Cyprus-Forum.com

[repulsewarrior]

supra as opposed to super. Turkey becomes a part of something bigger, beyond the national frontier, along with Cyprus and other parties.

[Get Real!]

It'd be helpful if some of you got a grip on reality.

If anyone it is YOU that needs to get a grip. 37% of Cypriot territory is under invasion/occupation and you're talking about demilitarizing? What kind of drugs are you taking?

[Oracle]

Repulsewarrior,

'Supramilitarisation is the solution ...' OK, so Cyprus militarises massively. What will Turkey do ? If Turkey responds in kind, then what will Greece do ? Or Syria ? And if Syria militarises still further, what will Israel do ?

'Supramilitarisation' is not a solution: it simply compounds, deepens and sharpens the problem.

By your own argument then, you should start from the top and work down.

[CopperLine]

Oracle,
Good idea. Let's start at the top. Let's start in the middle. Let's start at the bottom. Let's demilitarise.

[CopperLine]

Get Real,
Precisely because Cyprus has been riven by militarisation (SBA included) the answer is not to militarise further. Some form of demilitarisation which takes a particular kind of sting out of politics can be part of the solution.

Militarism is the problem.

[humanist]

Demilitarisation of Cyprus

LETS DO IT.

[Nikitas]

The answer is not demilitarisation. Voluntarily depriving yourself of the right of self defence is a nonsense solution at the personal as well as the national level.

There are resources lying offshore, on Cyprus' continental shelf and exclusive economic zone, that must be monitored and protected. If you cannot protect your property the neighbors certaily will not, and those that do will want a share.

In my view, it is time that Cyprus starts exploiting this much touted "strategic position" and exploiting includes selling intelligence information gathered by Cypriot means. So if the British want to the information that can be had by using spy gear from Dhekelia or Troodos, then let us install the equiopment and sell them the data. This is how independent nations act.

Copperline, you totally misconstrued my view that a well trained force of 5000 could overturn the present situation.

Basically I was referring to 5000 technicians with a very specific goal- to destroy or render unusable all these expensive toys used by conventioally organized armies. An F16 can be rendered useless with a tool costing 50 dollars. And often "dumb" weapons can outsmart "smart" weapons provided they are used smartly. A case in point was the effect that "dumb" anti aircraft guns had on Israeli jets in the 1973 war.

In a local conflict the first priority is to stop the other side from using its toys. Any emphasis given to killing people is a waste of time and effort. 40 000 troops without armour, air and naval support, and cut off from supplies are nothing more than 40 000 illegal immigrants in uniform.

But like I said above, this is not going to happen because Cyprus is willing to either surrender its military to foreign command or voluntarily disarm itself in the hope that enemies will be pacified. So I am only theorizing.

[repulsewarrior]

it will not be done alone in any case Mr. N...that is why I suggest the we best express our nature of neutrality, for Human causes to be our battle, with allies who may have on their agenda a policy which puts them in conflict, such as Turkey and Greece, while in their efforts on affairs beyond their frontiers they can act as one.

[CopperLine]

Nikitas
If intelligence gathering could not be done by other means and other technologies then Cyprus might be able to carve a niche itself a niche in the intelligence market. But intelligence gathering can and is being done by other means in which local presence is insignificant. The geo-strategic significance of Cyprus for intel purposes is radically overstated : there is nothing - that is nothing - that physical facilities in Cyprus can provide eg US that cannot be derived from other sources. With the exception of human intelligence.

For human intelligence to be valuable Cyprus would first have to be a location of geo-political importance. And it isn't. The conflict in Cyprus is managed; there is no ongoing violence; there are no 'terrorist' movements based in Cyprus; there is no radical 'rogue' government upsetting the international system. That is nothing in which local human intelligence gathering would make a difference or crucially supplement other intelligence gathering. If Cyprus was a market for arms, fissile material, etc then human intelligence might be important : but Cyprus is neither of these things either.

The same goes for geo-strategic matters. Cyprus is largely irrelevant. There are no deep water ports, there are no major airbases, there are no major military logistical facilities. Sure these could be built (with the exception of the first) but by whom and for who ? Neither NATO nor the US in particular has any need for such facilities. Evidence of this ? Look at the pattern and distribution of investment in intelligence and military over the last forty years, and what the projections are for investment in the next twenty years : Cyprus is not where it is at.


Moreover I cannot see how pimping out Cyprus to the intelligence or geostrategic market is consistent with a wish to insist that Cyprus be independent.

[Nikitas]

Copperline wrote:

"The geo-strategic significance of Cyprus for intel purposes is radically overstated" . Then why do the British go to such lengths to safegurad their bases in Cyprus? They even inserted a clause in the EU draft constitution to protect the status of their Cyprus bases. British experts have said that the intelligence gathered from the Dhekelia signals base is unique because that is the only plce they can pick up radio signals from central Asia and southern Russia.

What you write about Cyprus being a not so valuable miliary base is almost precisely what General George Grivas wrote in his memoires. Cyprus has no significant ports, etc. But the British disagreed with him too.

The US did not want Makarios because they assumed he would give the Russians access to Cyprus.

Turkey wants to control the island because it threatens its "soft underbelly" should it fall in enemy hands. So it went ahead and made 750 000 GCs its permanent enemies.

This base/strategic value thing is confusing.

One interesting parallel which occured recently. The new president of Ecuador, when asked by the US for a military base said yes, provided that Ecuador could have an equal sized base in Florida, and thus gave all small countries a lesson in self respect and the US a lesson in the principle of mutuality.