Priorities, Priorities

Paddy Ashdown is a fairly popular guy; long before Nick Clegg was carving out a niche for the Lib Dems Paddy Ashdown was establishing them as a political force in the UK. One can’t help but think that his rather macho image as a former SAS type helped strengthen and broaden the idea of being a “liberal”. As with many pre Clegg Leaders Ashdown probably never saw the political success he deserved but he went on to play a significant role on the world stage particularly as High Representative in Bosnia during a critical stage of its reconstruction.

Ashdown was in Dublin recently to talk about this and made some forceful points at a meeting of a Joint Oireachtas Committee on European and Foreign Affairs. A full transcript is well worth reading here. In summary Ashdown feels the EU is letting Bosnia unravel and not standing up to Serbia and its client entity in Republica Srpska and the Jim Allister of Balkan politics Milorad Dodic. He also believes that the interference by Serbia in Bosnia should not be accepted in terms of the accession process. The December European Council blocked the beginning of Serbian accession to the EU on the basis of it’s dispute with Kosovo, the implication being that the interference with Bosnia is just fine.

 

Ireland has an interesting view on this. It has clearly supported Serbia, indeed it has gone well beyond the view of the EU Commission (which itself was quite critical of Serbia but held out accession as a route to dealing with it) and has used phrases such as “major advances“ and “monumental“ . This is relatively strong stuff. We have to remember that in many instances Irelands foreign policy positions can be word for word the same as Commission statements. Paddy Ashdown has a different view. Following a fairly comprehensive presentation on the situation in Bosnia he requested that Ireland make Bosnia a foreign policy priority in the same way that the UK has. There it is, a fairly straightforward request. We could even write the language “two countries overcoming division and making their way together in a modern Europe” quite the stuff of Ferrero Rocher.

I get the feeling that such a request will be easily shrugged off and presumably the Government can cite some reasons why not. Principally we will be told that Africa and our Aid partners are our real priority. Perhaps, although even though the Government has published a worthy Africa Strategy it has not officially stated this is a foreign policy priority and we do not have a comprehensive policy document setting out what Irelands priorities are.

It is a fair question as to what Irelands priorities are in Europe’s neighbourhood, the EU has a neighbourhood policy and the External Action Service gives it a lot of attention. In terms of enlargement we are for everyone, including Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Turkey to mention but a few. Larger countries have issues with many of these countries but it seems to be a hallmark of our foreign policy that we have a “come one come all” approach. On the surface that would be fine but following Paddy Ashdowns logic might be another way of looking at it. We could then speak out and say Serbian gross interference in the internal affairs of Bosnia, undermining the Dayton Agreement, is not acceptable and will be opposed by Ireland.

Europe is where we live and we should have something to say about what happens on our continent. In Africa we prioritise human rights and democracy, maybe this would be an approach that we could try out closer to home.