Sir, - A question posed by Greek philosophers referred to a man remaining in a cave. He is aware that the poisonous rain falling outside has driven everyone else insane until he alone is left in his right mind. His choice is whether to go out and join the others or to remain within. The question seems relevant to calls to join the "Partnership for Peace".
I cannot say that we are being asked if we want to join the so-called Partnership for Peace because we are being denied a referendum on the issue, but we are being told, as very often in the past, that we have no choice in the matter. Outside we see a world going insane and are offered the politics of Lotto: if we aren't in, we can't win.
And what is on offer? We are being offered an alliance with a NATO-centred military system dependent on the ultimate threat of nuclear weapons and, in the case of many countries, dependent on conscription. We are being told that it is a negative response to stay out, as if this cast our humanity in some baleful light, and that moves to support the United Nations, to provide humanitarian aid and to support arbitration, mediation and international law are somehow second best.
I am not impressed by what passes for arguments to join the PfP. I regard it as a Trojan horse and have heard very little about the structures of decision-making that would be supposed to control it or how the decisions of NATO are tied in with money-making and arms production that very much belie any humanitarian aims it may profess. Once anchored into these militaristic structures, in however an innocuous way, it is clear that the NATO war-lords will have very little need to take notice of any Irish dissenting position. It is quite clear to me that all militarism implies a double value, an assumption that one group knows best what's good for the other group, who must therefore be left in the dark - not even knowing that their lives are now organised as part of some institutionalised form of insanity. - Yours, etc., Richard S. Harrison,
St Luke's, Cork.