Ireland, Neutrality and European Security Integration

Róisín Doherty

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138740129
• eBook ISBN: 9781351729260
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This title was first published in 2002: Roisin Doherty provides an innovative insight into European security policy by concentrating on Ireland through an analysis of compatibility of Irish neutrality with security integration. She also analyzes the factors influencing security integration. This contemporary analysis of neutrality also deals with the development of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and examines the factors pushing forward the development of EU security policy. A specialized text suitable for undergraduate and post-graduate courses in international relations, European studies and administrative studies, this stimulating volume will appeal to those interested in the European Union, Irish foreign policy, neutrality and the CFSP in general.

1 Introduction

The new European security order constructed after the end of the Cold War has severely tested the adaptive abilities of the security policies of all the European neutrals, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and Ireland. All of these countries except Ireland based their neutrality policy on impartiality between the blocs. Membership of the European Union (EU)¹ has required adjustments in neutral policy in particular to allow for observer status in the Western European Union (WEU) and to keep pace with the evolving relationship between the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). It has also been necessary for the neutrals to form relationships with NATO through its off-shoot organisation Partnership for Peace (PfP). More fundamentally the development of the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) towards a common defence policy has posed particular problems for neutrality as the eventual aim of common defence, to which all the neutrals have committed themselves, may be incompatible with neutrality. While this is a long term project and the end is uncertain, the process of security integration is under way and has been complemented by developments in NATO and Europe's broader security architecture.

These changes raise the question of to what extent states previously committed to neutrality will be involved in this new order and what the implications will be for neutrality. This research will attempt to answer these questions from Ireland's perspective, focussing on the continued compatibility of neutrality with participation in European security structures, particularly the CFSP. Recent changes have challenged Ireland because of a tension in the national psyche between the fact that the population wants to maintain what it thinks of as neutrality and the contradictory fact that Ireland is committed to the EU, which is developing a defence dimension. Irish Governments have addressed this tension by promising a referendum if Ireland ever accepts a defence commitment.

The late 1990s have witnessed the implementation of the Amsterdam Treaty, the fiftieth anniversary of NATO, and war in the Balkans. They thus provide an opportune moment to examine the compatibility of neutrality with increased co-operation in European security. The research covers all the main events of the 1990s analysing them from an Irish perspective. This is significant because Ireland changed its orientation during 1999 towards engagement in European security structures.

Consequently, the book aims to demonstrate how current developments in European security in the EU and beyond affect Irish neutrality, and to analyse the compatibility of Irish neutrality with current and future developments in this area. From this flow two objectives.

Firstly, an assessment of the level of Irish engagement in European security developments since 1992, linking this with neutrality in order to determine whether neutrality has constrained Irish participation in European security structures. Secondly, the research argues that Irish neutrality is compatible with developments in European security, including in the EU context, in the short to medium term. However, in the longer term security and defence integration in the EU will mean that Ireland will eventually have to choose between neutrality and full integration into the CFSP. Other issues to be examined as a result of these objectives are:

• That events outside the EU, in NATO and in WEU, have an impact on Ireland and on the CFSP.
• That Irish neutrality is capable of great flexibility and will be stretched to the limit before its core of non-involvement in military alliances will be abandoned.
• That Ireland has not reached a watershed in its approach to neutrality.
• That neutrality is not under any direct pressure within the EU.

Contrasts will be drawn between Ireland and the other neutral states in order to answer these questions, particularly to see if neutrality has constrained Irish involvement in European security structures as well as to assess the future of neutrality within the EU. The accession of the other continentals to the EU raised the possibility of a 'neutral club' within the Union, which might be a bar to further defence integration, but this has not been the case.² Domestic constraints such as public opinion and the impact of coalition politics and lobby groups will be examined where they are relevant in chapters 6, 8 and 9 but they are not the focus of the study.

It must be noted that the research does not define neutrality in an intellectual way. A common definition of neutrality among the four neutrals is almost impossible given the differences in history, geography and political culture, which have shaped their neutrality. This is aside from the question of whether they are really neutral any more. However, they do hold in common the fact that the end of their present status would be membership of a military alliance and the research proceeds from this assumption. Irish neutrality will be given deeper meaning in the domestic context in order to understand how it affects Irish freedom of manoeuvre on the international stage.

Ireland: A Neglected Case Study

This study does not aim to analyse the meaning or relevance of neutrality in the post-Cold War context. Instead it concentrates on examining neutrality and the CFSP from the perspective of a single country, Ireland.

An in-depth study on Ireland was chosen rather than a broader comparative study because Ireland is a special case when compared to the continental neutrals. This is due to the different factors determining Irish neutrality particularly the fact that, during the Cold War, the Soviet Union had much less influence over Ireland than it had over Finland, Sweden or Austria. In addition neutrality was not as important a factor in Ireland's security policy as it was in the other neutrals. This difference made it much harder for Ireland to re-examine neutrality in the light of new security needs after the end of the Cold War. Consequently, in contrast to Ireland, Austria appears to be evolving towards NATO membership, while the Finns and Swedes have dropped the use of the word neutrality in official texts.³ A broad analysis of their positions in a comparative study would not have allowed valid comparisons to be drawn between these states and Ireland who has adapted much slower to changing security conditions.

Secondly, the study seeks to assess those forces, which have propelled the neutrals into deeper integration. Although Ireland shares with the other neutrals a determination not to enter military alliances, in many other areas Ireland's participation in European security structures such as Partnership for Peace was delayed leading to the conclusion that those forces are either being felt to a lesser degree in Ireland or that Ireland is better able to resist them. Because of this, the impact of these forces should be examined from Ireland's perspective and not in a comparative study.

Ireland is also worthy of study because of the lack of recent work on Irish neutrality. From an examination of the literature it is evident that there has been less concentration on Irish neutrality in the European literature as the contributions of Sundelius and Hakovirta, written during the Cold War, demonstrated⁴ To the extent that Ireland's security policy has been ignored in the European context, Ireland would therefore appear to be a worthy subject for study. Previous works on Irish neutrality by Keatinge (1984)⁵ and Salmon (1989)⁶ have concentrated on the meaning of Irish neutrality in general and are not set within the European context. The literature on Ireland has concentrated on Ireland and the integration process in general.⁷ The exception to this has been Keatinge (1996) who has examined Ireland's security choices in the context of the Amsterdam negotiations.⁸ This study however, has not examined how the various aspects of the security architecture have affected Irish neutrality and did not provide any prescriptions for policy beyond the Amsterdam Treaty. However, Keatinge (1996), Keatinge (1984) and Salmon (1989) provide a good foundation on which to build a picture of Irish neutrality in the EU.

By contrast there have been recent contributions on continental neutrality in the EU context. Harden (1994), focused on the neutrality of the continental neutrals and membership of the EC,⁹ and Luif (1995) concentrated on the progress of the accession negotiations between the EC and the neutrals,¹⁰ A follow-up study, which would include Ireland and which would examine neutrality in the EU since the accession of Sweden, Finland and Austria in 1995, would not provide a sufficient depth of understanding of the forces compelling the neutrals towards deeper integration. This understanding can be achieved through the study of one state, Ireland. In addition although all the neutrals face the same difficulties in relation to European integration, Ireland is likely to be the last to contemplate abandoning non-alignment thus allowing useful comparisons to be drawn between it and the other neutrals.

There have also been more general comparative studies of the neutrality of the continental neutrals such, as Sundelius (1987)¹¹ and Hakovirta (1988)¹² but these have not included Ireland because of the difficulties in describing Ireland as neutral during the Cold War and because Ireland's position vis-à-vis the Soviet Union was different from those of the continental neutrals. These studies should be updated and include Ireland but this would change the focus of the research to a more general work on neutrality after the Cold War thus precluding an in-depth study of the CFSP. Given the fact that the neutrals now pursue their foreign policies in this framework a study of the CFSP is more relevant. Work on Ireland within the CFSP would fill a gap in the literature both on this subject and on neutrality and would complement two recent studies on the CFSP from the Finnish and Swedish perspective.¹³ These contributions have included just one chapter on Ireland.¹⁴

Theoretical Framework and Methodology

The theoretical framework consists of three parts, each corresponding to a different aspect of the explanation as to the dynamic behind the changes in both the CFSP and neutrality. There is no single theory, which accounts for this dynamic therefore elements of a number of new and traditional EU integration theories have been used. Some such as liberal intergovernmentalism have been found to be partly applicable. The first part of the explanation concerns the influence of internal integrative dynamics within the EU. The theoretical approach, which most accurately describes this process in the Union, is a modified form of neo-functionalist spillover supplemented by ideas on the lock-in effect of prior decisions. The second part of the explanation concerns the influence of the member states and how domestic preferences are formed. Here liberal intergovernmentalism forms a significant part of the explanation. The final part of the explanation concerns the impact of the international system both on the development of the CFSP and neutrality and on individual state's perceptions of their own national interest. Here, integration is explained using neo-liberalism supplemented by a theory of regimes.

The methodology of the research is also diverse, relying on a range of information derived from secondary sources, supplemented by in-depth, elite, semi-structured interviews with over sixty respondents in Dublin and Brussels, conducted between February and June 1998. Respondents came from institutions such as the European Commission, Council Secretariat, Permanent Representations of the Member States, European Parliament, NATO, WEU, Dáil Eireann, interest groups and government departments in Ireland.

Preview of Chapters in the Book

The book is split into three sections. The first section contains a review of the meaning of neutrality, an examination of neutrality in Ireland and Irish attitudes towards security integration as an EU member, and the theoretical framework. Chapter 2 outlines the evolution of neutrality and highlights the differences between Ireland's neutrality and that of Finland, Sweden and Austria, which justify consideration of Irish neutrality as a special case. Irish attitudes to neutrality are developed in chapter 3 as part of a more general discussion of Irish attitudes towards neutrality from the period before 1939 until 1992. Chapter 4 considers the dynamics of the CFSP and argues that in the long-term Ireland cannot avoid deeper security and defence integration in the EU. This is due to the internal dynamic in the Union evident in chapter 3, and the effect of external developments in NATO and the WEU. This second theme will be taken up in later chapters when the effect of these external developments on the CFSP will be analysed.

The second section details developments in European security from the Treaty of Maastricht until the beginning of March 2000, analysing the factors which have propelled the neutrals into deeper security co-operation and assessing the possibility that these forces will eventually lead to the abandonment of neutrality within the EU. Chapter 5 outlines the forces which combined to assure that the EU would not make any progress at Amsterdam beyond agreement on Petersberg Tasks while chapter 6 provides an account of the Amsterdam negotiations, the Irish role and the role of other member states, supranational bodies and organisations in the process. Chapter 7 completes...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Irish Terms
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Meaning of Neutrality
• 3 Irish Attitudes to Neutrality from World War Two until the Treaty of Maastricht
• 4 The Dynamics of the CFSP
• 5 The European Security Architecture from Maastricht to Amsterdam
• 6 Security and Defence Aspects of the Amsterdam Treaty
• 7 Developments in European Security After the Treaty of Amsterdam
• 8 The Importance of the Partnership for Peace for Irish Participation in European Peacekeeping
• 9 WEU and Defence Integration: Ireland's European Security Choices
• 10 Towards Engagement: Irish Neutrality and European Integration in the New Millennium
• Bibliography