NATO, Greece, Turkey, and the Cyprus Problem

Abstract

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Born in New York City in 1912, he took his A.B and A.M. at Harvard University. Before becoming US Ambassador to Cyprus in May 1969, Ambassador Popper was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, the Branch of the Department of Satae which is responisble for formulating policy relating to the various international organizations in which the US is concerned. From 1962 to 1965 he had been director of the Office of Atlantic Political-MIlitary Affairs.

SUMMARY Popper approaches the Greece-Turkey area from a 1947 anti-Communist expansion point of view with a strong input of the geopolitics - search for warm water ports, the natural thrust into the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean and Eastern Mediterranean. In this world "NATO is the sheet anchor of world peace". With this as introduction, he turned to a survey of the historical interactions of the countries bordering the Eastern Med. and the gradual involvement of the US. The Middle East is the US most dangerous problem: a note of fear and a whiff of doom.