The US, the Balkans and Détente, 1963–73

Abstract

This chapter will argue that the application of the American policy of ‘differentiation’ during ‘proto-détente’, the under-researched interregnum between the Cuban Missile Crisis and the launch of superpower détente by the Nixon administration, stirred up the Balkans across the Cold War divide in ways that were to have important repercussions for each state of the peninsula. Within this framework the essay will look at how the US viewed the process of ‘Balkan détente’ in the early 1970s. It will examine the embroilment of the Greek junta in the process and it will assess to what degree American involvement with the region was circumscribed by America’s overall Mediterranean policy and its desire to inhibit change in Southern Europe.