"IRELAND'S contribution to security is helping everybody", according to the US ambassador to NATO, Mr Robert Hunter. "What Ireland does in the European Union, in UN peacekeeping and through such people as Peter Fitzgerald in Bosnia, points to the same democratic and peaceful goals we have in NATO."
He was speaking during a conference, the 12th in a series, held in Malahide over the weekend on "Security Issues and Challenges in Europe". It was presented by the US mission to NATO in collaboration with the US embassy in Dublin.
The attendance included about 70 senior officials, diplomats, researchers, academics and journalists from some 24 European states, the US and Canada, and a number of Irish participants.
The discussion focused on NATO's new role in Europe after the end of the Cold War, on how the alliance will relate to the EU and on the mechanisms for security and defence co operation most clearly in evidence in Bosnia. There was much concentration on the NATO sponsored Partnership for Peace organisation (PIP), launched in 1994 by President Clinton. It has been joined by nearly all the former communist and neutral states (but not by Ireland) and seems set to play a bigger role now that NATO is expected to decide on enlarging its own membership at a summit meeting next year.
Mr Hunter said that "Irish security policy is for the Irish to decide. It's clearly a country that would meet all the conditions of the PIP if it wanted to join. It would be on the teaching staff for peacekeeping work. And it could join without any jeopardy to its neutrality - look at the Finns and the Swedes. But it is not for us to say and we are not pressing Ireland to join".
He explained NATO's new role in Europe by reference to the first and second World Wars and the end of the Cold War. Although NATO "is still a defence alliance designed to protect the security of its member states" it now operates in a totally different environment, which means that it has undergone a great deal of change. "It has no enemy in terms of a country or an ideology," according to Mr Hunter, but has to deal with the more intangible questions of "uncertainty, instability, lack of confidence in the future".
The forging of a new NATO role, will, in addition, "try to make people feel confident that America will remain involved in Europe".
Whereas the great powers victimised Germany after the first World War, with disastrous consequences, after the second it was decided to reincorporate it into the Western political and economic system. The same strategy is being followed with the post communist states after the end of the Cold War. He sees NATO as a necessary guarantee against external aggression and a guarantee internally that democratisation will take firm root in these societies.
Mr Hunter laughs off the suggestion that NATO is itself an aggressive organisation, which seems to underlie many of the reservations expressed about it in Ireland. When military and political leaders from the former communist states come to NATO headquarters in Brussels, which they do with extraordinary regularity these days, they ask "Were we afraid of this?", he says.
Mr Hunter says NATO is an organisation of 16 members functionally incapable" of aggression, but certainly "resolute" in defence. The extension of PIP membership to central and eastern Europe had already resulted in some miraculous agreements between former antagonists, most notably recently a treaty between Romania and Hungary dealing with minorities and other issues.
Certainly, too, NATO has "a lot of explaining and showing" to do so far as Russia is concerned, especially about the decision to enlarge its membership. But Mr Hunter is convinced that this is possible. The Russians have sent their best troops to serve in the Interim Force in Bosnia (IFOR). They operate under NATO command, with US, Swedish, Polish and Finnish troops on the ground. He is convinced that the neutral states have benefited very much from the IFOR and PIP experiences - two weeks ago a NATO conference on peacekeeping was run by the Swedes and Switzerland has now decided to seek membership of the PIP.
Mr Hunter welcomes the emerging security arrangements between the US, the EU and the Western European Union, which will give the Europeans access to NATO facilities to conduct their own operations. But he is "not sure that it will ever happen - we will be involved in anything serious". He acknowledges that there is healthy competition as well as co operation between the US and the EU on a range of political, economic and security questions.
The ambassador is a compelling advocate of his country's mission in Europe, credited with the authorship of many major security initiatives during the Clinton presidency. He advised Mr Clinton on European affairs before he was elected and is a close friend of the Kennedy family, as the US ambassador to Ireland, Mrs Jean Kennedy Smith, explained warmly at this conference.
