The Government has moved fast to change its position on whether Ireland should join the NATO-sponsored Partnership For Peace organisation. The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, told the Dail yesterday that the Government expects to join in the second half of this year if negotiations go well. The decision is welcome. It brings Ireland into line with nearly all other European states, whether neutral, non-aligned or members of alliances. It will enable the security forces to develop their peacekeeping skills in the setting where new norms and techniques are actually being developed in Europe.
Fianna Fail opposed joining PFP during the last election on the grounds that to do so would unacceptably erode the State's military neutrality and be a stepping stone or halfway house to joining NATO. Mr Ray Burke as minister for foreign affairs was particularly associated with that policy stance. His successor, Mr Andrews, was not as emphatically opposed to PFP and continued to defend neutrality. He also took an international initiative on nuclear disarmament with several other states, in keeping with a tradition of Irish foreign policy since the time of Frank Aiken. This has created some leeway with party members anxious about the incompatibility of PFP membership with military neutrality.
In truth, all these categories have changed and are continuing to do so since the end of the Cold War. Ireland's political debate on this subject has been unsatisfactory, partly because this State is not geographically exposed to the new security uncertainties affecting other neutrals such as Finland, Sweden and Austria, partly because of the sheer intellectual ill-preparedness of the political class for such decisions, which had been so little or so inadequately discussed. It has taken several domestic and international developments to bring about this decision. Fine Gael and the Progressive Democrats have been in favour of it for a number of years and, as Mr Gay Mitchell pointed out in yesterday's Dail debate, the proposal was floated in the White Paper on foreign policy in 1996. Labour's leadership has been qualifiedly in favour of joining, although the membership has yet to pronounce on it and its new Foreign Affairs spokesman, Mr Proinsias De Rossa, is opposed. In recent months the armed forces and senior civil servants have been more vocally in favour, on the grounds that joining would best develop Ireland's hard-won and widely admired expertise when PFP and NATO have a role in peacekeeping missions endorsed by the United Nations. Mr Ahern frankly acknowledged another important dimension when he speculated yesterday that this decision will show Ireland to be positive and constructive in all areas of European co-operation - even if it will not influence the outcome of the crucial Agenda 2000 negotiations on EU budgets, structural funds and agricultural reform. The new facts of life in continental relations dictate that those with most influence will be those involved in all the networks of co-operation emerging, security included. This decision brings Ireland more into that mainstream, without unacceptably prejudicing existing traditions and commitments. PFP accession is based on a flexible membership formula. It is not a stepping stone to NATO membership, unless that is the political will of those concerned, which is not the case in Ireland.