Ireland & NATO.

Dublin to enlist?

Plainly emboldened by the ongoing, if intermittent progress of the peace process in Northern Ireland, a number of senior Irish political figures have recently inaugurated a public debate on two issues which have traditionally aroused deep suspicions in the Irish body politic: membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and membership in the Commonwealth.

The issue of Commonwealth membership has been raised several times - most recently on January 14 - by the taoiseach (prime minister) of the Irish Republic, Bertie Ahern, who said that the Irish decision to leave, taken in 1949 (just after India had joined as a republic), was too hasty and destroyed a bridge Eamon de Valera, Ireland's first prime minister, had hoped would help to unite North and South. De Valera tried to reopen the question of Commonwealth membership in secret discussions with London in 1957, but only on the basis that the British would take an initiative by issuing an invitation to Ireland to rejoin. The British declined to take the bait. Ahem, in launching the debate now, has taken an initiative that De Valera felt politically unable to take forty years ago.

Irish Foreign Minister David Andrews has, for his part, formally re-opened a discussion on possible Irish membership of the U.S.-sponsored Partnership for Peace, which had been initiated cautiously by his predecessor, Dick Spring, and on which a decision will be taken by the cabinet before the end of 1999. Although not formally linked to NATO, the Partnership includes NATO states and is generally considered as a kind of anteroom which can be safely entered by states that have political or ideological difficulties in adhering to the larger organization.

The links between the Northern Ireland issue and the often-vexed question of Ireland's military neutrality have a long history. They surfaced in an acute form during secret negotiations between the Irish and British governments at the onset of World War II, when Churchill failed to persuade De Valera that an undertaking by him to try to sway Unionists into a united Ireland after the war was sufficient exchange for an abandonment of Irish neutrality.

During the war, Fianna Fail, De Valera's party, made the neutrality policy peculiarly its own, but also popularized it to the extent that it achieved an independent existence outside the ranks of the party faithful, and indeed became virtually a touchstone of Irishness in the minds of some. It had the advantage of being a distinguishing mark or characteristic of the Irish polity, one that made it particularly attractive to many of those whose attempts to achieve the two primary nationalist objectives-Irish unity and the revival of the Irish language-had met with a conspicuous lack of success.

The interparty government of 1948-51 formally declined an invitation to join NATO, ostensibly on the grounds that this would have involved a recognition of the partitioning of Ireland. It is now more generally agreed that the major reason was pique on the part of the then-foreign minister, Sean MacBride, at the rejection by the United States of overtures he had made for the creation of a new bilateral relationship between the two countries.

In the minds of the many Irish voters, over the years neutrality has become elevated to the status of a principle. The question of Irish membership in the Partnership is therefore potentially of great significance. It is plain that there is a perceived link between Irish membership in such a body, and anxiety, on the part of the Irish defense forces, that they might be left out of the procurement loop. Irish membership of UN peace-keeping forces in the Congo in 1960 provided the Irish armed forces with levels of equipment and international associations to which they had previously aspired in vain. Membership in the Partnership, it is thought, would involve a similar boost in terms both of equipment and morale.

Ahern, in his January speech, joined the chorus when he said that there was no reason why Ireland should continue to adopt an isolationist stance on purely ideological grounds. Foreign Minister Andrews has subtly moved the goal posts, redefining military neutrality as excluding any military alliance "based on nuclear weapons," and has invoked the experience of other neutral countries, not least Switzerland, which have not found their traditional defense policies and Partnership membership to be in conflict.

The defenders of Irish neutrality and opponents of rejoining the Commonwealth (and they include, principally, Sinn Fein, the leftist parties, and the small Green party) may find that, faced with such opposition, they will be able to do little more than mount a token protest when the time comes. But Fianna Fail, in particular, is deeply aware of the ways in which the ambiguities of its policy positions on these issues over the previous decades have become deeply embedded in the Irish political psyche, and will not be anxious to move too quickly, without preparing the ground. This is precisely what now seems to be happening.

John Horgan writes frequently from Dublin for Commonweal.