The American-Soviet confrontation in the Mediterranean after World War II : a review of the literature

Abstract

Since Homeric times, the Mediterranean region has been an arena for conflict and competition between rival empires and cultures. The post-World War II period was no exception. This time the main protagonists were to be non-traditional Mediterranean powers namely the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) who dominated world politics for nearly half a century since 1945. In effect, it can be said that the US, as superpower, replaced Britain's role in the Mediterranean. As one of the Great Powers of the eighteenth century, Britain maintained it's maritime sovereignty over the Mediterranean through the possession of various strategic outposts such as Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Egypt. These were vital to its commercial interests in the east, notably India, since they provided a whole chain of supply and fuel depots as well as a chain of defence against actual or potential adversaries in the Mediterranean. Britain also sought to control or rather contain its major competitor in the Mediterranean, namely Russia, by supporting the weak Ottoman empire thereby indirectly controlling the Turkish Straits in order to consolidate its dominant strategic position. Britain's containment of Russia also extended to Europe where it ensured that the status quo balance of power was maintained in its favour, and in Western Asia by supporting regional states there (Fenech 1993: forthcoming).In its turn Czarist Russia, pursuing its ambition to become a continental and maritime Great Power, was intent on breaking into the Mediterranean from the Black Sea. Like Britain, it sought to influence Constantinople in order to ensure the right of free passage for Russian shipping through the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus Straits. Conversely, it also sought some form of control over the Straits to prevent foreign shipping from penetrating its southern borders through the Black sea (Fenech 1993: forthcoming). if the US replaced Britain as the major Western power in the Mediterranean after World War II, it is also true to say that the USSR succeeded its predecessor Czarist Russia as the main eastern competitor for power in this strategic Sea. The post-war East-West confrontation in the Mediterranean was really a metamorphosis of the nineteenth century confrontation between Britain and Russia that was also carried out along East-West lines.