Perverse Institutionalism: NATO and the Greco-Turkish Conflict

Last year the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly approved the expansion of the Atlantic alliance. Whereas some advocates of enlarging NATO, particularly Eastern European leaders for whom the Soviets’ iron grip is an all too recent memory, stress the extension of the alliance’s traditional deterrent function, others acknowledge that Russia is in no position to reconquer its former empire. Rather, they argue that membership in NATO would stabilize the region by filling the power vacuum and eliminating the need for security competition. Traditionally a volatile area, East-Central Europe is rife with potential irredentist and ethnic conflicts, and NATO can help arbitrate and limit these disputes.1 Critics have denounced the move as unnecessarily provocative to Russia, and they have also decried its hefty cost.2 But they have not challenged the claim that alliances create zones of peace.3 Policymakers have swiftly embraced this intuitively appealing argument. In a 1996 campaign speech, President Bill Clinton trumpeted the virtues of alliance: ‘‘Through NATO, Western Europe became a source of stability instead of hostility. France and Germany moved from conflict to cooperation. . . . I came to office convinced that NATO can do for Europe’s East what it did for Europe’s West.’’4 This logic is attractive, but it overstates the alliance’s achievements. The triumph of Franco-German reconciliation must be balanced by the failure to suppress the persistent discord within NATO’s southeastern flank. At least once in every decade since World War II, Greece and Turkey have nearly come to blows, and a host of more minor incidents and skirmishes have further marred their relations. Historians have maintained that the