Malta and whose army?

Nothing like a spot of good old-fashioned hysteria to make people overlook even the most glaring and conspicuous facts about their country. And as hysteria mounts over the disintegration of nearby Libya, we all seem to have forgotten a small detail that has always been one of Malta’s more conspicuous features.

We have completely forgotten our utter lack of any military defence capability … not to mention the even more glaring lack of an offensive military capability that can conceivably contribute to the invasion of another territory.

Yet strangely, we now hear calls that Malta should participate in a coalition against ISIS: the Islamic terrorist organisation which seems to be firmly encamped on our doorstep, in a Libya aflame with chaos and turmoil. I say ‘strangely’ for a number of reasons. For one thing, it is unclear whether this ‘coalition’ – which officially claims just over 60 countries, including nearly all the EU – even exists. As far as I can see, the only countries actually bombing ISIS today are Jordan and Egypt. Where’s the rest of this coalition? What is it doing?

But to save time, let’s concede that the coalition does exist, at least on paper. The question then becomes: should we join? And if we do join… how will we contribute to its operations (and. more cogently, with what)?

Let’s take them in reverse order? With what? With nothing that can be described as a military force. In case no one’s noticed, Malta’s full military asset complement – including 100% of its personnel – can be comfortably accommodated on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, leaving plenty of room to spare. 

The AFM’s total manpower amounts to little more than 2,000: which is only marginally greater than the student population of the secondary school I attended in the 1980s. Our entire air force consists of eight fixed-wing aircraft and five helicopters: not one of which is equipped with fixed armaments. We also have a small naval flotilla, comprising seven patrol vessels, five interceptor vessels and a few other smaller craft. Most of the assets comprising both air and maritime capabilities were donated by other countries. 

In fairness, it must also be said that this humble military capability has been put to very effective (non-military) use over the years. Malta’s air force and navy have been instrumental in saving thousands of lives in search and rescue operations over the past two decades alone. As we speak, the AFM’s severely limited human resources are already at full stretch between co-ordinating such operations and overseeing militarised detention compounds for immigrants. We can argue until we’re blue in the face about Malta’s immigration policy and the strain this places on the AFM… but you certainly can’t say they’re sitting on their asses doing sweet FA.

But this only stresses the point that our armed forces are of a civilian, not military, nature. Which also means our ability to contribute to international military combat operations is quite literally zilch.

This leaves us with other forms of collaboration: logistics, intelligence-sharing, participation in counter-terrorism and organised crime efforts (including against human trafficking operations), etc. And last I looked, Malta was already involved in all that. We are signatory to the Council of Europe’s Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings; our police and security services network routinely collaborate with Europol (and other international agencies) in the fight against terrorism, organized crime, money laundering (which finances terrorism), and so forth. 

Personally, I fail to see how joining an international coalition against ISIS will provide any help that we are not, de facto, already providing. Unless, of course, we broaden the scope of ‘military assets’ to also include the territory of Malta itself…. in which case, the dynamic changes considerably.

Malta does indeed possess assets which would interest (and did interest, in the past) other military powers. It is a strategically valuable location from which to oversee Mediterranean operations, for instance; and its naval facilities, which have always been eyed with admiration and greed by foreign military powers, are better for that purpose than (say) Lampedusa’s. 

It was these assets that first encouraged the Knights of St John to accept an otherwise barren and resource-less island in 1530; and it was the same assets – and especially the use of those assets to disrupt German convoy lines to North Africa – that attracted the attention of Axis bombers in World War II.

But if this is the type of assistance we would be expected to provide as members of an anti-ISIS coalition, what it implies is a total overhaul of Malta’s Constitutional neutrality…which, let’s face it, has often been demanded before. The Constitution specifically forbids the use of Malta’s harbours as a launch-pad for any military operation targeting any other country [note: as others have already pointed out, this does not extend to humanitarian or logistical support… but then, we wouldn’t need to be a member of any coalition for that anyway]. 

So whether one agrees with neutrality or not, there is an existing legal impediment to this form of involvement that cannot just be ignored at will.

Ultimately, then, when people like MEP Roberta Metsola (echoed by the Opposition party) call for enrolment in this coalition, what they are indirectly doing is challenging Malta’s status as a neutral, non-aligned country. Absolutely fine by me, I hasten to add – I have reservations about it myself – so long as we all understand the possible ramifications for the future.

Has the time come to revisit Malta’s neutrality? Given the situation unfolding around us on almost all fronts… I think the question is now inescapable. The first thing that needs to be revisited is, in fact, the meaning of ‘neutrality’ as enshrined in the Constitution. Are we ‘neutral’ out of some endemic, deeply-ingrained tendency towards non-aggression and non-violence among our people? Or is it simply a practical defence mechanism which recognises the stark fact that Malta, on its own, is permanently defenceless and gapingly vulnerable to attack?  

I don’t think we’ve ever properly debated this point. ‘Neutrality’ has always been presented to us as a form of ‘inviolable principle’ to which we have collectively subscribed as a nation. Yet there was never any real national consensus. There was parliamentary consensus in 1987, yes: but even here, this did not arise out of a shared belief in the principle itself. In fact, the neutrality clause has been openly flouted by succeeding governments over the past three decades. (It also specifically prohibits visits by warships, remember?) 

The reality is that Malta’s neutrality was the result of a last-minute compromise to avoid a repeat of the 1981 election result (with all the possible effects this might have had in terms of political stability, violence, etc.). The actual bargaining took place between the late Guido de Marco and Dom Mintoff in the months following the death of Raymond Caruana in December1986… and this alone gives an indication of what was really at stake. 

Neutrality only came into the equation through the side door. It was the sop thrown in by Mintoff to make the deal resemble a glorious victory for his own political vision for the future of Malta… when we all knew at the time that it was just a desperately-scrambled compromise to avoid bloodshed.

There was, however, another more practical consideration in 1987. The timing was significant: a year earlier, a British and American strike force had bombed Tripoli after a protracted game of brinkmanship by the late Colonel Gaddafi. Rumours that Gaddafi had retaliated by firing missiles at Comiso (in Sicily) and Lampedusa had greatly reinforced the perception of Malta as a hopelessly vulnerable territory ripe for annexation. Even before we became neutral, former PM Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici had long tried to portray the country as a diplomatic ‘bridge’ between Libya’s Gaddafi and Italy’s Bettino Craxi. This may explain why Malta’s Constitutional neutrality is supposedly ‘guaranteed’ by those same two countries: Italy and Libya. 

Oops. This brings us to a somewhat massive pothole in the great road to neutrality: what happens if the two guarantors of our neutrality go to war with each other? Or, for that matter, if one (or both) ceases to exist as a functional state in future?

Incredibly, neither possibility – the first of which was incidentally much more real in 1986 than today – seems to have occurred to the architects of Malta’s neutrality clause at the time. Nor did it occur to them that the geo-political realities of the 1980s might not be the realities of the future… as exemplified in the well-known fact that the Constitution still uses Cold War terminology such as “two superpowers”, etc.

The upshot is that Malta’s neutrality clause is obsolete, and quite frankly unworkable in practice now that one of its guarantor nations has all-but disintegrated before our eyes. I’ll leave it to legal experts to decide whether this also means that the neutrality clause itself is now open to legal challenge in the Constitutional Court. 

So coming back to the question of whether or not to join the anti-ISIS coalition… it might perhaps be more useful if the people calling for that option also explain how, exactly, they envisage us as contributing member to the ensuing war. I believe the possibility of active combat engagement has already been ruled out. What about the use of Malta’s territory as a base of operations? Is that part of the package of enrolment? If so, we can kiss the concept of neutrality goodbye forever (for better or worse).

If, on the other hand, the intention is to provide help that can be provided regardless of coalition membership… then it becomes more of a political statement than an actual involvement. Indeed this is how it has been presented in most arguments: failure to make this statement in the face of ISIS atrocity amounts to ‘cowardice’.

As for myself, I still can’t decide which is the more cowardly: failing to make that statement (as the government is doing), or making it while all along not actually intending to commit a single soldier or military asset to any anti-ISIS operation (as the Opposition seems to be suggesting). 

Perhaps the truth is simpler than that. Perhaps, being a nation without any real military capability or even aspirations, we are beset by a choice of cowardice on all fronts.