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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 figureā€”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...

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