Russia-Cyprus Relations: A Pragmatic Idealist Perspective by Costas Melakopides (review)

Abstract

Set in the increasingly relevant and complex eastern Mediterranean, Costas Melakopides’s RussiaCyprus Relations: A Pragmatic Idealist Perspective, deals with a subject that has been overlooked in contemporary geopolitical literature. Through a chronological examination of the relationship between Russia and Cyprus, Melakopides attempts to make a strong statement on two levels. First, he provides a distinct theoretical insight into the motivations driving Russian foreign policy in the region, and second, he juxtaposes the Russian approach to that of Britain and the United States. Melakopides argues from what he describes as a “practical idealist” perspective. For him, this means that there are ideas and notions that tie states and peoples together, such as those between Russia (or the former Soviet Union) and Cyprus. He argues that the political realism coming from London and Washington since 1878 has consistently tilted policy outcomes toward Turkey, even though Turkey has been a gross violator of international normative and ethical behavior. Moreover, he argues that British and US influence in the region since the 1940s has consistently placed Cyprus on a course toward failure. This path, he writes, has included the unworkable constitutional arrangement that included three guarantor regimes; the acceptance of the illegal 1974 invasion; the unilateral declaration of independence by the Turkish Cypriots; the disastrous, “sinful,” and “illegal” Annan Plan of 2004; and the “punitive” “bailin” of 2013 during Cyprus’s financial crisis. Throughout, Melakopides argues that the only consistent supporter and friend of a weak Cypriot state has been Moscow, which recognized