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| From: Church & State: Articles |
| Date: October, 0001 |
| By: test |
The Meaning of Armed Neutrality |
| IPR: October 2023 In international law, an admittedly notional branch of the legal world, and in international relations generally, two forms of neutrality are recognised: demilitarisation (having no defence forces); and armed neutrality. Irish neutrality has always come under the latter heading. As successive Irish Governments have worked to dilute the traditional neutrality policy, it has become a commonplace to argue that the policy never had much substance in the first place. A line has been sold that Irish neutrality in World War II was benevolent towards the Allies to the point of being an elaborate public relations exercise. That argument represents a deliberate distortion of the historical record. Ironically, a relatively realistic assessment of Irish war-time neutrality, from a British source, is to be found in a 2008 book, British Spies And Irish Rebels, by Cambridge academic Paul McMahon. This book, a study of British Intelligence in Ireland from a British Intelligence perspective, hits the nail on the head regarding Irish neutrality. McMahon writes: “De Valera summed up this attitude in September 1939, when he assured London that he did not ‘want Irish freedom to become a source of British insecurity’. Rather than a moral stance, this was a finely judged policy to protect Irish neutrality. De Valera gave enough concessions to dissuade Britain from using force to seize Irish territory; he ensured that, from the British point of view, the benefits of cooperation would always (just) outweigh those of coercion†(p. 284). Well aware from the experience of the Irish national struggle, and from his own experience in the League of Nations, that the Great Powers—Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US—used war as a means for advancing their own supremacist interests, De Valera was in earnest about keeping Ireland neutral when Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Not only was Irish neutrality a defiance of the dominance of the Great Powers in international affairs—made possible by the singular skill of De Valera and to a lesser extent that of Sean Lemass and Frank Aiken—it was also ably defended by a competent Diplomatic Corps (Joseph Walshe, Con Cremin, Robert Brennan, Frederick Boland, Sean Murphy). Statecraft and diplomacy, obviously, loomed large in the Irish version of armed neutrality, alongside the military aspects, but the military side was far from inconsequential. The size of the Irish Army expanded from about 14,000 before 1939 to nearly 150,000 during the War, if the Local Defence Forces reserve is included. Invasion forces—whether from Germany, Britain or the US—would have encountered a military resistance followed by a guerilla-type insurgency, with the additional threat that the Irish would collaborate with the enemies of the invading Power. This article explores the concept of armed neutrality under a number of headings, and draws the strands together in a Conclusions section at the end. (Following discussions at a public meeting of the Irish Political Review Group in the Teachers' Club, Dublin, on 1st September, in due course further sections will be added: covering Ireland’s EU Membership, Lessons from Irish UN peacekeeping, and Neutrality in International Law. These will appear in a booklet, Conserving Ireland’s Foreign Policy Tradition, currently in preparation.) The Role of the Defence Forces On grounds of sheer practicality, the Irish Defence Forces provide services necessary to the functioning of a modern state. The responsibilities of the Naval Service include: maritime surveillance to prevent people and arms smuggling and the transportation of illegal drugs; ensuring right of passage for shipping; protecting Ireland’s 200-mile exclusive economic zone, its fishing grounds and its territorial seas defined by the 12-nautical-mile boundary; countering port blockades; and providing the primary diving team in the State. Militarily, the Naval Service is responsible for meeting contingent and actual maritime defence requirements. Non-military functions operated by the Air Corps include: the Emergency Aero-medical (air ambulance) Service, VIP transport, Search and Rescue (in support of Coast Guard search and rescue efforts), and maritime surveillance. In the military sphere the Air Corps provides support to the Army and the Naval Service. The Army provides certain non-military services including: the provision of aid to the civil power (GardaÃ) and to the civil authority (Government). An example of aid to the civil authority in recent years was the role played by the Army during Covid, when it augmented the efforts of the Health Service Executive by deploying its logistical planning, emergency planning, engineering and similar skills. The Army has also been called on to respond to extreme weather events, like the forest wildfire in Killarney National Park and gorse wildfires in Howth in 2021. A further non-military service is Irish Army crisis management and humanitarian relief operations in support of United Nations peacekeeping. The military service provided by the Army is more complex. In recent history it has taken two forms: UN peacekeeping; and the provision of internal security, especially during the 1970-1998 Provisional IRA War. Strictly speaking, the latter was, from beginning to end, an aid to the civil power operation, but categorising it as non-military devalues the reality and scale of the duties the Army was required to perform. Army involvement in UN peacekeeping, which began in 1958, has been a concrete expression of Irish Neutrality. Internationally, the Irish peacekeeping tradition is highly regarded, having the longest record of continuous service of any UN member state. Over the sixty-five years of its duration, 172,000 personnel of the Defence Forces, male and female, have served on UN missions, 87 of whom were killed while on duty. A famous engagemen,t known as the Siege of Jadotville, testifies to the strengths and weaknesses of the Army’s role with the UN. In 1961 an Irish unit on a UN mission in the Congo was ordered to proceed to the mining town of Jadotville to assist in the protection of its citizens. As a result of anti-UN sentiment among pro-Katanga elements, the troops were not universally welcomed. The unit, designated “A Company†and commanded by Commandant Pat Quinlan, had a complement of 155 men. On September 13th a combined force of between 3,000 and 5,000 local tribesmen, Belgian settlers and mercenaries from Belgium, France and Rhodesia attacked the unit. The assault came in waves of 600, preceded by artillery and mortar bombardment. A Support Platoon of A Company was able to knock out most of the Katangese mortar and artillery positions and, according to the Wikipedia account, defensive fire proved accurate and effective. A ceasefire was eventually agreed; whereas 300 of the attacking force, including 30 mercenaries, had been killed, there were no Irish fatalities—although five members of A Company were injured. The Irish unit eventually ran out of supplies including water, leaving Quinlan no choice but to accept a second offer of surrender. Quinlan’s leadership of a relatively small force is cited in military textbooks worldwide as the best example of the so-called “perimeter defenceâ€. The weakness exposed by Jadotville was that the Army top brass back in Ireland, because of the surrender, allowed an implied black mark to sully Quinlan’s reputation. It was not until the publication of “The Siege of Jadotville—the Irish Army’s Forgotten Battle†(2005) by Declan Power, forty years after the event, that Quinlan (posthumously) and the members of A Company received the recognition they deserved. I have used the Siege of Jadotville here, not to glory in a military exploit, but simply to show that the military arts were studied and practised in the Irish Army in the 1950s; that the Army could produce someone like Pat Quinlan testifies to its competence. The service provided by the Army during the long years of the Northern conflict is not directly relevant to the subject of Neutrality but needs to be examined in the context of the argument that the Defence Forces should be abolished. The story of that service has been described in detail in a book by Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Dan Harvey, Soldiering Against Subversion (2018). Harvey explicitly states in the Preface that what his book describes shows “the need for an army†(Kindle Edition, p. 14). He says: “This book is necessary because it is too easy to forget those difficult days and it is dangerous to do so, because the complexity of the fractured identity that was at the essence of the Troubles in a sense still remains to be resolved today. The Defence Forces played a crucial part in its containment†(Ibid, p.15). Harvey lists the many valuable security functions performed by the Army in those years as: “duties on cash, explosive and prisoner escorts, at mines during blasting, as guards on vital installations, with bomb-disposal capability and frequent deployments in Cordon and Search operations, riot (crowd) control and, of course, constant border operations†(Ibid, p. 216). Moreover, his hint in the Preface—that the experience of these aid operations to the civil power may be needed in the future—is apposite. A weakness in Harvey’s general position is his treatment of the 1970 Arms Crisis. He makes no mention of the role of the Northern Citizen Defence Committees or their relationship with Captain James Kelly, an Irish Military Intelligence officer. He implies that attempts were afoot to illegally import arms, to be supplied to the Provisional IRA. In fact, the Provisionals barely existed at that time and a Government Sub-Committee had planned for arms to be imported and supplied to a grouping of Defence Committees, legitimate local bodies solely concerned with protecting otherwise defenceless communities. In short, he rehashes the line of the Republic’s governing elite, making out that the Lynch Government saw off a hothead element in Fianna Fáil, when in reality it capitulated to pressure from the British Government. But it is not altogether surprising that Harvey, a retired Army officer, should choose to toe the Government line: the function of a national Army is to implement the decisions of the properly constituted political authority, the elected Government of the day. In that context, the Army cannot be blamed for the political course decided on by the Republic’s political leaders during the Northern conflict. As can be deduced from the title of Harvey's book, he sees the Army’s role during what he terms ‘the Troubles’ as a war against subversive elements, primarily the Provisional IRA. He is, however, critical of the tactics employed by the British Army during the early years and conscious of a different culture and approach to security between the British and Irish militaries. He identifies the more ‘highly politicised’ security approach of the Irish Army in contrast to the ‘more securitised’ tactics of the British Army as a reason why there was no communication between the two armies along the Border. Developing the point, he quotes a statement made by Lieutenant Colonel Louise Hogan during an interview on the BBC TV Panorama programme. She was being pressed as to why there was no cooperation. “I don’t see the point of it (co-operation with the British army); we have a mission to perform and presumably they have a mission to perform as well. I don’t know what their mission is, nor do I wish to know. We have a job to do and we do it in our own way, and as far as I’m concerned, I am satisfied that we do it effectively†(Ibid, p. 94). Harvey also shows that, in addition to countering IRA activity in Border areas, the Army played a role in defending against loyalist paramilitaries and “inadvertent or advertent†British incursions into the Republic. Amid the difficulties and hardships of the Army’s work during the Northern conflict and its spillovers into the South, there were gains in terms of institutional learning, or capability development as military people call it. In 1980 the Army Rangers Wing was initiated as a special operations force: focused, among other tasks, on hostage release operations. A high level of expertise was also developed in bomb disposal techniques. Capability development occurred across the range of military skills. As Harvey puts it, having described the development of the Army Rangers: “Apart from preparing an elite military unit for highly specialised interventions, a keener, more honed intelligence capability and a cadre of EOD [explosive ordnance disposal] and counter-IED [improvised explosive devices] personnel are viewed as amongst the best and most highly trained in the world. With much of their expertise being developed during the Troubles of the 1970s and 1980s, and overseas in challenging mission areas, the ATCP [aid to the civil power] ‘soldiering situation’ in the Republic required that the performance of internal security duties be regularised and regulated, particularly the daily threat of violence being faced by troops. An excellent and fully elaborate set of Current Operational Directive Guidance Documents and Standing Operating Procedures were drawn up for commanders to consult†(Ibid, p. 207). So, there are strengths and weaknesses in the military capabilities of the Army; it would be foolish to overlook the strengths. The Planned Transformation of the Defence Forces The military capability of the Irish Defence Forces has always been modest but, since the Crash of 2008, under-resourcing has been allowed to take its toll to the point where the viability of the services has come into question. The present Government’s Programme for Government in 2020 contained a commitment to establish a Commission on the Defence Forces (CoDF) and this duly published its Report in February 2022. A recent Government document describes the progress from that point as follows: “The report proposes significant changes for the Defence Forces, including change to Defence Forces’ culture, high-level command and control structures, HR and staffing and for the level of defence provision in Ireland. In July 2022 the Government approved a decision to move to Level of Ambition 2 (LOA2), as outlined in the CoDF Report, together with an increase in the Defence budget rising to €1.5 billion, in 2022 prices, by 2028. This represents the largest increase in Defence funding in the history of the State†(Building for the Future – Change from Within, update from the High Level Action Plan for the CoDF, March 2023, p. 6) So total Budget expenditure on Defence will have risen to €1.5 billion by 2028. Defence spending in 2023 is estimated to be €1.21, but this figure may not be reached since staff shortages are causing certain services to be cut back. The Commission Report describes three Levels of Ambition, leaving it to Government to choose which would be implemented. The Government has chosen the middle Level. If the Defence Budget rises to €1.5 billion in 2028, this will represent .72 per cent of Gross National Income, a percentage significantly below what other states spend (NATO members are expected to spend a minimum of 2 per cent of Gross National Product on Defence). Arising from the Commission Report, a transformation of the Army, Naval Service and Air Corps is starting to be implemented. The planned changes to the Command and Control structure of the Forces is described as follows in a report for the Institute for International and European Affairs (IIEA, a Government think tank): “ The Commission has recommended that the Naval Service and the Air Corps be renamed to the Irish Navy and to the Irish Air Force respectively,[xiii] and have made several recommendations for changes in the C2 [Command and Control] structures of the Defence Forces. Amongst the most significant of these is the creation of the new roles of the Chief of the Army, Chief of the Navy, and Chief of the Air Force, overseen by the Chief of Defence, who will oversee the branches of the Army, Navy, and Air Force respectively [xiv]…†(A New Level of Ambition: The Capability Recommendations of The Commission on the Defence Forces, Cian FitzGerald for IIEA, 18 May 2022. The two footnotes, indicated by roman numerals in the above extract, have been omitted here, as they are not relevant). Criticism has been made of the Commission Report, some in the public domain, some not. In a webcast on 31st May 2022, available on the IIEA website, Renata Dwan and Ben Tonra discussed the Report. Tonra opined that, while the Government had chosen Level of Ambition 2 (LO2) from the Report, word was that the Department of Defence “was committed to Level 2.5â€. Tonra considered that this was not enough. Any funding short of LO3 implied that, in some areas of our national security, we would need to depend on other states like France, the Netherlands or the UK. He considered that this implication should be made known publicly, especially if the State wished to retain the neutrality policy. Renata Dwan welcomed the Report but was critical of the way Ireland’s position as an international Internet Technology hub was ignored. She said this had security implications that needed to be addressed. A problem with the contributions from Dwan and Tonra is that they take for granted the assumptions underlying the propaganda of the West and NATO. Dwan has been the Deputy Director and Senior Executive Officer of Chatham House since 2020. Chatham House has pretensions to being an independent body, but is well known as a traditional think-tank of the British Government. Tonra is a Professor of International Relations at University College Dublin (UCD). In March 2022 it was reported that he had resigned from one of his posts at UCD because he viewed the University’s response to the Russian intervention in Ukraine as “underwhelmingâ€. The UCD response, which is assumed to be related to the funding it receives for its Confucius Institute from the Chinese Government, caused Tonra to be "deeply, profoundly ashamed". Clearly, Professor Tonra is no supporter of the emerging multi-polar world order which threatens the US’s role as world policeman. Some interesting insights were provided by both speakers on the IIEA webcast, but the distorting influence of their pro-US bias was ever present. Informally, we have heard a line of criticism of the Commission Report from people with a knowledge of military matters. It is that the present Government is committed to the integration of the Defence Forces into the EU’s security structures and ultimately into those of NATO, and that the transformation of the Irish forces arises from that end goal. A security and defence re-organisation based on Irish neutrality would, it is argued, start from a different place and have very different ramifications. That is unquestionably a valid criticism worthy of investigation. Proposals from the Commission Report include: re-organisation of the Command and Control system; parity between the army, navy and air forces structured under a joint command; enhanced cyber defence; acquisition of air and maritime radar; purchase of two fixed wing aircraft with strategic reach capability; and replacement of the naval fleet and the fleet of armoured personnel carriers. Furthermore, an explainer document on the IIEA site contains the following insight regarding Irish dependence on the RAF: “Finally, with the purchase of Air and Maritime Radar Systems, the government may consider the purchase of an air-intercept capability in line with the CoDF’s recommendations. At present, the Defence Forces will continue to rely on the UK’s Royal Air Force (RAF) to intercept potentially hostile aircraft. This may pose challenges to policing Irish airspace, particularly in potential crisis situations should the RAF be otherwise engaged and leaves potential ambiguity concerning who can authorise the use of force in Irish airspace†(Explainer: Ireland’s High Level Action Plan to Enhance its Defence Forces, 2 September 2022, IIEA website). Plainly, in these matters deep understanding of military matters and perhaps a degree of insider knowledge is required. Yet there can be no doubt but that, before engaging in a major transformation of the Defence Forces, political clarity on the neutrality question needs to be established. The Case for No Army The idea of abolishing the Defence Forces was summarily dismissed on security grounds at the beginning of this paper. Yet the point crops up in Irish public discourse fairly regularly, if sometimes as a whisper in backroom conversation. In 2009 Gill and Macmillan published a book by Anthony Sweeney called Banana Republic in which the case for not having the Defence Forces was argued on economic grounds. Sweeney is not a well-known author and the tyranny of economic thinking over political, historical and social matters is not what it was before and immediately following the 2008 Crash. But consideration of Sweeny’s logic is nonetheless a useful exercise if only in showing the flaws inherent in ahistorical thinking. For a start the heightening of geopolitical tension that has followed the Ukraine War has made his views on security matters out-of-date. He argues that Ireland is a neutral country with no known adversaries and no recent history of defensive or offensive military action. Even if Ireland was threatened by another power, he says, “it is highly likely that other power would be a much bigger geographical entity, with far superior resources, so our army could offer only token resistance†(p. 186). Yet, as was seen during the Second World War, any decision by an outside Power contemplating invasion would be influenced by the amount of trouble it would encounter. The existence of even a small army that could in adversity resort to guerrilla tactics would need to be taken into consideration and was considered by Churchill. Thus, during the US’s second Iraq War, a decision to allow the defeated Iraqi Army to disband allowed its military expertise to pass to Islamic State, a decision now seen as a tactical blunder. The existence of military expertise is an asset that Sweeney does not understand or appreciate. Regarding Irish involvement in UN peacekeeping, Sweeney misses the point completely. He sees UN missions as providing the Army with experience and asks what use such experience is, other than to serve in other UN arenas. But Irish support for the UN’s peacekeeping role is a foreign policy statement from a neutral State with a colonial past, that says: we favour an international order that, as much as possible, guards against the machinations of the Great Powers. Concluding his case, Sweeney says: “These are the arguments, but if the Defence Forces were dissolved, what would Ireland need in their place? There are three things needed. Number one, a coast guard service that can handle fisheries protection, sea rescue, drug enforcement, etc. Number two, a professional Civil Defence Force comprising a permanent core of professionals who are well resourced and well trained in all civil emergencies. They would need to specialise and train in dealing with floods, medical emergencies, mountain rescues, etc. This body could be supplemented with volunteers drawn from the local community and having local knowledge and expertise, which would in turn bind the service to the community. Number three, a better resourced, better funded and better supported police force. Abolishing the military might seem unusual, but there are precedents: Panama did it in 1990 with a constitutional referendum, and a number of smaller European countries have opted for very limited or no military forces, such as Andorra, Liechtenstein and Monaco…†(Ibid, p. 188). Economists like to design new arrangements that address particular economic problems but are not good at devising how we get from the present problem to the new system. Dissolving the Defence Forces and replacing them with new and cheaper organisations would likely provoke public controversy and dissent that would sidetrack and distract the political system unnecessarily. It would entail the formation of new organisations, no easy task, that might or might not prove effective. On the other hand, the accumulated knowledge, experience, expertise and traditions of the Army, Naval Service and Air Corps would be scattered to the four winds. Building State institutions may resemble the building of a business in superficial ways but the two activities are fundamentally different. Sweeney doesn’t understand politics and has no appreciation of the role of history and tradition in affairs of State. He certainly has no understanding of the service given by the armed forces. Thankfully, as a result of the 2008 Crash, the days when people who have chosen a career in public service need to defer to the superior knowledge of veterans of the business world are no longer with us! More than any other branch of the public service the Defence Forces represent the unique world institution that is the independent Irish State, with its faults, achievements and historical identity. Their abolition, and Sweeney is right on this one point, would reduce Ireland to the status of Andorra, Liechtenstein, and Monaco. Different people will have different views on this: you either get it or you don’t. Using the Army Rangers to Make a Political Point A tweet by RTE political correspondent Paul Cunningham on 6th August contained a link to an article in the previous day’s edition of The Journal on the Irish Army Rangers. Written by Niall O’Connor and carrying the title, ‘Inside the Army Ranger Wing: Prep for overseas deployments as new laws beckon’, the article contains strong hints about Government plans to remove the Triple Lock. It also unwittingly shows how the Defence Forces are being used in the political drive to erode neutrality. In the article O’Connor describes a recent training exercise undertaken under cover of darkness in the Wicklow mountains by the Army Rangers Wing. Behind the group of Rangers, known as operators, he says, is a much bigger crew of support soldiers who work on communications, controlling hi-tech drones, weapons maintenance, and managing the needs of the operators. As O’Connor says, the whole operation takes minutes but had taken days or even weeks to prepare. It is followed by an assessment of each operator’s performance known as the circle of truth. O’Connor quotes the Commanding Officer saying: “Professionally no offence is taken, it’s part of the mind-set, critical appraisal from those most important to you, rehearse, refocus, re-engage. Self-empathy has no place here.†The Rangers wing came into existence as an elite unit of the army in the early 1980s, although the size of the unit may not exceed sixty operators. O’Connor refers to the “9-month terror of the selection processâ€. He says the skill sets of the Rangers have been tested in recent years in the evacuation of Irish personnel from Kabul, the deployment of a 14-member squad in Mali over three years (1919-22), and the evacuation of Irish citizens from Sudan. The unit has seen service in Liberia, Mali, Lebanon, East Timor, and Somalia, among other places. Thus Niall O’Connor informs his readers about an interesting unit of the Defence Forces but in a subtle way he also softens the ground for the Government’s intended legislation to remove the Triple Lock. Tying Government plans to the reform of the Defence Act, passed in 1954, to the popularity and prestige of the Rangers, his opening sentence reads: “AS THE GOVERNMENT reviews legislation which could lead to more frequent deployment overseas by Irish Defence Forces personnel, the elite Army Ranger Wing trains for scenarios that are likely to occur in peacekeeping or peace enforcement missions.†He also takes care to emphasise links between the Rangers and other Special Forces around the world: “As the State is set to redraft laws which govern the deployment of the Army Ranger Wing and other units, its members look to those missions and other special forces around the world to keep on top of an ever-changing landscape.†Later in the article, having spoken to a number of soldiers participating in the training exercise, he says: “They speak of their connections with other countries and how those connections help them complete missions—whether that is through offers of transport or bases to operate. The operators spoke warmly of those connections, particularly, with European countries.†The implication here is clear. These highly-trained soldiers are looking forward to having closer links with their counterparts in European countries; they favour greater involvement in the EU’s security and defence apparatus. O’Connor’s political subtext is: if you admire the professionalism of the Rangers and wish to see their expertise deployed overseas more often, you should support the Government’s plan to remove the Triple Lock. While Niall O’Connor’s article on the Rangers is somewhat circumspect regarding neutrality, in an earlier article in The Journal he was far more explicit. In a piece entitled, ‘Govt plans to review 'Triple Lock' system and how foreign missions for Ranger Wing are approved’ back in January, he stated: “THE GOVERNMENT is considering new legislation this year that could allow Irish special forces to be dispatched on foreign missions. It has emerged that reviews of the so-called ‘Triple Lock’ system and a 70-year-old piece of legislation which prevents the deployment of the Army Ranger Wing (ARW) are both on the table this year. The Triple Lock system is a policy measure whereby there needs to be separate approval by the Government, the Dáil and a UN Resolution to mandate a mission in order to send more than 12 Irish troops abroad. A major stumbling block to send Irish troops abroad, at present, is the need for a UN resolution on a matter. However, it is a given that in most situations, such a resolution would be vetoed by Russia or China. A change to the Triple Lock system was mooted by then Minister for Defence and Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney in November, and it has now been included in a Government policy document†(The Journal, 17 January 2023). This is false information and is shown to be so by the fact that the Rangers have been dispatched on numerous foreign missions over the years, as testified by O’Connor’s own article of 6th August. He is also wrong to say that in most situations at the present time a UN resolution to send Irish troops abroad would be vetoed by Russia or China. All the previous Irish UN missions were allowed by the Security Council. Possibly, Russia might block an Irish mission on behalf of the UN to Kiev or to anywhere that might affect the present War, but even that is debateable: a UN peace-keeping mission would most likely arise only if a settlement of some sort was agreed over Ukraine. In such circumstances the only factor preventing an Irish mission would be the extent to which the present Government has damaged the credibility of Irish neutrality. O’Connor’s article in January was written before the debate surrounding the Consultative Forum had begun. The public is now better informed about the Triple Lock. Conclusions Irish neutrality has taken the form of armed neutrality since World War II and should defended and developed through that form. Having in the past provided services necessary to the functioning of the State like marine surveillance, the air ambulance, and aid to the civil power (GardaÃ) and the civil authority (Government), and having undertaken UN peacekeeping and the defence of the State’s internal security, all with sometimes severely constrained resources, the record of the Irish Defence Forces should be recognised as an invaluable heritage. The concept of armed neutrality requires a major transformation in the resourcing and organisation of the Defence Forces. While pertinent proposals seem to be contained in the Report of the Commission on the Defence Forces, the envisaged transformation is hamstrung and compromised because of Government ambivalence on the question of neutrality. A clear commitment to neutrality is a prerequisite to the planning and execution of a major reform of the Defence Forces. The policy of paying lip service to the neutrality policy, while undermining it in practice, is based on deceit of a fundamental nature. It represents a radical departure from the State’s foreign policy tradition and should be ended. The possibility that the Government is deliberately predisposing Defence Force units to base their training exercises on future membership of EU security structures, is worrying and should be investigated. Dave Alvey |