LET us call a spade a spade. Let us not call it a cake slicer or a surgeon's blade or a laser beam. It is a spade; and the thing we call neutrality is not neutrality. It is defence at someone else's expense and, historically, not necessarily a bad or unjustifiable thing either.
Most of us would prefer to have the little costs of getting through life paid for by some bogy else; if the Government said that I seemed a very decent fellow altogether, so decent that I'd no longer have to pay taxes towards the upkeep of the State, I could insist that I pay tax at the full and exorbitant rate it exacts from those within the tax net, or I could say, Thanks Very Much, and Exit, Grinning. There is a third option which is; not so obvious. It is to accept the offer of taxlessness, and not to say thanks, but rather to declare, I decline to pay tax on moral reasons because I am an ethically superior person.
And that essentially is what we have been doing since 1939. We have turned the exigencies of history into an extraordinary piety. Since then in Europe two totalitarian empires which we were too militarily weak to opt pose have come and gone; yet because we were protected by other people's endeavours from the appetites of the totalitarians, we find ourselves able to dress ourselves up in the raiments of sanctity. If you sniff the armpits of sanctity, you normally can detect the stale sweat of hypocrisy.
Neutrality
The question of "neutrality" is emerging again with the proposal that the Army - the disgracefully neglected, undercapitalised Army - might serve under NATO command in Bosnia. Opinion polls suggest that nearly 70 per cent of the Irish people favour neutrality: but approximately the same proportion of the Irish people favour Irish participation in Bosnia under NATO command, and even more favour our involvement in the Partnership for Peace, which sounds great, but it also goes by another name - NATO. If we are unable to call a spade a spade, is it entirely surprising that we are unable to recognise the phenomenon of having your cake and eating it?
Two parties in Government support our involvement in the Partnership for Peace. Democratic Left does not. We shouldn't blame it for that. It is just about the last relic of its old identity from the days when it was the Workers' Party, Moscow's favourite bunch of comrades in Ireland. I'd love to remind you of the ringing endorsements for "socialism" i.e. Soviet style communism which were passed annually party conferences, but I can't, alas, for the Workers' Party file for that period is missing from The Irish Times library. What a shame.
Anyway, Democratic Left is squeaky clean these days, having pupated twice from having an armed wing which bumped off Marcus McCausland and Ranger Best in Derry, and which blew a few gardeners, some serving women and a Catholic priest to pieces in Aldershot, through to being faithful followers of the party line emanating from the Politburo, through to being the suited democrats that they are today.
DL consistency
That's fine. We all have our journeys to make in life: I just don't want to hear any moral superiority lectures from that quarter, all right? You're against membership of NATO and against our involvement with PIP; and without that last vestige of separatist identity, how would you be different from the Labour Party? At least there is a consistency in DL's position on this; there is none whatever in the position that we should be involved in lofty concepts like Partnership for Peace, that we should accept all the EU booty we can, be listened to respectfully in Brussels, but not be committed to binding defence treaties with those who protect us.
"Our neutrality is respected world wide" is the usual parrot cry we hear during the debates on this issue. Wrong. Those very few people outside Europe who know that Ireland is independent are utterly unaware that we are "neutral". How good are you about SEATO? Is Indonesia a member of SEATO? Is New Zealand? Is Brunei? Does the world rise in awed respect at the normal stance Brunei takes in the conduct of its foreign policy?
No. If the world is anything like me, it hasn't a clue about what the hell Brunei is up to and whatever it is, I'm quite sure Brunei - a far more important country than Ireland - does not invest its foreign policy with moral superiority. It is not moral superiority which is the corner stone of our neutrality, but our geographical isolation from the bearpit of central Europe, aided by a mighty unwillingness to pay for our defence commitments.
This second bit is changing. At one level, we feel a certain commitment to things called peacekeeping operations, which would fade very fast if we had the experiences that the Americans or the Indians had in Somalia. Our appetite for heroically draped bodybags containing youngsters from Drimnagh is limited, as it should be. At a second and more powerful level, we are beginning finally to sense that it is in our interests to be committed to the defence of the European Union.
Lasting friends?
"But have we no lasting friends, Prime Minister?", Queen Victoria asked Palmerston. "No ma'am, merely lasting interests", he replied.
Palmerston was a sound man. Nothing is more fleeting than friendship when it comes to paying the cost of foreign policy.
Self interest is an altogether more powerful and enduring engine; and our self interest must finally be to align ourselves militarily with those with whom we are in economic union.
The truth is that historically we have no choice: we cannot remain in the marriage bed, pretending partial virginity. Either we enter wedlock, or we leave the house, our little suitcase banging on our shins. I still have reservations about the entire European Project; not because of the politics or politicians of today, raised downwind of the charnel houses of two world wars, but because of what another, less historically awed generation of politicians might feel inclined to do with this vast economic and political union at their disposal - something on the lines of sorting out troublesome little Serbia, say.
That means we get in or out of the Union. While in, we should try to influence it in our best interests, and accept that duties as well as pleasures must come our way. If we are prepared to accept the goodies on the breakfast table, we shouldn't be surprised if somebody asks us to cut the grass.