In this podcast Lisa Sharland speaks with Major General Cheryl Pearce on her appointment as the next commander of the UN peacekeeping mission in Cyprus, Georgia Grice asks deterrence expert Dr Brad Roberts if nuclear weapons becoming more or less relevant and Aakriti Bachhawat interviews RAND defence analyst Derek Grossman on the Quad, India and Donald Trump.
This year marks an important anniversary: 50 years ago, in May 1964, 40 Australian police officers arrived in Cyprus for a 12-month mission in what was to be the beginning of Australian civilian police involvement in international peacekeeping. While Australia agreed to contribute police officers to Cyprus, it had refused to commit military forces due to the volatile situation in Southeast Asia. The Cyprus request presented Canberra with the political opportunity to commit to international peacekeeping missions without jeopardising its own regional security concerns. And it provided the UN force in Cyprus with a contingent of personnel that could handle civilian tasks that the military wasn’t trained to undertake. Today the Australian police regularly form part of UN peacekeeping contingents, but here’s a look at how this legacy started.
On 17 February 1964, at Britain’s request, the UN Security Council took a look at the situation in Cyprus, which had steadily deteriorated since the outbreak of violence between Greek and Turkish Cypriots in December 1963. After the UN Secretary General had failed to reach an agreement with the parties, and following Turkish naval manoeuvres off the Cypriot coast, the Security Council adopted on 4 March a resolution authorising the Secretary General to create, with the consent of the Government of Cyprus, a peacekeeping force for the island. Read more