(The Nationalist, 16 June 1999)
Let’s have an honest debate about defence – a debate that states facts plainly, looks at their significance, and examines the options honestly.
What are the options available to us? One is to remain neutral. And neutrality has served us well in the past. We were drawn into the First World War when we were under British rule and it cost us about 50,000 lives. In the Second World War we were neutral and our losses were small. Later on came the Cold War. If it had become a hot war, it would have been nuclear. Our neutrality would not have saved us then; but neither would membership of NATO.
But what kind of neutrality are we talking about? Sweden and Switzerland were neutral during World War II and after, but they spent heavily on defence. Despite the good work we did with UN peacekeeping forces, we didn’t have a credible army, though we pretended we did. We weren’t prepared to spend the money on it; it had, and has, little equipment. Without that, soldiers can’t be trained for war, much less fight one. The blunt truth is that while we paraded our neutrality as if it were a kind of moral virginity, we were getting a free ride on defence under the NATO umbrella. Was that honest?
We could take the Costa Rican option. In the mid 1950’s, the people of Costa Rica abolished their army. Since then they have enjoyed peace within and without their borders, a stable democracy, and a good social welfare system. Few countries in Latin America could say the same.
We could depend on the UN for security. Its record is not impressive and it will never be otherwise until it has teeth. It will never have them as long as the five permanent members of the Security Council are also the world’s five biggest arms producers.
We could join Partnership for Peace (PfP). This is presented to us at the moment as merely a matter of army officers attending seminars. Who do the proponents of PfP think they’re codding? Everybody knows well that PfP is the waiting room for potential NATO members. If we join PfP we will find ourselves facing large increases in military spending. PfP is Profits for Producers of arms. Our politicians are not telling us the truth about its significance. And they did not tell us the truth two years ago about the military implications of signing the Amsterdam Treaty that we approved of in a referendum. PfP is not an honest option; it’s a way of slipping into NATO by stealth.
We could join NATO openly. That could mean involvement in war in Europe, such as in the Balkans, costing Irish men and women their lives. It would mean large increases in defence spending as we made up for the backlog of past neglect. But as Europe moves towards greater integration, the need for a common defence and foreign policy becomes clearer. After 50 years of peace since the Second Word War, the failure to have such a policy was demonstrated at bloody human cost when Serbia attacked Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and now Kossova. That killed about 250,000 people, and led to the dispersal of perhaps two million refugees. That is the human price paid for Europe’s dithering in the face of an aggressor who trampled on the common understanding in post-war Europe that international disputes would be settled peacefully. And once again it is the Americans who are being drawn unwillingly into the task of trying to bring the conflict to an end. They succeeded in doing so in Bosnia, while Europe’s leaders would neither stay out of it nor get involved effectively.
What do we want to do? Let’s talk honestly about the matter and make intelligent decisions that we are prepared to pay for, and to live or die with. Will we face the issue or will we fudge it?