Trying to find a new role in emergent security conditions

Will we have British troops back in the Curragh, the French off Bantry Bay, the Germans off Banna Strand, the Spanish in Kinsale and the Americans in Lough Foyle?

THIS remarkable catalogue was unleashed by Mr Bertie Ahern, leader of Fianna Fail, in Thursday's Dail debate about the Government's White Paper on Foreign Policy. He was referring to potential Irish participation in military exercises in Ireland with the Partnership for Peace the co-operative security initiative launched by Nato in 1994.

The Government has decided to "explore further the benefits that Ireland might derive from participation in PFP", on the basis that its objectives are in harmony with the policy principles set out in the White Paper. Fianna Fail has vehemently repeated its opposition to joining, on the basis, as Mr Ahern put it, that "it will be seen by other countries as a gratuitous signal that Ireland is moving away from its neutrality and towards gradual incorporation into Nato and WEU in due course". His colleague, the Fianna Fail spokesman on foreign policy, Mr Ray Burke, is more categorical. In an article in this newspaper on Thursday he said PEP "amounts to second class membership of Nato". He went on to describe the relevant PEP operations as "exercises in adventurism in which Ireland would be co-operating with the world's largest military alliance and with nuclear nations.

Seen in this way the prospect of the military reoccupation of Ireland set out by Mr Ahern would indeed be alarming. It calls up all the demons of Irish history in its entanglements with the Continent.

Never mind that within the nationalist canon we have been taught to value highly the roles played by the Spanish. French and German armies and navies in successive centuries of the struggle to get the British out of the Curragh. Are we not doing our best, too, to encourage the Americans to get them out of Northern Ireland?

What is more interesting is that the adversarial flavour historically associated with imperial force projection by all these large states is assumed to be alive and well by Messrs Ahern and Burke in post Cold War Europe. It is as if nothing has changed since the collapse of Stalinism in central and eastern Europe, German unification and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

The Cold War terminology persists, not only in defining the Nato alliance, but Irish neutrality as well, which is presumed to have protected us from involvement in aggressive military alliances, a function that will continue as the aggression is projected elsewhere after the end of the Cold War.

A radically alternative view of European security is much more plausible analytically and shared by most of the governments and peoples of the other EU member states, notably the other neutral ones. It says simply that the end of the Cold War has made many of the categories used during it redundant, that a much broader security agenda has emerged, and that much more participation and accommodation is required of those who would now wish to influence events and emergent security arrangements.

Neutralities and alliances alike have been struggling to find a new role in these changing circumstances. This offers a calmer, more measured, assessment of what is involved in the Partnership for Peace or participation with the humanitarian and peacekeeping tasks of the Western European Union. Most importantly, it takes proper account of the fundamental fact that Ireland is now a member of a political union with Britain, Spain, France and Germany in which reciprocal solidarities are an important bonding agency for the protection of interests as well as ideals.

The White Paper is at its most successful in thinking through and reconciling the relationship between Ireland's security policies in the UN and international disarmament fields and the new security landscape in Europe. The argument for involvement in the negotiations and participation in the soft security, preventative and crisis management tasks for which UN service has actually fitted the Irish armed forces is well made. There is less about the difficult choices that will face this State as it decides whether unpalatable choices must be made that may compromise traditional ideals in order to protect basic interests. An example would be a trade off between monetary union and defence.

Fianna Fail says it is willing to put Irish forces at the disposal of the EU on a case by case basis. But the party opposes joining PEP or getting involved in the WEU Petersberg tasks on humanitarian and peacekeeping work for fear of compromising neutrality. The trouble is that these two organisations are the only effective ones on offer, all the more so now that the UN is much more inclined to devolve such tasks to regional bodies. The Ifor operation in Bosnia is the best example. What will happen there when the US troops leave at the end of the year? This is a practical matter, not driven by doctrine or arguments from first principles.

It is similarly up to each state that joins the PFP or becomes involved in the WEU to negotiate individual agreements, as most of the other neutrals have done so far. There is no legal or political imperative to join the organisation fully, taking on alliance commitments.

Mr Burke quoted an article of mine in which it was asked whether Irish participation in a "common defence policy" would be compatible with the military neutrality the Government says it is determined not to abrogate. The White Paper is ambiguous about this probably necessarily so, ahead of the negotiations inaugurated in Turin yesterday.

Different interpretations are possible about whether participation in a common defence policy necessarily leads on to participation in a "common defence". It will be up to the negotiations to define these matters, probably by a formula that recognises a division of labour within a common commitment to political union.

Fianna Emil stops at a common security policy, whereas the Government is prepared to get involved "constructively" in talks about a common defence policy. The commitment to do so is explicit in the Maastricht Treaty, which was negotiated by a Fianna Emil Progressive Democrat coalition and accepted by the people in the 1992 referendum. Opinion polls since then show majority public support for Irish participation in PEP, a bare majority for working towards a common defence policy, much less for joining the WEU.