Yesterday evening I raised a number of questions which I suggested were both basic and preliminary to a discussion on whether Ireland should join Partnership for Peace. Deputy Gay Mitchell's introductory speech was valuable in that it at least summarised the position of a number of other significant countries who have arrived at a position regarding Partnership for Peace, including those countries – not all – who previously had a neutral position for a variety of different reasons, such as Austria or a number of the Scandinavian countries. It is also interesting that the two speeches on behalf of the Government emphasised the practical implications of joining and of membership, rather than engaging in inflated rhetoric about the down-side of joining or suggesting issues of principal where there are none.
It is now appropriate to turn to some of the basic points made by Deputy De Rossa and to the questions I posed earlier. I have tried to be both fair and accurate in summarising the speeches given so far.
If there is an intolerance at this point in the debate it is coming from those who are anxious that we would join without asking many more questions. I detect a note of intolerance on the part of those who suggest it is a limited view to be other than enthusiastic about membership of an entity which has not been subjected to the critical examination in terms of foreign policy that I have described. I also reject the suggestion that there is anything archaic or disabling about being in favour of a comprehensive approach, in a theoretical sense, to foreign policy.
What I have read and heard so far about Partnership for Peace, tested against some of the fundamental principles of foreign policy, does not pass muster. It is an institutional arrangement that is elaborate but is in all senses reactive. It is a reaction to a spin on a version of history, on a reading of circumstances as they are now. I mentioned earlier that the concept of interdependence in foreign policy is a classical one that used always be counterpoised against a theory of interests. Yet, in effect, those who speak about including everybody in a common reaction speak of an ill-defined and narrow version of security, as much as it is reactive in principle. It rejects interdependence except in the most narrow sense and fits more accurately within the theory of interests. It is because it fits within a theory of interests that it leaves unexamined the glaring paradoxes and contradictions in it, such as the balance of the US-British relationship to the emerging European relationship and the entirely changed context in the world following the collapse of the Soviet Union, where a single power has an unhelpful relationship to the international institutional order.
Turning to the practical agenda as I presumed it has been debated in the Department of Foreign Affairs under different administrations, one cannot have a debate on this reactive version of a narrow definition of security without looking at the whole complex of Ireland's institutional relationships in terms of, for example, the UN, the Security Council, the balance between the General Assembly and the Security Council, the issues raised and listed in documents by Brian Urquhart and the late Erskine Childers, both assistant under-secretaries on reform of the UN, and the relationship of the mandate of the UN Security Council to different peacekeeping initiatives. It is unworthy of those who suggest that those who ask these questions are dragging their feet in the evolution from peace maintenance to peacekeeping. It is quite the opposite.
Where we have to build and make peace, we want to do so out of a tradition of diplomacy that is democratic in its impulse, in its features and in its history. Lest people say this will give wonderful opportunities to the Defence Forces, I am as lost in admiration of the Defence Forces as anybody else. I visited them in Central America and elsewhere, and they would say the best gift they could get would be a clear mandate. A clear mandate comes from a genuinely representative Security Council of which we aspire to be a member, and the clarity in the thinking of the mandate and its democratic reference points are what are important, rather than an assemblage of bits and pieces, of people who want to exchange information about what weapons they are purchasing.
As to the Government's position on this, it should bear in mind the reason we have any influence on the Security Council, and what is our best opportunity of influencing the urgent debate on reform of the UN. The last time we were on the Security Council it was precisely because of our record on the Decolonisation Committee. The people who wanted us on the Security Council, and who assisted us in securing the place, saw us not as some kind of cripple because of our neutrality, but as people who would speak out of the experience of anti-colonialism and whose fides in relation to decolonisation could be accepted.
There is an interesting insert to that. I refer to the late Erskine Childers, son of the President of Ireland, covering the emergence of the African nations with the great BBC broadcaster, Dimbleby. In his unpublished book, "Amnesia at Midnight", Erskine Childers writes about what the British commentator said about another country rising to join the ranks of free nations free to make its own mistakes, and because he objected he lost his job in the BBC. There is such a thing as the Decolonisation Committee. There is such a thing as the Irish record on it. There is such a thing as the Irish reputation in the UN. There is such a thing as the Irish peacekeeping forces. Moving out from that there is the balance of our relationships, for example, with the European Union. We can go to the European Union and be positive because we have this truthful background.
Then one looks at those who at the same time are participating in anticipatory bombing, exemplary bombing, people who are taking exemplary actions, as they would say it, in relation to the destruction of opportunities for humanitarian aid, people who say that no matter what happens, be it in the Middle East or in Latin America, there will always be a US-British Axis that is more important than Europe. People do not want to face the reality of a genuine European foreign policy and genuine security built on trust and implemented through diplomacy. The difficult questions are not being faced. That is why people take the easy route, where they can arrive by exchanging Meccano sets and building bits and pieces.
I was morally appalled at the insufficiency of our response when lives were lost in different parts of Europe and Eastern Europe, but an uncritical rush to simply say that if we had this or that institutional arrangement it would have made a substantial difference is not the answer. It is in foreign policy genuinely thought out that we will be able to deal with issues of ethnicity and identity, and of building genuine partnership. There is no irridentist, uncritical, ancient traditional hang-up about words of semantics in relation to this. It is about the restoration of the integrity and the fullness of foreign policy of which diplomacy will be the principal instrument. It is built on a revulsion against those who strike militarily first and prepare for that and afterwards go seeking and scurrying for some gloss on a mandate. It is against those who suggest that one can speak on this with veracity and integrity and with better fides than those who are opposed to the armaments industry. Genuine foreign policy and the White Paper which was referred to must point to the use of the word “security” in terms of food security and how it is defiled by those who insist on the production and sale of armaments, often to the poorest parts of the world.
Let us have this debate and not short-circuit it. We are nearly unanimous on this side on that. On the other hand, let us not fudge it. Let the debate within foreign policy start on the principles of co-operation and interdependency and of reform of the UN, moving past arms production and afterwards if necessary. We do not require that peacekeepers stand impotent in the face of challenges. The peacekeepers must be given a clear mandate that is accountable and respects rather than abuses diplomacy. It must be built on courage, the courage to face those who seek alternatives to diplomacy, who want to have the use of the means of the strong to bully and police first and explain their actions afterwards and when a whole village is murdered, say it was one of their missiles that went astray. That is immoral. It is no basis for a foreign policy. Making institutional shortcuts as a substitute for foreign policy is wasting our time. Nevertheless, I am glad this debate is introduced here this week. I will be glad if a debate takes place around the country, but I hope it will be a morally informed debate rather than one that is made by saying that real Europeans will want to be pragmatic like this, that real Europeans will want to go to the exercises and will be exchanging shopping lists for armaments. Life as we want it in foreign policy is much more complex than that.
