NATO's Southern Research Articles

NATO’s Southern Flank: The Evolution of Türkiye’s Strategic Role and Its Implications for Regional Security

This article delves into the progressive development of Türkiye's strategic function within NATO, and what it signifies for regional security along the Alliance's Southern Flank. Türkiye, as a crucial NATO member since 1952, has steadfastly assumed a considerable part in the organization's collective defense, thereby bolstering the stability of the region. The article offers a historical review of Türkiye's involvement in NATO, tracking its journey from joining the Alliance during the initial Cold War years to navigating the more intricate security milieu of the post-Cold War era. The focus then shifts to the geopolitical challenges faced by NATO on its Southern Flank, particularly in the Middle East, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Black Sea region. Within this context, the article analyzes Türkiye's evolving strategic role, including its military capabilities and growing defense industry, diplomacy, and soft power initiatives, as well as its efforts to balance relations with NATO, Russia, and other regional actors. The article also explores Türkiye's strategic decision to acquire the Russian S-400 missile defense system, a move that underscores Türkiye's commitment to diversifying its defense capabilities and enhancing its national security, while also navigating the complex dynamics of international alliances and NATO's evolving security landscape. Subsequently, it discusses the possible advantages and hurdles that could arise from Türkiye's dynamic strategic role in regional security and on NATO's Southern Flank. Key topics addressed include the reinforcement of NATO's defense capabilities, the enhancement of regional security cooperation, and potential strains within the Alliance. The piece wraps up with an evaluation of future prospects for Türkiye's strategic function in NATO and the implications for regional security. This underlines the significance of maintaining a united and adaptable NATO that can adeptly respond to the evolving security challenges in the region.

Megan J. King: NATO's Southern Flank Does not Stop in North Africa: Addressing Terrorism Beyond the Sahel. 2016.

<b>Megan J. King:</b> NATO's Southern Flank Does not Stop in North Africa: Addressing Terrorism Beyond the Sahel. 2016.

Denuclearization on NATO's Southern Front: Allied Reactions to Soviet Proposals, 1957–1963

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Soviet Union and its East European allies sought to prevent the installation of U.S. nuclear missiles in Western Europe by embarking on a diplomatic “peace offensive” that included proposals for the creation of denuclearized zones in various geographical areas of Europe. This article considers how the NATO countries responded to these proposals. In the end, the Western allies rejected proposals for the denuclearization of the Balkans and other areas in Europe, but discussions within NATO's councils often proved complicated, especially regarding southern Europe. In the case of the 1957 Stoica proposal for the denuclearization of the Balkans, the leading NATO countries stepped back and let Turkey and Greece reject the proposal, but by 1963, in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, the United States and other key allied countries as well as the NATO bureaucracy assumed a more active role in evaluating and ultimately rejecting the notion of denuclearization in the Mediterranean.

Global Geopolitics and Local Geoeconomics in Northwest Africa: The Industrial Port of Granadilla (Canary Islands, Spain)

In the world scenario of US unilateralism, this paper argues the competition for control over Africa's resources between the major powers (United States, the European Union and China) provides a renewed geostrategic situation for the Canary Islands (Spain). First, the political and economic rivalry over Northwest Africa adds new dimensions to the geostrategic location of the Archipelago, which constitute NATO's southern flank and a logistic platform for neighbouring Africa. Second, it focuses on the particular case of the industrial megaport envisaged for Granadilla (Tenerife), examining its geostrategic projection as an important infrastructure both for the Canarian ruling elites' geoeconomic interests and also for the geopolitical interests of the major world powers.

The Inconsistency of United States Foreign Policy in the Aftermath of the Cyprus Invasion: The Turkish Arms Embargo and its Termination

When Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974, both NATO and United States interests were impacted. The United States adopted measures to preserve its interests in the Eastern Mediterranean and maintain the cohesion of NATO's southern flank. But the U.S. Congress imposed an embargo on arms sales to Turkey. This had serious implications for American foreign policy and brought out the sharp divisions between the legislature and the executive branches over issues of enforcing regulations governing arms sales and the need to preserve national interests. An examination of the conflicting interests of all pertinent actors is revealing and exposes the "purposeful inconsistency" of U.S. foreign policy in this instance.

Uncomfortable Questions: Cyprus, October 1973–August 1974

Scholarly research to date has analysed the Cyprus issue from the perspective of Greek–Turkish relations, suggesting that the United States was attempting to strike a balance between them in order to safeguard the cohesion of NATO's southern flank during the cold war. This article, without undermining the validity of previous historical findings on the issue, nevertheless constitutes an attempt to move towards a differing research agenda: it locates Cyprus in the Middle Eastern theatre and suggests that the Yom Kippur war of October 1973 may have more linkages to the Cyprus crisis of summer 1974 than one may at first sight discern.

Fire Brigade or Tocsin? NATO's ACE Mobile Force, Flexible Response and the Cold War

During the Cold War, NATO planners created the Allied Command Europe Mobile Force (Land) to implement proto-flexible response strategies. Originally conceived as a means to plug gaps in the NATO Central Region "Shield" forces with portable tactical nuclear weapons, ACE Mobile Force evolved into a signalling device intended to forestall an escalatory situation with Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces on NATO's northern and southern flanks. The story of ACE Mobile Force is a lens from which to view the implementation of Flexible Response, particularly in the mature period of the 1970s and 1980s.

French negotiating behavior: dealing with la grande nation

The cultural context the historical context the process case studies - NATO's southern command, UN weapons inspections in Iraq, Uruguay round of the GATT suggestions for negotiators looking to the future.

NATO Force Planning Without the Soviet Threat

Abstract : in the absence of its traditional adversaries, NATO can no longer do force planning in its accustomed manner. For over 40 years, NATO force planning began by identifying military threats posed by the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. These threats were translated into particular scenarios, which included detailed estimates of the size and quality of the forces that NATO might find arrayed against it, the length of time that NATO might have to prepare its defense after detecting hostile activities, and the strategy and tactics that the adversary might use in its offensive operations. These scenarios, in turn, were employed as a basis for sizing and structuring NATO's forces, For example, the primary scenario that NATO long used for force planning envisioned a Warsaw Pact attack against the Central Region employing some 90 to 100 divisions, preceded by an air attack against airfields, nuclear facilities, command and control installations, and other fixed targets, all with no more than 14 days' warning time. NATO might well be in for a turbulent decade on its periphery, but in the absence of identifiable adversaries, threat scenarios are no longer adequate as the basis for NATO force planning and certainly are not sufficient to win public support for national defense budgets. Yet no alternative basis for force planning has emerged. If the alliance's force planning process is to survive, a new conceptual basis will be required, one that does not rely on the outdated concept of threat scenarios but, at the same time, offers planners something more substantial than elusive risks. Conventional Military Capabilities NATO Must Counterbalance: Peacetime Force Deployments, Medium-Range Bomber Force, Forces Potentially Oriented Toward NATO's Central Region, Forces Potentially Oriented Toward North Norway, Forces Potentially Oriented Toward NATO's Southern Region, Conventional Capabilities of Turkey's Southeastern Neighbors, and Mass-Casualty Weapons within Reach of Southern Europe.

NATO's Southern Allies: Internal and External Challenges, by John Chipman

Introduction John Chipman 1. NATO and Security Problems of the Southern Region John Chipman 2. Allies in the Mediterranean: Legacy of Fragmentation John Chipman 3. Portuguese Defence Policy: Internal Politics and Defence Commitments Alvaro Vasconcelos, Director of Institute for Strategic and International Studies, Lisbon 4. Spain and NATO: Internal Debate and External Challenges Angel Vinas, Executive Advisor to the Spanish Foreign Minister 5. Italy: A New Role in the Mediterranean? Maurizio Cremasco, Instituto di Affari Internazionali 6. Greece and NATO: Continuity and Change Thanos Veremis, University of Athens 7. Turkey and the Southern Flank: The Domestic and External Contexts Ali Karaosmanoglu, Director of Strategic Studies, Foreign Policy Institute, Ankara 8. NATO's Southern Region: National Versus Alliance Priorities John Chipman

Changes in the character of East‐West relations: Implications for NATO's southern region

Changes in the character of East‐West relations: Implications for NATO's southern region

John Chipman (a cura di), NATO's Southern Allies: Internal and External Challanges, An Atlantic Institute for International Affairs Research Volume, London and New York, Routledge, 1988, pp. 399.

John Chipman (a cura di), NATO's Southern Allies: Internal and External Challanges, An Atlantic Institute for International Affairs Research Volume, London and New York, Routledge, 1988, pp. 399.

Book Reviews : NATO's Southern Allies: Internal and External Challenges edited by John Chipman. London: Routledge, 1988. 399pp. £35.00

Book Reviews : NATO's Southern Allies: Internal and External Challenges edited by John Chipman. London: Routledge, 1988. 399pp. £35.00

NATO's southern allies: internal and external challenges

NATO's southern allies: internal and external challenges

Cohesion and capabilities in NATO's Southern region

Cohesion and capabilities in NATO's Southern region

NATO's Southern flank and Italy's role in it

NATO's Southern flank and Italy's role in it

Politics and security in the southern region of the Atlantic alliance and NATO's southern allies: internal and external challenges

Politics and security in the southern region of the Atlantic alliance and NATO's southern allies: internal and external challenges

The Logic of Papandreou's Foreign Policy

Critical responses to the nationalist programme of Andreas Papandreou have ranged from suspicion to alarm. Dubbing him 'populist,' 'erratic,' 'pro-Soviet,' and 'antiAmerican,' critics have predicted that Greece's socialist premier would withdraw his country from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (nato), sever its link with the European Community (ec), eject United States bases from its soil, and commit a number of other related 'sins'. Roy Macridis, for example, has set out a series of sombre predictions based on Papandreou's ideological profile and the radical platform of his party; while John Loulis has argued that Papandreou's strategy has exhibited 'inconsistent and perplexing shifts,' although remaining essentially within a framework of 'antiAmerican' sentiments and 'pro-Soviet' inclinations.1 Clearly, if these dire forecasts were to come true, the consequences would be profound: the disintegration of nato's southern flank, increased opportunities for the Soviet Union to isolate Turkey, and the transformation of the Balkans into the powder keg it used to be. That none of these predictions has come to be suggests that they may have been founded on fallacies. Indeed, I will argue that Papandreou's critics have oversimplified, and hence distorted, his world view. Moreover, in personalizing their charges,

Political and military cooperation and security in NATO's Southern flank

Political and military cooperation and security in NATO's Southern flank

Rhetoric and Reality in the Aegean: U.S. Policy Options Toward Greece and Turkey

RHETORIC AND REALITY ______ IN THE AEGEAN: U.S. POLICY OPTIONS TOWARD GREECE AND TURKEY Bruce R. Kuniholm HE REELECTION OF GREEK PRIME MINISTER ANDREAS PAPANDREOU in June 1985 has raised serious questions in U.S. government circles about the direction of Greece's foreign policy and its implications for U.S. policy toward Greece, Turkey, and nato's southern flank. What are Papandreou's intentions? Has his rhetoric against the United States, which he characterized in 1984 as a "metropolis of imperialism," been a political tactic, intended primarily for domestic consumption; or did he mean what he said in 1981 when he pledged to remove U.S. bases from Greece and withdraw Greece from the nato Alliance? In either case, what are the implications for U.S. policy in the region? Some of Papandreou's critics have compared him to Salvadore Allende or even Fidel Castro; others have characterized him as unscrupulous and intellectually dishonest; while still others see him as an opportunistic politician whose positions are determined almost solely by tactical considerations. His admirers, on the other hand, regard him as a nationalist who, in looking out for Greece's interests, has necessarily ruffled the U.S. eagle's feathers. In the process, they assert, he has put the international community on notice that Greece cannot be taken for granted; he has brought concrete benefits to a considerable number of Bruce R. Kuniholm is associate professor of history and public policy at the Institute of Policy Sciences and Public Affairs, Duke University. The author of The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East and other books on U.S. policy in the region, he is currently writing a book on the United States and Turkey since World War II. 137 138 SAIS REVIEW Greeks; and he has provided them with a measure of self-respect that had hitherto been lacking in the "patron-client" relationship they shared with the United States. Andreas Papandreou was born on the island of Chios in 1919. Arrested and tortured by the Metaxas regime in 1939 for belonging to a Trotskyite student group, he was forced to sign a confession of repentance , after which he left Greece in 1940 for the United States. Attending first Columbia and then Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D. in economics in 1943, he became an American citizen in 1944, served in the navy until 1946, and subsequently taught in several universities, including Berkeley, where he became chairman of the Department of Economics. Returning to Greece a number of times in the course of the next two decades, he eventually renounced his U.S. citizenship and in 1964 successfully ran for parliament. Assisted by his father, who was prime minister at the time, Papandreou became a national figure—a development that greatly exacerbated fears on the part of conservatives, including the right-wing colonels who staged the 1967 coup, about Greece's future direction. Arrested and placed in solitary confinement for eight months by the regime of the colonels, Papandreou was released at the end of the year as a result of U.S. influence and went into self-imposed exile. He returned after the regime collapsed and in September 1974 founded the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (pasok), an outgrowth of an anti-regime movement he founded while in exile. His bitterness toward the United States has been attributed to a perception, widely shared by many Greeks, that the United States bears responsibility not only for Greece's military dictatorship from 1967 to 1974 but for making possible the Turkish occupation of Cyprus in 1974 as well. After obtaining 13.6 percent of the popular vote (and 12 seats in Greece's 300-member parliament) in 1974, pasok's popularity rose steadily: to 25.3 percent of the popular vote (92 seats) in 1977 and 48 percent (172 seats) in 1981, when Papandreou became prime minister. In 1985 pasok's popularity dropped slightly to 45.8 percent, but its margin over the conservative New Democracy party was sufficient under an electoral law passed in 1985 to give it an absolute majority in parliament (161 seats). Before his reelection Papandreou dropped hints about his designs...