Cyprus security

.Cyprus is a EU member, but not a NATO member - and its Northern part is de facto occupied by Turkey.

The International Law position on the whole occupation is rather clear-cut; Turkey is about as much an illegal occupier of Cyprus as Israel in the West Bank and Iraq in Kuwait 1990/91.

List of United Nations Security Council resolutions concerning Cyprus

Meanwhile, there's the people's right to self-determination, and a case can be made that the Turkish-speaking Northern Cypriots have a right to secede. This gets complicated by the history of ethnic cleansing, which is always illegitimate.

Its non-occupied population is speaking Greek, and despite cultural differences with Greece there is a possibility that Cyprus could be drawn into a stupid Greek-Turkey hot conflict. An invasion of the unoccupied part of Cyprus by Turkey should draw the EU into war with Turkey.

Lisbon (EU) Treaty:

Article 42:

7. If a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power, in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. This shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States.

Commitments and cooperation in this area shall be consistent with commitments under the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which, for those States which are members of it, remains the foundation of their collective defence and the forum for its implementation.

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The UN peacekeeping mission on Cyprus gets extended every six months, but it only has about 1,000 personnel and they're more eyes than guns. They are relevant for deterrence, but also irrelevant for defence.

The British forces on the island are a bit more substantial and their bases occupy an irritatingly large share of the country, but they do only contribute two infantry battalions to the defence, which pales in comparison to the ten thousands of Turkish troops on the island.

The Greek forces in Cyprus are just the same; about 1,000 personnel strong, more a deterrence mission than a defence capability.

Cyprus lacks the economic and personnel potential to defend itself in case of a Turkish aggression. 

Defence budget about 355 million USD in 2020 

Military personnel according to "IISS Military Balance 2020": 15,000 active, 50,000 reserves, 750 paramilitary

Cyprus' military would likely be able to defend against the Turkish troops already on the island, but incapable of defending against a major reinforced attack by Turkey.

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The populations of the EU countries hardly know about Article 42 and some of those who know about it dispute that it is of any consequence. This goes beyond just people from formerly neutral countries (Sweden, Austria). There is thus no motivation to reinforce Cyprus' defence with ten thousands of deployed foreign troops (not really a nice thing to have for Cyprus anyway) nor to subsidise it into a militarised Israel-like state that could defend itself. Both  could provoke a preventive invasion by Turkey anyway.

The geography gives Turkey all the air power advantages, so any help to Cyprus against Turkey would 

• require excessive resources (carrier fleets),
• be indecisive or
• have to include strikes on Turkey itself (air power on the ground, warships in ports).

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So far the approach was to have multiple "tripwires", to not dispute the Turkish occupation by force and to generally let the problem linger on for want of a promising solution strategy.

My personal stance on such cold conflicts is simple. Illegal occupations shall not be tolerated for the sake of peace and protection of sovereign countries. Every single country that illegally occupies another country or part thereof should be subjected to decisive, strangling economic sanctions that escalate to the point at which the country cannot import anything but medical supplies and food any more, and cannot export anything but what's needed to pay for these imports. This includes a total shutdown of communication. UN missions should help with the enforcement. Any country found to violate these sanctions should be subjected to the same set of escalating sanctions as long as it's not believed to comply.

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The title was and is "Cyprus security", but the security woes of Cyprus looks very much unsolvable by non-excessive military efforts. Countries like Cyprus would best be served by decisively enforced International Law, not by more guns.

The West / NATO has a history of looking the other way when some of its own commit offences or turn into dictatorships (such as the Greek junta 1967-1974, which exposed NATO as not being about freedom at all). It's thus a problem for -rather than an impartial champion of- the rule of International Law. This endangers and harms the sovereignty of many small countries, and Cyprus - a EU member(!!!) is one of those who suffer the most.

The practicality problem to my approach: UNSC veto powers, the birth defect of the United Nations

 

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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