Since the re-election of Donald Trump experts in Greece and Cyprus have been trying to decipher how the new White House would impact relations in the eastern Mediterranean. Would Trump 2.0 follow the policies it pursued during his first term, and what differences, if any it would have with the Biden administration?
Greek Reporter spoke to geopolitical strategist and Washington insider John Sitilides.
He admitted that it’s almost impossible to accurately predict what will happen, but examining the trends and patterns of the last four years under President Biden and the four years before that under President Trump “we will probably have a foreign policy and national security agenda that not only will sustain what has been a very positive direction in US-Greece and US-Cyprus relations, but probably carry it forward even more robustly in the next four years.”
The Greek-American expert highlighted the role Marco Rubio would likely play in the new administration.
“The fact that we have potentially a Secretary of State in Marco Rubio, who was the lead Republican co-author of the Eastern Mediterranean Energy and Security Act that passed under the first Trump administration, we can take the US-Greece relationship to a strategic level.”
He notes, however, that the US Secretary of State’s number one responsibility is to advance and promote the American foreign policy interest worldwide.
“He’s not coming into the State Department to be a friend of Greece or a friend of Turkey or an enemy of Turkey, for that matter. The degree to which the policies of the Greek government harmonize with those of the US government, we will have an excellent, continued excellent relationship between the US and Greece.”
US-Greece strategic dialogue launched under Trump
Sitilides, who chairs the State Department’s Advanced Area Studies Program for Southeast Europe (under a U.S. government contract) at the Foreign Service Institute, the primary training institution for U.S. diplomats and other foreign policy professionals, recalled that it was under President Trump that the US-Greece strategic dialogue was launched.
Under his first presidency, Greece and the US developed security cooperation, including the Greek government allowing access to US forces at a number of bases in mainland Greece, in addition to Souda Bay.
He added that there is a robust American investment in Greece and cooperation in a whole host of other vital areas, such as technology, environment, and trade.
“President Biden carried the US-Greece strategic dialogue forward and launched the US-Cyprus strategic dialogue. Washington has a stronger relationship with both NATO ally Greece and its partner in the Eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus, in a way that we have not seen in modern diplomatic history,” Sitilides notes.
“In many ways, this is the apex of America’s relations with both Greece and Cyprus simultaneously.”
US and Cyprus relationship
Sitilides told Greek Reporter that the Cyprus issue, 50 years after the Turkish invasion and occupation, has been reframed in Washington.
“When people talk about Cyprus in Washington, it’s almost always directly and immediately connected to the Turkish invasion and occupation and what can be done to resolve this issue.
“And now what we have is a whole host of very positive developments that are, in addition to that issue, areas for positive engagement involving security cooperation.”
He notes that the US is now helping to build out the Evangelos-Florakis Naval Base in Mari, with a major helicopter facility there and American troops that are being welcomed at the Andreas Papandreou Air Base in Paphos.
He adds that there is now a US-Cyprus law enforcement, counterterrorism, and customs enforcement training facility for regional stakeholders from South Asia to the Middle East and Northern Africa at the facility in Larnaca.
“And so we also had four senators that stopped by the Papandreou Air Force Base just recently to explore this tighter US-Cyprus security cooperation because the East Med and Greece and Cyprus together are our most reliable partners in this arc of crisis, north with the war in Ukraine, to the east with the wars that Iran is waging against Israel on multiple fronts, and to the south with the ongoing civil war in Libya, which is ungoverned.”
Turkey’s foreign policy drift away from the US
Sitilides says that Turkey is engaged in deeper and more “troublesome” foreign policy drift away from the US, away from the West, away from NATO, and away from the European Union.
He outlines some of the recent actions Erdogan has taken to alarm policymakers in Washington:
The purchase and potential deployment of Russian S-400 missiles, attacks on America’s partners, the Syrian Kurds in the eastern part of Syria, harboring Hamas now that they have been expelled from Qatar, bases and the mercenary activities that we see in several African countries, Turkey wanting to join the BRICS, the first European country to do so.
“The more President Erdogan undertakes policies that undermine and corrode the US-Turkey relationship, you will have sanctions slapped on your economy, as President Trump did and as President Biden maintained and as President Trump will likely maintain as long as Turkey has the S-400s.”
If Turkey revises its foreign policy agenda to one that harmonizes more cleanly and aligns with that of the US and its NATO partners, “then I think Erdogan will find a much more receptive audience at State and, for that matter, at other European capitals.
“The more foreign policy drift that pulls Turkey away from its Western partners, the more difficult the relationship will be. So, from my estimation, it’s all on President Erdogan to determine the future of U.S.-Turkish relations,” Sitilides told Greek Reporter.
John Sitilides is Principal at Trilogy Advisors LLC in Washington, D.C., specializing in U.S. government relations, geopolitical risk, and international affairs, and Senior Fellow, National Security Program, at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.