THE WAY THINGS ARE

A friend whose daughter studied in the UK, told me ‘She’s staying there, what future has she here?’ She’s not alone in making that choice. The Cyprus government wants to tempt brains and talent back home but what secure future prospects are there in troubled lands?

President Kennedy said, ‘Never adapt out of fear, but let us not fear to adapt.’ The West had to adapt to US President Trump’s drastically changed tone and manner of global politics, with long-established diplomatic and verbal norms rattled by an attitude that insinuates might is all right, and any pretence of courtesy wastes time and money.

He belittles leaders in democratic countries, alienates former allies or friends trying to appease a willful octogenarian whose temperamental switches leave them uncertain and uneasy. He approves a flow of ‘defence’ weapons for Israel’s Netanyahu who uses them on defenseless Palestinians.

Yet he encourages far-right extremists In Germany, where once far right extremists gassed Jews en masse. In the wake of that Holocaust, stronger nations changed Palestinian norms with the creation of Israel, disenfranchising one people for the security of another.

Trump berated, hustled Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy, a Jew, over weapons and territory. He hurriedly proposed peace deals for Palestine and Ukraine with an open parenthesis in both where genuine security is concerned, the Nobel Peace Prize entry deadline in his vain sights.

In the past, America assisted the West militarily, and although Trump is right to say Europe should foot its own defence bills now, the unexpected vehemency of his assertion caught former allies off guard. Years of calm and budget cuts gapped UK defences.

Ireland has 75 per cent of all transatlantic undersea cables, and 16 per cent of EU territorial waters, yet smaller Cyprus is more active with agreed defence alliances in a chosen political camp, not unreasonable given violations of its air and sea space by Turkish manned and unmanned aircraft and ships contending its gas fields. 

Ireland’s neutrality is causing dispute within and skepticism without – is it time to take sides. Eire will depend on UK air aid and submarines like Excalibur, when suspect Russian vessels prowl its coastal waters, and the uncertain Sword of Damocles hovers over Cyprus.

Russia is wary of trusting the West, not without reason, but Trump has given Russia more leeway than most. Trump appears to like Erdogan, and it’s unsettling when a non-Cypriot journalist, Richard Pine, The Irish Times Greece columnist, on the Greek “No” to Mussolini commented, no one shouted “No” when Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and remains in illegal occupation.

He mentioned possible risks to Greece and Cyprus from Turkey’s perceived Blue Homeland plans encompassing large portions of the Eastern Mediterranean including all Cyprus. Pine said Lawrence Durrell suggested “that the Greek ‘No’ came … when the great powers were all cringing, fawning in the face of the Hitlerian menace.” The West cringes and fawns with unpredictable Trump; grow balls! 

In Bitter Lemons, Durrell showed he knew Greek temperament well, knew a calm, reasoned approach gets better, frictionless results with a Greek than a heated argument. Many global hotspots of today were coldly sliced for foreign convenience and left with simmering instability, Ireland and Cyprus included.

Unification for all Cyprus within the EU, will be difficult but the past is gone, our future survival has to be as a nation of equals working together to keep Cyprus whole, the safest option. Ireland’s North/South Peace Agreement holds, if wobbly at times. Talk of Irish unification is on the stir, difficult too, but not as urgent as ours. May Erhurman and Christodoulides please fear not to adapt.