Papageorgiou, Agisilaos; (2023) US Interventionism in Greece during the early Cold War, 1947-1974: a consequentialist interpretation. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis covers Greco-American relations from 1947 to 1974, starting with American interventionism in the Third Phase of the Greek Civil War and ending with the collapse of the Greek military regime. Through an extensive study of diplomatic and intelligence documents, this thesis thoroughly explores the two countries’ bilateral relations—which do not figure prominently within Cold War scholarship—and elaborates deeply on American purposes in Greece and US foreign policymakers’ consistently deep level of interventionism, starting with the Truman and ending with the Nixon presidencies. This thesis adopts a revisionist perspective, suggesting that the conventional interpretation of Cold War American interventionism as unethical is unidimensional and inherently limited, as is the argument that in the early Cold War, the US undermined its own long-term position in Greece. This thesis’ findings suggest instead that American interventionism in Greece was not only consistently ethical throughout the period in question, but also highly effective in geopolitical terms as well. To do so, this thesis explores American interventionism in Greece during the early Cold War from a consequentialist perspective. By exploring American foreign policymaking through a consequentialist set of ethics, this thesis challenges the predominant deontological interpretation of American interventionism and proposes a wider alternative interpretation of ethical foreign policymaking. To achieve this goal, this thesis introduces its own theoretical framework, through which it explores the influence of American Exceptionalism in the conceptualization of American foreign policy in the context of the Cold War—and superpower competition with the Soviet Union, and world communism more broadly. The fundamental principle that this thesis proposes is that Cold War American administrations operated with a consequentialist mindset, in which containing and defeating the Soviet sphere of influence was not only a strategic and geopolitical interest in realist terms, but also a moral imperative, in existential terms.

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