Sir, - On June 3rd the heads of state and governments of the member states of the European Union decided to commit the union and member states to EU military missions on crisis-management, peacekeeping and peacemaking. This decision is or is not a good thing, depending on your view. But the Government's stance, that it does not affect neutrality ("not at all" - the reported words) is so patently a shameless lie that it sickens even the politically non-aligned, or those who support the Government on other issues. How can a member state's commitment in this area not compromise neutrality?
The line peddled presently is that "traditional" neutrality is unaffected because there is no mutual defence pact. To whom does neutrality mean merely the absence of a mutual defence pact? This emaciation of meaning should not go unchallenged. Even for fully-fledged NATO members, the extent of the obligations in the event of attack are deliberately vague, because the US did not want to lose control over the extent of its international legal obligation to intervene militarily in Europe. Are NATO members neutral too, according to this new and impoverished vision of neutrality?
To me, and probably to most people, neutrality means the international political and legal independence to act freely, autonomously if desired, and courageously, on concrete issues, from Kosovo to Central America to Tibet. Neutrality never had, and does not now have, merely the negative and emaciated meaning of no "mutual defence pact". If the Government does not have the courage to exercise an independent and free foreign policy, to take responsibility to act on Tibet, Central America, or Kosovo, then it should surrender office. It should not surrender our independence and freedom, or that of future generations, who may value the responsible exercise and contribution of Ireland's freedom above the retention of office. - Yours, etc.,
Diarmuid Rossa Phelan, Law Library, Four Courts, Dublin 7.