The Mediterranean Basin. Its Political Economy and Changing International Relations

140 Pages·1982·2.892 MB·English

by  Glenda G Rosenthal and François Duchêne (Auth.)

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
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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
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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