Foreign Policy Issues

The other day, I finished the book “Cyprus” by Cristopher Hitchens. He is a British-American writer who is extremely controversial for his portrayal of the untold story of foreign policy, specifically from his countries of citizenship. In the book “Cyprus”, he breaks down the role of each government involved (U.S, England, Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus) leading up to and during the 1974 war.

After reading the book I am bothered by the work of the U.S. in the controversy. Because we were so transfixed on ending the spread of communism, we failed to understand what consequence our foreign policy agenda was having on the citizens of each country in which we intervened. With Cyprus as an example, we (Henry Kissinger and his department) played Greece and Turkey (Guarantee powers of the island with Britain) against each other to overthrow the president (Archbishop Makarios). As a result, a Greek military junta sieged the capital of the island in 1974 (which Hitchens argues we knew about) and attempted to assassinate President Makarios, which failed. It failed even further when the Turkish military began to invade the island from its northern coast, while our government pleaded ignorance with ships stationed near Athens.

I understand that this was an attempt to protect our country from the growth of Communism that was moving westward, but was it worth it at the price of the thousands killed or missing and the further hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the war? Let me reiterate that we were not the only ones to blame (the British, for instance, allowed the island “sovereignty”, but forced the treaty to be signed to include them as a guarantor power as well as their 100 square miles of army bases that still exist on the island today only to keep out of the issues that developed leading up to and during 1974). However, Instead of open and honest peace talks in a diplomatic environment like the UN, the countries “involved” took it upon themselves to determine the future of Cyprus and divided her beauty into pieces. It was Senator Fulbright who attempted to raise concerns of the crookedness in the Cyprus Problem, but too few listened and the result has subsisted to this day.

Note: I am not turning into an anarchist, this has only strengthened my support of diplomacy in the way it is supposed to be used. See the movie Endgame as an example.