The original title of Marcel Proust's autobiographical novel, À la recherche du temps perdu, was used as the heading of an article that appeared in a recent issue of The Economist. This particular contribution recounted how with the certainties of the Cold War now gone, bipartisanship in US foreign policy is a thing of the past. With the world becoming a more fluid and complicated place and the US finding it impossible to recapture the old certainties that no longer exist, the writer of the commentary sought to find out what would replace those certainties.
What hit me while reading this piece was the uncanny parallel that is evident with some reactions to the news that Malta has reactivated its membership of the Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme.
Former Labour prime minister, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici (KMB), insists that this membership is in breach of the 'neutrality' clause in the Constitution. Discounting the evident nostalgia for things past when one knew exactly where one stood between the two superpowers, there are more pertinent questions to be asked.
How correct is the allegation that PfP membership is in breach of our Constitution? Are not certain aspects of the 'neutrality clause', as drawn up in 1987, passé in the current circumstances?
There is an evident difference between KMB's fundamentalist stand on the PfP issue and what Charles Mangion was reported to have told The Times last Monday. KMB's mentality seems to have stuck in the past: as if the Cold War were not over and the Warsaw Pact had not been wound up. The MLP seems to have reacted more to the manner and timing of the Government decision than to the fact itself. Mangion's comment to the effect that the MLP does not rule out amendments to the Constitution as regards Malta's neutrality 'in the light of a changing global reality' was refreshing news.
PfP is simply a programme of practical bilateral cooperation between individual countries and Nato. Each country is free to build up an individual relationship with Nato, choosing its own priorities for co-operation. Its official aim is to increase stability, diminish threats to peace and build strengthened security relationships between individual countries and Nato, as well as among the partner countries.
There is no way that the PfP can be considered a military alliance, as some seem to want to believe at all costs. Nor is it true that Malta's PfP membership obliges it to take part in any hostilities. A look of the states that are PfP partners should suffice to put this argument at rest. These partners include diverse neutral countries such as Switzerland, Finland, Ireland and Sweden as well as Russia and a host of countries that used to form part of the now defunct USSR.
It is true that the PfP is a NATO initiative, but to portray it as completely cut off from the EU is yet another attempt at discounting the truth in order to keep insisting on an argument that is based on the wrong premises.
The EU discusses issues of security regularly. Malta has invariably found itself in the situation where it had to withdraw from these discussions because its absence from the PfP precludes it from information which is only given to PfP members.
At the same time, as an EU member, Malta participates in the decision-making process on security issues. Malta was therefore facing a very peculiar situation: it could not really fulfil its obligations that result from its EU membership as it was being left in the dark about information relating to security in Europe; information that it is in the country's interest to have on a regular basis. Malta can only gain maximum benefit from its EU membership - as promised in the PN electoral programme - if we participate in all the discussions about European security as well. Membership in the PfP gives Malta this right.
Going back to our 'neutrality' clause, I recall that when this was discussed in Parliament in January 1987, Eddie Fenech Adami - then Leader of the Opposition - had proposed two simple amendments to it. These would have removed the word 'neutral' - which, he maintained, could mean so many different things; the reference to 'non-alignment' as this could even be a stance that contradicts neutrality; and the reference to 'the two Superpowers'. Dr Fenech Adami argued that the way the clause was written presupposed a permanent state of confrontation between the two super-powers. Little did he know that that 'permanency' was destined to fizzle into thin air so soon.
The then Prime Minister, KMB, opposed these amendments. His argument was that the terms 'neutrality' and 'non-alignment' implied other notions that were not explicitly declared in the clause and could be covered by the use of the two terms. Apparently, KMB thinks that certain ideas he holds so dear are only implied by stealth. No wonder he finds it convenient to argue that these 'ideas' are covered by the neutrality clause.
KMB also said that 'we would be foolish to think that we would be able to see the end of the two superpowers in the immediate future'. How wrong he was. And in that situation, he continued to argue, the reference to them in the Constitution would not have any effect except that it would be 'outdated'. Yes that was the word that he actually used.
Today, the Constitution's so-called 'neutrality' clause needs updating. There would have been no such need had KMB accepted the Opposition's amendment 21 years ago.
I have no doubt that KMB does not agree with this assessment. For him and those of his ilk, the past is also both the present and the future.
micfal@maltanet.net