The Eastern Mediterranean: Calm before the Storm in a Core European Strategic Zone
Four developments are converging to make the Eastern Mediterranean (EM) once again a core European strategic zone, very likely before it erupts, to the same degree perhaps as on March 12, 1947, when President Truman told a joint session of the US Congress that the “world faced a choice in the years to come”. He did not mean the Baltics, Poland, or the Ukraine. He proclaimed that “The Foreign policy and national security of this country” were involved in the situations confronting Greece and Turkey. This speech is widely considered to be the start of the Cold War. Lest we forget: it was the Soviet Union’s perceived demands for freedom of navigation through the Straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosporus that greatly contributed to Greece’s and Turkey’s membership of NATO in 1952. Throughout history, the geopolitics of the Straits have been a core European geopolitical interest.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)