In 1953 the first defense cooperation agreement between Greece and the United States was signed, providing for the establishment and operation of American military installations on Greek territory. Major installations included the Hellinikon Air Base and Nea Makri Naval Communications Station (both near Athens), Heraklion Air Station, Gournes Communications Station, and Souda Bay Air Base and Port (all in Crete). In the mid-1990s, the only operating facility that remains is the base at Souda Bay, which provides direct operational support for the United States Sixth Fleet in the eastern Mediterranean. In the past, bases in Greece also provided the United States surveillance of Soviet naval activities in the eastern Mediterranean, ammunition and supply storage sites, and support for the United States Air Force Europe and Military Airlift Command (MAC). The installations were under joint Greek and United States command. In 1972 an agreement with the military dictatorship provided home-port access for the Sixth Fleet at the port of Eleusis near Athens. A controversial issue in Greece even under the dictatorship, the project was abandoned in 1975 after the fall of the military regime.

Bilateral defense relations between Greece and the United States have been regulated by a series of defense and economic cooperation agreements (DECAs), as well as defense and industrial cooperation agreements (DICAs). Despite occasionally harsh rhetoric toward the United States in the early 1980s, the socialist government of Andreas Papandreou nevertheless signed a new DECA in September 1983. After solving some terminological problems on the duration of the agreement, a new DECA was signed in 1990. The 1990 agreement was facilitated by unilateral United States decisions to close some of its military installations in Greece (see The United States , ch. 4). The 1990 agreement was scheduled to expire in 1995, with renewal negotiations to take place in April.

Data as of December 1994

NOTE: The information regarding Greece on this page is re-published from The Library of Congress Country Studies and the CIA World Factbook. No claims are made regarding the accuracy of Greece The Role of the United States information contained here. All suggestions for corrections of any errors about Greece The Role of the United States should be addressed to the Library of Congress and the CIA.