THE White Paper on foreign policy is remarkably wide ranging and comprehensive, yet outside Ireland it may not carry as much credibility as would be desirable. Why? Because of an evident imbalance between its emphasis on ideals and interests.
For the challenge of foreign policy is to reconcile the ideals of a people with the protection of their interests vis a vis the rest of the world. And this White Paper is long on ideals but curiously short on the protection of our interests. In fact the balance between these two elements within the document does not seem to me, and will not, I believe, seem to other states, to reflect the balance of the policies we actually pursue.
It is, indeed, quite striking that the issue of the reconciliation of interests and ideals which lies at the core of any foreign policy is not really addressed in this document. In the section on the European Union the protection of our interests looms quite large, elsewhere the emphasis is on ideals.
But conflicts between the two are largely ignored.
Let me give some examples of problems of this kind that can arise in practice.
Our ideals commit us to assist the development of Third World countries and to help the former communist countries to become viable market economies. Our interests require protection for our industries and farming against low cost competition from these countries. Guess which win out in practice - and if in doubt ask any of the countries concerned!
Several years ago I discussed with EU officials the outcome of trade negotiations between the Community and the new democracies of eastern Europe. They are in no doubt as to Ireland's stance in relation to the agricultural part of these negotiations: it was negative so far as farm product imports from eastern Europe were concerned; mitigated only by the fact that the French were even more negative and that as a result we were able to "hide behind" them in these negotiations.
And I am not aware of any Irish support for greater freedom of entry for clothing, for example, from Third World countries such as Zimbabwe.
In matters like these our interests take precedence over our ideals, and if and when the Department of Foreign Affairs seeks to mitigate the harshness for protective policies in relation to poorer countries, the Departments of Agriculture and Enterprise and Employment are sure to take the opposite position - and in Cabinet they will always outgun the "do gooders" in Foreign Affairs.
Nor is this too surprising, for how many people would vote in favour of the admission of more clothing from Zimbabwe at the expense of Irish jobs, or more milk products or beef from eastern Europe at the expense of our farmers?
In this situation the most that the Department of Foreign Affairs can hope to do - and it has been done to great effect under Dick Spring - is to try to compensate for our hardline, self interested made policies by increasing substantially our development aid to Third World countries, and making sure that it is spent in a manner most beneficial to the recipient countries. But, as is well known, an ounce of trade is worth a pound of aid.
The trouble with this White Paper is that it seems to be an exclusively Foreign Affairs document, which virtually omits the economic part of our foreign policy that in practice tends to dominate wherever a serious clash of interest arises.
Now this incomplete approach has the domestic merit of making us feel good about ourselves. I am less sure about its effect outside Ireland, where our "holier than thou" attitude induces visibly negative attitudes among politicians and diplomats who find it hard to see just where our ideals influence us to greater practical generosity than that demonstrated by their own states.
Basically my difficulty with this document is that by dividing issues into so many separate compartments it manages to ignore some crucial dilemmas that we face, dilemmas that badly need public airing and discussion. The clash between interests and ideals in relation to trade is only one such area.
Another clash that has arisen in the past (e.g. in relation to Central America), and could conceivably arise again, is a choice between maintaining a good relationship with the United States because we need American help in regard to Northern Ireland and supporting, or at least not criticising, US foreign policy actions that are disapproved of by our people.
In our relations with Britain over Northern Ireland there is perpetual tension between public pressure to criticise aspects of British policy there, (e.g. policing and security, prison policy), and our interest in maintaining a constructive relationship with the British government so as to advance a political resolution of the Northern Ireland problem.
And within a couple of years we could face a dilemma in relation to economic and monetary union between staying out with Britain and losing the long term benefits of participating in a European currency, or going in, at the possible cost of seeing the competitiveness of some of our indigenous industries weakened by competition from a devalued sterling and of deepening the North South monetary divide at a time when a new and closer economic relationship between the two parts of our island may be on the cards.
Finally, within the EU we have to balance public reluctance to contemplate an involvement in European defence against the possibly damaging consequences for our interests in Europe if European defence became a real issue and we persisted in opting out.
Now it is precisely the satisfactory resolution of these kinds of dilemma that constitutes the core of foreign policy making. And yet the existence of these dilemmas hardly emerges at all in this Foreign Policy White Paper.
In fairness one should not be critical of the absence of an analysis of the EMU dilemma because this must await the completion of the Government's study of this issue that it has commissioned from the Economic and Social Research Institute.
But it is a matter of regret that the other dilemmas which do not require such economic analysis have been largely glossed over in a document which was meant to inform public opinion on foreign policy issues and to open a serious debate on foreign policy itself.
FIANNA Fail's initial contribution to this debate, on this page last Thursday, was disappointing. The principal criticism of the White Paper by Ray Burke related to the suggestion that the Government might contemplate Irish membership of the Partnership for Peace (PFP), which comprises all the European and former Soviet Union states, except for some mini states like San Marino, the three unpeaceful Yugoslav states, Cyprus, which has a particular, problem with Turkey, strife torn Tajikistan, and Switzerland, which will not even join the UN.
The purposes of the PEP are the protection and promotion of human rights; the safeguarding of freedom, justice and peace; the preservation of democracy; the upholding of international law; and the fulfilment of the obligations of the UN Charter and of the commitments of the Organisation for Security and Co operation in Europe - a regional organisation under the UN Charter, about which we are enthusiastic.
Quite which of these objectives is so worrying as to have made us hesitate for so long about joining the 43 state partnership has never been clear.
Ray Burke does neither his party or himself any good by describing membership of the PFP as involving "second class membership of Nato" which would "involve Ireland in exercises of adventurism with nations affiliated to Nato" (has anyone told the Russians that by joining it they have affiliated to Nato?), and by crediting the body itself with "a nuclear capability". Only Zhirinovsky in Russia can match this kind of absurd rhetoric about foreign policy issues.