Sir, - Michael McLoughlin (October 6th) claims that he has "yet to hear a convincing argument to the contrary" of his contention that "the training and military co-operation which PfP sponsors undoubtedly makes European conflicts less likely, and would enhance Ireland's contribution to European and thus global security."
Far be it from me to attempt to damage Mr McLaughlin's adamantine certainty, but please permit me space to pose a question for your less fixed readers. Is there perhaps the slightest possibility that by positing European security as a necessary precursor of global lack of conflict, such advocates might just be reversing the order of the best route to a situation of overall stability?
Could it conceivably be that the best route to European security lies in the promoting of a globalisation that is something more than a licence for the former colonial powers to continue extracting resources (mineral, fossil fuel and educated elites) through free market mechanisms.
Consideration of the point might just shake some of the depressing certainty of those who seem unable to grasp that the reason for UN ineffectuality is often sabotage, through fund and support starvation, by these same First World political moralists whose ethnic cleansing is perpetrated through the "clean hands" of IMF austerity programmes. - Yours, etc., Damien Flinter,
Aillebrack, Ballyconneely, Connemara.