Malta must move on – Nikos Chircop

The queen is dead, long live the king and, likewise, following the recent paradigm shifting events in global politics that culminated on February 24, the old-world order, too, is dead. I mention this event particularly in light of our small, yet proud, country that, in its continued efforts to discover its post-colonial path, seems to persist on a foreign policy modus operandi that, in many ways, was developed as a reflection not just of the previous unipolar world order but to that which existed even before the collapse of Mikhail Gorbachev’s USSR. Gorbachev, like the queen, and also like the perit of Malta’s constitutionally enshrined neutrality clause, former prime minister Dom Mintoff, are dead. But is Malta’s historic foreign policy posture – cemented on what for many is the sacrosanct principle of a neutral state that views its pursual of peace, security and social progress through the lens of non-alignment – also an essentially crippling posture that is begging for its own termination? Today, two arguably contradictory facts exist in parallel on our islands. On one hand, there thrives a firm (frankly ideological) commitment among not only most policy makers but also among...