mid-seventies to today in the perceived role of France in the Cyprus question. For example, the former French Foreign and Prime Minister, de Villepin, has made, more strenuously than most, the point that Turkey must fulfill its obligations in its EU accession negotiations. Far more strongly, former French president Giscard d'Estaing has said that Turkish admission to the EU would mean the end of Europe. A further 'then and now' comparison can be made between Britain and France regarding their relations with the US. Essentially, France is far more its own master than Britain could ever claim to be. The 'Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite' dictum holds true internationally, as well as nationally. Unlike Britain, France is rarely forced to do what it does not wish to. British policy in the mid-seventies, namely to do all it could to recognise occupied Cyprus de facto, but not dejure (fearing an international border and the coup de grace to the cratocidal 1960 treaties) continues to be replicated: in 2006, the British Foreign Secretary, Straw, caused a major outcry in Greece and Cyprus by meeting the Turkish Cypriot leader, Talat, in his 'presidential' office and subsequently saying that Cyprus is using membership of the EU to 'try unacceptably to seek progress on United Nations - related issues.122 Even the usually staid Greek Kathimerini wrote of Britain's 'pointless imperial syndrome,' 'striving to show the boss how useful it is, like every good employee.'123 The fact that the British Prime Minister's wife was hired to represent a British couple, so that they can keep their property, stolen from a Greek-Cypriot refugee, undoubtedly rankles with those who believe that current British behaviour is sour grapes for the massive rejection of the cratocidal 'Annan Plan.' Britain's almost manic efforts to get Turkey into the EU (with US prodding), before Turkey meets its legal obligations, is also germane to Britain's atavistic, hardnosed yet sometimes curiously emotional stance. The leader of the Akel party in Cyprus appears to have seen though the whole web, by pointing out that full British recognition of occupied Cyprus would blow up the 1960 treaties on which the SBAs depend.124 British policy is indeed to help the illegally occupied zone now, as it has since the mid-seventies, to promote partition and thereby render a genuine intercommunal agreement difficult. This amounts to 'Taiwanisation'.

AFTERMATH: LYING AND THE SELLING OF SOVEREIGNTY 115 On the question of Turkish claims to Greek territory in the Aegean and the role of the ICJ, Britain's backstage position is unlikely to have changed since the midseventies, but it would be loth to raise the issue with Turkey today. Just as Britain has tried to separate Cyprus and Aegean issues, Turkey ensures a particularly close linkage between the two. We cannot write a chapter such as this, with so much 'fresh' evidence, without eluding to morality: the above-mentioned Straw was asked a few years ago what action he could take to defend the interests of British citizens, such as a Mr. Parthog, whose property and homes had been expropriated by the military, since the 'civilian Turkish [Cypriot] authorities would not accept representation relating to the behaviour of the military (shades of 1975!).' Straw slithered out of the question by blaming the stance of the Cypriot government.125 Had Mr. Parthog been a Gibraltarian Jew (see Chapter Three), whose property in Athens had been ransacked, then the British government should have demanded compensation from the Greek government for the unfortunate man. But they did not. So things, perhaps, do not always return with different colours. But then a rule needs its exceptions. 'Interest* is of course the key word: it is not in BritishUS interests to irritate Turkey. It is 'interests' that sent Britain across the world to save the two thousand (white-skinned) British subjects, of the Malvinas-Falkland Islands in 1982, while expelling about the same number of (dark-skinned) British Chagos islanders (and gassing their animals) from Diego Garcia in the late sixties and early seventies, because the US did not wish anyone to observe its military and other activities, having rented the islands from Britain. Although, as we intimated, it is naive even to consider morality as a factor in the formulation of foreign policy objectives (whatever the asinine statements made by politicians about 'ethical foreign policies'), we can consider emotion as a factor. Despite Callaghan's caving in to Kissinger, (or perhaps because of it?), let us recall what he said about the Turks (to Kissinger): Now as regards Greece and Turkey, it is Greece who will need massaging because the Turks are too jingoistic, indeed too close to Hitler for my liking. All right?126 While on the question of emotion, and Callaghan's views of the Turks, we should perhaps record here the Turkish 'Hymn of Hate,' broadcast and sung from 1964 and recited at the first (annual) celebration of the Turkish invasion of 20 July. As long as vengeancefillsmy veins As long as my heart beats for Turkism As long as the word 'Greek' exists in dictionaries By Allah, this hate will not leave me A thousand heads of the Greeks will not wash away this hate. I will crush the heads of 10,000 of them I will pull the teeth of 20,000 of them I will throw into the sea the bodies of 30,000 of them

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But by Allah this hate will never leave me A thousand heads of the Greeks will not wash away this hate. As long as my fists can stand up in the air As long as 120,000 hearts can beat together As long as 40 million [Turks] support me By Allah this hate will not leave me A thousand heads of the Greeks will not wash away this hate.127 One can wonder on what Callaghan based his opinion when talking to Kissinger. Perhaps he had read this poem (at least it was sent by the British High Commissioner in Nicosia to the FCO's Southern European Department). Perhaps he was still smarting from his experience of negotiating with the Turkish government. Perhaps he knew some history, or had read of Harold Nicolson's views about the Turks in his book about the Versailles negotiations. We cannot say with any strong degree of certitude. But his sweeping statement about the Turks was not too well considered. A British ambassador to Ankara was perhaps rather more thoughtful in writing: The very qualities for which the Turk is perhaps most renowned - tenacity, stubbornness, lack of imagination, and that curious mixture of inferiority and superiority complex - have helped to preserve Ataturkism.128 Yet more pertinently, he wrote: Leaving aside Istanbul and Izmir and the Aegean littoral, for my money Turkey is more of the Near East and Asia than Europe. Not just physically, with 97 per cent of its territory in Asia, but temperamentally. Politically, of course, so far as the central direction of affairs is concerned, it looks to Europe and sees itself as Europe and wants others to see it so-which indeed they have done: what British schoolboy has not heard of the Sick Man of Europe? Ataturk taught that the European West was the only civilisation [...] Admittedly there are European ethnic strains in the people, but not so strong as the Asian. And their singular language is central Asian in origin. There is no natural reason why Turks should be so insistent on their European connexion. It is largely the dictum of Ataturk that makes them.129 Another 'then and now' comparison can be made, again 'on the morality front/ about lying. The story of the invasion and the US-British relationship is highly pertinent when juxtaposed with the pack of lies of Bush, Blair, Straw and the like about the invasion of Iraq. Both the Cyprus and the Iraq affair, while different, are connected by 'strategic interests/ In both cases Britain played the role of a 'pageboy,' and lied about foreknowledge of the Turkish invasion and about nuclear weapons in Iraq. Both affairs are products of the theory of 'political realism' and the accompanying infatuation with the theory of 'geopolitics,' propagated by the likes of Kissinger. So at least this story offers some rudimentary starting-points for the international relations theorist.

AFTERMATH: LYING AND THE SELLING OF SOVEREIGNTY 117 It is really a story which renders it easier - or less difficult - to understand how, for some, Britain became a client-state, through mishandling crises such as those of Suez and Cyprus and, stubbornly, continuing, at least in the case of Cyprus, to mishandle them. As we have seen, according to two Guardian journalists, Britain cannot fire cruise missiles without US permission; it cannot expel the US from its bases on British territories; it relies more on the US for intelligence; and while Britain has agreed to extradite its citizens to the US without prima facie evidence, the US refuses to do the same with its own citizens.130 Some seven months after the invasion, Olver wrote: The year ended then with the island divided into a northern third which, stagnating under the dead hand of the Turkish military, bid [sic?] fair to degenerate into a thirdrate Turkish province [...] it will be a dead land [...] surviving on massive subsidies from Turkey. In the south, the future is harder to divine. Greek initiative and international aid might continue to produce a slender economic revival but only if the government has the strength to contain the pressures from the 180,000 refugees and their political supporters. More likely, alas, is a recrudescence of the internal schisms which have traditionally driven Cypriot society, but exacerbated this time by physical misery and desperation.131 Hindsight tells us that the High Commissioner was mistaken about the politicosocio-economic well-being of free Cyprus. Few could however have foreseen at the time that free Cyprus would emerge so resiliently out of the confusion and death caused by fanatics and overseas armchair realist politicians such as Kissinger. Shortly before he left Cyprus, Olver wrote his valedictory dispatch to Callaghan, with the following words of advice: We could use our influence, either during the negotiations of a new arrangement to replace the present Treaty of Guarantee, or through the EEC, to set up a framework providing for regular political consultation between Cyprus, Greece and Turkey [...] the Bases are not diamonds.132 This sensible, moderate advice was, as we know, not taken. Hindsight suggests that perhaps this was a mistake, a mistake for which Cyprus is still paying a price imposed on it by the strategic obsessions of outside powers, some of whom insist on a political (and therefore not legal) solution, rather than one based on international law. Let us now return to our critique of the major forces in US policy that need to be taken into account to understand how they affect Cyprus.

8

THE GEOHISTORICAL CAT'SPAW: BETWEEN TEL AVIV AND WASHINGTON

We should be able to count on [...] Cyprus or Libya as staging areasfor the Middle East.

Henry Kissinger.1

Introduction Cyprus' geographical and political position betrays the quintessence of strategic dichotomy: on the one hand, it forms part of the Near/Middle East,2 being located near the epicentre of the major threat to world peace since 1948, namely the ripple effect of the violence characterising the arrival of the state of Israel; on the other, it has been a member of the European Union since 2004, even adopting the Euro in 2008. The Cyprus government's keenness to integrate militarily with the EU's embryonic Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) has however been constantly bedevilled by a tacit arrangement between the US, Britain, Israel and Turkey. Simply put, full Cypriot participation in EU security structures is perceived as inimical to Turkish interests, particularly as regards the military occupation of one third of the island. To better understand and evaluate the delicacy of Cyprus' position, it is necessary to bite the bullets of US foreign policy within the context of Israeli and Christian Zionism on the one hand, and the US-UK 'special relationship' within the context of European integration, on the other. The most obvious immediate reason for needing to understand the US-Israel aspects of international relations is that as regards at least the Middle East, US and Israeli foreign policy is identical, whatever superficial differences there may be, to the extent of not knowing whether the American dog is wagging the Israeli tail, or vice versa. Added to this is the fact that Israel and Turkey are the USA's closest Eastern Mediterranean allies, which helps to explain why Turkey and Israel have a long-standing military agreement, and why the Jewish lobby in the USA invariably supports Turkish positions. Both Israel and Turkey are also illegally occupying other people's territory, and exporting illegal settlers, in defiance of international law. The current Turk-

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ish-Israeli diplomatic spat is unlikely to affect the US-promoted Turkish-Israeli military co-operation. Cyprus is one of the US' most important Middle East intelligence-gathering centres, through its special relationship with Britain and its own relations with the Turkish authorities in occupied Cyprus. As we have seen, Kissinger considered Cyprus important to US Middle East interests as early as 1957, as the Turkish military and the Israeli government were preparing their secret military agreement, which has flowered to full-scale co-operation and intelligence-sharing today, at least in areas of common interest, such as Cyprus. It is no coincidence that two Mossad agents were briefly imprisoned in 1998 for spying on the installations in Cyprus that were due to house Russian S-300 anti-missile missiles. As we have also seen, in the previous chapter, Kissinger put pressure on the British government not to give up the bases. A further argument for looking at the question of the influence of the 'neo-cons' within the context of Christian Zionism and Israeli Middle East policy is that by delving into its psychology, we can better understand the background to modern US foreign policy formulation, and therefore how it has affected, currently affects and will affect the Cyprus situation. The election of a new president, Obama, seems to have done very little to alter US foreign policy. Additionally, connected as US-Israeli Middle East policy is to political realism, the whole question enhances our linkage between theory and practice. Last but not least, Cyprus is, geographically speaking, in the Middle East, yet is historically European in ethnic, religious and cultural character. This adds an extra dimension to understanding Cyprus' past, present and future. Hence this chapter. The Bellum Americanum Today, President Eisenhower's warning in 1961 about the unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex (the word 'congressional' was deleted at the last minute!) appears to have gone entirely unheeded. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the alleged end of the Cold War and some temporary navel-gazing as to what 'to do with American power',3 the chips have come down firmly on the side of the selfperpetuating partnership between business and government that is so lucrative for shareholders during wartime. As we have recently seen, institutional greed led to the so-called sub-prime scandal, the trigger for developments that will herald either a retrenchment and further Anglo-Saxon business-government greed and more war, and therefore a greater crisis, or a French-and-German-led effort to moderate greed through stringent state regulation. For the time being, one cannot expect a sudden transmogrification and reduction in tension: the forces of gross greed that created the crisis are still there, along with the soldiers in Afghanistan. The US and Britain are still pushing manically for the expansion of NATO, trying to make the latter into a world-wide military policeman at the expense of the UN, and threatening Russia from its own back garden. In this simplistic scenario of an excess of geopolitical logic, the US and Britain will be loth to give up Cyprus. Even before the horrors of '9/11' (which enriched many investors in arms and security companies),4 the Republicans had been planning an aggressive foreign

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policy. Condoleezza Rice stated that 'military readiness would have to take centerstage,'5 while Robert Zoellick wrote at the same time about the 'hammer of [America's] robust force' and the need to 'integrate technology into new operational concepts, doctrines and organizational structures - and then to practise them.'6 Under both Republican and then Democrat administrations, the expansion of NATO had begun, synchronised with the 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia, to the considerable irritation of Russia, since the United Nations was circumvented. The new age of US power-projection had started, aided and abetted initially, it must be said, by European states, and the strong US-British role in the first Gulf War.7 To understand this 'new age' of President Bush Senior's 'New World Order', let us briefly analyse and evaluate a key statement in 'Foreign Affairs' by the former editor of 'Foreign Policy', written towards the end of the Clinton Administration. Rarely in history do most major powers proclaim allegiance to one political and economic model, which happens to be our own one which, if properly regulated, can bring enormous benefit to humanity. It is equally rare that all the great powers essentially endorse the status quo, which happens to favor us. Indeed, for the first time ever, all major powers prefer internal development to foreign expansion. It is also the first time that communications make possible citizen-to-citizen contact on a truly global basis - and those citizens not only speak to one another largely in English, but they use reassuringly familiar Western concepts. The United States and its allies could seize this opportunity.8 Although the language is couched in reasonable-sounding terminology, the statement is, on closer inspection, infected with elements of presumption and inconsistency. First, the automatic reliance on the 'West' and the English language, as if they are the saviours of the world, suggests a superiority complex, and a tendency towards the 'them and us' syndrome, at a time when the end of the Cold War was being heralded. Second, given the gravity and earnestness of the statement, one could at least hope for a definition of the 'West'. Does he (Maynes) mean NATO, the Gracco-Roman heritage (a l'Unamuno), the old antithesis of the 'Evil Empire' of the East, a simple geographic concept, McWest - in other words the 'Coca-Cola' consumer- and market-oriented culture, or a mixture of some or all of these? Third, he avoids justifying or even explaining his presumption that most major powers proclaim allegiance to one political and economic (US) model. The economic systems of most major powers are different to that of the US. In Germany, for example, the 'Soziale Marktwirtschaft' (social market economy) differs in important respects from the US system, while France still has an important measure of state planning. Only Britain, with its moreflexiblecompany law, begins to approach the US system. As for the EU, it places far more emphasis on social legislation than does the US, with its allegedly self-regulating free market 'hire and fire' policies. Fourth, Maynes claims that all major powers essentially endorse the status quo, but does not grace us with evidence that a status quo exists, as it arguably did before the fall of the Berlin Wall; nor does he demonstrate that this alleged status quo is endorsed at all, or by whom.

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Although these ideas, scant as they are in analysis and reasoned argument, appear innocuous, in that they do not suffer from the semantic braggadocio of the likes of Condoleezza Rice, Zoellick, or Wolfowitz, they still serve as a basis for those who believe in the export of American freedom by force of arms. Pre-'9/ll' statements such as the above were just waiting to be re-interpreted and radicalized. Allied to this pre-'9/ll' navel-gazing, is Huntington's 'clash of civilisations' phenomenon, which paved the way for those seeking a new enemy following the retreat of Communism. Huntington claims that 'Western Civilisation' emerged in the eight and ninth centuries, yet later admits that it had a 'classical legacy', by which he presumably means Ancient Greece and Rome. His version of the West could not even exist without the Roman alphabet which he uses, based as it is to a large extent on the Greek one; neither would Western philosophy, based as it is on Greek ideas, to the point of even Karl Marx (among many others) having been helplessly influenced by pre-Socratic Greek philosophy and Aristotle, inter alia. Most extraordinarily, Huntington writes: There was a well developed sense of community among Western Christian peoples, one that made them feel distinct from Turks, Moors, Byzantines and others.9 This sort of assertion wears rather thin when one considers the slaughter of Christian heretics in the Middle Ages, the Thirty Years' War and the vast number of Roman Catholics slaughtered by Protestants and vice-versa, the victims of St. Bartholomew's Day, the almost perpetual wars between France and England, the alliance between the Christian French and the Moslem Ottomans to 'squeeze' the Austro-Hungarians in the sixteenth century, and Disraeli's and Metternich's support for the Ottoman Empire, not to mention the Franco-Prussian problems. Yet more naively and erroneously, in lumping together 'Byzantines' with 'Turks, Moors and others', Huntington appears to descend either into ignorance or into a subtle form of propaganda based on tactical obfuscation and omission. The reader is left wondering whether by 'Byzantines', he means Greeks or the inhabitants of the Eastern Roman Empire who, in addition to Greeks, included at various times Serbs, Bulgarians, Hebrews, Italians, Albanians and Moors, to name but some. Most of Huntington's 'analysis' appears to be geared in one direction: to prove his theory that the world is facing a 'clash of civilizations', of which he really means his version of the West and Islam. With slogans such as 'fault lines between civilizations' and the 'West versus the rest', this political 'scientist', by manipulating his obviously scant understanding of history, has nevertheless succeeded in influencing a whole flock of American politicians, more of the extreme Republican variety than Democrat, but including both. Huntington's ideas come close to an expedient and simplistic pigeon-holing of history, often betraying ignorance of the subject, by selectively cherry-picking some known facts and marshalling them into black and white categories. This simplistic and Manichean form of thinking has influenced American foreign policy

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formulation to an occasionally farcical extent, epitomised, for example in President Bush Junior's statement that 'those who are not with us are against us.' Huntington's wishful 'clash of civilizations' theory betrays the intellectually lowest common denominator of the geopolitical outlook, as influenced by an ideologically motivated version of political science. The danger of this is that a form of wishful thinking has been created whereby policy-makers prepare for - and therefore create - a clash of civilizations. If one adds to the above the moral tone of US foreign policy justification, one can better understand the obsession with world domination that the US has appeared to entertain. Several years before '9/11', Bush Senior stated: '[...] only the United States has the moral standing, and the means to back it [new world order] up [...] our cause is just, our cause is moral, our cause is right.'10 The outrage on 11 September, 2001, then, served as a perfect opportunity to go full steam ahead, and finally to find a new enemy for the West, led by the US. Bush Junior's reference to a 'crusade', controversial, simplistic and primitive though it was, was nevertheless telling. One US historian wrote: Neither the Pax Britannica [...], nor Napoleonic France [...], nor Philip IPs Spain, nor Charlemagne's empire [...], nor even the Roman Empire can compare itself to the present American domination.11 Even Adolf Hitler only thought of the Roman Empire as something to which to aspire. As a believer in racial supremacy, he also insisted that Germans were the superior race. Bush Junior has also stated that the American people are the 'finest on the face of the Earth'. It is not unreasonable to assume that both men were imbued with a power complex. The attacks on the 'Twin Towers' and Pentagon on 11 September 2001 did not so much alter the geopolitical thrust of the American-sculpted arguments in favour of American hegemony, as fortify and further radicalize those favouring an overt policy of US world domination, under the label of anti-terrorism. The hawks had now found something with which to replace communism. Drawing on a poem by Cavafy, a Greek Ambassador wrote that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were no more barbarians to fight: 'Communists find themselves stranded without their god, as are anti-Communists without their devil'.12 Thus, the US found a new enemy, 'terrorism' - which for many is simply a euphemism for radical Islam.13 An LSE academic, perhaps rather belatedly, asks whether the global war on terrorism will be the new Cold War, ending his article with the telling words: Europe is more resilient and better able to defend its values without resorting to excesses of securitization. By comparison, the United States seems a softer target, too easily pricked into intemperate reactions that in themselves work to undermine what it claims to stand for.14

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Another writer states: Scanting the Kyoto protocols and the International Criminal Court, sidelining the UN, trampling on the Geneva Conventions, and stampeding into the Middle East, the Bush regime has [...] exposed a darker side of the United States that has understandably been met with near universal abhorrence in Europe, even if etiquette has restrained expressions of it at diplomatic level.15 Eisenhower's military-industrial complex - or rather its more dangerous side finds expression in a now famous - but infamous for some - official US document, entitled 'The National Security Strategy of the United States of America', published in September 2002, although its origins go back to January 1993.16 In it, we find the dangerous sentence: 'to forestall or present such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively'.17 Given that Israel and the Middle East are now US foreign policy obsessions, it is easy to understand the more extreme edge to US foreign policy. The chief danger to world stability, the Middle East, and (let us now mention it) Cyprus is in fact US weakness, in the sense that wounded lions can lash out willy-nilly before expiring. A dying empire can lose control: the demise of the Ottoman Empire was accompanied by many atrocities, the Armenian genocide and the massacre of thousands of Greeks being but among the best known. Even the staid British Empire's demise is not devoid of its share of atrocities, principally in India (for example, at Amritsar), but also in Kenya. French hands, too, have innocent blood on them, particularly in Algeria, while German atrocities at the end of the Third Reich increased exponentially. If one adopts the thesis that the past few years have witnessed the end, rather than the establishment, of a US attempt to dominate the world, then, clearly, the Middle East is going through what is perhaps its most dangerous cycle of instability to date, which, as we shall see, will influence the Cyprus problem, essentially because of the island's geohistorical location. Obama or no Obama, we shall see later that US foreign policy is inordinately influenced by that of Israel, and that Cyprus' situation must be seen in that context. A number of serious analysts suggest that the US is in decline, one result being its increasingly dangerous behaviour. A former US colonel has written that it is not possible to pursue a strategy of absolutely unconstrained Machtpolitik™ while an LSE academic highlights the strength of the Euro, business competition (Toyota is expected soon to overtake General Motors) and non-American financial centres. If one adds to these the mediocre performance of the US military (depending to a • large extent on mercenaries in the guise of private security personnel) against a far smaller country, Iraq, then the argument that the US is now going through a stage of hubris, brought on by the temptation of empire, becomes pervasive.19 Recent developments tend to confirm this. Ominously, the LSE academic concludes:

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The question then is not whether decline is going to happen - it already is - but how successfully the United States will adjust to the process. There is no formulaic answer. However, it is not easy to be sanguine. After all, the US has clearly grown used to being the 'indispensable nation' - who wouldn't? - and is therefore unlikely to feel anything but deep existential angst about having to play a lesser role in the world. For this reason, it is difficult not to conclude that challenging times lie ahead as the republic comes to terms with new realities.20 The above is particularly relevant to understanding the Cyprus problem, notably because, as we have shown in previous chapters, the US is the most influential 'player' vis-a-vis the island, given that British foreign policy (and investment) is now so closely linked to US objectives and strategies, and that, in this sense, the British Sovereign Base Areas serve US interests in the Middle East, especially as regards the defence of Israel. Let us now consider more specifically the relevance to Cyprus of the EU-NATO relationship within the context of the 'special relationship', and the Israel-Turkey military alliance, touched on above.

The EU and NATO Although, over half a century ago, Winston Churchill himself called for the creation of a European army 'in which we should all bear a worthy and honourable part', when he returned to power, he back-pedalled furiously, saying: 'I meant it for them, not us', and 'we are with, but not of.'21 Although Britain did eventually join the club, thanks to the last of the Brito-European Mohicans, Prime Minister Edward Heath, her co-operative attitude lasted only as long as Heath's premiership, whereafter Britain's independence vis-a-vis the US became increasingly constrained at the same time as Britain was considered as 'wanting to have its cake and eat it' in the EEC. Prime Minister Thatcher simultaneously pursued an anti-integrationist policy vis-a-vis Europe, and a pro-US policy (the Reagan-Thatcher relationship). Charles de Gaulle's prophesy that Britain would be 'a worm in the apple' and an 'American Trojan Horse' in Europe was not, in the light of later developments, inaccurate, even if rather offensive in tone. The Iraq war both highlights and epitomizes the British-American relationship, and how it has clashed with 'Franco-German' Europe. To reduce French power and to weaken European integration, Britain (from inside) and the US (from outside) have successfully pushed for the enlargement of the EU into a big number of often squabbling states. At the same time, they have pushed for NATO expansion, giving it a virtually world-wide role. British and American pressure on the EU to facilitate Turkey's EU application is at one and the same time an effort further to weaken European political and defence integration, and to maintain a tight hold over developments in the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean. Hence the importance to them of Cyprus. For the more Europe integrates politically and militarily, with Cyprus' participation, the less control will the US and Britain have over the Middle East, and the weaker the new NATO will become. The 'Annan Plan' (see final chapter) should be considered against this background.

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Currently, the organization of EU defence, unlike that of the US, is not clearcut. Theoretically, and embryonically, the CFSP exists, but has not yet led to a serious common organization, as has agriculture. It should be remembered that the European Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF), a child of the European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI) only operates where NATO is not involved. It is thus inextricably tied to NATO planning, and cannot be seen as wholly independent.22 Cyprus and Turkey Britain and the US strongly support Turkish military involvement in European structures, despite the fact that Turkey is years away, perhaps forever, from EU membership. Concomitantly, they oppose Cypriot, and to a lesser but more subtle extent, Greek, military power in the Eastern Mediterranean, since it upsets Turkey. Thus, in December 2001, well before Cyprus' EU accession, Britain, the US and Turkey signed an agreement in Ankara - without an EU mandate - attempting to guarantee Turkey a role in the then embryonic EERF, and to deny the force any role in the Aegean or around Cyprus. This threw a confusing spanner into the works. Turkey had been refusing to release NATO assets for use in the EERF. Its basic position was - and is — that Cyprus must not be a member of any European defence force, since this would strengthen the Greek—Cyprus joint defence doctrine, thereby weakening not only Turkey's position vis-a-vis Cyprus (its illegal occupation of EU territory), but also claims on various Greek islets. After protracted negotiations, the EU eventually agreed to keep Cyprus out of ESDP operations. Greek pressure ensured a near farcical addition to the British-US-Turkish paper, guaranteeing that no NATO member (in other words Turkey) would threaten the use of, or use, force, against an EU member (in other words, Greece and Cyprus).23 Despite this, the Turkish parliament has still not lifted its threat to attack Greece, should the latter put into effect its twelve-mile sea limit - agreed under the UN Law of the Sea Convention. The situation, then, is not clear-cut, and the following maxim comes to mind when considering British-US policy in the Eastern Mediterranean: 'It is easier to confuse in order to control, than to control in order to confuse: power without responsibility is easier than responsibility without power.'24 The US-Israel-Turkey Axis The US government was not happy when the government of Edward Heath denied the US use of the British bases in Cyprus during the Yom Kippur war of 1973. Now, however, with over a third of Cyprus occupied by Turkey, the US would likely be able to use Cyprus' occupied territory in any future war involving the defence of Israel. Although the Turkish government would be likely to impose conditions (e.g. open US support for occupied Cyprus), the whole question of Israel's broader security concerns is already mixed up with Turkish geostrategy, in the form of the previously mentioned Turkish-Israeli military agreement dating back to 1958, and repeatedly strengthened since then.25 Since Syria claims Alexandretta (the Hatay) from Turkey, and does not recognise Israel (which still occupies the Syrian Golan Heights), the (US-sponsored) arrangement is clearly mutually beneficial. In

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the complex scenario around Cyprus, Turkey's consultative status in the ESDP gives Israel a tactical connection with Cyprus by default, because of its military cooperation with Turkey in production, training and intelligence. More broadly, were Cyprus to play a proper role in a future Europe army, this would be not only anathema to Turkey but, by extension, distasteful for Israel, since the EU (Britain apart) is distinctly more supportive of the Palestinian cause than is the US. The Israelis have not forgotten how Makarios expressed his strong support for the Palestinian cause, particularly during the Six Day War. In any event, the USA, by promoting Turkish involvement in putative EU military operations and at the same time promoting the Israel-Turkey military axis, can bedevil and dilute a strong EU position on Palestine. As one expert has put it 'this alliance, which the US has encouraged, guided and participated with [sic] in full, seems to be a serious stumbling block for the EU's distinctive strategy in the Middle East.'26 As long as Cyprus, or at least part of it, can be kept within Turkey's military ambit, this suits Israel and the USA. Calls for a NATO role in Palestine are even more germane, since this would involve Israel in close co-operation with NATO. Apart from complicating a common EU defence policy, the US-Israel-Turkey 'triangle' in the Middle East assures Turkey of the strong support of the powerful Israeli and Zionist lobby in the US.27 Cyprus' future is - at least partially - contingent on Israel's defence needs, and on the latter's military co-operation with the US and Turkey: Kissinger's strategy of using Cyprus as a springboard for the Middle East again comes to mind; and as we have seen in the previous chapter, Kissinger, following the Turkish invasion, linked Cyprus to the Arab/ Israeli problem: He [Kissinger] was also concerned with the effects of United States policy over Cyprus on the resolution of the Arab/ Israeli problem and he regarded this as more important than Greek hostility towards the United States, despite the effect of this dissension on the Southern Flank of the Alliance.28 In this connexion, one expert, commenting on the 1974 crisis, writes: These questions reinforce our research agenda here, namely, that the Cyprus crisis of 1974 was not a matter of Greek-Turkish conflict alone. More interestingly, it was a conflict with global dimensions seen in the context of a generalized Middle Eastern situation in which the security and defence of Israel was of paramount importance for the United States.29 US policy vis-a-vis Greece and Cyprus remains the same today, despite differences with the Turkish government over the Kurdish problem, since geostrategy or, more simply put, perceived strategic interest, takes precedence in policy formulation. There is, however, another factor which needs to be highlighted, namely the religious one. For just as in the Middle Ages, wars were often — at least ostensibly - fought for religious as well as territorial and commercial reasons, religion is again being used as a tool, excuse, reason and/or justification, depending on

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one's viewpoint. Of course, it is not religioner se that is influencing matters, but rather its manipulation by fanatics and, possibly, by some hard-nosed cynics who see 'good business' in religion. We therefore need to take a closer look, particularly at how religious fanaticism in the US and Israel is a foreign policy factor, with a deleterious spin-off in the Middle East and, therefore, the Eastern Mediterranean and Cyprus. Just as extreme Islamic fundamentalism has increased in strength in the Islamic - and not only Arab - world, so has extreme evangelical Christianity made leaps and bounds in the US that no amount of Obamism can stop. Along with the oil and arms business, religion is one of the ingredients of the deadly cocktail of the Palestinian/Arab/Israeli problem that has bedevilled the world ever since the British pulled out of Palestine in 1948. Christian Zionism and Foreign Policy: Exploiting Religion Most religions have their minority of fanatics, including various Christian, Moslem and Jewish sects. A good deal has been written about religion and politics. For the purposes of this book, we shall limit ourselves to 'Christian Zionism' and its background, but in particular to 'American Zionism', in other words 'active support for Israel and her policies', in the words of the British Embassy in Washington.30 If hard-nosed national interest and a fascination with power are two important characteristics of the geopolitical mentality (and of power politics/political realism), religion can also play a role, and indeed can influence foreign policy. While there has always been a certain evangelical spirit in US foreign policy, present since the very War of American Independence, in Puritanism and in constant references to the God of Israel,31 in recent years pre-millennialism (or dispensationalism) has made leaps and strides, mainly among the around 40 per cent of Americans who belong to a Christian sect. Dispensationalists believe, in line with their interpretation of the Bible, that we are now living in the 'end-time', and that the true believers will be spared the horrors of the last moments. Thus, the disorder and wars which the world is currently experiencing are simply part of'God's plan', according to dispensationalists, and can therefore be justified.32 Building Zion in America has now been supplanted with supporting the state of Israel. It is worthy of note that Osama bin Laden and his followers also believe that 'current history will end in violence' before a 'new history' comes about.33 Bush and Bin Laden are also linked by a Manichean form of thinking that has no truck with moderation, tact and diplomacy. The broad picture, allegedly in line with their interpretation of God's will, is all that counts. Although Obama is hardly hewn from the same stone as the Bushes of this world, that does not mean that we have seen the last of the unilateral and extreme policies of recent years. Whether the change in presidents will prove to be one of substance or style, of replacing heroin with methadone or white with red wine, is still not certain. At any rate, there is no current reason why the enormous US emotional and business investment in Israel should suddenly diminish overnight. The most significant recent development has been the strong bond that has developed between the more extreme evangelical and dispensationalist Americans on the one hand, and unbridled Zionists on the other. US evangelism as a factor

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in foreign policy has usually been of the benign, non-violent type: Wilson's idealistic Fourteen Point Plan, the American Missionary Schools and the quasi-religious zeal of anti-colonialism in the aftermath of the Second World War (this latter zeal perhaps not entirely genuine).34 Now, however, the dispensationalists have linked to the Zionists, in the form of Christian 'Zionists'. Although, in the '60s, many of the Christian fundamentalist cults were vehemently opposed by, inter alia, Jewish groups, there has since been a subtle yet radical modification in the relationship between Christian fundamentalism and Zionism. Simply put, Christian fundamentalists believe that God gave Israel to the Jews, and that at the Second Coming, many Jews will be converted to Christianity. Thus, Christian Zionists support the state of Israel even more fervently than the average American. A typical Christian Zionist35 gala can include, for example, the mayor of Jerusalem on the platform, surrounded by hundreds of Christian fundamentalists waving Israeli flags. When, in April 2002, President Bush demanded that Israel withdraw its tanks from the West Bank, he received 100,000 angry e-mails from 'Christian conservatives'. Ariel Sharon, the former right-wing (Likud) Israeli Prime Minister (also known as the 'butcher' for his role in the massacre of Palestinian refugees at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps) was greeted like a rock star by Christian evangelists in Jerusalem in September 2002.36 Most Zionist leaders (but certainly not the large but often ignored number of moderate Jews who criticise Israeli behaviour, and sometimes even the state's raison d'etre) accept the Christian Zionists' support and 'let them whistle for their conversions'.37 Various American Christian evangelical sects operate worldwide, often under the euphemistic guise of 'interdenominational churches', and sell Zionist and anti-Palestinian books through the social groups attached to these 'churches',38 sometimes quite lucratively. Derek Prince, a Christian Zionist par excellence^ is one such writer. Another, John McArthur, pandering to the public emotion of '9/11', brought out a book in which, apart from wrongly claiming that Saddam Hussein backed Osama Bin Laden, attempts to justify war through the Bible, quoting not only the Old Testament wars of the Jews, but even claiming that Christ himself justified war. He tries to achieve this by cherry-picking a small number of quotes from the Old Testament, entirely out of context. All this fits well with 'neo-con' perspectives and with Bush's emotional statement calling for a new crusade. Such is the stuff of religious fanaticism. Bush and huge swathes of Americans lower down the social scale have been infected with fanaticism. The 'neo-cons' are a prime example of how, in international relations, religion, emotion and politics can no longer be separated from what we can now term geopolitical fundamentalism. Greek journalist Elias Demetracopoulos thinks that the Christian evangelism of the (US) South influences US foreign policy. The likelihood that certain powerful figures are simply cynically manipulating the enormous emotional potential of the 'masses' to gain acceptance for hard-nosed power politics is also worthy of consideration. In any event, Christian Zionism can be considered as a serious factor in current US foreign policy vis-a-vis the Middle East and, therefore, Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean.

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The question of Israeli involvement in US foreign policy, linked as it is to Zionism, is certainly fraught with tension and has caused some bitter spats in the US and Britain which are, after all, the countries strongly associated with the creation of the state of Israel and its perpetuation. A Democrat congressman was bitterly attacked for suggesting that Jews were behind the build-up towards the attack on Iraq.39 In Britain, the Father of the House of Commons, Tarn Dalyell, sparked anger among extremist Jewish groups when he said that the then Prime Minister, Blair, relied too much on Jewish figures, naming controversial40 Middle East adviser Lord Levy and former minister and then EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson. Even more dangerously, Dalyell referred to a 'cabal of Jewish advisers' in the US, naming the controversial41 Paul Wolfowitz (then Deputy Defense Secretary), Richard Perle (adviser) and Ari Fleischer (Bush's then Press Secretary), among others. He alluded to the 'neo-Christian fundamentalist co-operation with Zionists', and decried the 'extreme Likudnik agenda'.42 He also made plain to this author his view that Mossad had been instrumental in drumming up false stories about the Iraqi regime trying to obtain uranium from Niger.43 It is hardly unreasonable to suppose that the US and Israel co-ordinate their policies on the Middle East, and that understanding the frenetic diplomacy surrounding Cyprus can be enhanced by recognizing this US-Israel agenda. Although it would be absurd to think that Israel would wish to claim Cyprus, a small minority of Jewish extremists have considered the island to be part of the Biblical land of Israel.44 Such are the problems encountered when a political state is also a religious one (Jewish), and connects religion and race to land (Zionism) as its very raison d'etre. Taking an extreme hypothetical view, an irritated Turkish government could easily encourage Jews to settle in occupied Cyprus (indeed, some probably have), in the same way that the Ottomans welcomed Iberian Jews to Thessaloniki and other parts of the empire in 1492, and to Cyprus after 1571 (notwithstanding the different circumstances). Such a scenario is of course unlikely, particularly since it could lead to an international outcry and focus yet more unwelcome attention on Israel and its illegal occupation and settlement policies, as well as on Cyprus. There is a tangible connexion between the fate of Cyprus, US-Israeli policy, and the TurkishIsraeli military partnership. One glaring example of this connexion was the arrest and imprisonment of two Mossad agents in Cyprus: they had been spying on the installations being prepared for the (eventually abortive) arrival of Russian S-300 anti-missile missiles.45 The Israeli-Turkish partnership is part and parcel of USIsraeli policy on the Middle East, which is predicated on out-and-out support for Israel. This is where the power of the Israeli lobby in the US comes into the picture. The most recent well-known critique of this lobby was written by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt,46 and caused a furious reaction among extremist Zionists. The article's main argument was that the power of the Israeli lobby had led to one-sided US support for Israel that was inconsistent with its own interests and those of other states in the region. The US had become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the occupied territories, 'making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians'. The article highlighted US hypocrisy in this

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complicity, given that it presses other states to respect human rights, and that it condones Israel's nuclear arsenal, while insisting that Iran and others must not have a nuclear capability. Perhaps the most recent example of US connivance in unacceptable Israeli behaviour towards the Palestinians was the new US Secretary of State, Clinton's, comment that the building of settlements for Jews on occupied Palestinian territory was 'unhelpful', when it is in fact downright illegal, indeed criminal in terms of international law. In terms of euphemistic language, it reminds one of the phrase 'collateral damage' for killing civilians, or 'awkward murder' and ' naughty rape.' This suggests that, Obama or no Obama, one can expect no serious US initiative on the Middle East and, concomitantly, Cyprus, in the near future. The influence of the Israeli lobby has indeed contributed to the US devoting one sixth of its foreign aid budget to the sixteenth most wealthy nation on earth.47 In addition to this, Israel receives 1.8 billion dollars a year in military aid. Clearly, the term 'aid' is in this context a euphemism for massive political, economic and military support. There is 'little doubt that Israel and the lobby were key factors in the decision to go to war', write Mearsheimer and Walt, who continue by demonstrating the power of the Israel lobby in pushing the US into attacking Iran, all with the full support of the 'neo-conservatives', as those Christian Zionists are also labelled. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPEC) plays the leading co-ordinating role among the plethora of Jewish organisations in the US, and is a 'de facto agent' for Israel, with a 'stranglehold on Congress'.48 Although the Israeli embassy in Washington takes great pains to claim that it has no official policymaking contacts with the Israel lobby, the authors make it clear that American Jewish leaders often consult Israeli officials, to ensure that their actions advance Israeli goals. Those critical of Israel keep silent, however, because they fear that the lobby will damage their careers. If there were no AIPEC, Americans would have a more critical view of Israel, and US policy in the Middle East would be different. Zionist organisations in the United States have always been powerful, and the phenomenon of the disproportionate influence they wield has been suspected, but rarely enunciated fully, for a long time. Many who wish to criticise the less positive side tend not to do so, for fear of being labelled 'anti-Semitic', in itself an odd idea, since the Semitic peoples include Arabs, among others, leading to suggestions that the term 'anti-semitic' has been hijacked. A confidential paper was written by the British embassy in Washington in March 1972, part of a series for a proposed Foreign and Commonwealth Office paper on 'the role and effectiveness of Zionist organizations in the United States and Western Europe'. A covering letter from the British ambassador in Tel Aviv stated: I need hardly say that this is a subject on which the Israel Government is very sensitive, because the continuing support of the Diaspora is an important element in their national security. They might well be suspicious of our motives if it comes to their knowledge that we were preparing a study of this kind [.. .].49

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The paper, prepared in Washington and entitled 'Zionist organisations in the United States', is in certain respects a perhaps more subtle version of the Mearsheimer/ Walt paper, remarkable in that it was written 34 years earlier. Had it been published, it could well have produced a Zionist backlash, just as the recent Walt/ Mearsheimer critique did. The paper equated for its purposes the term 'American Zionism' with active support for Israel and her policies. Extracts from the paper speak for themselves, requiring little if any interpretation: 'The well-organised lobby of Jewish organizations concentrates its activities on influencing Congress. There is very little activity in State Legislatures, mainly because few issues arise affecting Israel or the Jewish community in those bodies. The obvious point of pressure must be Congress and there is little doubt that much of the active output of the Zionist organisations is devoted to that end [...] whenever an important event occurs in the world at large or in this country, or whenever there is any public threat to Israel, a flood of letters descends upon the offices of Senators and Representatives throughout the country. Some, no doubt, are spontaneous, but the majority show unmistakable evidence of a careful orchestration.'50

The paper devotes some attention to Zionist activity in the press, 'which are [sic] in any case responsive to pro-Israeli articles [sic],51 largely because a number of press magnates, editors and journalists are themselves of Jewish stock.' An example of clearly illicit pressure is given: 'A well-known columnist, who writes in the Christian Science Monitor, told us last year that, when he wrote an editorial which contained mild criticism about the intransigence of the Israeli government, he received a telephone call from the Israeli Embassy in Washington within the hour to express official Israeli displeasure. He was told that such judgements would not be well received by many of the big firms in the Boston area who bought advertising space in the paper and that the Israeli Embassy were confident that he would not wish to deprive his paper of much needed revenue. [...] There can be little doubt that the Israeli Embassy discreetly passes on information to the Jewish organisations, but it would be difficult to point to a direct link'.

Other interesting observations emerge from the paper. For example, whereas Jews made up about 3 per cent of the population, between 18 and 25 per cent of faculty members at Ivy League universities were Jews, while 8 per cent of the urban population of the US were Jewish, and 96 per cent of Jews lived in towns. There is little doubt that Zionist organisations and the Israeli lobby wield considerable political strength in this country, states the paper, concluding that 'support for Israel has a universal appeal, being quite distinct from the lobbying efforts of other ethnic minorities'. Perhaps, and to their credit, some of the most powerful and persuasive arguments against the activities of the Israel lobby and Zionism have come from Jews. Some Jews cannot 'stomach Zionism'. For those whose motives are purely spiritual, the Jewish state is at best an irritant, at worst a blasphemy.52 One of the most

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critical books about the excesses of Zionist fanatics against innocent Palestinians was recently written by an Israeli academic. It details in precise terms the plan to expel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their lands, even before the war of 1948,53 including how and when particular murders of civilians were planned to achieve maximum effect. The disaster that befell Jews at the hands of, mainly, Germans, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Poles, but also various collaborators in France and the Netherlands, which was gradually named 'the holocaust' from the late 50s onwards, has proved to be a double-edged sword for Zionism. On the one hand, it provided Zionists, and a guilty Europe, with some justification for the establishment of a Jewish state. On the other, the over-exploitation by the Zionist public relations machine and by Hollywood of the whole horror has tended to irritate some Jews and non-Jews alike, worried that too much exaggerated attention over sixty-five years later focuses too much attention on Israel, Jews and Zionism, reviving, therefore, the whole idea of Nazism, which is then connected to the fate of the Palestinians.54 Exploiters of the wartime Jewish holocaust try to label anyone who criticizes Israel's quasi-destruction of Palestine as 'anti-Semitic', clearly an erroneous accusation. Other groups who have suffered genocide, such as American Indians (many millions were murdered or starved to death), Tutsis, Germans and Japanese, do not have the 'advantage' of a continuing widespread diaspora, lobby and religious aura of respectability, although the Armenians have certainly had some success in Europe in getting their treatment at the hands of the Ottomans recognized as genocide. The almost constant reminders of the Jewish holocaust, to support the state of Israel, is seen by some as disrespect for those millions of murdered Jews, in other words as unwarranted politicisation of something that occurred over sixty years ago. If one adds to this the controversy over the exact numbers of murdered Jews, then one can see why using the Jewish holocaust as a political weapon — and Hollywood money-spinner par excellence - can be self-defeating. Does one believe the much bandied-about figure of six million, or accept that the figure lies between four and a half and six million, as stated by the eminent London School of Economics historian D.C. Watts?55 And are there precise figures on the number of gypsies, communists, freemasons and others who died in concentration camps, and how many starved to death at the very end of the war, when there was simply no food? Debate about the precision apart, another aspect to consider is that while the Armenians relate their holocaust to a particular people, the Turks, and still publicise this fact strongly, even to the point of killing Turkish diplomats in the eighties, Zionists have long ceased emphasising the German connexion, but have, in a subtle transmogrification, equated Arabs and Palestinians with Nazis, appearing to many to turn their revenge on Palestinians, rather than on Germans, Poles, Baits and Ukrainians. This has upset a large number of more moderate and honest Jews, since the Palestinians had no role in the abysmal treatment of the Jews in Europe.

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Conclusions: the United States of Israel' (USI) It is not easy to attempt to deal in a dispassionate manner with US and Israeli foreign policy within the context of Zionism, and this chapter may well evoke howls of protest from powerful groups of Christian Zionists and other extremists. The acronym 'USF is not intended to be tongue-in-cheek, but to draw attention to the perhaps rather obvious fact that, at least since President Kennedy was murdered, the US and Israel have increasingly become one as regards Middle East policy. Whatever the nuances and studied disagreements that arise from time to time over arms delivery disputes or the treatment of the whipping boys of international relations, the Palestinians, it is clear that the US and Israel are hand-in-glove. The most glaring example is that the US government obviously condones - and privately supports — Israel's possession of a nuclear arsenal, never daring to mention it publicly, while it criticizes Iran to the point of planning to attack the country. What shows the US to be particularly biased is the fact that Israel's possession and development of nuclear weapons is entirely illegal in international law, while one respected academic writes that 'the Israel lobby has worked assiduously and with extraordinary success to make sure that Israel's enemies are seen by Americans as also being those of the US.'56 To write or speak of a world-wide conspiracy involving Zionist and extreme Christian fundamentalists may appear off the mark and simplistic, just as Winston Churchill may have been when he wrote about a Bolshevik Jewish conspiracy. Yet in the case of the US and Israel, the phenomenon about which we have written is too obvious to be labelled as a conspiracy. The most effective criticism of the dangers that we are witnessing comes more often than not from the quiet majority of Jews themselves,57 who see the danger for their people of being associated with the unpopular policies that the US and Israel persist in pursuing in the Middle East. It is fair to say that the Zionist lobby is also effective in Britain, but more subtly, and that Britain's economic and psychological attachment to (some would say dependence on) the US makes it very much a close ally of the 'USI'. The most evident example of this was the appointment of the discredited former British Prime Minister, Blair, as head of the 'Quartet', comprising the EU, US, Russia and the UN, that is attempting to bring peace to Palestine.58 Even more bizarrely, the volatile French President, Sarkozy, proposed Blair as the first President of the EU,59 an appointment which would hardly have gained international respect for the body, or helped the attempts to create a common foreign and defence policy. Common sense prevailed, and Blair was flicked out of the running. If Anglo-US(I) Middle Eastern policy, then, is one major factor to be taken into consideration when analysing and evaluating the Cyprus question, so the other is EU policy, but particularly the efforts of Britain and the US to prevent a 'United States of Europe', and keep it as a simple trading block. As we have seen, Britain, and more recently the US, have worked to enlarge and weaken Europe, and have a single policy vis-a-vis Cyprus, which is connected to their distaste for a coherent and independent EU army. Thus, Britain's and the USA's policies toward the EU (one from inside, one from outside) also affect developments in Cyprus, with the

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latter keen to exploit its EU membership to the full. The link between UK-US Middle East policy and EU policy is clearly the major constraint on Cyprus' attempts to reverse the effects of the Turkish occupation and force the Turkish occupation army to leave. The fact that Britain and the US strongly support Turkey's EU application, when the latter is occupying an EU country, and even refusing to recognise it, shows that they will never support a solution that Turkey does not want. Only EU and Russian power might influence matters. The increasing influence of Russia is perhaps the most significant recent factor to affect the complexity of the diplomatic scurrying around Cyprus. Here, of course, in line with our geohistorical view of history and human characteristics as the only stable analytical factors for the study of international relations, the same historical factor is merely reasserting itself. Despite protestations that the Cold War has ended, the US and Britain have never had any intention but to wave their flag of victory by expanding NATO. Russia is moving back into the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean. We can see this in its support for Serbia's view that Kosovo should not be internationally recognised, and in its opposition to the 'Annan Plan' (see concluding chapter). Russia is unlikely to favour any solution that favours NATO, and could well seek a base in Cyprus. This would of course put NATO member Greece in a difficult position, since the British and American governments would likely privately condone Turkish sabre-rattling over its claims on Greek islands. At any rate, Russian influence has also increased due to the Russiansponsored Burgas-Alexandroupoli oil pipeline, which has also given Greece more clout regarding energy. Things never replicate themselves exactly; nevertheless, there is a geohistorical link between today, the Don Pacifico affair (which turned Greece towards Russia), the Crimean War and the Great Eastern Crisis, when Britain acquired Cyprus. In the context of mass human characteristics and national consciousness, Russia played the most decisive role in Greek independence from Ottoman occupation, despite British attempts to impede this. At the end of the day, Cyprus' geographical and political position is not merely the result of the hard-nosed clash of strategic interests surrounding the inexorable and painfully slow demise of the 'sick man of Europe', but of fear, pride, ambition and greed, combining into thirst for control/power. Because of the increasing involvement of the US on the world stage beginning early in the nineteenth century,60 Cyprus is yet more of an international question than hitherto. The US-Israel Middle East axis plays the greatest role, influenced by the use - and abuse - of religion that in some respects harks back to the Crusades of the Middle Ages, when, in the name of Christianity, westerners gained a lot of land and money, just as certain shareholders are enriching themselves today in the 'war on terror/1 slam'. In this sense we are currently witnessing the regression of international relations. As regards theory, this chapter has tried to demonstrate how the most extreme forms of political realism/power politics are practised by Christian Zionists and their followers. Some readers may think that this chapter has placed too much emphasis on the influence of Christian Zionism. It is of course difficult to quantify

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mathematically something that cannot be physically measured, other than in terms of adherents. However, the number of Christian Zionists is sufficiently large for the group to be exploited by its leaders, and to exert considerable influence. One factor which we have not yet been able to analyse and evaluate with conviction and precision is the current clash in Turkey between the AKP (the Islamistoriented Justice and Development Party) and the fanatically Kemalist (although some think that Kemalism died with Kemal) part of the Turkish establishment, the former currently represented by the Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan, and the latter by Ergenekon, a secret 'deep state' network of extremist neo-Kemalist military and extreme establishment figures. If Erdogan, who recently slammed Shimon Peres in public for Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, wins the day against the fanatics, this could herald a 'sea-change' in official Turkish attitudes towards Israel and the US, which could have a positive knock-on effect for Cyprus, particularly if Turkey is able to end up with a favoured relationship with the EU. It is, however, too early to tell. Turkish politics is extremely volatile, and we could even see an overt military takeover, rather than the demise of the Turkish military in Turkey's apparent democracy. The essential question is whether Turkey will be able to move away from the tight embrace of the US and Israel. We turn now to our final chapter, where we shall trace and consider recent key developments in the geohistory surrounding Cyprus, and set out to show that, bar force majeure, the same factors and human characteristics have continued to manifest themselves.

THEN IS NOW

What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.

William Henry Davies1

Introduction Despite Cyprus' qualified independence in 1960 and its recent entry into the world's most powerful economic club, the European Union, the island's status as a cat'spaw of ambitious power-mongers has, if anything, become yet more poignant than hitherto. Kissinger's cynical statement that the Cyprus 'problem' was solved in 1974 (with the Turkish invasion) has been shown to be entirely misplaced and mistaken, with a new factor, Turkey's US- and UK-promoted ambition to join the EU, adding yet another spicy ingredient to the Cyprus question, while the Middle East is becoming increasingly volatile. The inexorable advance of business, military and, therefore, strategic interests and ambitions, closely interwoven, if not virtually synonymous with, state interests in Cyprus' tense geographic and political environment, has contributed to the practice of international relations becoming increasingly frenetic and neurotic. The plethora of theories has contributed to the confusion. As fast as one theory replaces, complements, detracts from or competes with another, old theories are dusted off and repainted. They are used, rightly or wrongly, to explain, justify and promote policies that usually serve the interests of powerful countries and/or corporations, often detrimental to those of weaker ones. Thus, political realism/power politics and the chasing pack of 'sub-theories' have been used to procure academic respectability for the USA's hegemonistic policies, whether in the name of freedom, democracy, 'pre-emptive self defence' or a contrivedly 'serendipitous' combination of all three. The essential factor, namely the control of oil supplies, is studiously avoided where possible, but lies behind America's desire for either a fully-fledged (independent) state of Kurdistan, or, in a divided Iraq, a strongly autonomous Kurdish state. Some US military theoreticians have already redrawn the Middle East map to include inter alia, a 'Free Kurdistan'. The map was discussed by students and teachers at the NATO War College in September 2006. It is unashamedly the result of crude geopolitical thinking. The divide and rule obsession is by no means dead.

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Connecting this whole question to Cyprus, we see that, apart from the importance to Israel's security of US, British and Turkish influence in Cyprus, oil has been part of the strategic picture. Even before the term 'geopolitics' had returned to its preWorld War IV fashionable status, Anthony Eden had said (in 1954): 'No Cyprus, no certain facilities to protect our supply of oil'.2 Once Britain had gained US support for retaining British bases on Cyprus, the island simply continued as a victim of strategy, hence the complicated - and incipiently cratocidal - set of treaties of 1960 being predicated, covertly if not overtly, on Anglo-American desires to keep Turkey happy and to control the Middle East in the post-Suez debacle, with fear of the Soviet Union and Egypt's President Nasser coming increasingly to the fore. The protection of Israel was also an increasingly important factor. Before elaborating to show how the same geohistorical factors of human behaviour — mainly greed, ambition, fear and pride — continue to manifest themselves, let us make a brief but pertinent observation about the effect of computer technology on international relations. Just as the telephone and the aeroplane took much of the negotiating power out of the hands of professional diplomats, so the information explosion and exaggerated computerization have tended to dehumanize the art of negotiation, which detracts from tactility. Their main effect has been to increase artificially the speed at which policy formulators work. This speed, combined with information overload, can serve to divorce a policy from its very foundations, with the former assuming its own programmed momentum, where, paradoxically in the name of communication, e-mails substitute, albeit poorly, for face-to-face meetings. Once a policy has been decided upon, it tends to lose its human touch, and cannot easily be modified or reversed. Thus, the illegal attack on Iraq went ahead like a blind, charging elephant, despite reasoned criticism and warnings from many analysts and observers, including prophecies of further destabilization of the world's most dangerous region. 'Winning hearts and minds', 'human rights', 'freedom', 'democracy', 'anti-terrorism' and 'self-defence' all took precedence over the human subtleties of diplomacy, which is becoming an increasingly quaint term in the geopolitical world of power politics, oil pipelines and strategic regions, an activity relegated to the coat-tails of military policy, rather than a necessary counterweight to it. We have in addition also witnessed the crude sloganization of international relations where 'winning hearts and minds' means attacking people. The Bismarckian era of Realpolitik appears redundant for the time being, although Russia is arguably donning some at least of Bismarck's mantle, in other words putting diplomacy first, yet playing on power, without lashing out wildly, preferring consolidation to overseas adventurism. It is perhaps unfortunate that the theory of Kealpolitik has never really caught on or been developed as much as some others, in particular political realism, pluralism and constructivism. It seems that the geopolitical mentality has led the pack of academics and think-tankers, perhaps because it uses maps a great deal, and maps are easier to look at than words alone. The current climate of confusion does not lend itself to the re-unification of Cyprus, there being too many conflicting stakeholders. It is all too easy for the US, Britain and Turkey to claim that the Cyprus boat should not be rocked in the 'war on terror', and that the British bases

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and the 40,000 Turkish occupation troops are necessary to preserve Middle Eastern stability, and to warn the Syrians not to get too big for their boots, especially whenever the nearby Lebanon is undergoing a crisis. Apart from the defence of Israel and control of the Middle East, the other main reason for maintaining the Turkish occupation and a divided island is the least-mentioned one: the atavistic fear of Russia. Let us now sum up Cyprus' region geohistorically, and then look at the 'Annan Plan'. Microcosm of External Ambitions Ever since Richard Coeur de Lion set foot on Cyprus, the island has been a cat'spaw of competing powers in a volatile region, becoming increasingly important as new powers emerged and flexed their muscles. From being a focal point of Venetian-Ottoman rivalry, it then became an area of Anglo-French, and then AngloRussian, contention for control of the Eastern Mediterranean. On a smaller scale, Methoni, in the Southern Peloponnese, suffered from external strategic ambition (as, generally, Greece and the most of the Balkans did), with the inhabitants experiencing various massacres from time to time at the hands of the Ottomans, keen to wrest its castle from Venice.3 Since at least the Napoleonic Wars ('the Second World War'),4 similar forces have competed around Cyprus, with the British gaining the upper hand in the Mediterranean, and trying to keep Russian influence at bay by supporting the Ottoman Empire. The US then appeared as an additional force following the 'Second'5 World War, just as a re-invented Israel was consolidating its position. To this cocktail of forces, we can now add the European Union, although its power is essentially economic rather than military. Also, having no common foreign policy to speak of, the EU is divided between those who tend towards the Anglo-US-Israel line on the Middle East (mainly the former Soviet satellites and Britain), and those of a more communautaire integrationist disposition, who are closer to Russia. The end of the Cold War - or at least of the somewhat contrived and exaggerated ideological divide - has left an intellectual void in explaining effectively what, precisely, the 'international system' is, or has become, if indeed a clearly definable system does exist, rather than the more obvious age-long vacillation between chaos and order. Theory has tried to fill this intellectual void, one that was fuller during the Cold War, when many of the theories, as we have seen, had some relevance, if not completely, at least in certain aspects, or in combination with each other. We have now arrived at the new anarchy, perpetrated, contradictorily, by alleged conservatives, who seem to have discarded their compasses. Although some of the theories were useful in explaining various aspects of world politics, there is now some confusion. The so-called balance of power, for example, no longer seems to exist. One wonders if it were not in any case merely an excuse to attack other countries. For example, Britain saw its view of the balance of power being adversely affected by the Russian victory over the Ottomans in 1854, built up an alliance, and attacked Russian forces. Yet from Russia's view, balance of power would only be established by moving towards Constantinople and freeing Bulgaria from the Ottomans. In

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other words, British policy at the time is better explained through the theory of political realism, even though it did not exist in name at the time. Similarly, dependency and world systems theory both get a look-in, since exploitation was definitely involved. This was how Cyprus was taken by Britain. This is why Cyprus is now still Anglo-Saxon, with incipient involvement in a macho geopolitical tug-of-war between the EU on the one hand, and Britain and the US on the other, with Russia understandably looking to prevent the expansion of US power in the Eastern Mediterranean. Geohistory, Guicciardini and Vico help us to understand the whole situation of Cyprus and, by default, the state of relations between states worldwide. The same ambitions, fears and macho power-politics have been with us since time immemorial, just as have attempts to create alliances of states, with the objective of achieving peace, even if war resulted. What we are now witnessing has happened before in one way or another, as we have seen in this book, and there is little new when it concerns the basic ingredients of individual human behaviour, whether at private, public or state level, or a combination of two or all three of these levels. Cyprus contrasts vividly with the states and statelets of Eastern Europe following the fall of the Berlin Wall, in that it did not go through the pains of adapting to new influences and systems. The island remained as divided as ever, a division which has, with the import of thousands of (illegal) settlers, become increasingly concrete, despite the window-dressing of 'intercommunal negotiations' and failed attempts by the US and Britain, such as the Annan Plan, to 'sort out matters' in their interests. Before concluding our book, let us take a look at the so-called abortive 'Annan Plan', the attempted implementation of which coincided with Cyprus' accession to the EU in 2004, since it is still very much on the Anglo-US agenda, and is likely to rear its head again within a few years. The United Kingdom Nations Plan The US and Britain realized that Cyprus' impending membership of the European Union could cause problems for both Turkey's attempts to join the EU, for the status of the discredited 1960 treaties (their compatibility with EU legislation) and for their efforts to keep Cyprus from becoming a fully-fledged member of a future EU security structure; hence, the plan presented to the world by the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, on 11 November 2002, described as a 'basis for agreement on a comprehensive settlement'. Several books and chapters have been written about the plan, most of them highly critical,6 and we are therefore not concerned here with 're-hashing' the whole story, but rather with looking at the abortive plan within our geohistorical context, to demonstrate that it was simply a device to continue the age-long international game of macho power politics. First, the plan proper was preceded by a 'Foundation Agreement', to be signed by Cyprus, Greece, Turkey and Britain, which re-confirmed the validity of the failed cratocidal treaties of 1960. This attempt alone shows that Cyprus' sovereignty was again being curtailed, since the government was being pressurized into signing a document in which past mistakes were repeated. Second was a stipulation

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that Greece and Cyprus would support Turkey's EU application, quite extraordinary in that it detracted from both Greece's and Cyprus' independence of action, by getting them to agree a priori to something that would restrict their freedom of action later. Also, it was quite possibly contrary to EU law, since candidates' applications should be decided on their own merits when the moment of decision arrives, not years before. Third, the plan deprived Cypriots of several rights under the European Convention of Human Rights (in connexion with valid claims to stolen property). Fourth, it denied to thousands of Greek Cypriots the right of return to their homes. Fifth, it legalized the presence of thousands of illegal settlers. Sixth, it skirted around many previous UN resolutions on Cyprus. The most glaring evidence, however, of the attempt to reduce Cyprus' status as a fully-fledged member of the EU was the clause stipulating that in the event of the Supreme Court (composed, disproportionately of three Greek Cypriots, three Turkish Cypriots and three non-Cypriots) reaching deadlock, then the issue would be decided by the outsiders. Much of the plan's detail, particularly that relating to Britain's rights, especially over maritime borders, was buried in 9,000 pages of annexes, not placed on the UN's website until 23.59 GMT on 23 April, a few hours before the referendum on the plan. It is, at any rate, hardly surprising that the Greek Cypriots rejected the plan out of hand, with a 'no' vote of 75.83 per cent, perhaps on the 'better the devil you know' principle, while the original Turkish Cypriots (a dwindling group) and a large number of illegal settlers voted in favour with a 'yes' vote of 64.9 per cent, under strong pressure from the Turkish government. A furious Turkey, Britain and US thus witnessed Cyprus joining the EU as an occupied state, with the acquis communautaire not yet applying to occupied Cyprus. David Hannay, the chief negotiator and Britain's proponent of the plan, who undoubtedly played an important role in its drafting and re-drafting (there were several versions), was clearly particularly disappointed at the outcome, and was unable to suppress some bitterness in his otherwise reasonably written account of how he failed: he described Russia's veto of a UN Security Council resolution designed to strengthen aspects relative to the plan as 'disgraceful'.7 He also described President Papadopoulos' television speech criticizing the plan as lengthy, rambling and emotional, when in fact it was surprisingly precise and cogent. He displayed his inadequate knowledge of the Cyprus problem by omitting to mention in his eightand-a-half-page 'Historical Background', the Foreign Office's role in dividing the Greek- and Turkish-speaking communities on Cyprus (particularly in 1955), Britain's secret collusion with Turkey, Britain's key role in the 1963 debacle (by helping Archbishop Makarios to draft his 'Thirteen Points'), and British and US agreement in 1963 and 1964 not to resist militarily a putative Turkish invasion. Hannay does at least admit that 'we [the British] had not covered ourselves with glory', but only as an apparent self-protective aside at the end of the book.8 Most revealingly, he gives the lie to the plan with his final words: 'and it is difficult to see any solution straying far away from the Annan Plan which has been so widely [?] endorsed. But if

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Turkey's candidature stalls or is blocked, it is not easy to be sanguine'.9 This apparent threat shows that one of the plan's main objectives was to use Cyprus as a tool to help Turkey's EU application.And it shows that Hannay was not acting in the least off his own bat, but simply off an Anglo-American one. Thus, now as then, Cyprus is still seen by the US, Britain and Turkey as a piece of valuable military real estate, with its independent Europeanization considered a threat to their Middle Eastern interests. Whether Mr. Hannay would agree with this is a moot point. Now Since the plan's resounding rejection and Cyprus' EU accession, Turkey has not carried out its threat to annex occupied Cyprus, or even attacked free Cyprus. Knowing that it has the full backstage support of EU member Britain and the powerful US, it has however been able to continue its application process, despite continuing violations of Greek airspace, occupation of a third of Cyprus, and a refusal to recognize a member of the very club which it is trying to join. On top of this, Turkey has not revoked a 1995 casus belli against Greece, should the latter exercise its right (under the UN Law of the Sea Convention) to extend its territorial waters from six to twelve miles.10 Theoretically, however, Turkey could become a member by 2015. Britain and the US are unlikely to risk pursuing an overt re-run of the Annan Plan. In the meantime, there is speculation that the new president, Christofias, and the leader of the Turkish Cypriots, Talat, who are both left-wingers, will achieve more than has been achieved to date. But it is unlikely that an unstable Turkish polity will be able to stomach too much agreement, particularly if the majority of illegal settlers agree with Ankara. Even if they do not, they are themselves under occupation. And by the time that this book is published, there may be a new and bumptious Turkish Cypriot leader. In the meantime, there is much tension behind the scenes; for example, Britain and Turkey recently signed a document calling for close links with the Turkish side of Cyprus. To rub salt into the legal Cypriot wound, Britain referred to the 'Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus' (unrecognized by any country except Turkey), thereby thumbing its nose not only at Greece and Cyprus, but at the EU and UN into the bargain. The British Ambassador to Athens was even summoned to the Greek Foreign Ministry, where he denied that Britain recognized occupied Cyprus. Despite his denial that Britain was trying to partition Cyprus further and his assertion that the UK was committed to reunification, Britain's and the US's policy is simply a re-united but emasculated Cyprus, without a genuinely sovereign central government, designed to ensure that Cyprus could never take decisions in the international sphere detrimental to Britain's perceived interests, such as pushing for a stronger role for the CFSP in the Eastern Mediterranean, or being able to veto Turkish accession to the EU. Similarly, Britain and the US do not want two internationally recognized states, since (as mentioned earlier), a smaller - but institutionally, stronger - Greek Cypriot state would be inimical to Turkish interests and - worst of all for Britain and the US - could jettison the 1960 metacolonial treaties (an anachronism for the EU) and force Britain to leave its bases, or

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at least re-negotiate a lease arrangement. In this connexion, it is interesting to note that in 1972 the FCO feared 'Greco-Turkish collusion to attempt to partition the island', since this could threaten the long term viability of the bases.11 We have seen, however, that Britain did not even wish to keep its bases following the Turkish invasion, and how British defence policy was - and is - subsumed into US plans. The US's relationship with Turkey is indeed the most pertinent factor in the Cyprus question. During the frenzied negotiations for the Annan Plan, which coincided with the preparation for, and attack on, Iraq, a senior State Department official, Daniel Fried, told an audience of Greek Americans in Washington in June 2003: When we were trying to persuade Turkey to allow the passage of our troops through its territory into Northern Iraq, we offered Turkey two incentives, several billion dollars in grants and loans and Cyprus in the form of the Annan Plan.12 Such is the stuff of the secret horse-trading that surrounds diplomacy, particularly on the Cyprus question, with so many interested parties. Given Turkey's geographical position, the US, despite disagreements with Turkey over the Kurdish question, will lean over backwards to support its policy vis-a-vis Greece and Cyprus, provided that it does not conflict with its own interests. Britain follows.13 It is hardly surprising that, in such a volatile situation, Greece has adopted, in a quasi-surrealistic ingeniously ingenuous fashion, a policy of welcoming Turkey's application to the EU, in the hope that Turkey will gradually drop its claims in the Aegean and withdraw from Cyprus. This is perhaps somewhat optimistic, since as long as Britain and the US support Turkish policy - even if merely subtly - the latter will continue - perhaps understandably from its own viewpoint - to pursue an aggressive policy vis-a-vis Greece and Cyprus, particularly to divert attention from its own internal problems. Should unoccupied Cyprus continue to toe its strictly legal UN and EU line, in conformity with functionalist theory, it is difficult to envisage Turkey attacking Cyprus, especially because of the increasingly strong Russian position in the Eastern Mediterranean (Russia has recently been refurbishing its naval base in Syria). A Turkish attack would destroy its relationship with the EU, and embarrass Britain and the US. One factor that could upset the precarious apple-cart would be an attempt to destabilize free Cyprus, with the objective of eventually making it, for example, a US client state (we have examples of both US and Soviet client states in the past and present). This is, however, highly improbable, given Cyprus' EU membership, and the socio-political homogeneity which her free part has enjoyed, perhaps paradoxically, since the 1974 invasion. An interesting thought arises here: in terms of both dependency and world systems theory, it is possible to put forward the view that, despite the British bases, Cyprus is less of a client state of Britain than is Britain of the US. Occupied Cyprus as de facto annexed Turkish territory contrasts vividly with the (free) Republic of Cyprus in many ways, the most important being that, in

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legal terms, the relationship between Cyprus and Greece is more obviously one of equals. The joint defence doctrine, so loudly proclaimed following the Imia crisis, still exists, even if it is (prudently) not bandied about. Linked as it is to the whole question of Turkey's Aegean claims, the Cyprus situation does by default exercise a disproportionate influence on Greece (and Turkey) from time to time. The most obvious recent example was that the bad relationship between radical elements of the Greek junta and President Makarios led to the coup in Cyprus, the Turkish invasion, and a new government in Greece. It is also likely that one of the main factors inducing the former Socialist Prime Minister, Simitis, to call an election before the referendum on the Annan Plan and Cyprus' EU accession, was the very plan itself. There is a small but powerful group of politicians and academics in Greece which is thought by some to subtly promote British and American policy. Needless to say, this group, which often operates under the umbrella of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), and the Hellenic Observatory at the London School of Economics, in the form of conferences and papers, was considered by some to subtly support the Annan Plan. They have written in the Athens News along with a close collaborator, Mark Dragoumis, and a former American diplomat in Athens, (who resigned over the Iraq war, but who remains in Athens, sometimes promoting (inadvertently or otherwise) US and Turkish policy vis-a-vis Kosovo, FYROM and the Moslem minority in Thrace). In an article in the Athens News (then owned by Lambrakis), Dragoumis called for AKEL (the Progressive People's Working Party of Cyprus) to 'have Papadopoulos resign' and for Athens to assist in 'implementing this decision', thus evoking the policy of radical Greek junta elements of the 60s vis-a-vis President Makarios.14 Dragoumis' policy seemed to be in line with what the British and Americans wanted, but could never dare say out loud. Examples such as the above bear witness to the tendency in Greece for 'foreign parties': where, in the earlier years of the foundation of the modern Greek state, the main political parties were openly English, French and Russian (with a Bavarian monarch), today, albeit in a far subtler form, the main external forces are the Anglo-American, the EU, and the Russian, with some synergy between the latter two. Thus, those of the former persuasion will do their best to play down disagreements between the Greek government on the one hand, and the Turkish, British and US ones, on the other. An example of this is a recent non-academic tourist

book, Greeks and Turks in War and Peace,15 published by the Athens News^ translated

by Dragoumis, and published by the Athens News. The book goes to great pains to avoid upsetting the British, by omitting such vital historical data as: the Greek War of Independence in its totality (where Britain's role was controversial) yet including a blow-by-blow account of the origins of modern Turkey; the Greek Civil War (again, as we have seen, Britain's role was very controversial); Britain's studied division of Cyprus; Britain's role in the 1963 debacle; how Britain and the US agreed not to resist a putative Turkish invasion in 1963/4; how Britain gave in to Kissinger in 1974; and how Britain wanted to give up its bases in Cyprus in 1973/4.

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Today the delicate mix of international rivalry, greed,16 ambition, pride and prejudice surrounding Cyprus has been offset to some extent by Cyprus' EU membership, which acts as an obstacle to Turkish policy. It also enables the Greek government to put much of the problem into the EU's lap. A statement by the former Greek Prime Minister, Simitis, at the end of 2002, shows how Greece and (doubtless) Cyprus consider that the EU should be a panacea: I would prefer it, if it were possible, that neither Greece nor Turkey should act as guarantors of Cyprus' security. I believe that Cyprus itself, with its EU accession, will guarantee the security of all its inhabitants and that these agreements [the 1960 treaties] are not necessary.17 Such a policy was of course diametrically opposed to that of Britain, the US and Turkey: an EU security guarantee - implied in Simitis' statement - would have rendered the 1960 package and the viability of the British territories in Cyprus yet more anachronistic than they already are. Turkey was - and is - entirely opposed to any EU military activity and planning on its doorstep that includes Cyprus and Greece. Britain and the US wish to maintain their control over Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean. Thus, they continue to support the arrangements of 1960, so rashly imposed by the then Greek Prime Minister, Karamanlis, his Turkish counterpart, and the British, with the people of Cyprus only getting a last-minute look-in. It is not surprising that the Greek government still refuses to release the papers on Cyprus, fearful of embarrassing skeletons. For the time being, Cyprus is in a fuzzy legal limbo: a good part of the 1960 package is incompatible with both UN and EU law, hence the 'Annan Plan mentality', which would have restricted Cyprus' rights vis-a-vis its security relationship with the EU. As Anglo-American pressure for Turkey's EU membership increases, so will Annan style' pressure on Cyprus, to force the EU to accept Turkey's presence on Cyprus and prevent future EU defence without Turkish involvement. Matters will undoubtedly come to a head before 2015, since neither Greece nor Cyprus will be able to accept Turkish membership while it continues to occupy Cyprus, refuses to recognise and trade with its free part, and threatens Greece with war. Much will therefore depend on how far the EU will be prepared to go to allow Cyprus to be a fully-fledged and sovereign member. Turkey will be furious at the fact that in June 2012, Cyprus takes over the EU Presidency for six months, since, unless there is a solution before then, she will be sidelined, even as an observer. Thus, there will be an enormous amount of Anglo-Americo-Turkish backstage arm-twisting and extreme power-political behaviour to try to get as many meetings as possible moved to Brussels, and to get the illegal occupation regime involved. This will of course be resisted, quite rightly, by the Cyprus government. The Cyprus government has made a number of moves recently. For example, it now has a military agreement with France, to the irritation of Britain, and has enhanced its relations with Russia, as has Greece. Apart from the EU factor, the Russian one will be crucial in the next few years, as the US and its military

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subordinate, Britain, try to keep the Russians from increasing their Eastern Mediterranean influence. Cyprus is a lynchpin in this respect, particularly since Russia favours an EU solution over an Anglo-Saxon NATO one. Just as in the 1820s Russian power led to Britain having to involve itself in Greek independence, so now Russia might, with possible EU support, offer security guarantees to Cyprus that would render the British territories and Turkish occupation an international embarrassment. Reading history has the effect of provoking thought. Cyprus is no exception, having spawned a large number of books and papers, some historical, but most political, with a fair smattering of cultural works underlining the ancient archaeological richness of the island, now partially destroyed by the invaders. Considering the situation of a country from a theoretical as well as practical standpoint is an intriguing task, first, because looking at the issues that arise from a practical standpoint automatically induces theorizing, and second, because considering the relevance of international relations theory to the issues that arise is like putting on various differently coloured spectacles, and theorizing through other people's theories. Most difficult, one gains the impression that some of these theories have been thought up, expressly or accidentally, to justify the view of the theorizer. In other words, however interesting may be the intellectual exercise, the realities of human behaviour will get in the way of the detachment necessary to see things clearly. This is perhaps why political realism is so attractive to geopolitical people: it is, in a sense, more brutally and simplistically honest than some theories, although it also suffers from some humbug. Thus, the answer is the geohistorical approach, since this gives not only knowledge (rather than hot air), but also enables one to see why, for all the theory that exists, perfection can simply not be created, because human behaviour has always got, and will always get, in the way of a universally ideal solution. This is what my study of Cyprus' diplomatic history has taught me. It has also taught me that the study of primary source historical documents is the most direct way of getting acquainted with an international relations problem. Guicciardini introduced the world to the effective use of documents to learn history. Through history, solutions can be found, provided that one does not try to push a theory too hard, and concentrates on lessons learned, rather than repeat mistakes. Cyprus shows how a dehumanizing and mechanistic geopolitical approach, with its emphasis on state interests, trade-routes, and oil and gas pipelines, leads to cold military logic, at the back of which lie greed, ambition, pride and, above all, fear. Perhaps the world consists of the weak, the weaker and the weakest,18 since true strength does not rely on vaunting itself. Cyprus is an example, a victim and hostage of outside power complexes resulting from geopolitical power politics, that can only be properly grasped by the study of the history and the realization that pride, prejudice, greed, fear and ambition are permanent and immutable characteristics, that no amount of surrealistic theory can do away with. It is indeed the powerful who often try to influence the less powerful, and it is obvious that the state system is the basis of mass human organization; but only through a (geo) historical approach can one understand, and therefore try to harness, force, by

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preventing extreme ambition and hegemony, which lead to the continuation of politics by other means.

APPENDIX

Trying to squeeze blood from a stone The following correspondence shows the difficulty that modern diplomatic historians can encounter when trying to obtain the facts necessary to try and establish the truth.

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EAAHNIKH AHMOKPATIA

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concerwriisOrecxaaiidkthecaseaftheextn^ andCvpros.

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FOI«ection27(2)exem|*k»*3piksto Hun tbc UK, orfroman intcmatioml orgMilMiiottlnthecafeoftliewMiteldextiwttitein d) and i) H is confidential information receivedfromthe government of Cyprus and exchangee between Cyprus siidCoitti»osn^^ information received font the US government la applying the section 27 exemption we have bad to balance the piblk interest m witohoidk«tbenrfbnMtk»agato Infcvourof miesae w« acknowledge that rekase of all infcniwtioarcbtii^ to Greece and Cypiue may addtothe understanding and knowledge of this subject, and wliere disclosure of information would be unlikely to have any iignlfkani (Wtiimw^ effixt, ib« puWk interest in disdoswc is lflDBly to prevail. However, ia favour of withholding this niftMKion we consider that, to these eases, the United Kingdom'srelatiomwith Qteec«,Cypnjg and Unhed States, would be piqwfiocd if we wleased the infonnatioiL Farther to ttet.tein»t within which confidential exchanges between the United Ksa«(lomaiidotlier)FCO9/1185 " FCO 9/1190 FCO 9/1947

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I will be sending the rest of the files during July. Yours sincerely,

Uichard/'Barr Richard Baix Information Management Group

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Enclosed: Complete files 4 Files

Data Protection Act 1998 The FCO processes personal data as notified to the Information Commissioner (www.informationcomniissioner.gov.uk) for the puipose of working for the UK's interests in a safe, just and prosperous world. Such personal data may be shared with other UK Government Departments and public authorities.

APPENDIX

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Foreign & ^ Commonwealth 3* Office

8 October 2008 Information Management Department Our Ref No: 0425-05 ICO Ref No: FS50115138 r. »* ir DrMaUinson

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