Ioannidis, Cyprus, and the irony of history

by Alexandros Nafpliotis

On 16 August 2010, Dimitrios Ioannidis, one of the instigators of the April 1967 coup that brought the Greek Colonels to power, died. During the seven-year reign of the 'junta', Brigadier Ioannidis was director of the Greek military police (ΕΣΑ), and he was known as one of the hardliners of the regime. He rose to prominence in November 1973, when he masterminded, behind the scenes, a new coup that put an end to the liberalising efforts initiated by Georgios Papadopoulos, under the so-called 'Markezinis experiment'.

History showed its ironic face once again, as the 'invisible dictator' (as he was known during 1973-4) passed away on the 50th anniversary of the independence of the Republic of Cyprus. Ioannidis' fate was tied to the Mediterranean island.

The Cyprus issue, which eventually brought about the demise of the military junta, was the most predominant foreign policy preoccupation of all the dictators (and especially of Ioannidis) throughout their tenure of power, for they thought that, as Coufoudakis has argued, ‘removing this irritant from Greek domestic and foreign policy and interallied relations, was expected to increase the Colonels' prestige at home and end the régime’s international isolation’. The first signs appeared in the summer of 1970, when a crisis was brewing up on the island, also as a consequence of the attempted assassination of President Makarios earlier that year.

Papadopoulos' handling of the situation in Cyprus, in conjunction with his initiatives in trying to mitigate foreign critics through pursuing a conciliatory line precipitated cracks within the junta, which appeared at that time to be far from united. The internal troubles peaked in the summer of 1970 when Papadopoulos (who was already both prime minister and minister of defence) decided, following Pipinelis’ death, to assume the post of minister of foreign affairs, as well. Jealously prevailed among Papadopoulos’ critics, with the concentration of power in his hands being the real issue. The casualties of the acute internal crisis, which was resolved in September, were the prime minister’s ability to confront the hardliners and his supposed efforts towards the gradual democratisation of the régime.

When, in November 1973, a coup overthrew Papadopoulos, British diplomats were quick to identify Ioannidis as the ‘somewhat shadowy figure’ behind the new government. As a consequence of developments in Greece, however, the British government decided to adopt once more a wait-and-see policy, with greater caution dictated by parliamentary attitudes that were unfavourable to Ioannidis.

A few months later, and before celebrating fifteen years as an independent state, the Republic of Cyprus would cease to exist in its initial form. The coup that the Greek junta, under Ioannidis, launched against Makarios triggered a invasion by Turkey, which still occupies the northern third of Cyprus today, thus dividing the island. The 16th of August 2010 also marks 36 years since the occupation of Morfou, a town in the north of the island, which was founded by Spartans- big admirers of whom were the Greek Colonels.

The actions of the dictator that precipitated the division of Cyprus came back to haunt him; the 16th of August will from now on mark both the beginning of the Republic of Cyprus and the end of the man who tried to dismantle it. And this is an instance of irony that only History can create.

*Alexandros Nafpliotis holds a PhD in International History from the London School of Economics and is currently writing a book on Britain and the Greek Colonels, 1967-1974. His academic blog on the subject can be accessed at http://britainandthecolonels.blogspot.com/.

Neo-Cons, having Declared History's End, Try to Reclaim the Past

Having declared that History ended around 1989, it seems that some neo-conservatives are keen also to reclaim aspects of History as 'their' achievement. In particular, it was claimed by a prominent scholar that the Marshall Plan, among other postwar US foreign policies, was a "quintessentially neo-conservative" policy. This was at a recent (excellent) conference of the BISA US Foreign Policy Group at Leeds University.

In later exchanges, the neo-conservative scholar marshalled arch-neo-conservative, Joshua Muravchik, to the cause: Cold War policies, Muravchik argues, "were muscular policies (we were spending roughly 10 percent of our GNP on defense), to which today's neoconservatism is the heir much more than today's liberalism. While realist policy following the First World War led to unparalleled disaster, neocon policies after the second achieved what was arguably the most perfect success in the history of statecraft-our relatively bloodless victory over a foe possessing the most ponderous military machine ever assembled".

Further more, the argument, it is claimed, was endorsed by no less a source than (neo-conservative?) President Barack Obama in December 2009: "the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions-not just treaties and declarations-that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms".

I don't think that we are in disagreement about fundamentals: the bigger point is correct: the dispute seems to be over what label one applies to the sources of such cold war policies. Perhaps we shd call it 'liberal-internationalist realism' as neither liberal-internationalism nor realism fully captures the blend.

Neo-conservatism, on the other hand, seems to over play the hand: solid conservatives in the 1950s were frequently opposed to Korea, NATO, Marshall aid, Point 4, the UN. So, to the extent that 'neo-cons' (who were they? Was Paul Nitze a neo-con?) can claim to be heirs of Truman, it was in their liberal anti-communist crusade and in their militancy. That unifies them (whoever they were) with the dominant US national security tendency arguing for US preponderance: the US FP establishment. Since neo-cons were not anywhere close to being the tendency they became in the 1970s and after, I doubt that they can be considered the authors of Truman's liberal internationalist realism: that lies much more closely in the contributions of Dean Acheson, partly of George Kennan, in the post-June 1950 period of militarised containment (so ably documented by Jerry Sanders in Peddlers of Crisis), and in activities of a range of elite organisations of which the CFR is a good representative.

The other point of course is that programmes like Marshall aid, but also IMF/World Bank, and even German/Japanese reconstruction, were heavily reliant on the almost two decades of New Deal economic thinking, at the heart of which sat economic and social planning. The recently published excellent book by Jeff Bridoux, American Foreign Policy and Postwar Reconstruction, makes the point brilliantly and with powerful historical evidence.

The neocons of today are not noted for their support of such tendencies, even if some of their ancestors might have been relatively liberal on domestic affairs, except McCarthyism. Their general bent was towards economic liberalism/neo-liberalism; that came to fruition in the 1970s in particular and via the Reagan revolution.

Having declared the End of History, neo-conservatives (minus Francis Fukuyama) seem to want to claim their heroic role in its demise.

Guess what? History marches on and simply asserting that neo-conservatives shaped it does not make it so. And the historical record more than amply demonstrates that. 

Inderjeet Parmar is Professor of Government at the University of Manchester, Vice Chair of the British International Studies Association and an Associate of the LSE IDEAS Transatlantic Relations Programme.  This post first appeared at his excellent US Blog

Frontier Politics: Israel, Palestine and the Current Talks

By Guy Burton

With direct talks starting between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, a range of different issues are on the table – and will need to be negotiated if a complete agreement is to be achieved within the proposed one-year deadline. One of those will be the question of the border between Israel and a future Palestinian state. To date there has been plenty of ink spilled over where the border should be located. The sources of contention include the issue of land swaps between the two sides, the presence of settlements, and the status of Jerusalem – with both sides claiming it as their capital. Underpinning this discussion are two crucial factors that need to be taken into account: on one hand, there exist differing visions for the border and therefore differing approaches favoured by each side; and, on the other hand, there is the question of governance of the future boundary (i.e. whether it should be managed between the two sides or with the support of a third party).

Placing the Border
The Palestinians and Israelis have very different ideas of where the border should be located. Without reconciling these differences, it is questionable whether any final status agreement would be sustainable. For the Palestinians, their public position is that the border should follow the Green Line, which before 1967 separated Israel from Jordan and Gaza Egypt. The Israelis, by contrast, have been less adamant about the Green Line serving as a decisive international border. This is particularly evident given the state encouragement of Jewish Israeli settlements in the West Bank (and until 2005, in Gaza) since 1967.

The lack of a clear endgame has been an advantage and a disadvantage for Israel. For example, Israel’s unwillingness to define clear boundaries helped it expand and contract the state as necessary. That boundary flexibility enabled Israel to accommodate both the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza after 1967, to accept the loss of the Sinai following the 1973 war and to evacuate settlements from Gaza in 2005. In this framework of unclear borders, for many Israelis (especially younger ones), the Green Line has become meaningless because they assume the ‘Security’ Wall, built within the Green Line following the Second Intifada, is the ‘real’ border between Israel and Palestine.

At the same time, the absence of a clearly defined vision of border delineation challenges the Israeli concerns regarding both security and the future status of the settlements. Israel’s leadership and the current Netanyahu government emphasise their concern with security, an issue prevalent in Israeli discourse since 1976, when the Allon Plan identified the Jordan Valley region as a potential risk for the transit of weapons from Jordan into the West Bank. Although that fear diminished over subsequent decades (including through the final peace settlement signed between Israel and Jordan in 1994), security-minded Israelis continue to demand a final say over any Palestinian-Jordanian border. Indeed, at a July 2010 meeting of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI) NGO in Jerusalem, Shlomo Gazit, a former major general in the Israeli army and the coordinator of operations in the West Bank after 1967, recommended a diminished Palestinian role in border management.

Addressing the Settlements
Meanwhile, the future status of Israeli settlements within the West Bank remains uncertain. A full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank (as demanded by the Palestinians) poses the question of whether the Israeli settlers remaining in the West Bank would be prepared to become Palestinian citizens or become foreign residents in a Palestinian state. If the settlers opt for the latter there is a risk that Israel may not renounce its right to intervene in the West Bank. However, anything other than a complete military evacuation by Israel would reduce Palestinian territorial sovereignty. This has prompted the settlers’ leadership to talk favourably about a ‘one-state’ solution. This recommendation, though, is substantially different from the prevailing – and idealistic – model proposed by the Israeli Left and part of the Palestinian population, who see a bi-national single state with equal citizenship between the two communities as a viable alternative to the continued failure to achieve two separate states. While this model is an inspired solution, the leaders of the settlement movement have a vision that is closer to the present reality within Israel: where Jewish Israelis are full citizens and Arab-Israelis (or Palestinian-Israelis) are effectively marginalised and have to earn the right to citizenship.

Managing the Border
The question of governance over a future Israel-Palestinian border will need to be addressed in the talks. In particular this concerns the extent to which the border will be ‘open’ or ‘closed’ – neither of which may necessarily benefit the Palestinians. One of the ironies of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories after 1967 was the growing ‘openness’ and increasing exchange between the two communities, especially economically. By the time the First Intifada broke out in 1987 there were a considerable number of Palestinian workers crossing into Israel. The First Intifada, the Oslo process and the Second Intifada all served to reduce contact between Israelis and Palestinians. Perhaps the most visible manifestation of this is the Security Wall. Also, Israelis rarely enter into Palestinian-controlled areas and the complex pass system limits Palestinians from travelling between the West Bank and Jerusalem. Furthermore, the pass system limited most Palestinians’ exposure to Israelis to those Israelis serving in the military at the checkpoints.

Economic Factors
A key concern for Palestinian negotiators will be whether a future border with Israel will undermine its economy. Despite the ‘closed’ nature of the Security Wall, an estimated 25,000 Palestinians continue to cross through it into Israel to work each year. However, there is no evidence that their status will be improved in the event of a final border agreement between Israel and a future Palestinian state. At another IPCRI event in August 2010, Ephraim Kleiman, an economics professor at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University and a senior adviser to the Israelis during their economic negotiations with the Palestinians in 1993-94, argued that following separation, Israel would be less concerned with maintaining economic links with an independent Palestine. This could lead to a complete shutout of any economic contact between the two sides. A month previously, Shlomo Gazit envisaged a future where borders would need to be closed between Israel and an independent Palestine for at least a generation, in order to achieve greater security.

At the same time, a more open border may not work to the Palestinians’ advantages. Currently Palestinian products are dependent on Israeli controls to pass through to export markets. Moreover, this does not look like it will change: in 2009 the World Bank reported that future commercial traffic from an independent Palestine into Israel would involve a ‘back-to-back system’ through the Security Wall, where goods are off-loaded from trucks on one side of the border to others on the other side – a system similar to that currently in place in Gaza according to a 2009 World Bank report. This will ensure higher transportation costs for Palestinian firms, which will act as a further disadvantage in relation to a more competitive Israeli economy, including in terms of product diversification and access to export markets.

Limited liberalisation of trade at the border may only serve to perpetuate the economic disparity between Israelis and Palestinians. Even if Israeli restrictions on investment were removed as a result of a two-state solution (e.g. an ending of Israelis’ visa restrictions on foreigners wanting to do business in the West Bank), there remains the fact that much of the work undertaken by Palestinians in Israel is poorly paid and offers few future prospects. Moreover, there is a risk that a similar situation to that which exists in regard to the ‘maquilas’ (or sweatshops) between the US and Mexico may develop. In particular this would involve the sub-contracting aspects of production to low-wage and low-skilled Palestinian labour with Israeli firms marking up and collecting the greater profit margin. The disadvantage of such a model is two-fold: first, it will not provide sufficient wages to Palestinian labourers to escape subsistence; and second, it will not offer a means of sustainable and value-added development for the Palestinian economy.

Conclusion
In sum then, the question of the Israel-Palestine border encapsulates in microcosm the broader challenges facing the two sides in the upcoming direct talks. The status and management of the final borders – whether open or closed – are vital aspects for any final agreement. Furthermore, the issue of a future Israel-Palestine border captures the difference in power relations between the two sides. Although the public impression is of two sides coming to the negotiating table as equals, the reality is that the talks will favour the Israeli position over the Palestinians: the Israeli position is both more fluid (as demonstrated by its flexible approach to border placement) but also more dominant, owing to its troops’ control of the land and movement into, within and out of the Palestinian territories.

Nowhere is Israel’s strength more apparent than if the talks either fail or succeed. If they fail, the prospect of two independent states will be undermined and the drive towards the one-state solution proposed by the settler leadership hastened further. If they succeed then it is likely that the Palestinian economy will continue to be dependent on Israel. In such circumstances – and given the degree of animosity that exists between the two communities – the role of the international community, as third-party guarantors of the border and as a source of investment will be vital if Israel and an independent Palestine are ever to become equals.

Guy Burton is a research associate at the LSE Ideas Centre.

Shifting Sands is the blog of the Middle East International Affairs Programme at LSE IDEAS, analysing current events in the Middle East and contributing to the ongoing deliberations over policy prescriptions.

Amber Holewinski, Editor