Sir - As a visitor from Britain, of Irish descent, I have a question for your political classes: where are the Euro-sceptics? It surprises me that, in a nation which fought so valiantly for its independence, so few are anxious about the surrender of of basic freedoms that "political union" entails. Such freedoms include the right of a government to make law and the right of a nation to control its own defence.
This spirit of adulation of the European Union is evident in your Editorial "Common Defence" (June 15th). There, you rightly praise the role of Irish soldiers and police on UN peacekeeping missions. Yet this praise is used to reinforce uncritical acceptance of a "European defence identity". In practice, such an 'identity' means signing over troops and weapons to Commissioners who speak openly of a "European Army". In the United Nations - and, for that matter, within NATO - national sovereignty is explicitly recognised, and with it the right to withdraw. No such guarantees are built into the Common Security and Defence Policy. For the intention is not to strengthen national defences, but eventually to replace them.
Ironically, most of the crises to which Irish soldiers are sent arise when people are denied the right to govern themselves. Are we, Europe's peoples, going to do to ourselves what we would not wish on Africans, Asians or South Americans? In my week in Dublin, I have seen but one sign of Euro-scepticism: an old man with a tattered banner, protesting outside Leinster House. To me he is like a prophet, crying aloud in the wilderness as others are slouching towards Brussels - Yours, etc.
Dr Aidan Rankin, Department of Government, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2.