Last week, I came across an article from The New York Times dated August 17, 1971. In one very slim column inch, obscured by a quasi-full-page advert of Macy’s suits (huge lapels, very 1970s, selling for $34.99), there was a piece about Malta.
It reported how, the day before, during a sweltering heatwave, then prime minister Dom Mintoff had declared that Malta was not interested in “establishing any permanent relationship with NATO” and, consequently, booted out anything and anyone that had to do with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. This included their forces and all the staff at their sub-headquarters in Floriana. Three days later, NATO had packed up and gone to Naples.
Mintoff was on a ‘neutrality’ roll at the time. Only a month earlier, he had barked at the British, who, after Independence, had retained military bases in Malta in exchange for an annual rent of $7.6 million. He told them that he was tripling their rent costs and, if they didn’t like it, they had to pull out. Mintoff believed Malta was of such strategic geographic value that they’d be willing to fork out whatever astronomical sum he dictated. As it were, they called his bluff and departed (and that’s what we celebrate on March 31 and call “Freedom Day”).
Interestingly in that article of August 17, 1971, The New York Times reported: “But some military experts consider that Malta has only a ‘negative’ strategic value… a potential asset to the Russians.” It noted how present at Mintoff’s anti-NATO announcement was a certain Mikhail Smirnovsky, the Soviet ambassador to London and envoy to Malta. To be sure, a few days later, the Lascaris War Rooms, which were used by NATO as a communication centre for the interception of Soviet submarines in the Mediterranean, was also closed down. Sigh.
Given that NATO was founded in 1949, after WWII and at the start of the world’s Cold War with the Soviet Union, Malta’s stand in 1971 was diplomatically bizarre. From that year on, the neutrality clause in our constitution, which describes Malta as a “neutral state actively pursuing peace, security and social progress among all nations”, was wheeled out at every opportunity (it got hysterical in the 1990s when warcraft stopped by or when Malta joined the Partnership for Peace for the grand total of 60 seconds).
Mintoff, by now, had even changed his wardrobe to reflect his ‘neutral’ politics. He stripped off his anglophile suits and styled himself in Marsa horseracing punters’ outfits: unbuttoned shirts and belts that could have doubled up as boxing championship belts. But this neutrality business was and is utter bullshit. While Mintoff waved the neutral white flag, he courted dictators like Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Kim Il-sung in North Korea and Nicolae Ceaușescu in Romania. He also nurtured closer ties to Russia and its communist philosophy, clearly something the Maltese socialist party still has not got rid of, to this day – vide our government’s reluctance to condemn Putin for his war against Ukraine.
Half a century later, we are still not a member of NATO. And perhaps we only need to look at the tragedy of Ukraine, innocently attacked by Putin, an imperialist criminal, to realise that maybe it’s high time we reconsidered our position.
Government officials seem reluctant to condemn Putin’s brutal war crimes and go to great lengths to be as ‘neutrally’ vague as possible- Kristina Chetcuti
NATO’s mission is “a desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments”, which to me reads pretty similar to what our constitution says. The only EU member states that are not NATO members, apart from us, are Austria, Cyprus, Ireland, Finland and Sweden. Now, citizens of Finland and Sweden, both neighbours of Russia, urgently want in.
In the absence of an EU military organisation, and in the reality of a very volatile world, and given that peace is the aim of both NATO and our constitution, shouldn’t we, like all other countries, be discussing the possibility of joining NATO?
If you ask me, we should not wait a minute longer.
We are no longer privy to endless footage of Ian Borg, donning a hard hat, strutting up and down, pointing at trees and fields and giving orders to replace them by asphalt. Instead, we have to make do with still images of him as foreign minister posing with… a telephone handset.
The other day, he had Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba at the other end of the line. Borg had some grovelling to do: Malta, unlike all other EU member states, has not kicked out a single Russian diplomat, even though the Russian Embassy in Malta is doing its utmost to spread misinformation and lies about the war.
And although Malta is following sanctions imposed by the EU on Russia, Malta still has not stopped its corrupt golden passports scheme – a lifeline to oligarch Russians. Moreover, government officials seem reluctant to condemn Putin’s brutal war crimes and go to great lengths to be as ‘neutrally’ vague as possible.
Kuleba insisted with Borg that the sixth EU sanctions package must include an oil embargo on Russia. Borg said nothing about this and, although this would not affect us, he does not seem to have any intention of lobbying his EU counterparts to do that, lest we ruffle our sitting-on-the-fence stance.
It is only at the end of their conversation that we realise what the call was all about. Borg asked: “Umm, isma, għidlu naqa’ lil Zelensky jagħmel Skype call magħna fil-Parlament, għid? Bħal ma għamel ma’ l-oħrajn, taf?”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky does not mince his words. In his brilliant appeals for support, he has given scathing and condemning speeches to pussyfooting parliaments. Perhaps that’s what we need to finally get off our ‘neutral’ high ground.