Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias visited Washington on October 13-14 for a scheduled round of the US-Greece Strategic Dialogue. He met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other top US government officials and discussed current regional concerns.
That otherwise routine and uninteresting discussion, similar to those held by Washington with many other countries in the "strategic dialogue" format, was spruced up this year (Round #3) with the signing of a new US-Greece defense agreement, formally amending previous bilateral agreements and aimed at enhancing the outstanding defense cooperation the two countries have shared for years.
A separate letter from Secretary of State Blinken, which has yet to be released, is said to include language that the Mitsotakis government is already interpreting as a form of US guarantee of Greece's sovereignty over the Aegean islands and territorial waters, in accordance with the UN Law of the Sea Convention, which Turkey vigorously contests.
Because the bilateral military-to-military relationship had been excellent for so long, it was difficult for both sides to identify significant areas for improvement, and the document signed on October 14 should be viewed as part of an updating and modernization process rather than a functional upgrade, as some in Athens believe.
The new US-Greece agreement, which is actually an amendment to the US-Greece Mutual Defense Cooperation Agreement (MDCA), builds on the one signed in Athens two years ago by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and is said to give the US increased access to two bases in central Greece and one near the Greek-Turkish border at Alexandroupolis.
None of them would be fresh US deployments, and the majority of the US presence in the region is rotational, such as the use of Greek training facilities during the winter months when US bases in northern Europe are closed.
The permanent US naval station in Souda Bay, Crete, is essentially the core to the defense partnership and the US and NATO's force projection capability across the region, apart and above the activities in northern Greece.
The modifications signed in 2019 and this week are meant to reassure the US Congress that the defense connection will remain long-term, allowing significant financing for essential base improvements and other activities to be safely appropriated.
There is still debate about whether the current deal legally authorizes the US to remain in Greece "indefinitely," as the 2019 MDCA amendment claimed.
The State Department revealed that Blinken thanked Dendias "for the constructive role Greece has played in supporting regional integration in the Western Balkans" in a separate Blinken-Dendias meeting on the same day, sending a message to the disappointed EU accession candidates of Albania and North Macedonia that Washington had not forgotten last week's lacklustre Brdo EU Summit outcome.
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