It is hard to believe that the terms in which public debate on European integration is conducted in Ireland are still focused on the question of neutrality.
Long after Ireland effectively abandoned the policy in favour of treaty obligations open to the development of common defence, the Irish electorate is asked again to adjudicate between two falsehoods: that of the pro-neutralists on the one hand and the Government and anti-neutralists on the other.
Now that the steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone are set for demolition by a peace agreement which aspires to closer integration and the pursuit of common interests between the British and Irish sides of our quarrel, another spectre reappears in all its dreary integrity. The ghost of Frank Aiken stalks the land, as if we were still struggling to find a voice in the Cold War environment of the late 1950s, when peacetime neutrality was formulated.
What is peacetime neutrality, which some wish to preserve against erosion by the Amsterdam Treaty and which others claim is protected by the same legislation?
Neutrality is a relationship between a state and the international community, sanctioned by international law, and giving rise to rights and obligations only in the event of war. There are no provisions in law for the status of peacetime neutrality and its derivatives - "positive" or "active" neutrality.
It is clear, however, that international law has serious peacetime implications for the putative neutral state. Not only does it require the obvious condition that a state be militarily non-aligned but two other conditions follow from this.
To be counted a neutral, a state must declare its foreign policy intentions unambiguously in that regard, and its declaration must be credible. The notion of credibility entails at the minimum the military capacity for self-defence in the event of war. Pacifist countries need not apply.
China, Poland, the Czech Republic - indeed most of the countries in the world - fulfil the first condition of neutrality. As a matter of fact, none is a member of a military alliance. They do not refer to their foreign policy as one of "military neutrality", since that would be absurd. They have no particular intentions of pursuing a neutral policy in any future war, nor must they confront the spectre of neutrality from their past, to be fought over with domestic interest groups and traditionalists in the present.
In three progressive steps, Ireland has eroded the basis of any credible claim to be a neutral country and joined the ranks of the great and the shabby who just happen to be non-aligned.
First, its official declaration of policy has been consistently and deliberately ambivalent since it was first formulated by Sean Lemass in 1961. In crude terms, it outlines a policy that could equally describe the position of Hungary and Poland today: we are not in a military alliance at present but this is conditional on future developments in partner states.
The second step was taken when we joined the EEC in 1973 and became legally bound by its treaty provisions, including the aspiration for a political union.
Finally, in the Maastricht Treaty, we cut away the last-but-one thread on which the cloak of Irish neutrality then hung. We are now legally committed to participation in a future common defence policy.
The term "military neutrality" is carefully cultivated in Government and anti-neutralist circles. It has no meaning in law and has no other political significance in Ireland than symbolically to placate the ghost of Frank Aiken and postpone the day when Irish policymakers will face the political and moral challenge of our EU membership.
It is clear that the Amsterdam Treaty makes little or no difference to a policy of neutrality which no longer exists. The rejection of the treaty is not a feasible option for other reasons, and would not in itself reinstate the foreign policy of Aiken's day.
For pro-neutralists to claim that Irish neutrality can be restored to official policy is to join with the Government in a game of political make-believe.
Ireland is not neutral, any more than China, Cuba or Zimbabwe. Against the fiction of both sides in the debate, there is nothing there to maintain, nothing left to preserve. The only viable option is to address the future character, not the fact, of a common defence in Europe.
Whether this includes nuclear deterrence as a core instrument is an important matter. But it is a question to be decided within the body of member-states who must translate foreign policy intent into a common defence.
Common defence will come. The choice in the referendum is between joining the negotiations which will determine its strategy, or - like Britain in relation to monetary union - choosing to exclude ourselves from the debate and having to accept the consequences later.
Dr Bill McSweeney teaches international politics in the Irish School of Ecumenics. His edited volume, Moral Issues in International Affairs, is published next month by Macmillan UK.
