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Portugal FOREIGN RELATIONS
The Revolution of 1974 did not merely transform
Portugal's
domestic politics, but led to a transformation of its
foreign
relations, as well. For centuries Portugal's foreign
relations
were directed away from Europe, first down the South
Atlantic and
to Africa, then to Brazil and the Orient. Lisbon's
relations with
Europe were limited to an alliance dating from 1386 with
Britain,
another Atlantic country, that was intended to protect it
from
Spain and any other European power that might threaten
Portugal's
independence and its vast empire. Over the centuries, much
of
this empire was lost. Preserving what remained of this
empire,
the country's African colonies and a few other small
entities,
became the core of Portuguese foreign policy in the
nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. Moreover, the Portuguese saw
themselves
as a people with an "Atlantic vocation" rather than as an
integral part of Europe.
Postwar developments for a time buttressed this
traditional
attitude that Portugal's true concerns and interests lay
in the
South Atlantic and beyond and away from Europe. Portugal
became a
founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO)
not for what its army could do in Central Europe but for
the
importance of the Azores as a site for military bases.
Other than
permitting the United States access to these islands,
Portugal's
contribution to the alliance was negligible.
The wave of anticolonialism that swept through the
Third
World after World War II sparked rebellion in Portugal's
African
colonies. Lisbon's great efforts to quell these struggles
for
independence intensified the metropole's traditional
interest in
Africa. In the end, however, Portugal was not strong
enough to
put down these wars of independence. In fact, the great
expenditure of manpower and revenue in the African wars
was the
main cause of the Revolution of 1974. The revolution
brought to
power members of the military who were determined to end
the
fighting, and within a matter of eighteen months
Portugal's
empire was gone.
Shorn of its colonies, Portugal was forced to concede
that
its future lay in Europe, a revolutionary change in the
country's
view of its place in the world. It became a member of the
EC in
1986 and enjoyed the benefits and endured the change that
this
membership entailed. Portugal's most important foreign
relationship, its relationship with the United States,
changed
only in degree, not in kind. In other respects, however,
Portugal
began a whole new era in its foreign policy.
Data as of January 1993
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