Sir, - I must thank Edward Rafferty (June 11th) for the courtesy of his reply to my letter on this subject. Trying not to be "voluminous" I must say that, having been studying history for the past 70 of my 87 years, I have formed the definite conclusion that when small nations enter military relations with big ones they are almost invariably first patronised, then exploited, then sacrificed.
If we join Partnership for Peace, that is what will happen to us. We shall lose control of our foreign policy, have to greatly increase our military expenditure, standardise our weaponry to suit the needs of the big partners and find ourselves, with no enemy anywhere now or likely, lined up against whatever enemy the big partners make. It is, I fear, naive to think NATO, deeply influenced, as even President Eisenhower noted, by the billionaire armaments manufacturers (the only victors in the Balkan war, as Prof Noam Chomsky, the great US sociologist, told RTE last week) would listen to voices of sweet reason from Irish politicians, not known, as a class, for stern moral behaviour when the pressure comes on.
Chomsky, who certainly knows more about these things than I do - or even Mr Rafferty - sees as the inevitable result of NATO's recent piratical venture not only the breakdown of international law but the end of the Nuclear Proliferation Ban which Ireland played a great part in achieving. So frightened are certain nonwhite medium powers of being NATO's next target that they see safety only in nuclear weapons. Does any thinking Irish citizen really want our country to enter partnership with such an alliance of the rich, aggressive, over-armed juggernauts as NATO has shown itself to be? - Yours, etc., Dr John de Courcy Ireland,
Dalkey, Co Dublin.