By Can Öztaş
In Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove, the American president interrupts a scuffle between General Buck Turgidson and the Soviet ambassador with an appeal to institutional dignity. “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room.”
Around the Eastern Mediterranean, the meetings remain rather better behaved. The participants sign agreements to protect themselves from one another and describe the proceedings as cooperation.
On Aug. 31, Greece signed a 3 billion euro agreement with Israel for the air-defense systems of its Achilles Shield program. When Hephaestus forged the original, he placed weddings, harvests and a city under siege upon it. Homer found room for the world beyond the warrior. The modern version comes with technical specifications.
That same day, in Istanbul, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan settled fresh details of their own trilateral pact. One purchases equipment; the other organises collective defense. Both promise peace through greater preparedness for war.
AMONG FRIENDS
The arrangements become more intriguing when the alliance badges are attached. Greece and Turkey belong to NATO. Israel is a close American strategic partner. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have their own longstanding security relationships with Washington.
A NATO member is thus buying protection from an American partner partly against another NATO member, which is strengthening its own arrangements with two other American partners. Washington’s friends have much in common, including reservations about one another.
Military cooperation can therefore deepen while political reconciliation remains indefinitely postponed. The contracts specify delivery dates. Peace enjoys rather more flexible terms.
PRICE OF REASSURANCE
Israel markets the Greek agreement through the operational experience its defense establishment has acquired in war. “Battle-tested” is an economical expression: it keeps the evidence of performance and discards the inconvenience of remembering the battlefield.
Israeli officials are candid about what the money does next. defense Ministry Director General Amir Baram described large export agreements as strengthening Israel’s armed forces, expanding production lines and building stockpiles — force buildup by other means. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry has concluded that Israel committed genocide in Gaza; Israel rejected the finding as “distorted and false”. Whatever Athens makes of that finding, a defensive label does not detach these missiles from the capacity that produced them. The shield will stand in Greece. The stockpile behind it stands wherever Israel decides to use it next.
Nor is Greece only a customer. Greek firms are contracted as subcontractors on the deal, worth several hundred million euros. Athens has not simply purchased a shield; it has bought itself a stake in the relationship continuing.
ANKARA’S OWN ACCOUNT
Ankara’s corresponding responsibility is to explain what it has promised. The Joint Defense Agreement was signed on Aug. 7; three weeks later, in Istanbul, the three governments gave it a name, the Mecca defense Alliance, and a secretariat in Riyadh. Its full text has still not been published. Criticism inside Turkey has focused on possible entanglement in Saudi–Iranian or India–Pakistan confrontations that Ankara neither chooses nor controls.
Parliament has not been spared the uncertainty. “We too only just found out about it,” the opposition MP Turhan Çömez said of the agreement, arguing it has not been properly debated in public. What assistance is obligatory, and who decides that it has arisen? Compatibility with NATO, repeatedly offered as reassurance, answers neither question: an agreement can coexist with one alliance while creating substantial liabilities through another.
Operational plans may require secrecy. Citizens should nevertheless know the commitments under which those plans could become their country’s war. They are being asked to welcome an insurance policy without being shown its exclusions, while their lives and taxes stand behind the guarantee.
Athens owes an account of what its money sustains. Ankara owes an account of what its signature commits. Neither obligation disappears beneath the word “security”.
