Sir, - While several details of Lt Gen Gerry McMahon's useful presentation of the case for joining Partnership for Peace (Opinion, May 12th) are open to debate (e.g. can Sweden be cited as in any way exemplary when its policy of aggressive arms exportation makes it an aggravating factor in the ongoing militarisation of the world?), the whole argument stands or falls on whether or not one regards NATO as an acceptable candidate for partnership.
I submit that NATO is an inherently immoral institution designed for the needs of the military-industrial nexus. As a Cold War creation, it should have gone the way of the Warsaw Pact. However, the militarists need a permanent war and a permanent enemy, be it tyrannies originally installed and maintained by the "great powers" themselves, militant Islam, or merely the resurgent poor and dispossessed (your May 12th issue coincidentally cites UK Defence Secretary George Robertson: "The days of cutting defence budgets are over"). Ireland, as a small nation still not fully decolonised, should have no part in such a phony partnership.
Several of Lt-Gen McMahon's other premises assume a relationship of trust between government and governed in this country. But we know that our politicians are up for grabs, and that their promises are so much hot air. Today they are in the pockets of developers; tomorrow their paymasters may well be the mandarins of global militarisation.-Yours, etc.,
Raymond Deane, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.