NATO's Southern Flank: A Troubled Region

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the most salient factors and events in 1986 that affected US security relations with the countries of NATO's Southern Flank. Perhaps nowhere was the combination of these pressures more discernible than in the bilateral negotiations over US and NATO military bases that the United States has been and is carrying on with the different countries of the region. Historically, the Southern Flank of NATO-Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Turkey-has been taken largely for granted by US At the heart of these generally harmonious relations have been widely shared security concerns regarding the Soviet Union and the concomitant desirability of having the United States play a dominant role in the defense of the region. Accordingly, these base negotiations are examined in detail in an effort to shed light on the direction and concrete nature of the growing strains in the usually harmonious bilateral US security relations with the countries of the region.