NATO's military victory over Milosevic, resulting in the liberation of Kosovo, has gone largely unheralded in Ireland. It has been greeted by an awkward official silence, a slightly embarrassed reluctance to comment. I think that this arises from the under-developed nature of our foreign policy. In the past, even within the European Community, we were able to shy away from what we felt was unpalatable. We assured ourselves that anything of a military or security nature really had nothing to do with us. We saw the European Community as a cash cow that existed for our benefit. We regarded the squeezing "out of Europe" of an extra penny or two on a gallon of milk or of a few pence in the intervention price of beef as a triumph of Irish foreign policy. In short, we had all the benefits of club membership without having to pay more than a nominal subscription to the club, financially or otherwise.

Things have now changed. The European Union is anxious, indeed determined, to evolve and develop a common foreign and security policy. It will do so eventually. We have therefore to mature our thinking and realise that we must at last face up to some of the real crunch issues of foreign policy.

As Kosovo demonstrates, the foreign policy of a meaningful player like the European Union is of limited value if in the last resort it is unable in appropriate cases to apply military sanctions.

Milosevic, like Hitler and other tyrants before him, could be stopped in the last resort only by force. Such force is therefore an integral part of foreign policy. Up to now our comprehension of military force consisted of benign, blue-bereted, lightly-armed peacekeepers. There may well be situations in which we may be able to make a contribution of that kind in the future, but we will be called on to do more. We should have the ambition to be more than pavilion members of the European Union.

Our reluctance to formulate a fully-developed and comprehensive foreign policy probably arises from several factors, of which the historical is clearly one. Our good fortune in staying out of the second World War deepens our resolve not to become involved in anyone else's conflicts, even where those conflicts arise through a gross breach of fundamental rights such as genocide or attempted genocide. The more distant the conflict the less we care, no matter how great the injustice.

While we are clearly instinctively a pro-Western democracy our feelings are leavened by a curious combination of Anglophobia and antagonism to aspects of the foreign policy of the United States.

The love-hate relationship between Ireland and the US is a wonder to behold. At times we clasp them to our bosom as if we were the 51st state itself. One of the inescapable annual duties of an Irish Taoiseach is to turn up in the White House on St Patrick's Day with a Waterford glass bowl of shamrock and a green tie.

We regard our place in the US domestic scheme of things as almost a God-given right.

But when it comes to American foreign policy, including such things as the defence of the free world and the discouragement of tyranny and would-be tyrants, we balk. When NATO, which is an integral part of US foreign policy, is mentioned, many of us recoil and do not want to know. While President Clinton was making a major contribution to bringing about the Good Friday Agreement, to the huge benefit of this island, there were many here going on with the usual claptrap about NATO imperialism and American colonialism.

When NATO commenced its action against Milosevic late in March, which was inevitable and obviously justified, we had an awkward and inelegant response from the Government. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, told us that Ireland was "between a rock and a hard place". The Government's floundering and uncertain response was accompanied by a chorus of condemnation of NATO from the usual and predictable left-wing sources in the Dail and outside.

The discomfort of some here was I think heightened by the prominent part played by Britain in the attacks on Milosevic and in the liberation of Kosovo. While Anglophobia may be a declining phenomenon here, it is by no means dead. In spite of the considerable efforts of Mr John Major and Mr Tony Blair over the last decade to promote a settlement in Northern Ireland, there is still a residual suspicion which carries itself over into opposition to NATO.

So deeply ingrained is the antagonism to NATO in some quarters that it instinctively extends itself to the rather harmless arrangement known as the Partnership for Peace. Such noted non-belligerents as the Swiss, the Austrians, the Finns and the Swedes had and have no problem signing up for whatever aspects of the Partnership for Peace arrangement suit them. The response in Ireland is a huge campaign of malign disinformation, which genuinely worries many people who have not the opportunity to inform themselves of the facts.

PfP is always referred to as "NATO-led". The impression is given that it is some sort of military alliance, the members of which incur obligations to one another. The truth never concerns the opponents of the partnership.

In the Kosovan crisis the Irish Government's difficulties may well have stemmed from the fact that it is willing to approach problems of this kind on an ad-hoc basis, with an absence of principle.

The obvious and only principle that had to be maintained was that tyranny, genocide and ethnic cleansing, whether of one's own people or of another people, had to be resisted. Appeasement of tyranny led in the past to an increase in tyranny. Bosnia was a perfect object lesson for anyone with an eye in his head who wished to see.

These are some of the realities of contemporary international relations to which we might face up. An isolationist reluctance to be involved in the less palatable aspects of international diplomacy will have to be a thing of the past.

Seeking the emotional and political protection of the United Nations in a crisis is not enough. That worthy body is hamstrung by its own virtually unamendable charter. Why should the protection of the oppressed be dependent on the unanimous agreement of the five permanent members of the Security Council? The Chinese treatment of the Tibetans makes me reluctant to rely on them as one of the essential vindicators of human rights on the globe. International law on the defence of the oppressed is not all contained in the charter of the United Nations. There is a time and a place for regional military bodies. The liberated Kosovan people have reason to be thankful for that.

Desmond O'Malley TD is Chairman of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs