This debate should not be taking place solely in this House. It is a debate, the Taoiseach led the people to believe would be decided upon by them by way of a consultative referendum. In the Fianna Fáil manifesto, he stated that, under a Fianna Fáil-led Government, Ireland would not join Partnership for Peace. In effect, the people were offered a double guarantee which has been unilaterally withdrawn. "Fundamentally undemocratic", I think, is how the Taoiseach would describe it.
The decision on whether to join Partnership for Peace is the first of a series of issues, which will confront this nation about our international relationships. The issues of global interdependence, peace enforcement, democratic control of the military and United Nations reform are all issues that we will have to address. There are no easy answers to some of these questions.
Writing in a recent issue of The Economist the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, puts the question succinctly. Referring to a series of recent conflicts across the world, he states that they all give rise to fundamental questions. These questions go the heart of our Irish identity and our political values. How do we and how should we react to conflict, particularly those involving crimes against humanity and widescale human rights abuses, which occur in other countries?
The existing UN Charter leans heavily on the rights of states and the significance of boundaries, rights recently discussed during the Kosovo crisis. The issue was also raised in relation to East Timor, where pressure had to be brought to bear on Indonesia to allow the intervention of an internationally UN mandated force.
In Kosovo, a regional force acting without a mandate, save its own, intervened on behalf of the Kosovar people. A United Nations Security Council mandate would not have been secured for this action, but in Rwanda, where Security Council unanimity would have been easily achieved, there was not a regional force and as we, sadly, know, genocide on a massive scale took place.
In East Timor too, the prospect of a Security Council mandate was minimal and were it not for economic pressure, the genocide against the East Timorese would probably have continued. Many of those who claimed the moral authority to intervene in Kosovo showed a marked reluctance to intervene when the sphere of conflict was further away.
The situations in both Kosovo and East Timor gave rise to considerable anger and emotion in this country. Those emotions are not unique to Ireland. In part, they are drawn from a new relationship between citizen and state. They are an end to the principle of "my country, right or wrong". Where once citizens served the state, the state is now expected to serve its citizens. Increasingly and instinctively, global citizens react against fundamental breaches of the rights of their fellow global citizens, whether it is in Kosovo, East Timor or the next country in which an assault on decency is either contemplated or perpetrated.
These changes in the world, as Kofi Annan describes it, do not make hard political choices any easier but they oblige us to think anew about such questions as how the UN responds to humanitarian crises and why states are willing to act in some areas of conflict but not in others where the daily toll of death and suffering is as bad or perhaps even worse. The people want to be involved in finding an answer to these questions and are prepared to address issues which have implications for how we do our business. We cannot say, for example, that our foreign policy, perhaps until recently, has been informed by any criteria other than that of our own self-interest.
However, alongside this willingness to engage in any new international debate, there remains a marked attachment to our traditional position of military neutrality. The term, military neutrality, is not sufficient to fully describe the Irish position. As a nation, we have historically opted out. If we contrast our attitude to military neutrality and all its resonances, our position is not dissimilar to the attitude of our neighbours in Britain to the pound sterling. We are reluctant to give up military neutrality. The fear that to cede military neutrality starts us on the slippery slope to militarism remains strong. However, it is now competing with a view that Ireland must play its part in helping to police the world for democracy, not the warped vested interests of the Cold War and its imperialist predecessors.
That is why the reasons of control are central to the people. It is why many of the same people marched outside the US and UK Embassies during the Kosovo and East Timor crises arguing against intervention, on the one hand, and for it on the other. It is why we, as political parties, have always assured our people that there will not be any change to our neutral status without referral to the people. It is why the people have a strong attachment to the United Nations and our central supra-national involvement or membership of the European Union has been so successful. At each stage of the integration process we have debated issues as a people and we have decided upon them collectively.
I know the issue under discussion today does not in strict constitutional terms require a referendum. I am aware of the legal advice my party accepted when we were in Government, but so was the Fianna Fáil Party two and a half years ago when it promised such a referendum. We should not try to fool the people that nothing has changed, nothing is changing and that Ireland's membership of PfP is a stand alone event. Our world is changing. It is increasingly interdependent. As a global people we can see into each other's lives. We are the first generation to witness at first hand, global pain and experience global compassion. Such an experience cannot but alter our view of the world.
The people are more than aware of the growing significance of regional alliances to the United Nations and their role in carrying out UN functions which are of increasing importance. They are also increasingly aware of the slow but steady evolution towards a common and foreign security policy within the European Union. They know the Government recently acquiesced to the appointment of the former Secretary General of NATO to co-ordinate that emerging policy. How are they supposed to trust a Government which promised unilaterally to consult them on other issues?
This Government is led by a Taoiseach who stated only three years ago that membership of the Partnership for Peace would mean British troops back in the Curragh, the French in Bantry Bay, the Germans in Banna Strand, the Spanish in Kinsale and the Americans in Lough Foyle. Such cheap and emotive scaremongering always comes back to haunt its propagators. The Taoiseach should hang his head in shame today. It is little wonder that politics is held in poor esteem by many people when efforts are made to whip up such emotions. Having made promises to the people, the Taoiseach breaks them without having the manners to explain why he made a U-turn.
Nothing has changed in the makeup of Partnership for Peace or our Constitution since the Taoiseach made those remarks, yet he is prepared to proceed as if he did not make them. The Taoiseach may find that such cynical manoeuvring costs him dear in the long run. He has won few friends in either the pro or anti-PfP camps. Yesterday he referred contemptuously to people picketing outside this House. However, he is responsible for stoking the fears to which the people are now responding. I ask him to come into the House and explain what, apart from his duplicity, has changed since he told the House in the debate on the White Paper on foreign policy that "while the Government may reassure the public that there are no implications for neutrality – and that may be technically true at this time – it will be seen by other countries as a gratuitous signal that Ireland is moving away from its neutrality and towards gradual co-operation in NATO and the Western European Union in due course".
Given the absence of direction and conviction about this Government's foreign policy and its inability to assert itself either inside or outside the European Union, the Taoiseach's statement three years ago is probably more true now than at any stage in our history. This was not an election promise which could not be implemented or which ran into an insurmountable opposition but pure and naked opportunism. The Fianna Fáil manifesto commitment that Ireland should not join PfP ended the debate as the possibility of joining seemed to recede. The Taoiseach in the Dáil sought a cast iron pledge from the Government that it would not make any move without first consulting the people. It is interesting now to think what he would have done about such a pledge.
An explanation of why the Government changed its mind might go some way towards restoring its credibility. By that I do not mean an erudite contribution from the Department of Foreign Affairs, but a political explanation from the Fianna Fáil Party as to why it changed its mind. For example, what behind-the-scenes forces operated and what compelling logic came into play about which we have heard nothing? It is unbelievable that Fianna Fáil is now repeating the arguments of the 1996 White Paper which it firmly and comprehensively rejected then.
Membership of PfP does not represent a significant departure in our foreign policy. However, membership of the EPAC and the appointment of an ambassador mark a considerable change in the nature of our relationship with NATO. There is a genuine fear, which the Taoiseach must address and which is evident in his party, that PfP is a means to obtaining back door entry to NATO. That fear is groundless – I listened to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who perhaps will not be in that position for much longer, offer his point of view and assurances – nevertheless, it is a fear which is now stalking the land. Having discussed this issue with other non-allied PfP members, I know many of them remain determined not to join the NATO bloc. For example, the Austrian Government's refusal to grant NATO planes use of its airspace during the Kosovo conflict is evidence of that intention.
However, there is a wider fear which needs a more careful response, that is, that membership of PfP amounts to conferring on NATO the role of Europe's policeman, a role it should not have. In this context, NATO's limitations became particularly clear during the Kosovo crisis. NATO's historical position of antagonism towards Russia in particular threatened to result in a considerable escalation of the Kosovo crisis. NATO is a Cold War relic, an organisation without sufficient democratic input, which is accountable to no one. To what democratic assembly was the decision to take out the central heating system of Belgrade referred? What elected group of politicians was consulted by a United States general before that so-called military action was embarked upon? In addition, its policy of first strike nuclear deterrence is also abhorrent to me and my colleagues in the Labour Party. While NATO itself has no direct imperial legacy, I fear its imperial swagger. As recently as last night, even Henry Kissinger, the great Cold War warrior and former Secretary of State under President Nixon, coming from the position at which he started and which he has maintained, questioned the continued relevance of NATO. That is why I worry about the drift into PfP and the conferral on NATO of this kind of role which will result in it becoming the policeman of Europe.
However, we live in the real world and there is no point in denying that NATO has filled a power vacuum. Its attractiveness to the new democracies in central and eastern Europe is particularly understandable in the light of their historical relationship with imperial Russia. The power vacuum arises, however, because the region's major economic power, the European Union, does not carry political weight commensurate with its economic might. However, often, as in the cases of Palestine and Kosovo, the European Union is left to pick up the tab. Most people, from reading the news and listening to American politicians, would think the United States was sending most of the aid to Palestine. That is not true. The major donor of aid there is the European Union, the taxpayers in this Chamber and in the Gallery. Likewise, the damage caused by United States and NATO aircraft in Yugoslavia will be repaired with moneys from European taxpayers, not from the United States.
My party supports Ireland's wholehearted and active participation in the newly emerging European Union foreign and security policy. We welcome the commitment of the French, British and Germans to developing an EU policy position independent of NATO and the United States while at the same time working in close co-operation with them. This is an opportunity the Irish Government should be vigorously pursuing within the terms of the Amsterdam Treaty, which was ratified in referendum by the citizens of this Republic.
As an institution, the European Union is globally unique, built on the back of a war-torn continent, its continued existence and its internal solidarity is proof of its success in bringing to an end, for a common peaceful purpose, old tensions and historical rivalries. At a regional level, it embodies my party's principles of commitment to international solidarity and rule by law. Its experience over 40 years in conflict resolution and peace building is unparalleled. It would be selfish of us to keep that experience to ourselves and not to attempt to export it where it is sought, to our neighbours in Central and Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
Ultimately, the European Union is a democratically accountable body. Notwithstanding the weaknesses of its constitutional structures, it is a body in which elected politicians, with all their faults, call the shots, a body which is conferring increasing powers on its own Parliament, a body which will, through the values and policies it espouses at international level, be democratically accountable. However, while European security based within an EU framework is a great deal more preferable to the NATO centred alternative, both involve difficult choices and would invoke opposition from a significant section of the Irish people. For example, two members of the European Union possess a nominal independent nuclear capacity. Many have sizeable armaments industries. Most of our European partners have an imperial past. To participate in such a structure will involve some relinquishing of sovereignty on our part. We must recognise the difficulties this will pose for all of us. It will require an opt-in rather than an opt-out. It will involve a considerable increase in expenditure on defence, which is overdue, even if we confine ourselves to UN peacekeeping operations.
In many ways PfP is merely a small part of a much wider debate except that the circumstances of our joining will cloud the bond between Government and people which has always existed here as regards foreign policy. This is an important point. The emotional and political attachment of the Irish people to military neutrality is very real. The manner in which this Government has decided to join PfP deeply offends many people, not just in Fianna Fáil, but across the country. The complexity of issues which I have outlined will be further complicated by the consequences of this act of political duplicity and electoral opportunism. Instead of an open debate and decision involving the Irish people who, I believe, would have endorsed the Government's decision to join PfP, there is mounting cynicism that the Government is pursuing a secret agenda in respect of our foreign policy.
In fact, the desire to keep the people out of the equation has gone way beyond the Government. Many political commentators, writing on this issue over the last couple of months, seem happy to convey the impression that this is a debate out of which the Irish people should be kept. It is simply nonsense to claim there has been a national debate. Intermittent newspaper articles as the various stages of the process were completed do not constitute a debate of any kind. Neither does the limited circulation of a White Paper on the issue which the vast majority of the public have hardly seen or even know exists.
Over the last couple of weeks, I have heard Ministers and the Taoiseach – whose U-turn has put him on the back foot – deny that PfP is a NATO sponsored programme. It clearly is and the presentation document we are discussing is this country's contract with NATO. As such, it would be instructive to compare the terms of the presentation document with those of other neutral countries. At first reading, the commitment to peacekeeping within the PfP framework is stronger than that contained in either the Finnish or Swedish documents. The Minister should address that and the following questions.
Does he feel the nature and extent of this commitment has any impact on our traditional peacekeeping role under the auspices of the United Nations? What are the cost implications of this decision? In the memorandum that was brought to Government under the standard provision cost implications of this decision, was an estimate provided and, if so, can that be put before the House?
As a member of the Cabinet which first decided Ireland should consider membership of PfP, I still support that decision. Any organisation that can provide a modicum of stability in central and eastern Europe in accordance with the UN charter and the principles of the OSCE is welcome. So, too, are the opportunities this would provide for the Irish Defence Forces to train with the best and most modern equipment. On balance, if there is no alternative – there is none at present – PfP is better than a vacuum. However, it is far from perfect.
We are merely at the beginning of a debate about how, as a global community, we do our business. In Ireland there are fundamental choices to be made about the level of engagement we wish to take in that global business. The legal basis underpinning our neutrality is no more than a declaration of sovereignty over our armed forces. It does not amount, in constitutional terms at least, to a statement of values on our part. It should be clearly understood that in the economic, political and cultural areas, we have already permitted a diminution of that sovereignty in the national interest. Global peace and security is as crucial to us as any of these other ideals. That PfP does not impact upon this constitutional position is proof, in itself, that greater issues lie ahead.
The Government's silence on these wider issues is a source of concern. Ireland is currently campaigning for a place on the Security Council but it is difficult to understand why. We have yet to put on the table any ideas about the reform of that institution. We want to join the Security Council but have we any ideas for its reform? Are we satisfied, for example, that the force of a UN mandate and international law can be vetoed by a single state, regardless of the scale of abuse taking place? What is our determination to address the issue that Kofi Annan puts, namely, that it is essential the international community reaches consensus not only on the principle that massive and systematic violations of human rights must be checked wherever they take place but also on ways of deciding what action is necessary and when and by whom?
This Government, led by Fianna Fáil – the Progressive Democrats do not feature in this matter, it is a solo run by Fianna Fáil – has stumbled to where it finds itself today. It has duped the Irish people on the way and no amount of obfuscation in the House or reference to legal and constitutional principle will hide that, and the public know it.
