Sir, - While I share Roger Cole's attachment to our neutrality and independent foreign policy tradition, there are far more sensible ways of applying those values than the series of unfounded assertions put forward in his article on the war on Afghanistan, Nice and the EU (Opinion, December 18th).
The war in Afghanistan is not about protecting oil routes. It is about preventing further mass slaughter of innocent civilians, such as took place in New York, the UN capital. Its victims of many nationalities included both Irish and Irish-Americans. The next attack could be a lot closer to home, particularly if those responsible were left free to continue.
The United States is not an empire, but to call it such enables people to keep artificially alive the dated Marxist category of imperialism. However much people may criticise it, the US has been for two centuries a beacon of democracy, economic opportunity and human advance.
The Government has at all times during the Afghan War stressed our humanitarian concerns. But is it seriously argued that we in this country live at such a great height of moral abstraction that we owe no practical solidarity with the people and President of the United States at this time, only unsparing admonishments from "a friend"?
Neutral Ireland has always quite legitimately been a strong supporter of collective decisions by the United Nations and before that the League of Nations, even where they sanction military action, in self-defence or against aggression. (See de Valera's Dβil speech on the UN, July 24-25th 1946).
The Nice Treaty contains no proposals for a federal European superstate. In any case, the notion of a federal superstate with a budget ceiling of 1.27 per cent of GDP is plainly preposterous.
A contribution by Ireland on a case-by-case basis to peacekeeping and humanitarian tasks by the EU (the Petersberg tasks) does not constitute integration of the Irish Army into a European army. The delays in being able to put together any multinational EU contingent does not exactly suggest a continent hungry for war.
Europe has in fact substantially demilitarised since 1989 - fewer troops, less conscription, fewer tanks, fewer nuclear warheads and less defence spending. What makes people so paranoid about our EU partners, the majority of which are still governed from Mr Cole's point of view by fraternal members of the Socialist International?
It was neutral/non-aligned countries Finland and Sweden which proposed bringing the Petersberg tasks into the EU Treaties in the Amsterdam negotiations, the ability to implement which is slowly being put in place. Why does Ireland have to be more neutral than the other neutrals? What exactly is wrong with participation in UN-delegated EU peacekeeping? This was agreed in principle under the Amsterdam Treaty ratified by the Irish people in 1998. I shall resist the temptation to ask Mr Cole if there is something he does not understand about the word "Yes", and suggest instead that since he wants to revisit the Amsterdam Treaty, not to mention the Treaty of Rome and its goal "of an ever closer union", in logic he must allow others may want to revisit Nice.
The European Union is not an empire with subject or imperialist peoples (more Marxist innuendo?) It is a voluntary union of the democratic states of Europe that has ensured a peace for 50 years which never existed before, something which should deeply impress any self-styled peace alliance. It has given Ireland a respect and influence and a prosperity that we never had before and that we should not throw lightly away at the behest of people very plausible at masking their fundamental opposition to the EU in any recognisable form and our membership of it.
The defects of the European Union, real and alleged, for the people of Central and Eastern Europe pale in comparison with the Stalinist dictatorships, the Nazi tyranny and the forced incorporation of subject nationalities in the Hapsburg, Hohenzollern and Romanov Empires that pre-1989 was their lot for most of the last century, bar a brief experience of democracy post-1919.
How could any self-respecting, progressive, peace-loving internationalist obstruct even for a short period enlargement and the final, peaceful liberation of so many proud but hard done-by European countries, when, as Marx once famously said, if you will the end, you must will the means? - Yours, etc.,
Martin Mansergh, Special Adviser to the Taoiseach, Government Buildings, Dublin 2.