Cyprus: The Mouse That May Yet Roar

The eastern Mediterranean, and particularly Cyprus, had been set for some sort of international crisis throughout 2013. Many tense situations become spring loaded by their circumstances, and no one can predict what, if anything, might set them off. But in the politics of the eastern Mediterranean, there are so many hefty mice at large that it is increasingly likely that at least one of the them will run across the pressure plate, probably sooner rather than later. The fact is that Cyprus finds itself caught in the shockwaves of a number of upheavals in the Middle East and in Europe and in the increasingly fraught politics of the eastern Mediterranean itself—and at a time when the Cypriot government is least able to operate independently and navigate its own diplomacy in its own national interests.