Opposition Broadens : Greece Typifies Problems of American Bases Abroad

ATHENS — One day last February, several hundred Greek demonstrators gathered near a U.S. naval base on the island of Crete to burn the moorings of an American supply ship, the Saturn, and to throw bottles at some of the sailors.

When U.S. officials here protested that local police had stood by and done nothing to stop the demonstrators, the Greek government of Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou icily dismissed the complaint. Some crew members on the Saturn “overreacted” to the demonstrators, said Synephys Drakopoulos of the Greek Foreign Ministry.

It was just one of several tense incidents this year over the four American military bases in Greece, which serve as a linchpin for U.S. naval and intelligence operations in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.

With negotiations on the future of the bases under way, security for U.S. officials in Greece is now so tight that a senior U.S. diplomat acknowledged in an interview: “We have 190 people, and the problem is how far down in the ranks do we go with armored cars and putting police inside people’s homes?

The difficulties the United States faces in Greece are typical of those elsewhere in the world as U.S. officials strive to overcome growing political opposition abroad to American military bases.

The opposition comes not merely from fringe or terrorist groups, but from prominent, elected officials, such as Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez and Greek Prime Minister Papandreou, who have pledged to voters to limit or get rid of U.S. military facilities.

Even in Britain, the closest of all U.S. allies, opposition to U.S. bases figured prominently in last year’s general election. Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock called for the withdrawal of all U.S. nuclear forces from bases in Britain within five years. His party lost but received 33% of the vote.

Earlier this year, Spain ordered the United States to remove its planes from the Torrejon Air Base near Madrid. The United States also faces tough negotiations over the future of bases in Portugal, the Philippines and several other nations.

In many countries, government officials and intellectuals argue that the American bases should be viewed primarily as an outgrowth of the global rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. Protective of their sovereignty, the nations are increasingly sensitive about being perceived as a military outpost for one side.

The growth of the anti-nuclear movement overseas also has inflamed objections to the nuclear weapons kept at some of the 759 American base sites around the world.

In the past, the United States was often able to keep its overseas bases by making deals with foreign autocrats like Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos, dictators like Spain’s Generalissimo Francisco Franco or military regimes like the Greek government of Col. George Papadopoulos.

Now, U.S. officials often find themselves negotiating with democratic governments, and in many cases the legacy of the past has become a political liability.

Defusing Sentiment

This year, after Spain ordered the U.S. Air Force to remove its squadron of 72 F-16s from Torrejon Air Base, Julian Santamaria, the Spanish ambassador to the United States, observed: “Had the base at Torrejon been established by a democratic government, (we) would have to take the heat for that.” Instead, he noted, the agreement for the base was negotiated by Franco “without popular consent.”

In recent years, the United States has taken some steps to try to defuse nationalist sentiments. It has stopped insisting on the right to fly the American flag over U.S. bases and has allowed foreign governments to place their own military commanders inside American facilities, although some areas generally remain off-limits to them.

U.S. officials have even tried making changes in the language they use in an attempt to make the bases more acceptable. “We don’t call them bases any more,” said a State Department official. “They’re facilities to which the United States has access.”

‘Bases Are Not Here for Us’

American officials regularly seek to persuade foreign governments that U.S. bases help protect their nations from Soviet attack. But this argument seems to carry less and less weight. “The reality is that these bases are not here for us,” said Philippine Foreign Minister Raul Manglapus this year. “They are here for the United States.”

Sometimes, the most persuasive argument for keeping the American bases is money--that is, the U.S. military aid paid to some countries with bases, along with other economic benefits. “These bases are a gold mine for these countries,” said Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The United States spends approximately $5 billion on its bases annually, with almost half of that paid in “permit costs” to the host countries. As U.S. and Philippine negotiators proceed with talks over the future of the two American bases there, the Reagan Administration is also talking about a new, multibillion-dollar “Marshall Plan” for the government of President Corazon Aquino.

In Greece, government officials and intellectuals express anxiety about the possible economic impact of any action by the Papandreou government against the U.S. bases. “If we close down the bases, I don’t know what the reaction of the United States would be in the economic field,” observed Antonias Brademas, a professor of international studies at the University of Athens.

Yet American economic power is no longer always the decisive factor it once was. With Congress trying to reduce the huge federal budget deficit, the United States has less money to hand out these days. And some of the countries with U.S. bases are no longer as impoverished as they once were.

Spain, in evicting the Air Force squadron, has willingly given up all future U.S. military aid.

Aid from Allies

Even with more impoverished nations that continue to need foreign aid, such as the Philippines, the United States finds itself turning to allies, such as Japan and West Germany, to provide some of the money. Japan provided approximately $700 million in foreign aid to the Philippines last year, most of it in loans at favorable rates.

In Greece, money is only one of many factors in the current negotiations over the future of the American bases.

“Of course, everything has its price. But here in Greece, things are more complex,” said Drakopoulos of the Greek Foreign Ministry.

On the one hand, he said, Greece wants to remain on good terms with the United States to help prevent aggression by its neighbor, Turkey. On the other hand, he went on, “there is a portion of the (Greek) population which is against these bases, which doesn’t want the bases here. It’s not the majority, but even a small group can create impressions.”

The United States maintains four bases in Greece. One is the naval base at Souda Bay on Crete, which can harbor the entire 6th Fleet. Two more are communications facilities at Iraklion on Crete and at Nea Makri east of Athens. The fourth is the Hellenikon Air Base, which is adjacent to Athens International Airport.

7,600 Americans

The bases house approximately 6,300 American military personnel and dependents and another 1,300 U.S. civilian employees and dependents.

Officially, the U.S. bases in Greece are portrayed as a bulwark of North Atlantic Treaty Organization military defense against the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies.

“If Greece is neutral or a member of the opposition, we lose Greece as a link between (western) NATO (countries) and Turkey,” said Maj. Thomas O. McQuerry of the U.S. Marine Corps. “Probably the most important strategic asset Greece gives us is an ability to defend the (Dardanelles) straits and the Bosporus in depth.”

By establishing a series of defense lines or “belts” running from the Greek mainland across Greek islands in the Aegean Sea to Turkey, McQuerry explained, the United States would be able “to keep the Soviet fleet bottled up in the Black Sea.”

The U.S. bases in Greece serve other functions as well that are unrelated to defense against the Soviet Union. From the base at Athens, surveillance planes have carried out flights over Libya. The base at Iraklion has monitored communications from Libya and the Middle East.

A Price to Be Paid

Greece respects the bases’ value to the West. But, U.S. officials now acknowledge, resistance to permitting the United States to keep the bases may now be the price that must be paid for past involvement with discredited Greek leaders.

The Greek junta that came to power in 1967 was led by Col. Papadopoulos, who had previously worked as a psychological warfare specialist in the Greek counterpart of the CIA. According to McQuerry, Papadopoulos worked before the military coup in the same Athens office building where the U.S. Military Advisory Group was headquartered.

The plan that Papadopoulos used to seize control of Greece was, in fact, an old NATO contingency plan for taking over the country during wartime.

“Quite a close relationship developed” between the Greek junta and U.S. military officials, said McQuerry in an official briefing. He said that under the junta, the United States was given veto authority over the promotions of officers in the Greek armed forces.

The Greek junta fell in 1974. Seven years later, the Greek Socialist Party (PASOK) came to power after a campaign in which it pledged to withdraw Greece from NATO and the European Economic Community and to win the removal of U.S. bases from Greek soil.

Papandreou, the leader of PASOK and son of a former Greek prime minister, had himself been imprisoned under the junta. As prime minister, he switched directions and negotiated a five-year extension of the agreement allowing the United States to use its bases in Greece. But he also inserted a clause that says the agreement “is terminable” at the end of 1988.

‘A Referendum of the People’

With the prospect of another extension possible, Greek and U.S. negotiators are now talking about the future. “Assuming that we reach an agreement that reaches our highest national interests, we will submit it to a referendum of the people,” says a government spokesman. “If not, then the law (requiring U.S. forces to leave the bases at the end of this year) will take effect.”

Greek opposition to the U.S. bases remains strong. Twice last year, bombs exploded on or near buses carrying U.S. military personnel in Greece. This spring, a bar near the U.S. air base in Athens was bombed.

Greece’s leading pollster, Panayote Dimitras, says that recent surveys by his company in Athens show that 54% of the Greek people want the American bases to go, 36% would like them to stay and 10% are undecided. Dimitras notes, however, that the opposition to the bases has diminished from five years ago, when surveys showed that 75% wanted the Americans to leave. Most Greeks believe that Papandreou will allow some of the U.S. bases to stay but that he may negotiate some new restriction. The most likely possibility is that American forces will be asked to leave Hellenikon, the air base near Athens--just as the United States was asked to leave its base near the Spanish capital of Madrid.

“Hellenikon is the base which has aroused the most public reaction in the past,” says Thanatos Veremis, a political science professor at the University of Athens. “It’s in a very public area, in the midst of Athens, where things like drunken sailors are more noticeable. The other bases are tucked away in the midst of less populated areas.”

Guarantee Demand Likely

But it remains unclear what the United States will have to promise to Greece to keep all or most of its bases. U.S. officials say that in addition to new U.S. military aid, Greece would like to receive some sort of American guarantees that the United States will use its power and influence to prevent Greece from being attacked by arch-enemy Turkey.

“The main threat (to Greece) is from Turkey,” says George Nicolaidis of the Greek Foreign Ministry. “This is not to deny there is a threat from the Warsaw Pact, but it is a distant threat.”

For the United States, the problem is that Turkey is also an important ally--and a country neighboring the Soviet Union, in which the United States has military bases even more important than the bases in Greece. The United States would like to show support for Greece, one base country, but not at the expense of offending Turkey, another base country.

At the U.S. Office of Defense Cooperation in Athens, Col. Lou Zakas compared the U.S. role in dealing with Greece and Turkey to that of a parent with problem children.

“It’s like a mother or father that’s got two kids who are always bickering,” he said.