WorldView:In 1996 Dick Spring, then tánaiste and minister for foreign affairs, launched the White Paper on Irish foreign policy. He said then that Irish foreign policy was about much more than self-interest. He insisted that the elaboration of our foreign policy was also a matter of self-definition - simply put, it was "for many of us a statement of the kind of people that we are". What, today, is the relationship between Irish foreign policy and shared or contested understandings of what it is to be Irish?
Over the last three decades, academics have begun to come to terms with what has been called "the return of culture and identity to international relations theory" with a new focus on norms, beliefs, identity and culture. If we were thus to abandon the traditional tools of foreign policy analysis - the excavation of interests and the provision of "explanations" for Irish foreign policy - what, instead, might we find?
This research agenda seeks to understand the relationship between national identity and foreign policy and thereby to identify the contested ways in which we define and understand ourselves - the different identity "narratives" that we present to each other and the rest of world. What's of particular interest is the extent to which dominant narratives, exercising their ability to shape and frame public debates, have the capacity to make of themselves the apparent order of things, the "common sense" view and to crowd out other, contradictory narratives. Thus, it is also part of this research agenda to identify more clearly the alternative narrative identities that exist and which thereby create the frictions that underlay so many foreign policy debates.
In the Irish case, and from a base of key texts - official and unofficial, public and private - it is possible to distil at least four distinct foreign policy narratives that, it can be argued, drive Irish foreign policy debates. These are the narratives of the Irish nation, the global citizen, the European republic and the Anglo- American state.
One of the earliest foreign policy narratives is that of the Irish nation. Constructed from the many discourses that underpinned the struggle for political independence, this narrative encapsulates the idea that to be Irish is to be unique and, pre-eminently, not to be English. In its ascendant phase, the strength of this narrative led many historians to see Irish foreign policy towards the League of Nations, the Council of Europe, NATO and even European integration as being determined by Ireland's relationship with Britain.
An overt challenge to this dominant narrative only began to take substantive shape in the mid- to late 1950s. Despite the energy devoted to political unification, partition was a fact of life, and the State, languishing in a metaphorical backwater, had not yet been seen to take its place among the nations of the earth. The shoots of other, soon-to-be-powerful narratives, came to be nourished.
The second grand narrative is that of Ireland as a global citizen. The colonial experience and the Irish Diaspora are the key sources of this narrative as is the body of Irish political thought which was rooted in an internationalist and modernist rather than primarily nationalist orientation, contributing to a political consciousness which looked beyond the confines of a small, western Atlantic island and which claimed for Ireland a unique moral mission in the world.
The significance of this narrative to the development of Irish foreign policy is evident in the Commonwealth, the League of Nations and the United Nations where the State pursued principles related to the equality of states in international law, the right of national self-determination, the pursuit of collective security, trenchant opposition to colonialism and support for international justice. It is the ascendance of this narrative that gave rise to the perceived "golden age" of Irish foreign policy from the late-1950s through the 1960s.
The challenge to this narrative of global citizenship was rooted in the fact that the universal values that informed it were not universally shared. The cold war necessarily defined the State in a particular way while at the same time the states of the developing world became both more numerous and assertive. Their escalating demands began to challenge the perceived interests of a small, comparatively wealthy state such as Ireland. Irish foreign policy came thus increasingly to be defined within western walls.
The third grand narrative is that of Ireland as a European republic, sourced from claims that Ireland's historic vocation has been European by virtue not only of its geography but also of its history, culture, religion, politics, philosophy and native tongue.
The emerging ascendance of this narrative may be identified in the alleged retreat from an "independent" diplomacy at the United Nations, in the dismissal of neutrality as an aberrant "technical label" and in the shift from internationalisation to Europeanisation as the proposed channel of Irish economic development.
The fourth narrative is that of the Anglo-American state, constructed from the older shards of a more inclusive definition of "Irishness" which could envisage the concept of an Irish Briton and which places a high value upon shared expression through the English language, the strength of the common law tradition and familial bonds with North America and the old Commonwealth. The most recent expressions of this narrative can be identified in the position of the State in the invasion of Iraq, in the origins and architecture of the Northern Ireland peace process and in the claimed parentage of the Celtic Tiger.
It is difficult to see how the ongoing narrative battle may yet be fought out. The 30-year-long hegemony of the European republic narrative is undeniably under strain - but may yet reassert itself. A synthesis of the global citizen and European republic narratives into a postmodern, pacifist, anti-globalisation meta-narrative - an "Old Europe" Ireland - clearly also holds some potential. This might place Ireland close to the Rhineland core of Europe but would also require either a permanent opt-out from a common European security and defence policy or else a determined attempt to transform that policy from within.
On the other hand, a synthesis of the European republic and Anglo-American narratives might also be possible, which would seek to define a modernist, globalised and globalising meta-narrative - a "New Europe" Ireland - as it were. Placing Ireland within a new Mitteleuropa, there are certainly discursive straws in the wind for such a turn. It would potentially stabilise the Irish position within the European project but would arguably require a decisive move on "neutrality". This might have to be consigned to the national memory cupboard alongside the 1919 Limerick soviet and the anti-jazz campaign of the 1930s. Such a synthesis would, however, face a much more concerted and powerful challenge from a revived and starkly contrasting Irish nation and global citizen narrative coalition, the success of which would challenge the very basics of Irish membership of the EU.
It might therefore be possible to conclude that Irish foreign policy is indeed reflective of Irish identity in all its complexity, just as contrasting visions of that identity have contributed to the shape of Irish foreign policy. As long-dominant reflections of ourselves perhaps falter, fall or are re-established on new foundations, we can only be sure that Irish foreign policy will continue to be "a statement of the kind of people that we are", and all that we would wish to be.
Ben Tonra is Jean Monnet Professor of European Foreign Security and Defence Policy at UCD and author of From Global Citizen to European Republic: Irish Foreign Policy in Transition (Manchester University Press)