European Affairs
| 04 July 2010
During the last months, a strengthening in European public dialogue, an intense cultivation of views and recommendations in reference to the future of security in Europe and East Mediterranean have emerged. In most European countries this pubic dialogue is in progress something of course that does not occur in Greece and Cyprus all though– due to Turkish threat – it should be just the opposite. : Athens and Nicosia had to have undertaken initiatives, both diplomatic and political, to their active participation in associated matters with the new framework under formation (or, new architecture as called otherwise) for common European security in the world of tomorrow.
The US, Britain and countries of Eastern Europe integrated in NATO, also form a first block expressing old, Atlantic order and trend, as to collective security. Although President OBAMA attempts a certain review of American security strategy, calling all nuclear forces of the planet to common management of nuclear arsenals, despite the fact that the US seem to accept, even slowly, that the world walks to more multipolarity, their understanding for European collective security seems to remain static and paternalistic. This was shown in many crises: in Georgia (2008); in the last land operation of Israel in Gaza, which, the government of Prague back then, characterized as “defensive” in its EU presidency statements (that is on account of the all other European partners).
| 23 June 2010
The Common Base and Northern Cooperation
Already during the Cold War the Nordic states formed a security community, but high politics was avoided on the common agenda and crystallized in the concept ‘Nordic balance’. It softened the East-West confrontation in Europe, but together with the sense of community gave also a good start to develop European security architecture. In the north the eastern border was quickly transcended by non-military security. Some of first institutional expressions were the Barents Euro-Arctic Region and the Council of the Baltic Sea States, both of which involved also Russia. The security community expanded to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Finland and Sweden joined the European Union in 1995 while the Baltic States joined both the EU and NATO in 2004. Also, new institutions preceded the inauguration of the policy of Northern Dimension in the European Union.
| 14 June 2010
In March 2010, Daphne Park died at the age of 88. As The Times noted in an obituary, she was ‘one of MI6’s most treasured intelligence officers’ whose ‘final job at MI6 was as Controller of the Western Hemisphere which included North America, South America and Canada’. (The Times, 26 March 2010). After retiring from MI6, the British intelligence agency officially known as the Secret Intelligence Service, she emerged from the shadows and held a string of public posts, including a Conservative peerage in the House of Lords, the upper chamber of Parliament.
| 22 May 2010
‘The European peoples do not want a supranational authority to impose agreements … in every respect we are closer to our kinsmen in Australia and New Zealand on the far side of the world than we are to Europe’. These insular and somewhat arrogant words were written by the ruling British Labour Party in June 1950, only a few months after it had scuppered Europe’s first attempt to create a united and peaceful Europe, the result being an election-free ‘Council of Europe’, that had no remit to create policy, and which ended up as little more than a talking-shop. When the French, irritated at Britain’s negative attitude, then consulted the US about a European Coal and Steel Community, the British Foreign Secretary, Bevin, was furious. The six went ahead without Britain which, in the words of one politician, wanted to keep the US to herself, like a ‘jealous lover’. Enter the arch-politician Winston Churchill who, when in opposition, had called for the creation of a European army, under a unified command, in which ‘we should all bear a worthy and honourable part’. When he was returned to power in 1951, however, he reneged on his commitment to Europe, saying that ‘he had meant it for them, not us’, and that we are ‘with, but not of’. Such semantic sliding typifies Britain’s alleged commitment to Europe.
| 27 January 2010
I had the privilege to represent International Security Forum of Cyprus to the 34th Annual Conference of the British International Studies Association (BISA) which took place at Leicester University, 14-16 December 2009. More than 350 congress delegates from all parts of the globe presented papers analyzing in depth and breadth multiple dimensions of international relations. The BISA represents along with the US International Studies Association (ISA), the top venues for presenting research findings and exchange of views between the academic world and government and non-governmental organizations.
During this congress the UK defence budget trimming was, inter alia, discussed. Consequently, also the scaling down of the British Armed Forces. Already in December 2009, this issue was mooted in a report of the authoritative British Television ‘Channel 4’. Channel 4 reported that the defence cuts would affect bases of the Royal Air Force (RAF). Consequently, the private UK TV channel surmised that among those bases could be the RAF base Akrotiri, Cyprus which is the biggest RAF base outside of British territory. This news item was largely overlooked in Cyprus and in Greece. As far as I could follow, no Greek Cypriot or Greek politician seems to have reacted to the possibility of even a partial British Forces withdrawal from the island after more than half a century of their continuous reinforcement especially during the period of the Cold War.