VOL. XV, Nos. 1 & 2 SPRING-SUMMER 1988 Publisher: LEANDROS PAPATHANASIOU Editorial Board: MARIOS L. EVRIVIADES ALEXANDROS KITROEFF PETER PAPPAS YIANNIS P. ROUBATIS Managing Eidtor: SUSAN ANASTASAKOS Advisory Board: MARGARET ALEXIOU KOSTIS MOSKOFF Harvard University Thessaloniki, Greece SPYROS I. ASDRACHAS Nlcos MOUZELIS University of Paris I London School of Economics LOUKAS AXELOS JAMES PETRAS Athens, Greece S.U.N.Y. at Binghamton HAGEN FLEISCHER OLE L. SMITH University of Crete University of Copenhagen ANGELIKI E. LAIOU STAVROS B. THOMADAKIS Harvard University Baruch College, C.U.N.Y. CONSTANTINE TSOUCALAS University of Athens The Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora is a quarterly review published by Pella Publishing Company, Inc., 337 West 36th Street, New York, NY 10018-6401, U.S.A., in March, June, September, and December. Copyright © 1988 by Pella Publishing Company. ISSN 0364-2976 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS DAVID GILMORE is professor of anthropology at the State Uni- versity of New York at Stony Brook . MOLLY GREENE is a doc- toral candidate at Princeton University . CLIFFORD P. HACKETT is a former aide to U.S. Representative Benjamin Rosenthal and Senator Paul Sarbanes. He is currently administering an exchange program between the U.S. Congress and the European Parliament and is also executive director of the American Council for Jean Monnet Studies . JOHN LOUIS HONDROS is professor of history at the College of Wooster, Ohio ... ADAMANTIA POLLIS is professor of political science at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Re- search . JOHN E. REXINE is Charles A. Dana Professor of the Classics and director of the division of the humanities at Colgate Uni- versity . DAVID SYRETT is pmfessor of history at Queens College of the City University of New York. The editors welcome the freelance sub- Articles appearing in this Journal are mission of articles, essays and book re- abstracted and/or indexed in Historical views. All submitted material should be Abstracts and America: History and typewritten and double-spaced. Trans- Life; or in Sociological Abstracts; or in lations should be accompanied by the original text. Book reviews should be Psychological Abstracts; or in the Mod- approximately 600 to 1,200 words in ern Language Association Abstracts (in- length. Manuscripts will not be re- cludes Language Bibliography); or turned unless they are accompanied by in International Political Science Ab- a stamped, self-addressed envelope. stracts; or in American Bibliography of Slavic & East European Studies, in ac- Subscription rates: Individual—$15.00 cordance with the relevance of content for one year, $27.00 for two years; to the abstracting agency. Foreign—$20.00 for one year by surface mail; Institutional—$25.00 for one year, $45.00 for two years. Single issues All artides and reviews published in cost $4.50; back issues cost $6.00. the Journal represent only the opinions of the individual authors; they do not Advertising rates can be had on request necessarily reflect the views of the by writing to the Publisher, editors or the publisher. TABLE OF CONTENTS Congress and Greek American Relations: The Embargo Example by Clifford P. Hackett 5 "Too Weighty a Weapon": Britain and the Greek Security Battalions, 1943-1944 by John Louis Hondros 33 The British and the Greek Naval incident at Chatham, 1944 by David Syrett 49 Documents: Cyprus, 1950-1954; The Prelude to the Crisis, Part I: 1950 71 Book Reviews Molly Greene on State and Class in Turkey: A Study in Capitalist Development 103 John L. Hondros on Studies in the History of The Greek Civil War, 1945-1949 109 Adamantia Pollis on A Profile of Modern Greece: in Search of identity 111 John E. Rexine on Euripides' Medea and Cosmetics 113 John E. Rexine on The Karagiozis Performance in Greek Shadow Theater 114 John E. Rexine on Education and Greek Americans: Process and Prospects 117 John E. Rexine on The Road to Daulis: Psychoanalysis, Psychology, and Classical Mythology 119 John E. Rexine on Greek Connections: Essays on Culture and Diplomacy 121 David D. Gilmore on Anthropology Through the Looking-Glass: Critical Ethnography in the Margins of Europe 123 3 Congress and Greek American Relations: The Embargo Example by CLIFFORD P. HACKETT Introduction The 1978 repeal of the limited arms embargo on Turkey was the most recent occasion for the Greek American community to focus on a major congressional action. The imposition of that embargo in late 1974 was the first such occasion. The four-year legislative-executive contest bracketed by these two events pro- vides a convenient and extended opportunity to review the role of Congress in Greek American relations. Indeed, the embargo story, which even today is cited by its proponents as a benchmark of congressional activism and by critics as outrageous ethnic lobbying, can itself be understood only in the larger context of the American role in and toward Greece during the seven years of the Athens military dictatorship whose end marked simultaneously the Cyprus crisis and the start of the embargo. The embargo was, both in its origins and in its consequences, a major affirmation by Congress of its intention to make independent judgments in foreign affairs. This intention does not flow auto- matically from the institutional role of Congress. Nor, as history shows, is it uniformly or universally recognized or accepted, even by Congress itself. Instead, the Turkish embargo, the Trade Re- form Act of 1974 with its Jackson-Vanik amendment, and the decisions by Congress on Vietnam and Angola, all represented actions in a particular historic context: that of the immediate aftermath of the. Vietnam debacle, of a weakened presidency after Watergate, and of an aroused and hypersensitive Congress which 5 6 JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA was suspicious of further real or perceived incursions on its legis- lative jurisdiction. The vacillations on aid to the Nicaraguan Contras may represent a reversion, after the dimming of that historic context, to the more conventional behavior of Congress in the post World War II period of occasional posturing while generally following presidential directions. The Embargo and Vietnam The involvement of Congress with Greece and related issues from 1967 to 1978 both preceded and extended beyond the most intensive influences of Vietnam on the country and its legislature. That is, the Congress was involved in our relations with Greece even before the full extent of the Vietnam tragedy was widely known in the United States and that involvement extended well beyond the point when the impact of Southeast Asia appeared to be receding from the public consciousness. Yet the events of that now insignificant corner of Asia (to Americans) interacted with those ten thousand miles away in the eastern Mediterranean when the two theaters of events were perceived by Congress. How can the student of Congress explain this continued atten- tion to Greece which is discernible even today ten years after the last major legislative fight involving Greece, Turkey or Cyprus and long after Vietnam faded from the day-to-day consideration of most Members of Congress? One possibility is that Greece became a symbol both of congressional vigilance and of ineptness by the executive branch. To examine that question, and this tentative answer, it is nec- essary first to outline the nature and extent of the congressional involvement with Greece. In April 1967, when a colonels' coup destroyed the fragile stability of Greece, the Congress was still fully behind an escalating Vietnam war whose dimensions were still unknown. Its eventual disillusionment with Vietnam tended to reinforce the perception of a correct congressional judgment on Greece which was based on doubts concerning overreliance on military factors and a corresponding discounting of local political developments. Slowly a conviction developed that the errors and misrepresentations which marked Vietnam were not peculiar to Congress and Greek American Relations 7 that region but rather characteristic of a mindset in the executive branch which was manifested in many areas, including Greece. In Vietnam, early 1967 was the beginning of the most intense period of obsession with "winning" that war. With attention focused on Southeast Asia, important problems elsewhere were neglected. A declining trade balance, the weakening of our con- ventional military forces and important political and military developments in Europe were secondary or tertiary to the war in Asia. This neglect was evident in both Congress and the higher levels of the executive branch. It was curious, therefore, that the exception to this obsession with Vietnam was the congressional attention to the collapse of Greek democracy. There were several explanations for this excep- tion but these did not include the Greek-American community which largely remained complacent toward events in Greece, with a few courageous exceptions. Outside of Greece itself, con- cern about the fate of Greek democracy centered on two groups: a small, number of congressmen and senators, supported by several small, outside groups and individuals, and a number of European governments and parliamentarians who attempted to influence American policy which moved, after initial hesitation, to maintain close relations with Greece despite the military dictatorship. There was, from the start, some interaction between these Members of Congress and their European parliamentary col- leagues. It was also no coincidence that the congressmen critical of policies in Greece had already begun to oppose the war in Vietnam. It was the confluence of these anti-junta elements which was crucial in the history of Congress' involvement with Greece and which culminated in 1971 with an episode largely overlooked by both the press and the academic community. This involved the successful effort of a disparate group of members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to suspend all military aid to the Greek dictatorship. The effort was led by Congressman Wayne Hays who had, in previous years, opposed such efforts against Greece.