Irish peacekeepers serve in the UN-mandated, NATO-commanded S-For (Stabilisation Force) in former Yugoslavia. We have 580 troops deployed in the UNIFIL force in Lebanon and smaller numbers in UN forces in Cyprus, Western Sahara, Afghanistan, Kuwait and elsewhere.
Irish peacekeepers under OSCE mandate are to be found in Georgia, Macedonia and Albania. We have observers with the European Community Monitoring Mission (ECMM) in former Yugoslavia. We have also said we will participate in Western European Union humanitarian, peace keeping and search and rescue tasks - the so called Petersberg Tasks.
However, despite this substantial international military activity, we are considerably less involved than other EU neutral and nonaligned states in political and operational decision-making in relation to such missions. The reason is Ireland's traditional interpretation of its military neutrality as obliging it to remain outside all co-operative military or security organisations and alliances, save the United Nations and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
This policy survived unquestioned throughout the Cold War period. However, the longstanding two-sided model of confrontation in Europe between NATO to the west and the Warsaw Pact to the east vanished when one side - the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact - imploded 10 years ago. The end of the Cold War prompted a fundamental re-examination of security policy in Europe and led to the beginning of a debate in Ireland as to what neutrality actually means.
In Ireland that debate now centres on Partnership for Peace (PfP), a NATO-sponsored programme which all European states - east and west - have joined except for Ireland, Tajikistan and the microstates of Andorra, San Marino, Liechtenstein and the Vatican.
Its advocates say that joining it is necessary if Ireland is to remain among the leading peacekeeping states in Europe. More and more training and preparation for peace keeping missions such as S-For is done through PfP. If we are not in, this argument goes, we will be marginalised in terms of political decision making and military participation in peace keeping.
However for its opponents, PfP involvement would mean a departure from a neutral, UN-oriented, foreign and security policy based on remaining outside military alliances and promoting nuclear disarmament. To have an association with NATO through PfP, according to this argument, is to move instead towards involvement with a nuclear-armed partisan military alliance seeking to supplant the UN and become the global policeman.
That nuclear-armed partisan military alliance survived the collapse of the Cold War security structure. While one superpower bloc simply dissolved, the western alliance did not. Rather than wind itself up, NATO sought to evolve and change to take account of the new situation.
NATO correctly identified the new threats to European security as arising from conflicts with roots in ethnic, religious, social and economic differences. The current events in Kosovo provide just one example of the accuracy of this assessment.
In recognition of this change NATO moved to include others in a security structure designed, dominated and led by itself. It developed the North Atlantic Co-operation Council (NACC) in December 1991, a body which included NATO member states, former Warsaw Pact states and the republics which were created after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Its role was to develop areas of security co-operation among its members. In mid-1997 this structure was replaced by the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC).
The next key part of NATO's adjustment was the establishment, in 1994, of Partnership for Peace, a series of bilateral agreements between NATO and non-NATO states through which they could co-operate on military training and development matters. PfP aimed to intensify political and military co-operation throughout Europe.
This is not simply as a means for NATO to absorb the former Warsaw Pact and neutral states. Indeed, faced with a clamour from central and east European states to join NATO, PfP provided a handy structure in which poorly equipped non-NATO armies under dubious levels of democratic control could be accommodated. In other words, in many cases it was a polite way of keeping some of these states out of NATO.
Three of the original PfP members - the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary - joined NATO this year while nine more are interested in joining. There are other states such as Russia, Switzerland and Finland who have no intention of joining NATO but have nevertheless become involved in PfP. Still others - such as Austria - have seen a debate on whether to join NATO since becoming involved with PfP.
Its critics point to the fact that PfP states are now buying substantial weaponry from large arms-exporting NATO members. States which want to fully participate in PfP exercises need to have a certain standard of military equipment and if they don't have it, they will buy it. However, it is also likely that whether they became involved in PfP, such states would be buying arms anyway.
PfP participants have no commitment to defend other PfP or NATO states. PfP agreements can involve very broad and intensive co-operation or quite minimal joint activity.
NATO claims that much of the credit for the rapid and efficient deployment of the IFor (Implementation Force) and SFor forces in former Yugoslavia the Dayton peace deal was due to prior training of NATO and non-NATO members through PfP. A number of non-PfP states - including Ireland - are also participating effectively in S-For.
Last week the former Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces, Lt Gen Gerry McMahon, highlighted the phenomenon that while Ireland was very active in international peacekeeping, we are "very timid in planning discussions and exercise participation with our partners . . . We are completely disadvantaged by our non-membership of PfP". He told a conference on the subject last week that this inaction "has effectively sidelined our Defence Forces in the area of training countries new to peace support operations". Sweden, he said, had supplanted Ireland as the leading state in this area.
However, the Government mood has changed and the Fianna Fail leadership's opposition to PfP involvement has evaporated. "I see no valid argument in terms of national interest as to why we should continue to remain out of line with the other European neutrals on PfP, or become more neutral than the neutrals themselves," the Taoiseach said earlier this week.
In 1996 he did see valid arguments against joining, and in 1997 the Fianna Fail election manifesto promised a referendum before any decision to join. However, now the Government appears fully committed to PfP involvement. Quoting Sean Lemass in another context Mr Ahern remarked this week: "All right, so I have changed my mind, what about it?"