Foreign relations of Greece: Encyclopedia II - Foreign relations of Greece - United States

Foreign relations of Greece - United States

The United States and Greece have long-standing historical, political, and cultural ties based on a common heritage, shared democratic values, and participation as Allies during World War II, the Korean conflict, and the Cold War. The U.S. is the largest foreign investor in Greece; U.S. foreign investment in Greece was about $1.5 billion in 1994.

About 3 millions Americans are of Greek ancestry. The Greek-Americans are a well-organized community in the U.S., and they help cultivate close political and cultural ties with Greece. Greece has the seventh-largest population of U.S. Social Security beneficiaries in the world.

During the Greek civil war of 1946-1949, the U.S. proclaimed the Truman Doctrine, promising assistance to governments resisting communist subjugation, and began a period of substantial financial and military aid. The U.S. has provided Greece with more than $11.1 billion in economic and security assistance since 1946. Economic programs were phased out by 1962, but military assistance has continued. In fiscal year 1995, Greece was the fourth-largest recipient of U.S. security assistance, receiving loans totaling $255.15 million in foreign military financing.

In 1953, the first defense cooperation agreement between Greece and the United States was signed, providing for the establishment and operation of American military installations on Greek territory. The current mutual defense cooperation agreement (MDCA) provides for continued U.S. military assistance to Greece and the operation by the U.S. of a major military facility at Souda Bay, Crete.

However, there is also much anti-American sentiment in Greece as a result of the United States meddling in Greece's affairs a number of times with negative results. The United States intervened in the Greek civil war, taking the side of the right extremists against the left National Liberation Army (ELAS), the organization that carried out most of the resistance during the Nazi occupation of Greece, and ELAS' successor in the civil war, the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE). The extreme right won and instituted a highly brutal regime, for which the CIA helped create a new internal security agency in 1953, KYP (now renamed EYP). Before long, KYP was carrying out systematic torture and other human rights violations commonly associated with secret police.

Furthermore, the United States CIA assisted in the 1967 coup. The military coup took place in April 1967, just two days before the campaign for national elections was to begin, elections which appeared certain to bring the veteran liberal leader George Papandreou, senior back as prime minister. Papandreou had been elected in February 1964 with the only outright majority in the history of modern Greek elections. The successful machinations to unseat him had begun immediately, a joint effort of the Royal Court, the Greek military, and the American military and CIA stationed in Greece.

The 1967 coup was followed immediately by martial law, censorship, arrests, beatings, torture, and killings, the victims totaling some 8,000 in the first month. This was accompanied by a declaration, considered predictable and laughable by some leftists, that this was all being done to save the nation from a "Communist takeover". The new conservative regime decided to remove influences in Greek life it considered corrupting and subversive influences, including miniskirts for women, long hair for men, and foreign newspapers; church attendance for the young would be compulsory.

James Becket, an American attorney sent to Greece by Amnesty International, wrote in December 1969 that "a conservative estimate would place at not less than two thousand" the number of people tortured, usually in the most gruesome of ways, often with equipment supplied by the United States.

Becket reported the following:

Hundreds of prisoners have listened to the little speech given by Inspector Basil Lambrou, who sits behind his desk which displays the red, white, and blue clasped-hand symbol of American aid. He tries to show the prisoner the absolute futility of resistance: "You make yourself ridiculous by thinking you can do anything. The world is divided in two. There are the communists on that side and on this side the free world. The Russians and the Americans, no one else. What are we? Americans. Behind me there is the government, behind the government is NATO, behind NATO is the U.S. You can't fight us, we are Americans."

The occupation of Iraq and the 2004 recognition of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia with its constitutional name by the United States has only expanded the view of the United States as belligerent in the eyes of many Greeks living in Greece.

See also

• Greek-American Relations

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "United States", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki