Tom Griffin (London, OK):Over at the main openDemocracy site, John Palmer looks at the stakes as Ireland contemplates a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
With ratification now virtually complete in the rest of the EU (the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany apart), the Irish veto has put the whole process of reforming the way the union functions into cold storage.
Meanwhile, a number of large-scale issues and events have emerged or become more acute since discussions about a new constitutional treaty for Europe began - global economic crisis, severe threats of climate change, dangerous regional conflicts, challenging geopolitical shifts, prospects for significant change in United States policy under a new president. All are stretching or will stretch to the limit the capacity of the union to react.
As Palmer notes, under the charismatic leadership of Declan Ganley (profiled in a recent RTE documentary), much of the Irish No campaign is now closely linked to the kind of euro-sceptic circles which may yet come to power in Britain in the next few years.
Ganley celebrated his victory in the first referendum with a speech to the Heritage Foundation's Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom in Washington. Heritage's concerns about European integration are very different from Ireland's worries about neutrality:
It is frightening to imagine what would happen to American interests if the supranational imperative extended further into the foreign and security policy realm. For example, if a Common European Foreign and Security Policy had genuinely functioned in 2003, however badly, then Belgium, France, or Greece (all states with strongly anti-American publics) could have vetoed the U.K., Poland, and Italy from aiding America in Iraq
It seems, ironically, that De Valera's constitution has become the best hope for traditional Atlanticism.
