Sea Control - Sea Control 388 - The Case for More Basing in Greece & Cyprus with Dr. Aaron Stein

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

Links1. "At the Seam of Three Regions: The Case for More Basing and Access in Greece and Cyprus," by Aaron Stein, War on the Rocks, July 29, 2022.2. "Sea Control 199 - The Eastern Mediterranean Question with Dr. Ioannis N. Grigoriadis and Dr. Jan Asmussen," by Jared Samuelson, CIMSEC, September 12, 2020.3. Sea Control 226 - Phase Line Attila with Dr. Ed Erickson & Dr. Mesut Uyar, by Jared Samuelson, CIMSEC, February 14, 2021.

Hey folks, it's Jared. Dr. Aaron Stein is my guest today. We'll be discussing his War on the Rocks article on increased spacing access in Cyprus and Greece. This episode was edited and produced by Jim Jarvie. I'd like to pause here to highlight our local chapters, whether you're in South Korea, Egypt, Singapore, France, New York, India, or the Caribbean, chances are there's a SimSec local chapter near you. You can find a full listing of our chapters and contact information on our website at simsec.org. So if you're interested, please reach out and get involved. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, The Village Pumps, you can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of iron brew bottles

wherever you download your podcasts. With that, Kimber's Men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Hello, hot shipmates, and welcome aboard Sea Control. My guest today is Aaron Stein. We're going to be discussing his article in War on the Rocks, calling for more basing and access in Greece and Cyprus. So Aaron, welcome aboard. Could you tell the listeners a little bit about your background, please? Sure. You know, my name is Aaron Stein. For the listeners who don't know me, I'm now the chief content officer at War on the Rocks. Previously, I was director of research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Before that, the Atlantic Council, and was bouncing

around some European think tanks before that as I was finishing my PhD at King's College. Thanks, and as a reminder to the listeners, all opinions are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. So Turkey and Greece have a sort of famously torturous long-term relationship in history with one another. How has the U.S. balanced engagement with Turkey and Greece to minimize antagonizing both of those countries? Well, I would say, you know, during the Cold War, the two were always attached to the hip in terms of U.S. policy. They were led into NATO together in 1952. And when that first NATO expansion happened, the U.S. was cognizant of the tensions between them. And so there was

an effort through military assistance programs, through the provision of military arms to keep a military balance between the two powers so that one didn't gain one access over the other because of the constant tension that permeated throughout the relationship, most pointedly during the two heated crises over Cyprus in 1964, and then ultimately culminating in the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. You know, it went as far, for example, that in response to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 74, Congress imposed an arms embargo on Ankara. And in keeping with that balancing policy, the U.S. also halted certain arms shipments to Greece as well, even though Greece, in theory, was at the other end of the invasion. And there's a lot of,

obviously, tensions between the two sides. The Greeks had their own hand in what was going on in Cyprus. But my point in bringing this out was in terms of how militant and committed to the balancing policy the U.S. has been. And I would say up until just elements of the Trump administration for a whole number of reasons, geopolitically and things that are going on, balancing has been the policy, but the U.S., and this is certainly the feeling in Ankara, has started to tilt and tilt a little bit more towards Greece in terms of perpetuating its own interests. So besides their shared history of conflict, what is the primary source of tension between Greece and Turkey at the moment? At the moment, it's similar to festering issues that have been, I don't want to say ever present, but as maritime issues, particularly over the delineation of territorial claims for undersea, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Ankara has resisted how expansive Greece's territorial boundaries are and should be based upon the number of islands that are around and very close to Turkey's coasts. And so Turkey, at least at elements of the policy level, believe that Greece's territorial claims are far more expensive than they should be, and that they're not negotiating in good faith in terms of what access Ankara would have to its own countervailing claims on territorial demands around its coastlines. The other is the festering and never-ending issue of Cyprus. The island is divided after the Turkish invasion of 1974. And Ankara, particularly under the Erdogan government, felt, and they're correct in this, is that in 2004, they really were forward-leaning

in their support for a peace plan that would resolve the Cyprus issue. And when it was put up for referendum, the Turkish side of the island voted for it. This isn't actually all that surprising. The Turkish side of the island is unrecognized by everybody except Ankara. And it's very nice to have an EU passport because Cyprus is a member of the EU. But it was the Greek Cypriots that actually voted against the referendum. And ever since then, Ankara's policy has basically moved towards, and we've seen it codified now, two states, right? The issue has become far worse with the discovery of hydrocarbons, right? And so you have this expansive and relatively large discovery of natural gas in Greek Cypriot waters, and in Cypriot waters, because it does extend

around the entirety of the island. And Ankara says, well, the Turkish Cypriots should get in on the fund too. And so there's tensions about these, the exploitation of hydrocarbons. And when you smash the two together, the territorial delineation, the maritime claims and the hydrocarbon issues, it's when you get Turkey sort of pushing the boundaries of these claims through its own use of seismographic vessels to go out and explore in contested waters for its own natural gas deposits in the Mediterranean Sea. So I'll pause here to plug a couple of things for the listeners. If you want a little bit more background on a couple of the issues that Dr. Stein just brought up.

One is Sea Control 199, Dr. Yanis Gagouryaz and Dr. Yanis Moussin discussing the overlapping maritime claims in the Eastern Mediterranean. And the second is Sea Control 226 with Dr. Ed Erickson and Dr. Mezut Uyar discussing the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. How did the relationships with both of these countries change with the Turkish purchase of the S-400? So, I laugh because Ankara will say, well, we're the second one to introduce a double-digit, you know, using NATO terminology, Russian surface-to-air missile into this part of the world, and that the Greeks operate an S-300 on the island of Crete, to which Americans who are around or who've studied this remember that it was the Greek Cypriots who actually purchased the S-300. And there's all sorts of reasons I'm not going to go into as to why they were interested into it, one of which was to keep Turkish jets away. But the other one is that the Russian arms bazaar of the early 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Putting that aside, a compromise was reached so that the S-300 was put on Crete because the Turks had actually threatened to bomb it. Fast forward into 2017 range, directly following a coup attempt in Turkey. Ankara's history with trying to purchase high altitude long range air and missile defense goes back as far as the first Gulf War. So we're talking about a three decade pursuit of some sort of air and missile defense system. The negotiations with the United States for Patriot have been torturous and ongoing for these three decades. There was even a time when Turkey explored working with Israel on the aero system with the U.S. being partnered there as well. Ankara even flirted with the Chinese to buy

the HQ-9, their S-300 knockoff. And ultimately, we ended up with the S-400. And the S-400 came about at a time when U.S. politics had soured on Russia for a number of reasons. I'm not going to into domestic politics, but it was the passing of the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which placed sanctions on Russia for its interference in the 2016 election, and importantly, had secondary sanctions put in place on anybody that did a significant transaction with Russian-designated firms linked to the Ministry of Defense and the intelligence services. Well, the producer of the S-400 is obviously linked to the Russian Ministry of Defense, And after some back and forth, this culminated in the imposition of sanctions on Turkey.

Independent of this, and if you actually go back and look at the, as we call it, the Cypriot missile crisis, the S-300, there were similar concerns about the placement of an S-300 in Cyprus because of intelligence collections from Akrotiri, which is the RAF base in Cyprus itself. which is that the s400 could be used as an intelligence collection platform and if you co-mingle the f-35 of which turkey was a co-production um partner and the s400 on a day-in and day-out basis this would be bad for exploitation of the jet and so that after some back and forth and some warnings turkey was also removed from the f-35 consortium so that the outcomes of this have been and the CAATSA sanctions. Now, if you link this back to my first answer about the tensions, tensions have ratcheted up in the Mediterranean and the Aegean with Greece at this point. And Greece, which is not historically out of whack, but relatively

in line with how they've done this before, have started a rearmament program. Looking at France and the United States, they're two typical suppliers of military equipment. And there are serious concerns in Ankara that the Greek purchase of the Rafale and the expected finalization of a Greek purchase order for the F-35 and the modernization kits for their F-16 will mean that Ankara will lose its aerial advantages in these sort of Aegean dogfights that go on all the time in that part of the world. And so you see a Turkish concern that their military advantages may erode. And that's leading to a lot of paranoia in the Turkish system that the U.S. is somehow tilting too hard to Greece and getting too far out of whack with its history, with its balancing policy and its historical approach to the two countries.

Why do you believe bases in this area are so critical to U.S. interests? so i came at this you know i wrote the piece for war on the rocks you know i call it the strategic scene and it's it's at the scene of different combatant commands right so it's european command it's central command and it's africa command and then you just have this island you know cyprus or crete or the greek islands that are stuck in the middle of it and it's it's becoming increasingly apparent that in the drive for dollars from the appropriations from the defense budget is that the Indo-Pacific will be prioritized. It's been slow. There's been criticisms of how this has been going about. But I do think that the ship is turning. And you certainly see this in the way

that the Central Command is addressing its future planning for the Middle East, right? It's looking for more partnered operations and less sort of physical or at least heavy U.S. presence that was typical of the global war on terror. And so if you're thinking creatively, right, about where you can augment U.S. advantages in geographically important regions, I keep coming back to the seam. And why the seam? One, it's close to the Middle East, right? Two, it's already a home port for ships attached to Afrikom. And three, with the Russian invasion of Cyprus, what we saw is that it became a good place to push up into the Black Sea. And so you can have naval assets at certain Greek facilities, and you could overfly Greece on your way to Romania

to respond to crises on the continent. And this is all the more important because if you have, at the same time a downturn in U.S.-Turkish relations, access to this part of the world, while far different than the Cold War, is still important, right? And why do I say far different from the Cold War? It's no longer Turkey is sort of like the far eastern flank of the alliance. You have the new entrance, all of the Baltic states, obviously, plus Poland. But getting access to the Black Sea is still important. And so I see Greece as an important place to at least invest time in. And the other thing, right, is, of course, political winds can change in Athens, is that you have a enthusiastic and eager host government that is looking to increase

U.S. basing access. And so why turn down a good offer if it's already on the table? What's the current level of engagement, access, and basing in both Cyprus and Greece? I mean, so the U.S. actually expanded its basing agreements. So in many cases, i was sort of preaching to the choir you know historically um with suda bay you know with the with the home port of the sixth fleet um and there's been expansions at least in exercises between the two and then the then you know more access for u.s bases and for this like you know it it's a good start right but i do think that that some you could increase investments particularly u.s dollars which i think is part of the reason greece is interested in this

uh to improve those facilities to make them more robust for uh for u.s forces uh you know and then i would obviously you know building upon the the commercial side of this with the foreign military sale of the f-35 there's multiple ways that the two sides can exercise together and then further to exploit the s-300 which is there and i know that the u.s that the u.s air force is able to train against, or at least explore training against, so that you can sharpen the skills of our pilots, particularly at a time when tensions with Russia have increased. So I'm going to audible a little bit based off of that answer here. The Brits have an air base, I believe a naval base. Well, I know they have a naval base in Cyprus, because I did an

employment with UNIFIL back in 2007. And if you got anywhere close to that base with your ship, You got some aggressive queries from British vessels or shore establishments there. How do the Brits feel about a potential U.S. footprint on Cyprus? Are they territorial about that in any way? We have access, as far as I can tell. You know, I'm just, as an outside analyst looking in, it is their base, obviously. It is a British base on Cyprus, Akrotiri. But we do have access to it.

And so some of the elements of the war against Islamic States were based in Cyprus. And then the U.S. has invested some money and some funding into the facility to increase U.S. access for it. So I do think that the relationship, as is most things between the U.S. and the United Kingdom, is fairly close. but there should be no mistaking that that is a British base that we have privileges and access and rights to alongside this. The U.S. has been investing itself in Crete, in Souda Bay, excuse me, and in Crete itself to expand its already robust port relationship there as well. And there are also some legacy bases, you know, Androvita or places like that in Greece where I think had atrophied in the years after the Cold War, where there could be some further investments

to host exchanges with the U.S. Air Force. Do you have a proposed base or capability footprint that you think would be optimal? You know, what I would say to that is the most important thing is making sure that the access agreements that are already in place are robust and remain steady. You know, I think that the template and the model that we saw at the front end of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is actually the one that I would propose.

You know, I think there would be some finicky stuff towards permanent basing. I don't think the U.S. has any interest in permanent basing of any equipment there. Let's say, you know, you had a squadron and I'm just going to go off the Air Force here, like a squadron that was doing a rotation through that part of the world. You have crisis. And so you could use that part of the world to leapfrog either back to Lakenheath as a way to go towards the outer edge of the alliance, whether that be Poland, or to use these places to port, to bring supplies in, as we have seen, and then truck them overland into places like Romania to help with both the resupply of Ukrainian forces, to supply US or NATO forces that are enforcing the air policing mission, or things like air and missile defense, for example, that you could bring in to augment NATO capabilities in that part of the world. So for me, it's less about the hardware that's there

and more about ensuring that the access arrangements that are completely nailed down and are robust. And just flipping it a little bit on this, It's not just necessarily in the European theater. You know, one of the things that has happened is that Greece has invested heavily in its relationship with Middle Eastern states. And part of this, this is because everybody's gotten scared of Turkey. And so because there's a general region-wide concern about Ankara's unpredictability.

Now, I don't think anybody in the region thinks that like Ankara is going to march into it like Greece, or is going to start a regional conflict, but they are concerned about the unpredictable behavior of Erdogan, the Turkish president, and how he uses and leverages this unpredictable behavior for populist domestic political benefit. And so if he has a down month, say, will he go start a fight with a neighbor, right? And a lot of these neighbors are much smaller than Turkey. Turkey's 8 million people. And so, and it's the largest, I would probably say the most capable military in that part of the world um you know perhaps with the exception of israel but israel is tiny and turkey is very large and so when you take these things out is you have

typical alliance bandwagoning behavior greece israel cyprus they're all close to each other have significantly increased cooperation greece and cyprus is obvious but israel less so now on top of that you've seen participation from the united arab emirates as far away from the gulf um and the kingdom of saudi arabia and so you've seen increase in maritime and uh air force activity and you see cyprus for example allowing israel to train because it simulates um elements of northern of southern lebanon uh and you've seen a much closer military to military relationship cyprus is buying iron dome for example these are good things to bootstrap or leverage on top of To start a discussion between the U.S. and Greece about what a foreign policy in the Middle East looks like, shared ideas about what the threats are, and building off that contingencies for access, say to, you know, this would be with the U.K., but Cyprus, or even Homeport with the Sixth Fleet, about where and how you could use these facilities in the event of a crisis in this part of the world.

Well, I'm sorry that's all that we have time for today. I'd like to thank my guest, Dr. Aaron Stein. Aaron, where can we find you online, and what are you working on next? Well, you can check out the website I now run all content for, which is warontherocks.com. If you want to follow me on Twitter, it's at AaronStein1. And what I am working on at the moment is a whole bunch of other people's work because that is now my job. So if you want to get particularly now, if you want to get into debates about the future of the Marine Corps, I would say that our pages are leading that debate. But for me, I'll eventually come back to this topic at some point when I get some free time and write about the fun stuff of Turkey, Greece and U.S. interests in the Mediterranean. Well, thank you again for joining us. Listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.