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Thirteen FINAL THOUGHTS POSTSCRIPT A Greek nationalist, after reading this account, might be compelled to protest that what I was advocating at this critical period of recent Greek political history was nothing different from what my adversaries were engaged in, specifically that I was advocating one kind of intervention whereas they were involved in another kind. Why did I not take the honorable position of arguing for a policy of nonintervention in the internal affairs of Greece, noninterference of any kind?1 On principle I could not fault this critic. All I can say in extenuation is that during the period in question the spirit of Cold War competition still dominated international relations, with each of the superpowers vying for influence in the Third World, trying to ensure continued support within its spheres of influence and where possible enforcing conformity within its own power bloc. Interference by one side or the other or both was a fact of life; it would have been unrealistic—a head-in-the-sand attitude, really—to propose that one superpower refrain from trying to exert its influence in Greece or elsewhere. Thus interference was a given, and not only the kind expected of the CIA; the problem, the argument, concerned the purposes and ends to which that interference would be put. The entire question of the involvement of the ‘‘American factor,’’ as the Greeks term it, is a most complex and fascinating one. Greek politicians nearly to a man—and they are not as unrepresentative of average Greek thinking as the Papadopoulos junta would have us believe—have never taken a position against American involvement in the affairs of Greece. They all want it, but they want it exerted on their own behalf and to the detriment of their political enemies. Even the most ardent opponents of the junta regime have never ceased hoping the Americans will eventually come to their senses and step in to throw the junta rascals out. The Greek junta itself only complains about American interference when they fear it is going to be exerted against themselves, to force them somehow to restore a democratic regime sooner than they would like. What I have presented in this memoir as Ambassador Talbot’s do-nothing -ism, he would probably have explained (defended) as a reluctance to interfere directly in Greece’s internal political affairs. Most opponents of the regime have regarded our apparent ‘‘hands-off’’ attitude as constituting militant support for Papadopoulos and company, since they believe that only active hostility from the U.S. government could topple them. One could get into an endless argument on this score, but suffice it to say that a hands-off policy hardly squares with the hundreds of millions of dollars of military assistance we have given the junta since the coup, nor with the strong (but often behind-the-scenes) political support we have given by lobbying in their favor in such organs as NATO as well as in other bodies to which we do not even belong, such as the Council of Europe, where we discouraged friendly governments from taking any action that might annoy the Greek Colonels. If all this was ‘‘noninterference’’—for example, take merely the massive military aid to a regime that stays in power only because it enjoys the support, or at least the sufferance, of the Greek armed forces—then I would like to know where the definition of ‘‘interference’’ begins. As time passed, I was no longer advocating intervention to encourage the immediate departure of the junta from power—which appeared increasingly impracticable—so much as advocating a policy of putting the maximum distance between ourselves and the oppressive and inept Greek Colonels, while still maintaining relations with the Greek government as such. This is what is known in State Department parlance as assuming the posture of ‘‘a very low profile.’’ I thought we could easily afford to cease the highly visible hobnobbing with the Colonels by our ambassador, our spooks, and our resident military, as well as the constant high-level visits by American generals and admirals, cabinet officers, and other VIPs from Washington that so outraged the opposition and convinced them that we had really learned to love the junta. As an illustration of this syndrome, I cite the serenading of Prime Minister Papadopoulos by a group of American schoolchildren singing Christmas 198 final thoughts [13.58.150.59] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 08:12...

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