Butterworths European Studies is a series of monographs providing authoritative treatments of major issues in modern European political economy. General Editor François Duchêne Director, Sussex European Research Centre, University of Sussex, England Consultant Editors David Allen Department of European Studies, University of Loughborough, England Hedley Bull Montague Burton Professor of International Relations, University of Oxford, England Wolfgang Hager Visiting Professor, European University Institute, Florence, Italy Stanley Hoffmann Professor of Government and Director, Center for European Studies, Harvard University, USA Hanns Maull Journalist, Bavarian Radio, Munich. Formerly European Secretary, Trilateral Commission, Paris Roger Morgan Head of European Centre for Political Studies, Policy Studies Institute, London, England Donald Puchala Professor of Government and Dean, School of International Affairs, Columbia University, USA Susan Strange Professor of International Relations, London School of Economics, England William Wallace Director of Studies, Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, England Already Published Europe and World Energy by Hanns Maull Europe Under Stress by Yaosu Hu European Environmental Policy : East and West by Josef Füllenbach Monetary Integration in Western Europe : EMU, EMS and Beyond by D. C. Kruse Pay Inequalities in the European Community by Christopher Saunders and David Marsden Forthcoming Titles An Electoral Atlas of Europe 1968-1981 Britain in the European Community European Integration and the Common Fisheries Policy European Political Co-operation Political Forces in Spain, Greece and Portugal The Defence of Western Europe The EEC and the Developing Countries The Mediterranean Basin Its Political Economy and Changing International Relations Glenda G. Rosenthal Assistant Professor of Political Science Columbia University New York Butterworth Scientific London Boston Sydney Wellington Durban Toronto All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, without the written permission of the copyright holder, application for which should be addressed to the Publishers. Such written permission must also be obtained before any part of this publication is stored in a retrieval system of any nature. This book is sold subject to the Standard Conditions of Sale of Net Books and may not be re-sold in the UK below the net price given by the Publishers in their current price list. First published 1982 © Butterworth & Co (Publishers) Ltd 1982 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Rosenthal, Glenda G. The Mediterranean Basin.-—(Butterworths European studies) 1. Mediterranean region—- Economic conditions 2. Mediterranean region—- Politics and government I. Title 330.9182'2 HC244.5 ISBN 0-408-10711-1 Typeset by William Clowes & Sons, Beccles Printed in England by Mackays of Chatham Foreword My academic interest in the politics and economics of the Mediterranean goes back more than ten years to my graduate student days. In fact, my first publication, in 1970, was an essay on relations between the European Community and the Maghreb. This was before the launching of the European Community's Global Mediterranean Policy, the Yom Kippur War, the energy crisis and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. It was certainly well before any plans to enlarge the European Community southward to include Greece, Spain and Portugal. My concern here, as a student of international relations and a Europeanist, is to attempt to examine in a methodical and systematic way, and draw together in one volume, a number of extremely important topics that have until now been scattered about under such headings as Europe and Energy, Enlargement of the European Community, and the Euro-Arab Dialogue, to name just a few. The Mediterranean is a part of the world that has for centuries been characterized by many commonalities as well as conflicts. It constitutes without question a kind of crossroads between East and West and North and South. Thus, it seemed logical and useful to look at what is going on there from a global perspective. This book has been a long time in the making and there have been many interruptions, mostly unforeseen. Nevertheless, there has been no lack of encouragement along the way. My mentor, colleague and dear friend, Donald Puchala, has never failed me, even at times when I was ready to give up. I have received welcome financial assistance in the form of summer grants from Columbia University's Council on Research in the Social Sciences, its School of International and Public Affairs, and Institute on Western Europe. Oksana Dackiw, a graduate student in political science at Columbia, did wonders in tracking down the most recent available statistics and Mark Hibbs drew the map of the Aegean that appears in Chapter 7. Drafts of the book were read by Ellen Seidensticker, Elliot Zupnick, Tom Suter and Donald Puchala, and I am most grateful to them for their criticism and suggestions. I am grateful, also, to my editor, Peter Richardson, for his patience and understanding during the past two years. Finally, and somewhat closer to home, my husband David Ellenhorn and my son Adam have at times been hard taskmasters and demanding of my time, but this has made the final achievement that much more worthwhile. To all those mentioned here, and to the many others who have been helpful and supportive during my academic career, I extend my thanks. New York City August 1981 n asi B n a e n a err dit e M of p a M 1 Introduction More than ever before the Mediterranean Basin is playing a vital role in international relations: strategically, politically and economically. Not since Roman times and again in the Middle Ages has the area been so focal. It lies at the strategic junction between East and West ; at the political junction between Europe and the Middle East and Europe and Africa ; at the economic junction between the industrialized and developed North and the non-industrialized, less developed South and between the oil-poor North West and the oil-rich Middle East. By reason of its location, its diverse and complex national systems and its political economy, it is rapidly constituting an arena in which many contemporary international problems are being acted out. Strategically, both the superpowers attach great importance to the Mediter- ranean. It is as if, as one scholar observes, they had chosen it as 'an arena for contest ; as a testing platform for their political ideologies, their economics, and their weapons' ^. Until the mid-1960s, Western navies, above all the United States Sixth Fleet, sailed the Mediterranean unchallenged. Since then, and with gathering momentum following the Yom Kippur War and the 1974 Cyprus crisis, the Mediterranean has been increasingly penetrated by the Soviet Fifth Eskadra. The 1975 embargo on American arms supply to Turkey, intended to bring about a settlement of the Cyprus problem, succeeded only in calling into question the south-eastern cornerstone of the Atlantic Alliance and transforming Turkey's 30-year-old loyalty to the United States into disenchantment, frustration and, for a while, even rapprochement with both the Soviet Union and the neighboring Balkan states. The withdrawal of Greece from the integrated NATO command also weakened the American position in the eastern Mediterranean. In contrast, the Soviets, although no longer present in Egypt, have built up close ties with Syria and negotiated a series of arms and supply arrangements with Libya, Lebanon, Algeria and Morocco. Thus, the configuration of the East-West struggle in the Mediterranean has changed considerably in the past 10 to 15 years. Times have changed politically as well as militarily. The overthrow of dictatorships and the establishment of democratic governments in Portugal, Greece and Spain between 1974 and 1977 led to a marked shift in these countries' relations with the rest of the world, a shift very much in the direction of the European Community. Greece became a full member of the Community on 1 January 1981 and Spain and Portugal also appear to be on 2 Introduction their way to entry. Although these three countries have asserted repeatedly that their prime motivation for EC membership is economic and develop- mental, the nine European Community members emphasized from the very outset that their principal interest in the Southern European countries lay in forging political links and strengthening Western European-style democracy there. In other countries of the Mediterranean littoral - notably Algeria, Tunisia, Yugoslavia and Albania - changes at the top have occurred or are likely to occur in the near future because of the advanced age or poor health of the men in power. These changes are particularly significant since the new leaderships may adopt sharply different international postures during the next few years. Lengthy and bitter succession struggles accompanied by internal instability could also occur. There are big question marks hanging over the political situation in Italy, Turkey and Syria as well. Domestic upheaval, particularly in the last two, is not ruled out and could lead to major changes in the overall configuration of politics in both the Mediterranean Basin and the international arena as a whole, since the Mediterranean has been quite accurately described as a Vast political echo chamber where developments in any one country - and many events in countries outside the region - are reverberated and intensified, often exploding with violence that in turn is felt in other parts of the globe'2. Throughout the Mediterranean, areas of tension and points of conflict lurk as permanent threats to regional stability and international peace. In the Maghreb, periodic armed clashes have erupted between Algeria and Morocco over the Western Sahara. In the eastern Mediterranean, the Cyprus quarrel remains unsolved despite all kinds of intercession, and Greece and Turkey still seem to be no closer to an agreement on the island's fate than they were in 1975. In addition, tension between the two countries has been exacerbated by disputes over territorial waters and the continental shelf in the Aegean. In Lebanon, not only do Christian-Moslem rivalries remain unsettled, but Syrian and Israeli involvement has rendered the problems there even more explosive. Last, but by no means least, the continuing struggle between Israel and its Arab neighbors, only somewhat alleviated by the 1978 Egypt-Israel peace settlement at Camp David, continues. The strategic, political and economic connections between the Mediterranean and the Middle East and the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf undoubtedly head the list of international concerns that underscore the importance of the Mediterranean in world politics today. The Mediterranean must be maintained as a throughway and free of area conflict in order to keep Western European energy supplies flowing. Moreover, political stability and uninterrupted supply have become all the more precarious in the last few years in light of the overthrow of the pro-Western regime in Iran, the Soviet-engineered coup in Afghanistan, Syrian and Iraqi ties with the Soviets, and the war between Iran and Iraq. Finally, one must add to the Mediterranean energy equation the not inconsiderable volume of products that flow to Western Europe from the Maghreb countries, Introduction 3 none of which is politically reliable, and which currently supply approximately one-fifth of Western Europe's energy requirements. Growing economic ties between the Mediterranean and Western Europe extend not only to the energy sector. Well over half the exports of Mediterranean countries go to Western Europe. In agriculture, the Mediterranean Basin forms one ecological unit and patterns of agricultural production are similar almost everywhere. As a result, almost all the littoral countries are competing with each other to export the same products and almost all are pressing Western Europe for privileged access to markets that are frequently well supplied and, in some cases, over supplied internally. Trans-Mediterranean agricultural trade thus poses difficult regulatory problems for the future. On the human level, the Mediterranean has become a vast area of labor migration : from the east and south towards Western and Northern Europe in the 1960s and early 1970s, and, now that the labor markets of these areas have dried up, back from West Germany, Switzerland, France and the Benelux countries to Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Yugoslavia, Turkey and the Maghreb. Since 1973, the number of Mediterranean immigrant workers in Western Europe has been dropping off by about 600000 a year from the 1973 peak of 6 500 000. Moreover, the host countries appear increasingly determined to keep migrant numbers below former levels even when economic conditions improve, partly because of higher levels of domestic unemployment than before, and partly because of social problems associated with large concentrations of foreigners in some areas. Not only does this reversal create serious socio-political difficulties, financially also the drop in workers' remittances as a result of stagnation and immigration restrictions in the former labor-importing countries has contributed to worsening balance of payments deficits in several Mediter- ranean countries. Although the notion that the countries bordering the Mediterranean in some respects constitute a strategic, political and economic entity goes back to the Greco-Roman era, in modern times, with the notable exception of Fernand Braudel's seminal ha Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II3, little concern has been shown by scholars, strategists, politicians or economists for the commonalities of the area. At most there has been a passing show of interest in times of crisis, as in 1973. Admittedly, it is difficult to ignore some of the rather obvious dissimilarities between the countries of the Mediterranean littoral. Christian, Moslem and Jewish societies neighbor each other. Political regimes range across the entire spectrum: from feudal monarchies like those in Jordan and Morocco; to the diverse socialisms of Yugoslavia, Albania, Algeria and Syria ; and the dictatorship of Libya. There are important differences also in levels of development - not only the obvious ones between the countries of the northern and southern littorals, but along the southern shore too, as, for example, between Israel and Morocco. But, despite all these distinctions, it is contended not only that all the Mediterranean countries are drawing closer together in a variety of ways and 4 Introduction constituting more of a distinct region, but also that many of their international ties are going through important and, at times, crucial changes. The most striking of these changes is the increasing 'Europeanization' of most Mediterranean countries. By Europeanization is meant a process or combination of processes whereby these countries are moving more and more into the economic, political and strategic orbit of Western Europe. Put another way, Western Europe is acquiring an expanding sphere of influence in the Mediterranean Basin. In some instances, as with Greece, Spain and Portugal, this is coming about because of decisions made on both sides that it is in their mutual interest to become more closely associated with each other. But, the Europeanization process is not always the result of conscious political and economic choice. Sometimes, a combination of traditional patterns of exchanges and the growing economic weight of Western Europe has exerted an irresistible gravitational pull on the Mediterranean countries, particularly on the southern shore. In yet other instances, some Mediterranean countries, in an effort to divest themselves of their Cold War alliances with or dependence on one or other of the superpowers, and to diversify their foreign relations, have found that they cannot be free agents and that Western Europe presents the most logical and, on occasion, the only other willing and viable source of support. These three processes, not necessarily mutually exclusive, at times even cross- cutting, constitute the jumping-off points for the three parts of this study. Part I will focus on the effects on the Mediterranean Basin of the southern enlargement of the European Community; Part II will examine some key issues in the political economy of the area ; and Part III will look at superpower involvement in the Mediterranean. The topics are clearly very large in scope. Consequently, in order to reduce the analysis to manageable proportions, each of the three parts is made up of two or three case studies that illustrate the three different kinds of Europeanization process described above. Thus, Part I contains two chapters : the first deals with the implications for Turkey of Greek membership in the European Community, and the second follows the same analytical pattern to shed light on what Spanish and Portuguese membership may mean for the Maghreb countries. Part II selects three functional areas - agricultural production and trade ; labor ; and energy - and points out how most Mediterranean countries are becoming increasingly locked into the Western European political economy in these areas. Finally, Part III turns to the third level of analysis and examines, in one chapter, recent developments in the East-West naval competition in the Mediterranean and how they relate to the countries of the area and, in a second, describes how local disputes between Greece and Turkey have become part of a special 'triangular' relationship between these two countries and the United States. By examining this cluster of questions, it is hoped that a more detailed and up- to-date analysis of the contemporary Mediterranean scene will be provided than that to be found in any other single-author work. The student of the Mediterranean who wishes to look at the area in the context of present-day Introduction 5 international relations has only sparse, partial and scattered materials to draw upon. This work is designed to fill some of the gaps, pull together the available information into a coherent whole and, finally, offer some comments of a more theoretical nature. The thrust of this study is descriptive, analytical and, in some small measure, policy prescriptive. There is no intention of engaging here in broad-ranging theoretical debate. Nevertheless, those of us who study politics from an international perspective would be delinquent if we did not make some effort to determine whether processes in one part of the world give us a better understanding of processes elsewhere, and perhaps even provide us with some clues about the kinds of international developments that may be expected in the future. That is the final task of this work. Notes to Introduction 1 Jesse Lewis, The Strategic Balance in the 3 F. Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde Mediterranean, American Enterprise Institute, méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II, Armand Washington, DC, 1976, p. 1 Colin, Paris, 1966 2 ibid., p. 3