"Between a rock and a hard place" is the highly original expression chosen by the Foreign Minister, David Andrews, to describe the Government's attitude to the subjugation and pillaging of the province of Kosovo and the butchery of its male population. Ah yes, the Herr Hempel school of Irish diplomacy; neutralism at its most querulously sanctimonious. (Most sorry to hear of your beloved leader's death, Herr Hempel. You must be very upset. And the dog died too, I hear. How sad. I was never in Berlin myself, but my good friend the writer Mr Stuart lives there. Have you met him?)
Foreign policy is not an easy matter, especially in time of war, but its creation is worthy of a little more thought than is suggested by the rock-and-the-hard place metaphor. If the Government cannot decide that what Milosevic is doing is a perfectly monstrous barbarism, and if it feels unable to support the action of publicly accountable governments, then we must presume that it is incapable of expressing itself strongly about any issue. (And Mr Hitler's special lady friend? Is it true that she too . . ? Ah. I am most sorry to hear it. A very great tragedy indeed. Thank you, tea would be delightful.)
Legacy of wars
It has taken a ludicrous and lazy dependency culture in Europe to bring this tragedy about. That culture is the legacy of two wars which broke Europe's will to fight, to defend itself, to project its will and its standards beyond its own immediate boundaries. Europe is a rich but crippled child, pampered to a degree inconceivable in world history, but unable to get out of the nursery, and minded throughout by the greatest nanny of them all, the US.
It is that way because Europe chooses it to be that way. In 1914, Europe had almost a monopoly on military technology. Its battleships and armies were the mightiest in the world. French aviation was infinitely superior to anything anywhere. Today, Europe's defence is wholly in pawn to the US. Whatever technology is being used in Serbia is American technology. If we were to depend on the native genius of European weaponry alone, Slobodan Milosevic would be master of a Croatless, Muslim-free Greater Serbia.
He is not the only criminal in this conflict. Criminality could prosper in the region, on Europe's backdoor, simply because criminals do not live in fear of their neighbours, the democracies of western Europe. Serbs understandably complain about NATO's interest in the fate of the Kosovo Albanians; what interest did NATO show in the 200,000 Serbs expelled by Croatia from Krajina? What interest did NATO show in the elderly who decided to remain and were butchered in their homes by Croat fascists? And who can blame Serbs for pointing out that the Croat army is the invention of the US and that Croatia is now the eastern extension of State Department policy?
Inertia
But inertia towards one example of ethnic cleansing does mean that one should be consistently inert. We need not linger long over the virtues of the KLA; there are few or even none. Their early victims were isolated and defenceless Serb villagers. They began a war which they could not win without outside intervention. Who knows, maybe some Machiavellian theorist in their upper ranks knew that Milosevic could be relied on to clear the province of its untermensch rather than lose the heartland of the Serbian religion and identity, its Jerusalem, its Mecca and its Medina. And maybe he calculated that NATO would then be obliged to intervene.
All this is irrelevant. How we got to the crisis is largely a matter for historians. We are in it now; mumbling baffled pieties about rocks and hard places does nothing to get us out of it. Every single piece of equivocation feeds the appetite of dictators for more. And though that villain, with his murderous retinue of Arkan and Mladic and their retinue of torturers and killers, is unlikely to tremble at the thought of being condemned by Ireland, we at least would feel better. We would be standing four square with the democracies of the world; and when it comes to the policy of genocide, where else is it better to stand? (And the bunker destroyed too? Tut tut. Thank you, another cup would be most delightful. One lump, please. And Mr Stuart? Is he well? We listen to his broadcasts. Most illuminating.)
People expelled
Sweden, whose neutrality is of the real, armed, come-at-get-me-but-count-the-cost-Buster variety, has chosen to support NATO because it has recognised that there is now not a choice between rocks and hard places. An entire people have been expelled from their homes. Their men are being murdered, their towns and villages torched. To seek refuge in casuistry, to mumble witless cliches about how we do not get involved in armed alliances, is to say to the expelled of Kosovo, as we must say to the dead Jewry of Europe: we were aware of your plight, and what did we do? We did nothing. (Well, I must be going now. I have a meeting with our censors, those splendid fellows who have been censoring death notices of Irishmen killed in action and valiantly keeping the truth about the death camps from the Irish public. After all, we are neutral. Once again, Herr Hempel, my heartfelt condolences.)