During the Cold War, the differences between Turkey and Greece on several issues brought the two countries to the brink of war and threatened the stability and security of the Western Bloc. However, the potential burden of assuming responsibility for war persuaded leaders on both sides to avoid escalation, and all crises were ultimately diffused with the support of the US and the EU within the alliance system. The demise of the East-West competition following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the beginning of a US-dominated unipolar system – with its unrivalled economic and military capabilities – created a completely different environment in international politics. In the post-Cold War era, the security agenda widened to include new issues such as environmental threats, human and drug trafficking, migration and cross-border crime. The new system also heralded an era of inter- and intra-state rivalries as result of the Soviet Union's disintegration. As Coufadakis (1996, 41) has stressed, …

Foreign and security policy-making therefore became much more complicated in the new atmosphere of the post-Cold War era. This new period inevitably also impacted Turkey and Greece. Both countries, like so many others, had to reformulate their foreign and security policies in order to address nascent security concerns. Primarily, the absence of a common enemy and changes in the nature of security threats led to this policy re-evaluation. Although Greece's security policy considerations did not change entirely, since Turkey had already represented one of its main security threats apart from the Soviet Union, the new security environment heightened Greece's perception of Turkey as a threat. During the Cold War, Greece felt that it could depend on the West to prevent any attack from Turkey (Nachmani 2001, 72; Moustakis and Sheehan 2002, 82). Even reliance on the Western alliance – mainly the US and NATO – proved ineffective as a means of protection for Greece, as the Turkish intervention in Cyprus demonstrated that Greece lacked offensive capacity and deterrence against external attacks (Platias 1991, 97–98; Tsakonas and Dokos 2004, 106).