Why Cyprus???
One long-suffering recipient of BMD-List has asked "Why the interest in Cyprus? Where does this issue fit in the spectrum of arms control, etc.?"
I wish I could find the time to write a polemic explicating this, and hopefully in the fullness of time either I or someone else will, as there is certainly much food for thought here. There are at least two things going on here, which I have alluded to previously, though perhaps not at sufficient length.
1 - This is the first exemplar of post-Cold War TMD deployment, and it has confirmed all of the "dove" arguments concerning why such regional deployments would be viewed as destabilizing. This has been particularly amusing because it has placed the US in the position of explaining in excruciating detail why the deployment of "defensive" weapons is such a terrible thing.
2 - The entire Cyprus exploit is the first Cold Peace exemplar of Russian mischief-making in their new adversarial mode of looking around for places to "confound their politics, frustrate their fiendish tricks" [as they say in God Save the Queen] as the principled organizer of the global opposition to TheSoleRemainingSuperPower[tm]. In particular, it demonstrates that Russian oposition to NATO expansion will consist not merely of making noise, but of also taking concrete steps to make our life more miserable.
In particular, I am focusing on this because no one else is, and while all of this is incredibly obvious to me, it seems to have escaped almost everyone else's attention in the mass media. This is a bad thing, particularly with respect to NATO expansion, because if the Cyprus exploit failed to captivate Washington, then surely Moscow will be driven to bolder steps whose import is more difficult to ignore or deny.
I could be wrong, and I would welcome responses on this question.
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