The agreement by EU member-states to provide what United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan has called the "backbone" of a "credible" force for Lebanon marks not only a welcome engagement in a vital mission but is an important symbolic milestone in the evolution of the Union's security and defence policy.
The EU states, responding to a UN appeal for troops which will serve under its command, are still acting as individual states and the operation will not be an EU mission. But the rationale for just such an operational capacity for the Union is precisely the logic driving the current work on the creation of EU battlegroups .
Too large an operation for one country, particularly in the light of the unacceptability of the partisan US as a contributor, the Lebanon mission will allow the EU to be seen to play - even only in its constituent parts - a robust honest broker and to go beyond its traditional regional role of diplomatic handwringing on the sidelines while endlessly footing the bills for chronically dysfunctional polities and never-ending humanitarian crises.
From an Irish perspective the commitment, agreed on Friday, of what diplomats have called "anchor tenants", in the form of French and Italian contributions of 2,000 and 3,000 troops respectively, removes an important barrier to participation. The assurance by Mr Annan that the force mandate will not require it to disarm Hizbullah is also crucial. Like it or not, as the Italian foreign minister, Massimo D'Alema, said over the weekend, Hizbullah is "an important part of Lebanese society" and the UN force's goal is not to destroy the Lebanese Shia group. Hizbullah, for its part, also over the weekend promised to exercise restraint.
Yes, the mission will be dangerous, and in committing to it the Government will undoubtedly be putting Irish troops in harm's way. The decision is a serious and onerous responsibility but nevertheless right to take.
It would be profoundly wrong to characterise, as elements in Ireland's anti-war movement have sought to do, the UN troops simply as agents of a US-Israeli project aimed at subduing the fractious neighbourhood. For one thing, the force will go to Lebanon at the invitation of the democratically elected Lebanese government, containing as it does Hizbullah ministers, and its mandate is explicitly to support the Lebanese army.
And the alternative to the deeply destabilising US unilateralism in the region is not to turn our backs on the plight of its people by placing impossible conditions on intervention, a counsel of inaction, but precisely to reinforce the contribution of the UN and multilateralism.
Indeed, the mandate, and August 11th's Resolution 1701 which expresses it, may not be perfect. Not least, it does not point a way to restoring the dialogue and road map for peace between Israel and the Palestinians that is so crucial to peace in the entire region. Silencing the guns in battered south Lebanon must, however, be a prerequisite for any other progress.