Funding Cyprus to upgrade its military to elite Western standards

by Michael Rubin

The Ukrainian military largely relies on Russian and old East bloc weaponry. More advanced Western platforms help, but these often take time and training to put into action. While many Eastern European countries have already done their part to help, Ukraine needs more.

The United States succeeds most in its foreign policy when that policy is bipartisan. Iran and Venezuela policy has suffered because they became partisan footballs. Ties with Taiwan, on the other hand, grow stronger because of bipartisan consensus about the need to stand firm against Chinese aggression. The Eastern Mediterranean is another bipartisan success story. Rather than reverse former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s efforts to advance both diplomatic and military ties to Greece and Cyprus, his successor, Antony Blinken, has built upon them.

Should President Joe Biden want to resupply Ukraine quickly, he should turn to Cyprus. A bipartisan legal framework already exists. In 2019, Sens. Bob Menendez and Marco Rubio introduced the Eastern Mediterranean Security and Energy Partnership Act “to fully support the trilateral partnership of Israel, Greece, and Cyprus through energy and defense cooperation initiatives.” The legislation reoriented U.S. policy toward a regional concert of democracies, set the stage for an end to the arms embargo on Cyprus, and forced the State Department to report on strategy, malign Russian influence in the region, and Turkish violations of Cypriot waters and Greek airspace.

The European Recapitalization Incentive Program that began in 2018 allocates Foreign Military Financing funding to enable partner countries to purchase U.S. defense goods and helps underwrite training and other self-defense activities. For example, Albania used the program to purchase helicopters, Greece received infantry fighting vehicles, and Bulgaria received fixed-wing aircraft and air surveillance radars.

In 2021, Menendez sponsored the U.S.-Greece Defense and Interparliamentary Partnership Act. This was effectively the East Mediterranean Partnership Act version 2.0. It focused far more on security and included specific authorization to get surplus material to Greece faster, given the growing Turkish aggression. It enabled funding for Germany to replace Greece’s submarine fleet so that Greece could transfer its old submarines to Ukraine. The unilateral U.S. embargo prevented the inclusion of Cyprus into this act, but with that now lifted, Menendez’s legislation could be a model to use for Cyprus.

While Turkey has used the Ukraine crisis to enrich itself, selling (rather than gifting) drones to Ukraine while simultaneously keeping NATO resupply ships from the Black Sea, Cyprus has embraced the West completely. It denies Russian ships port calls on the island and has reformed so completely as to fall off any money laundering black or gray list.

Magic formulas are rare in international relations, but the current Cyprus situation is an exception. Funding Cyprus to upgrade its military to elite Western standards while enabling it to backfill Ukraine’s declining stockpile will not only help bring peace and defend the Eastern Mediterranean from aggression but will also help Ukrainians face down the greatest threat to the liberal order since the Cold War.

Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.