Crisis at the Turkish Straits

Sometime next year, the Soviets’ new 70,000-ton aircraft carrier Tbilisi will complete trials in the Black Sea and attempt to transit the Turkish Straits. This prospect presents a dilemma to the signatories to the 1936 Montreux Convention, which prohibits the passage of “capital ships” through the Straits.

The Turkish Straits are a crossroads of history. For 500 years, the struggle for their control has plagued the nations of Europe. Running northeast to southwest, the Straits comprise: the river-like Bosphorus, about 18 miles long and as narrow as 800 yards wide; the Dardanelles, about 47 miles long and three to four miles wide; and the lake-like Sea of Marmora in between. The European and Asian shores lie entirely within Turkey. The channel between them constitutes the sole sea route in and out of the Black Sea for Turkey, Rumania, Bulgaria, and the Soviet Union. The Straits are also the only exit for Istanbul, Turkey’s principal port.

The latest and most enduring international effort to resolve the centuries-old problem of regulating traffic through the Straits and access to the Black Sea was the Montreux Convention of 1936.[1] The Convention’s restrictive provisions regarding transit of warships once again threaten to provoke a crisis. Since the mid-1970s, U. S. officials have claimed that passage through the Straits of the Soviet’s 37,000-ton Kiev-class vertical/short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) and helicopter carriers violates a specific prohibition of the Convention.[2] In 1985, a U. S. advisory committee to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency charged that the Kiev’s transits were illustrative of Soviet disregard for its arms control obligations.[3]

Now a more serious issue is developing. Nearing completion in a Soviet naval yard at Nikolayev, on the Black Sea northeast of Odessa, is the Tbilisi, a 70,000-ton, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.[4]

About twice the size of the Kiev-class carriers, the new Soviet carrier will, when it completes its sea trials in 1989, represent a major step in the evolution of the Soviet Navy from a coastal defense force to a blue-water fleet. It will vastly increase the Soviet Navy’s capacity to project its naval power anywhere that supply lines and the exigencies of geography permit, but to do so it must have the right to move freely through straits and sea lanes. Naval experts believe that the new aircraft carrier’s most likely assignment will be to operate out of Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula, providing air cover for the Soviet Northern Fleet, but its use in the Mediterranean and elsewhere is not excluded. In any case, to fulfill its function, it will have to pass through the Turkish Straits. At this point, the Soviet Union and the other signatories of the Convention will be confronted with limitations on the transit of warships that reflect an old dispute over access to the Black Sea.

Since the end of the 18th century, Russia had intrigued to relax Turkish control of the Straits. In the decade before World War I, the Straits question became a prime consideration of Russian policy. While repeatedly abjuring any designs on Constantinople itself, Russian officials were frank in setting the opening of the Straits as a foreign policy goal.

Early in World War I, Turkey entered the war on the side of the Central Powers as the result of an unpredictable event that almost certainly changed the course of history. Trapped in the Western Mediterranean at the outbreak of war, a German naval squadron consisting of the new battle cruiser Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau took refuge in the Straits after a running battle with the vastly superior British Mediterranean fleet. In a quick change of costume, the ships assumed Turkish nationality. The accession of two modern warships and their crews to the decrepit Turkish Navy, coupled with Turkish indignation over the Admiralty’s seizure of a Turkish battleship fitting out in a British dockyard, tipped the scales of Turkish neutrality. The Ottoman Empire closed the Straits to Allied shipping and in October 1914 entered the war on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary.[5]

In 1915, the Allies twice tried to force the Straits in an attempt to detach Turkey and open a sea route to Russia. The Dardanelles were first the scene of an abortive attempt by an Anglo-French naval force to batter its way past Turkish batteries and minefields into the Black Sea. This was followed by the disastrous Gallipoli landings, in which a primarily British and Australian expeditionary force was repulsed with heavy loss of life. Had the Goeben and Breslau not been allowed to take refuge in the Straits, Turkey would almost certainly have remained neutral, the Straits would have remained open to merchant, shipping, and the Allies could have sent supplies to alleviate Russia’s desperate ammunition shortage of 1915. Later it might even have been possible for the Allies to send reinforcements to Russia and Rumania.[6]

The Turkish Empire collapsed in 1918, and the Allies occupied Constantinople and opened the Straits to naval and merchant traffic. They remained open through the post-World War I period when Britain and France were supporting the Russian “White” armies in the Ukraine. They also stayed open during the Greco-Turkish war of 1920–22. However, after Kemal Ataturk’s liberation of Turkey from Greek occupation and its reconstitution as an Islamic Republic, the European powers agreed to include the Straits question in the conference convened in Lausanne in 1923 to revise the short-lived Treaty of Sevres.

The resultant Treaty of Lausanne not only abrogated the “ancient rule of the Ottoman Empire,” barring the Straits to foreign warships, but demilitarized the Straits and placed them under control of an international commission.[7] The Treaty of Lausanne guaranteed freedom of transit and navigation for foreign warships and military aircraft in time of peace, subject only to a limitation on the total foreign naval tonnage allowed to enter the Black Sea (no greater than that of the largest Black Sea navy, i.e., the Soviet Union’s). There were additional restrictions on transit in time of war, depending on whether or not Turkey was a belligerent. The signatories were the British Empire, France, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Turkey.

During the 1930s, Turkey became increasingly restive with international controls. The ostensible reasons were rising tensions in the Mediterranean—the Spanish Civil War, the Abyssinian crisis, Nazi ambitions in the Balkans, the Italian naval threat, and fear of a “general conflagration.” The real reasons were Turkish nationalism and resentment over a perceived infringement of sovereignty by the international regime.[8] Consistent with Czarist policy the Soviet Union supported Turkey in its bid for resumption of Turkish control. Finally, in 1936, the decline French and British influence in the Balkans, combined with fear that Turkey would unilaterally denounce the Lausanne Treaty, led the Western powers to agree to a Straits conference in Montreux.

At the conference, the positions of the participants reflected the military interests of the day. Great Britain, the to dominant Mediterranean naval power—not yet awakened to the devastating threat of land-based air power to battle-ships and cruisers—took the traditional view that it required maximum access to inner seas and oceans. The British pressed for equal transit through the Straits for all nations, except when Turkey was a belligerent. The Soviet Union, still smarting over allied military intervention in behalf of the White armies, not to mention the fading memory of the Crimean War, pressed for closure of the Straits to the warships of non-Black Sea nations. More for political than strategic reasons, Australia, France, and Japan supported Britain.

Turkey’s position at the conference was grounded in its desire to recapture territorial sovereignty over the Straits, to stay neutral in any future European war, and to be liberated, from the second-class status of a defeated nation. What today would be called “national security” considerations were less important than prestige. In any case, distrust of Greece which had invaded Turkey only 15 years before and had a navy larger than Turkey’s, loomed larger than fear of the Soviet Union.[9]

The Convention that emerged was a compromise.[10] Its 29 articles, four annexes, and protocol terminated international control of the Straits, restored Turkey’s right to militarize and control them, and reaffirmed the time-honored right of free transit for merchant shipping. At the urging of the Soviet Union, Montreux substantially restricted the Lausanne provisions covering passage by warships of non-Black Sea powers by once again closing the Straits to foreign warships, but with certain exceptions. “Light surface vessels” of 10,000 tons or less, “minor war vessels,” and auxiliaries of Black Sea and non-Black Sea powers were authorized transit up to an aggregate of 15,000 tons or nine vessels. “Capital ships” (generally accepted as battleships and cruisers) of non-Black Sea powers were denied access to the Straits, but capital ships of Black Sea powers could exceed the 15,000-ton limitation provided they passed through singly and were accompanied by not more than two escort vessels. Submarines were barred completely, except for Black Sea submarines purchased or constructed abroad, or which needed to exit the Black Sea for repairs; these were accorded rights of transit for this purpose only. All transits of foreign warships through the Straits were made subject to advance notification and pilotage requirements.[11]

The Convention thus traded confinement to the Black Sea of the Soviet Black Sea submarine fleet for closure of the Straits to non-Black Sea warships except for the largely symbolic and non-threatening right of entry accorded to a limited number of light cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and smaller vessels. Aircraft carriers were not a factor in the negotiations. Japan’s carriers and the U. S. giants Lexington (CV-2) and Saratoga (CV-3) were in the Pacific, and the Royal Navy had only three modern carriers. The Soviet Union, which at that time had no aircraft carriers and was not contemplating building any, took care to exclude them from the Straits by not including them in the definition of “capital ship.”

The Montreux Convention, which restored Turkish sovereignty over the Straits, was highly favorable to Turkey and reasonably satisfactory to the defensive needs of the Soviet Union. Britain, France, and the other powers acquiesced to relinquishment of international control, militarization of the Straits, and severe limitations on the movement of their own vessels through the Straits out of fear of alienating Turkey and in hopes of Turkish neutrality in any future war.[12] The fact that Turkey did indeed remain neutral during World War II and that the Montreux Convention was able to survive nearly a half-century of cold war and military conflict seems to vindicate this judgment.[13]

Another reason why the Convention has lasted so long is that its restrictions on warship transit were congruent with the defensive posture of the Soviet Union throughout the inter-war period and for a time after World War II. The development of the Black Sea ports of Sochi, Novorisissk, Batum, Sebastopol, and Odessa as trade centers and points transshipment for the Soviet river network, and the expansion of Soviet industry in the Ukraine, vastly increased the economic and strategic importance of the Black Sea littoral oral and its hinterland.[14] It also increased the vulnerability of this “soft underbelly.” The Soviet Navy’s construction of submarines exclusively designed for Black Sea operations illustrates the defensive view of the Black sea that the Soviet Navy took until the 1960s. Only with the recent creation of a blue-water navy and increasing global projection of Soviet sea power have the Soviets stopped viewing closure of the Straits to foreign warships as an acceptable trade-off for onerous restrictions on the passage of their submarines and capital ships, including aircraft carriers, out of the Black Sea to the outside world.

Another reason for the Convention’s durability has been Turkish reluctance to reopen the Straits question. Turkey knows that tampering with the lifeline of the Black Sea powers would provoke a crisis of massive dimensions. Paradoxically, Turkish membership in NATO and heavy dependency on the United States for military and economic assistance have made Turkey even more wary of disturbing its stable relationship with the Soviet Union. The virtually automatic involvement of NATO in any future Straits crisis would leave Turkey in the front line and deprive it of negotiating room.

Moreover, another international conference would almost certainly whittle away Turkey’s preferential position. Any agreement that emerged would probably restore some form of international control. On the other hand, if negotiations broke down and the Montreux Convention were abrogated with nothing to replace it, the customary international law of international straits, now largely embodied in the still unratified 1982 Law of the Sea Treaty, would become applicable and this would be highly disadvantageous to Turkey.[15] Under the latter, the navies of the world, perhaps even including submarines traveling submerged (under the U. S. interpretation of customary law), could claim the right of transit through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles.

The major NATO powers are also wary of provoking a Straits crisis because of the hostile relationship between Greece and Turkey. Strategically and politically, NATO’s Southern Flank has always been its most vulnerable sector. The current Greek government has repeatedly stated that it regards its nominal ally Turkey as a far greater threat than the Soviet Union. Greece and Turkey are at odds over Cyprus, and even more over the Aegean issue, which affects access to the Dardanelles and is inextricably linked to the Straits question.

The Aegean islands and the air space above them belong to Greece. Even under the old three-mile territorial sea, this route between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean consisted of relatively narrow stretches of international waters intersecting groups of the Greek Aegean islands. The six-mile territorial sea now generally in force has converted these stretches into twisting channels and squeezed Turkish territorial waters up against the Anatolian mainland. An extension of the limit to 12 miles, which is authorized under the 1982 Law of the Sea Treaty and claimed by Greece as a right, would convert the Aegean into a Greek lake. Turkey has consistently proclaimed that any attempt by Greece to expand its territorial waters to 12 miles would lead to immediate war.[16]

For 20 years, there have also been acrimonious disputes over Greek air traffic control over the Aegean and Greece’s assertion of a ten-mile territorial air space. Relations between Greece and Turkey have deteriorated further because of the prospect of offshore oil deposits and disagreement over the limits of each country’s continental shelf. Each country has threatened to stop by force the other’s oil-exploration activities in what it considers its shelf areas. Turkish oceanographic research vessels in the Aegean have had to be escorted by warships, and on two recent occasions have been forced to withdraw from what Turkey considers to be international waters.[17] There is now no way of reopening the issue of the Straits without opening the Pandora’s box of conflicting Greek-Turkish claims to the Aegean.

Meanwhile, all parties concerned are aware that expansion of Soviet naval and naval air power in the Black Sea guarantees that any threat of further restrictions will end Soviet tolerance of the Montreux Convention. While the new Soviet carrier will not be ready for sea trials until 1988, or become operational until 1992 at the earliest, the question of its classification will certainly surface much earlier. Here the precedent set by earlier transits of the Kiev and the helicopter carriers becomes relevant. Kiev-class ships, which are 920 feet long and have a 600-foot angled flight deck, carry a complement of 30–40 vertical V/STOL aircraft and an assortment of helicopters. They look like aircraft carriers, function like aircraft carriers, and are classified as aircraft carriers.[18] However, they also carry 76-mm. dual-purpose guns, as well as surface, anti-aircraft, and antisubmarine missiles and rocket launchers not usual in the conventional carrier. Originally classified as antisubmarine cruisers, the Soviet Navy now calls them “aircraft-carrying cruisers.” The reason for the cruiser label lies in the wording of the Montreux Convention.[19]

Article II of the Convention authorizes only the capital ships of Black Sea powers—i.e., the Soviet Union, bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey—to transit the Straits. Annex II excludes aircraft carriers from the category of “capital ship.”[20] While the Convention contains no provision that expressly prohibits aircraft carriers from transiting the Straits, the definitional language would imply such a Prohibition, but only if the reader confined his scrutiny to the Convention’s text alone. Political instruments like the Montreux Convention must, however, be construed within a historical context.

When the Montreux Convention replaced the Treaty of Lausanne, it transferred control over the Straits from an international commission to the Turkish government. This carried with it the right to implement the Convention. As an result, only Turkey is responsible for its day-to-day interpretation. At the time of the Kiev’s first passage—and indeed earlier, while the ship was under construction—the Turkish government had ample opportunity to challenge both its transit rights and its classification. The Turkish government not only failed to do either, but accepted the Soviet Navy’s “cruiser” classification for the two Moskva-class helicopter carriers based in the Black Sea and acquiesced in their transits as well.

In addition to the Soviet Union and Turkey, the other signatories of the Montreux Convention are Bulgaria, France, Great Britain, Greece, Japan, Rumania, and Yugoslavia. Neither collectively nor singly have any of these nations protested the classification of the Kiev and the two helicopter carriers as cruisers, or challenged their right to transit the Straits either at the time of first passage or since. The subject has apparently been on the agenda of the NATO Council and its committees, but NATO as a body has never taken formal action to make known its concerns, much less to raise the issue to the level of diplomatic protest.[21]

In short, over the last 30 years, the inaction of Turkey and the other Montreux signatories has set a precedent that constitutes de facto amendment of the Convention either through waiver of an express provision or, given the absence of an express prohibition, by giving repeated permissions to Black Sea aircraft carriers to transit. Either way, the time to protest the transits of the Kiev and the two helicopter carriers seems to have passed. But would this affect the new Soviet carrier, the configuration and dimensions of which put it in a totally different class? No protest has been made to date.

Where does the United States stand in this tangled politico-legal web? As regards its standing to protest violations of the Montreux Convention, pretty far down the line. The United States is neither a signatory of this Convention nor of any prior Straits agreement. Like other maritime nations, the United States makes periodic transits of the Straits into the Black Sea with “light” and “minor” warships—destroyers, cruisers, and frigates—to reaffirm its international rights. If the need arose, it could also avail itself of such remnants of customary international law applicable to international straits as have not been preempted by the Convention. These, however, are not of much use: Article 25 of the 1958 Convention on the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone specifically exempts from its coverage of straits and territorial waters straits covered by special international agreements like the Montreux convention.[22] The United States can comment from the sidelines, but has no vested right to make authoritative interpretations of the Convention’s provisions, much less to complain about violations.

The most favorable time for the United States to have injected itself into the Straits question was at the end of World War II, when relations with Stalin were still good and its power in Europe was at its zenith. Winston Churchill compared Russia to a giant “with his nostrils pinched by narrow exits from the Baltic to the Black Sea,” and President Truman favored freedom of international waterways. In the summer of 1945, at the time of the Potsdam Conference, the United States agreed in principle with Soviet demands for revision of the Montreux Convention and indicated its willingness to become a signatory. A U. S. proposal of the time advocated keeping the Straits open to international merchant shipping and opening them to warships of Black Sea Powers, with the United Nations as guarantor; it would also have opened the Straits in times of peace to non-Black Sea warships of limited tonnage, or of any tonnage pursuant to the consent of the Black Sea powers, or when acting under the aegis of the United Nations. The U. S. proposal to lift restrictions on the passage of Soviet warships through the Straits was accepted by Great Britain, Turkey, and others.

Both at Potsdam and later, however, the Soviets coupled agreement on transit with demands for a joint Turkish-Soviet regime to defend the Straits and preserve their neutrality.[23] The Straits question then got caught up in the Cold War. In the rising tension between East and West, these Soviet demands for a new Straits regime were interpreted by Washington as the first step in a Soviet plan to assert “political control” over the Turkish government and reduce Turkey to satellite status. In Washington, hysteria mounted to the point where, by January 1946, President Truman was convinced that the Soviets were about to invade Turkey.

During this period, Turkey was also an obstacle to a Straits settlement, consistently refusing to accept either a joint regime or the United Nations as guarantor of the Straits on the grounds that any such arrangement would be incompatible with Turkish sovereignty. After passage of the Greek-Turkish aid program in March 1947 and enunciation of the “Truman Doctrine,” U. S. relations with the Soviet Union had deteriorated to the point that any revision of the Montreux Convention that would have loosened restrictions on Soviet transit through the Straits would have been vetoed by the European signatories under pressure from the United States. For reasons that cannot be explained, it seems never to have occurred to the Truman administration or any other post-war U. S. administration to simply adhere to the Montreux Convention tout court.

This policy of self-exclusion had two major effects, both negative. It deprived the United States of standing to give authoritative interpretations to the Convention or to protest violations. This may not have been a significant loss as regards transit of merchant ships, the rights of which were not at issue and have remained virtually unchanged for 200 years, but it left the United States on the same footing legally as Liberia, Panama, and all the other non-signatory maritime nations. Regardless of superpower status, nonadherence still leaves the United States without an effective voice regarding day-to-day administration of the Straits and enforcement of the Convention.

Non-signatory status has also seduced successive U. S. administrations into placing far too much emphasis on its non-signatory maritime transit rights. These rights may have had military significance at the time of the Montreux Conference, but the rise of Soviet naval power in the Black Sea, and the almost total vulnerability of surface vessels in narrow seas to land-based missiles, have denuded them of significance. Nevertheless, the practice of sending U. S. Navy warships through the Straits and into the Black Sea on symbolic visits two or three times each year is rather like keeping alive an easement, except that here the easement exists by treaty and transits are not legally necessary to keep the easement alive. The Soviet Union in turn files token protests whenever visiting U. S. warships carry antisubmarine rockets (ASROC) with launching tubes exceeding the eight-inch gun diameter limitation that the Convention prescribes for light surface vessels—a silly attempt to equate missile tube diameter with muzzle diameter.

Today the strategic context of the Turkish Straits is quite different from what it was in 1936, or even in the 1960s. They are now a strategic and commercial lifeline for the Soviet Union. As many as 50 Soviet naval vessels and auxiliaries are on station at one time in the Mediterranean. Soviet naval vessels regularly pass through the Straits and the Aegean to the Indian Ocean and elsewhere, and return to Black Sea bases for repair or overhaul. The Straits are a pipeline for an immense flow of seaborne fuel and supplies to support distant water Soviet naval power. Soviet naval and commercial traffic through the Straits in both directions can run as high as 70 vessels a week.

The issue today is not whether foreign naval vessels can enter the Black Sea but whether Soviet vessels can freely exit and enter. The Black Sea has become such an important staging area for the projection of Soviet naval power that another Straits crisis could trigger the worst East-West confrontation since Berlin. One can, however, question the wisdom of using freedom of transit through the Straits to test innocent passage rights within Soviet territorial waters while ignoring Soviet traffic and notice requirements—as occurred in the February 1988 “bumping incident” between U. S. and Soviet warships in the Black Sea.

It could also provoke the defection of Turkey from NATO. Despite all propaganda to the contrary, Turkey is a far weaker ally than publicly advertised. Although Europeanized at the governmental, business, and technical level, culturally and historically Turkey is neither part of the West nor a natural ally of the West. Turkey was an enemy in World War I and neutral in World War II until 1945. Democratic institutions are an alien transplant. Turkey’s entire political orientation is toward neutrality, and this tendency has been reinforced by the authoritarian stamp of its government, its economic vulnerability, and its ties to the Moslem world.

Turkey’s value to the West mainly lies in its strategic location and its willingness to tolerate U. S. air bases and electronic monitoring stations, the lease of which was recently renewed for a five-year period. The notion that its underequipped 650,000-man army “ties down” Warsaw Pact forces is a myth. The army’s entire orientation is defensive and it is undeployable for offensive purposes, except against Greece. Although confronted in the “Turkish crisis” of June–October 1946 with a Soviet propaganda campaign for a “regional” Straits regime, Turkey was at no point actually threatened by Soviet troop movements. It was lured under the Truman Doctrine umbrella and into NATO by a huge U. S. aid program and out of fear that unless it was tied to the West, it would end up in an unstable, neutralized limbo and an arena of superpower intrigue—precisely the same reasoning that has swung it from East to West throughout its history.

Overlooked in the West is the fact that throughout the post-war period and despite the commitment to NATO Turkey has cultivated and maintained stable and friendly relations with its old enemy. Today, Turkey’s distrust of Greece and resentment over Greek domination of Aegean sea and air space far outweigh any concern over Soviet territorial ambitions. Absent unprovoked Soviet aggression or some form of blatant Soviet threat to Turkish control of the Straits, Turkey has too much of a stake in preserving a cooperative relationship with its northern neighbor to risk being dragged into a confrontation.

Similarly, Soviet Straits policy remains substantially what it was in the days of the Czars—that is, to let sleeping dogs lie but resist having any hand on the sluice gate other than Turkey’s. As long as Turkey and the Montreux signatories acquiesce in an interpretation of the Montreux Convention that allows passage of Soviet aircraft carriers, the Soviet Union will continue to support the present de facto “regional” regime for the Straits, especially if the alternative is an international regime in which the United States would play a part. The current Russo-Turkish relationship can truly be described as entente within detente under the umbrella of NATO—an Oriental arrangement if ever there was one.

As long as this equilibrium endures, the options for the United States are narrow. The day has passed when it might have been possible to strike a sphere-of-influence deal that would keep the Soviet Navy out of the Mediterranean. Today, Soviet naval vessels dog the flanks of the U. S. Sixth Fleet and reinforce Soviet political influence all over the world. In theory, the Soviet naval lifeline through the Straits and Aegean, winding as it does from one choke point to another, is too precarious to be reliable. But until put to the test in war, this fragile lifeline will continue to support the global projection of Soviet naval power.

Despite the overwhelming striking power of the Sixth Fleet, the United States does not hold a strong political hand in the southern Mediterranean. In the eyes of Turkey, it starts out handicapped by the existence of a powerful and vociferous Greek lobby that has succeeded in forcing through Congress the notorious 7:10 ratio: for every milion dollars in military assistance the United States gives to Turkey, Greece is entitled to $700,000, regardless of need. Each recent U. S. administration has had to reassure Turkey that it is not partial to Greece with respect to Cyprus. Washington must now put up with the anti-Yankee posturing of the Greek Socialist government of Andreas Papandreou, who regularly threatens to terminate or not renew the U. S. military base agreement because of fancied U. S. partiality to the Turks. It must allay the well-founded suspicions of both Greece and Turkey that U. S. bases and installations are not being used for NATO purposes but to implement U. S. foreign policy goals—especially support of Israel, a goal neither country shares. Moreover, it must avoid taking umbrage at the pro-Arabism of both Greece and Turkey and stop being overcritical of their laxity in cracking down on terrorism.

With political disabilities like these, it is no wonder that each successive U. S. administration steers clear of raising the Straits issue. Hence, the objective of U. S. policy should be not to provoke a confrontation over passage of Soviet aircraft carriers that everyone, and especially Turkey, wants to avoid, but somehow to inject itself legitimately into the decision-making process. The best way of doing this would be to negotiate with the signatories to the Montreux Convention, without haggling and without reservations. A useful second step would be to lobby for the creation of a Straits Commission that would keep the Convention under review and examine ways of bringing it into line with current realities, including the controlled passage aircraft carriers.

The long-term goal of U. S. policy should be to resolve the territorial conflicts that are wearing away the props of NATO’s southern flank, and, by compromise, to achieve stability of both the Straits and the Aegean.

Mr. Maechling is a Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge University, England. An international lawyer and former State Department official and professor at the University of Virginia Law School, he served in the U. S. Navy 1941-46, leaving with the rank of lieutenant commander. He holds a B.A. degree in international relations from Yale University and a J.D. degree from the University of Virginia Law School.