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69- 18,810 NEILSON, Thomas Lavon, 1924- UNITED STATES SECURITY INTERESTS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN: SELECTED PROBLEMS. The American University, Ph.D., 1969 Political Science, International lav and relations University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan © THOMAS LAVON NEILSON 1^70 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED UNITED STATES SECURITY INTERESTS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN: SELECTED PROBLEMS by Thomas Lavon Neilson Submitted to the Faculty of the School of International Service of The American University in Pai’tial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philoscphy in International Relations Signature Chairm ran of the School Date: 1969 AMERICAN UNiVERSii r l i b r a r y The American University MAV2G 1969 Washington, D. C. WASHINGTON. 0 . C. 3 1 ^ TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION.............................................................. 1 PART I. THE ANGLO-SPANISH DISPUTE OVER GIBRALTAR AND ITS IMPLICATIONS TO THE UNITED STATES Chapter I. HISTORIC, STRATEGIC, AND POLITICAL POSITION OF GIBRALTAR........................ 7 H. IMPLICATIONS OF THE DISPUTE FOR THE UNITED S T A T E S ...................................... 42 HI. POSTWAR SPAIN AND UNITED STATES INTERESTS . ...................................................... 70 PART H. MALTA AND CYPRUS IV. THE MALTESE ARCHIPELAGO.................................... 93 V. CYPRUS: CROSSROAD OF EAST AND WEST . 130 PART HI. UNITED STATES-SOVIET CONFLUENCE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN VI. THE USSR IN THE MEDITERRANEAN...................... 161 VII. A STRATEGY FOR THE MEDITERRANEAN .... 219 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 250 INTRODUCTION This study is being completed some fifteen months after the capture of the USS PUEBLO and only fifteen days following the shoot ing down of an unarmed United States EC-112 surveillance plane by the North Koreans. Within the past month the heads of two states (Pakistan and Lebanon) have been forced to resign because of mob and student violence and President de Gaulle has been toppled by the French electorate. The Middle East is almost hourly the scene of destruction and death. While the United States and a few SEATO members continue to fight a war in Vietnam, an internecine war con- tihues in Nigeria. In the past week some sixty Soviet warships have entered the Mediterranean and some forty United States warships have penetrated the Yellow Sea. Under these conditions one pauses to ask for a better defini tion of national security than those of the past. Massive retaliation, flexible response, pre-emptive strike warfare, and many extreme formulations of national security policies have been advanced since the ballistic missile for delivering nuclear warheads became a reality in the early 1960's. Security for the United States, however, 1 2 cannot be defined in terms of weaponry alone. Today offensive and defensive power are wide apart. Both the United States and the Soviet Union can destroy each other and yet cannot guarantee protec tion for their own citizens. Nuclear weapons are not effective in local or limited wars and are not credible as a threat to smaller nations because of their total destructiveness. Security is achieved through fear of the alternatives to peace—not solely in arms or good will. Absolute security for one country can only be achieved through the complete submission (insecurity) of all other nations. This is impossible today. Therefore, deterrence must be real through a nation's display to prove its credibility or use of the power at its disposal. The Soviets showed their credibility by proving that they had the will to use conventional military power when other coercive practices failed in Czechoslovakia. Since power, has become at least in part a psychological phenomenon, its use by a superpower becomes progressively more difficult. The situation in Vietnam and the North Korean acts of war against the United States are current examples. Under contem porary conditions no nation will go to war over purely legal issues since by the time they become legally defined it is too late. Korea and Vietnam have clearly proven that superiority without will is not credible. This is empirically verified since the past American 1 definition of winning now means something less than total victory. United States leaders no longer talk of "winning" and the North Vietnamese in effect win their ideological conflict by simply "not losing. " This distinction is obvious to much of the world. Clearly, it broadens the range of alternative strategies that can be employed by the United States or the Communists and makes the point that strategy need not be limited to a rearrangement of coercive powers. For the purpose of this study, therefore, security or national security is composed of the elements which are normally considered as comprising national power (geography, natural resources, indus trial capacity, military preparedness, population, national character and morale, the quality of government, and the quality of that govern ment's diplomacy) plus international psychological and economic factors. In short, it combines all those'elements which afford economic and military security to the United States. United States security problems in the world or even in the Mediterranean would be too ambitious for any single work to under take in meaningful depth. This study, therefore, restricts itself to the examination of several vital areas in the Mediterranean where United States national security interests are at issue. This seems appropriate,_ especially since these interests are changing at a more rapid rate than the plans and policies of the United States government 4 concerning them. They represent a pattern from which certain analogies and suggestions can be formulated. The examples selected for the examination are Gibraltar, Spain, Malta, Cyprus, and the Soviet Mediterranean Navy. The changing roles of Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union are considered. The focus first is on the Spanish claim to sovereignty over Gibraltar and the intricate issues this presents to Britain and the United States. Because of Gibraltar's strategic position astride the Mediterranean life-line, the study shows how this dispute involves many other nations. Not only are Gibraltar and Spain directly involved in United States security, but one finds that the islands of Malta and Cyprus could be useful, even vital, for the United States if other Mediterranean bases were even tually denied. Soviet penetration into the Middle East and the Medi terranean with the effects this is having on United States and NATO security arrangements is also measured. Finally, this study attempts to synthesize the dynamic forces of world politics as they influence United States security interests in the Mediterranean. f t 1 % it V T~\ •n ■7 UN' s 2 <3 is K THE ANGLO-SPANISH DISPUTE OVER GIBRALTAR AND ITS IMPLICATIONS TO THE UNITED STATES CHAPTER I HISTORIC, STRATEGIC, AND POLITICAL POSITION OF GIBRALTAR Thanks to the victories won by American arms, the American representative in Paris was at the height of his prestige in 1782. At long last everything seemed to be going his way. Prob ably at the prompting of the French Foreign Minister he brought the weight of his increased influence to bear on his British contact, urging him to make it known in London that the United States desired that Gibraltar be returned to Spain. Britain's declining influence in the Mediterranean, the American noted, made it less important for 1 the British to hold on to Gibraltar. The American envoy knew the United States still badly need ed Spam's continued military, economic, and political cooperation but that the Spanish, inflamed over the continued British occupation of Gibraltar and uncongenial to American political philosophy, would reject the role of a formal ally of the United States. The Spanish 1 Thomas H. Williams, Richard N. Current, and Frank Freidel, A History of the United States (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), p. 213. 7 8 were especially bitter at the British occupation of Gibraltar, calling the fortress a "pile of stones which is only a matter of expense and trouble to them, disturbing to us and an impediment to permanent 2 friendship.11 Diplomatic records show that on at least two other 3 occasions the American envoy pressed Spain's claim to Gibraltar. While these confidential Anglo-American conversations con cerning Gibraltar were taking place in Paris, preparations were well underway in Spain for a large scale, joint Spanish-French armed assault on Gibraltar. The United States was aware of these plans and expected, even welcomed, the fall of the strategic fortress which had come to symbolize Britain's world power status. It was near the end of the American revolutionary war with Britain that United States fortunes were thus entangled for the first time with the Gibraltar dispute between Britain, France, and Spain. Benjamin Franklin, the before-mentioned American representative in Paris, had learned that the military alliance with France, without which American independence seemed impossible to achieve, had in fact been substantially modified by a secret agreement between France and Spain in 1779, under which France had undertaken not to 2 Richard B. Morris, The Peacemakers. The Great Powers and American Independence (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p. 271. 3Ibid., p. 517. 9 make peace or enter into a truce with Britain until Gibraltar had 4 been returned to Spain. In turn the United States, under the terms of its own alliance with France, was committed not to conclude a separate peace with Britain without French concurrence. The United States^ which was enjoying decisive successes on the revolu tionary battlefields, therefore seemed to find itself in the unfortunate position of being unable to conclude an agreement with Britain acknowledging United States independence unless Britain would at the same time agree to return Gibraltar to Spain. It was this situation which explains Franklin's keen interest in Gibraltar. On September 13, 1782, after an intermittent siege of three years, the combined Spanish-French forces made the long awaited massive assault on Gibraltar.