Consensus frayed: The Greek colonels, the Turkish embargo, and the crisis of Cold War containment

These pages seek to elucidate why Congress responded to the 1974 Turkish intervention in Cyprus with an arms embargo that cost the United States its highly valued military bases and facilities in Turkey. The decision was at the time attributed to the influence of politically engaged Greek Americans, an incomplete explanation that ignored the broader themes at play during the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War. Through close textual analysis of primary archival records of Administration decisionmaking and of Congressional materials, including the personal papers of the primary Embargo proponents, committee hearings and floor debates, I conclude instead that the Turkish Arms Embargo represented a broader challenge to America's policy of Cold War containment. Proponents believed that containment had corroded America's values and perverted her political institutions. They downplayed the Soviet challenge, believing it either overrated or outdated in a world where global public opinion had supplanted projection of military force as the primary measure of international power. Faced with this challenge, Presidential Administrations from Johnson through Ford clung to a narrow conception of the containment strategy, and prioritized military necessity above all else. Administrations and Congressional liberals contended for control of America's eastern Mediterranean policy beginning with the 1967 Greek military coup. The Turkish Embargo was the culmination of this political struggle. It demonstrated a bifurcation of the original consensus, and the crisis of Cold War containment.