Temporary little solution to neutrality dilemma

ATO, WEU, OSCE, CJTF, PFP . . . You could drown in the alphabet soup of the defence debate or in the niceties of the distinctions between Chapter Six and Seven of the UN Charter or Articles Five in the Nato, and WEU treaties. And be none the wiser.

In the end the neutrality debate is about the idea of a just and legitimate war and answering questions that can be much more simply expressed. Should we send our troops into a particular conflict situation? And if we are willing, under what conditions? In the name of whose peace can we ask young Irishmen to lay down their lives?

In December, the Government was approached informally by the Belgians to consider sending troops to help keep the peace in Eastern Slavonia. The province is a fiercely contested region of Croatia and its separate peace agreement, unlike Bosnia, will still be monitored and kept by the UN.

The issue is under consideration. It is a difficult mission, but relatively traditional from an Irish perspective in terms of mandate and legitimacy. And there is the fact that Ireland has no military contingents in former Yugoslavia, a reality that may become embarrassing during our EU presidency.

Nevertheless, sources suggest that overstretch in commitments abroad, particularly in Lebanon, makes a positive decision unlikely. But what makes the principle so, straightforward? And what makes defending a fellow EU member, perhaps only a few short miles away, so difficult?

Fianna Fail put the neutrality case most bluntly in its recent foreign policy document, Our Place in the World. "If a military dispute breaks out in the islands of the Aegean or the eastern Mediterranean, should we really be obliged to involve Irish troops in the conflict?" Put the issue like that to a Greek and he will be most upset.

What about EU solidarity? he will ask. We are prepared to cede sovereignty to the EU on foreign policy, to constrain our exchanges with Turkey so that they conform to a common position. Does that not give us the right, he will ask, to expect some reciprocal support if we come under attack?

Legally, perhaps not. But morally? Or is it that we are too far from the centre of Europe, second class Europeans, only embraced on sufferance?

Although the Government does not articulate Irish neutrality quite as undiplomatically, its fundamental position is no different from Fianna Fail's. The line in the sand is clear. Peacekeeping, yes, but we will not get involved in what are known as Article Five commitments, the pledge to defend another EU member if attacked.

But drawing the line in the sand is no longer as easy as it was. There is a new context to the neutrality debate. The Cold War certainties are gone. The old enemies, friends. The threats are new and the actual need for mutual defence guarantees perhaps less strong, although in eastern Europe the perceived need is even stronger.

The instruments of peace of the new age have also been exposed as inadequate. The UN, in particular, which is now increasingly asking regional security groupings to do its work for it in their own region. A new security architecture is evolving, and Ireland must ask itself again if it wants to play its part.

THREE possible scenarios for the involvement of Irish troops abroad - Eastern Slavonia, Bosnia and Fianna Fail's hypothetical Aegean island - illustrate the dilemmas involved. Three MEPs, Patricia McKenna (Green), Mary Banotti (FG) and Pat Cox (Ind), illustrate the different ways of drawing the lines in the sand.

First the common ground. All three have in the past been unqualified supporters of neutrality. All three acknowledge the weaknesses in the UN as a vehicle for collective security. It needs to be reformed, democratised. For Patricia McKenna, particularly, it's a matter of a greater say for the Third World. For the other two, the issues are both greater legitimation, but also its capacity to act.

All three abhor nuclear weapons band find it difficult or impossible to conceive of Ireland entering collective security organisation committed to a nuclear strategy. A serious problem, as that is all that is on offer, whether Western European Union (WEU) or NATO. But this is a "fact" that the EU will have to address at some point, Mr Cox argues.

Eastern Slavonia: a traditional UN peacekeeping mission. All three accept that this, once mandated and controlled by the UN, is not a problem. But this is where Ms McKenna draws the line, seeing Irish involvement in any form of operation with a more "robust" mandate or under less direct UN control as the "thin end of the wedge" of involvement in an aggressive alliance.

She maintains that there is a tendency among the superpowers and the UN, which acts as their agent, to resort too quickly to force when peaceful means of conflict resolution have yet to be exhausted.

Bosnia: The operation just across the border in Bosnia is significantly different. Although mandated by the UN, like the Gulf War the operation has been subcontracted to another body, in this case, what might be called "Nato and friends" because non Nato countries such as Russia", and neutral Sweden are willing to work with it and are effectively, under its command structure.

Mary Banotti opposed Gulf War involvement by Ireland, but sees in the Bosnian case crucial differences. Importantly, Ifor is there at the request of the peace conference and of all parties to the conflict.

Moreover, she argues, the sad lesson of UN peacekeeping in Bosnia was that it required a far tougher stance to make a difference.

Irish involvement in the Ifor operation, a peace enforcing rather than peacekeeping one, would be legally possible because of the amendment of the Defence Act during the Somali operation to allow just this eventuality. It might, however, be necessary to amend the Act further to allow participation under a non UN command.

Both Ms Banotti and Mr Cox would accept such involvement as long as it was clearly backed by a UN mandate and sanctioned by a Dail vote. But this is Ms Banotti's personal line in the sand.

Hypothetical Greek island: Giving an automatic guarantee to our fellow EU members that we will defend them if they come under attack is also a step too far for both the Government and opposition, a position they share with the EU's other neutrals, Austria, Sweden and Finland.

This is the touchstone of neutrality. Pat Cox argues there is a "logical breakdown" in Ireland's position. "I personally can't logically understand how we can countenance showing solidarity with third countries (nonEU countries) and yet, in the event of a problem for a member not be willing automatically to give solidarity."

OTHERS suggest that the logic is particularly strange, in the light of the likelihood that an invasion of an EU member would prompt a UN Security Council mandate for an operation to defend the territorial integrity of a member state, as it did in relation to Kuwait. Ireland would then, under its obligations to the UN rather than the EU, be obliged to assist such an operation.

Pat Cox argues that much of the debate in Ireland has tended to be conducted in terms that assume that the worst security scenarios will never happen. The result is that we only face up to softer security alternatives than those which others are, prepared to consider.

The long promised White Paper on Foreign Policy should, for example, address the reality that for many of the countries of central and eastern Europe membership of the EU is more about security commitments than economics. If the paper does not address that reality and how to overcome it, Mr Cox argues, it will represent a "failure of nerve".

He utterly rejects Ms McKenna's fears that the EU is in danger itself of becoming an imperialist superpower. That view was simply not compatible with the historical experience of Europe since the war, he says.

Ms Banotti also acknowledges that, the issues are less clear cut than they used to be and welcomes a new debate, although she is unwilling yet to, accept Article Five commitments.

She says her experience in the European Parliament, particularly of the Germans and French, has taught her that "it is very arrogant to assume that we are more in favour of peace because we are neutral. We need to be a little less cocky."

At the Inter Governmental Conference this year Ireland will not be asked to surrender its neutral position. It is likely that the Conference will agree to bring the WEU closer to the EU, but allowing observers like Ireland the right to opt into individual peacekeeping operations as they see fit.

But some diplomats believe that there may also be a desire on the part of some member states to strengthen the treaty aspiration to an eventual common defence. That may not be a runner given the recent belligerence of the British Defence Secretary on the issue, but will Ireland be forced to shelter behind the British in the hope the question will go away?

In the longer term the WEU treaty needs to be renegotiated in 1997. The Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Mr Gay Mitchell, has argued that this may provide an opportunity to renegotiate Article Five to allow an opt out for some. In those circumstances, he argued, it might be possible to see the WEU integrated into the EU and for Ireland to sign up.

But such an approach still leaves unresolved the issue of the WEU's nuclear strategy, and diplomats also believe that Article Five represents such a core value for the organisation that it is unlikely to be willing to see it watered down.

The result is that the "temporary" solution that is likely to come out of the IGC has increasing appeal as a long term solution to Ireland's neutrality dilemma: a permanent semi detached relationship to the WEU, itself permanently semi detached from the EU.

If in the future Ireland saw the need to express its willingness to defend its fellow EU members, then there is always the possibility of Article Five without the rest of the WEU treaty. A bit like the man who walked up to the bar and ordered an Irish coffee: "Hold the coffee, hold the cream!"