Get comfy on the SOFA: Is Mintoff rolling in his grave?

Prime Minister Robert Abela’s terse replies on Monday morning on his intentions regarding signing a SOFA that could, as one of their privileges, exempt US military personnel from facing Maltese justice, spoke volumes on the unease felt inside the Labour Party and those whose identity was forged by the fiery anti-colonial rhetoric of Dom Mintoff.

It is not just old Labour that is disoriented. Labour’s first pragmatic moderniser and Dom Mintoff’s own nemesis, Alfred Sant’s first action in government was to withdraw from the NATO Partnership for Peace agreement that had been signed a year earlier by a Nationalist administration in 1995. This week the former PM and Labour MEP made his dissent public, declaring a soft spot for the USA but a “greater soft spot” for Maltese sovereignty and neutrality.

Sugaring a bitter pill

Abela has clarified that Malta’s neutrality will be safeguarded in any SOFA, while Foreign Minister Evarist Bartolo, himself a survivor from the Sant era, insisted in a belated denial of any fait accompli, that any agreement will still give Malta the right to choose which crimes should be prosecuted in Malta and which could be prosecuted in a foreign jurisdiction.

Bartolo’s choice of words, while not excluding that some crimes committed here will be prosecuted in the USA, indicated that it will be Malta which will determine which crimes will be prosecuted here or in the USA.  “We will be deciding whether anyone hailing from a foreign country who breaks the law here, will have his crime prosecuted in Malta or in another country,” he said.

The pragmatist template: while Mintoff’s anti-colonial rhetoric served as the dominant genesis of post-Boffa politics, Labour was pragmatist in its sovereignist politics. Still under Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, Labour backed dockyard strikers who prevented the HMS Ark Royal from entering the dockyard

This fine distinction made by the foreign minister may indicate which kind of SOFA agreement is being concocted. For SOFAs come with different nuances reflecting the political realities in the country signing up to enhanced military cooperation with the USA.

While Abela and Bartolo would like to sugar the bitter pill of a country which prides itself of its republican, constitutional neutrality – despite being part of the PfP after a shrewd and secret move back in 2008 – the reality is that for Labour, a SOFA remains hard to swallow. But even while sovereignism has been a hallmark of Labour policies, even under Mintoff a pragmatic side to Labour’s foreign policy always made it open to deals with foreign powers aimed at securing the island’s economic independence.

Mintoff the pragmatist

Mintoff was so pragmatic in his approach to reach the goal of economic independence that following his split with Paul Boffa, he threatened the British that he was willing to offer up Malta as a military base to the United States if they did not give the Maltese their due from their share of Marshall Aid.

Mintoff himself toyed with integration with the UK in 1956, a constitutional agreement that would have seen Malta sharing its sovereignty as part of the United Kingdom.

Mintoff believed that Malta could not emancipate itself from colonial shackles as long as it was not economically free. Political and economic independence went hand in hand. He was always aware of the fact that a strong welfare state needed an economic back-up; integration for him was one way of securing this back-up.

After being rebuffed by the UK, Mintoff re-articulated his foreign policy vision in an article in the New Statesman in 1958 where he proposed membership in the Common Market for a neutral Malta, which would act as a “Switzerland in the Mediterranean”. Free of military bases, Malta could serve as a bridge between Europe and the Arab world.

MEP Alfred Sant

Dom Mintoff then started to present himself as an anti-colonial leader in the mould of other leaders like Nasser in Egypt. Mintoff’s ease in shifting from full integration to full self-determination is an example of the politician’s pragmatism, but one shaped by a principled commitment to improve living standards and to shift the economy away from foreign military spending to a national economy based on its own industries.

But Mintoff’s long-term goal of freeing Malta from dependence on British military spending was only after he secured an additional $50 million in an agreement signed in 1972, prolonging the stay of British troops till 1979.

And while Mintoff played brinkmanship in the Cold War, anchoring Malta in the emerging non-aligned movement, he was still hoping for a visit to the White House, with US ambassador Bruce Laingen at the time noting that “a well-timed and well-coordinated invitation to visit Washington could pay worthwhile dividends in influencing a man who is both conscious of slights and enormously susceptible to attentions paid him.”

The anti-EU crusade

Anti-colonial sentiments still ran through the veins of the party led by Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici in 1984. After being sent back in opposition in 1987, it still followed the lead of dockyard workers who blocked the entrance to the grand harbour to stop the HMS Ark Royal from entering, in a major show of force which saw the aircraft carrier rerouted to St Paul’s Bay.

It was the Nationalist Party which realigned Malta’s foreign policy, shifting to closer relations with the West, which in 1995 led to Malta signing a NATO PfP agreement and commencing negotiations to join the European Economic Community. It still kept the hallmarks of Mintoff’s foreign policy, notably constitutional neutrality and friendship with Arab states: after all, this was what had been brokered in the crucial electoral and neutrality amendments of the 1986 Constitution between Mintoff and the PN’s shadow foreign minister Guido de Marco, himself a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause.

Robert Abela meets US Secretary for Defence Mark Esper, in a meeting that took place against the background of speculation about a SOFA deal with the Americans

Upon being re-elected to power in 1996, Alfred Sant immediately withdrew Malta from the PfP while “freezing” Malta’s EU membership application. But the downfall of Sant’s government, accused by the patriarchal backbencher Mintoff of succumbing to “American interests” by privatising the Cottonera shoreline to accommodate a yacht marina, prompted the return of the PN in 1998.

Here began the reactivation of the EU membership bid, which the Labour party opposed from a sovereignist position. But here Labour was opposing the sharing of sovereignty between equal member states, rather than then a loss of sovereignty.

Access to the single market and free movement in the EU has however enhanced the value of both Maltese citizenship and its financial services industry, a fact of life for Labour’s economic vision today. But this also came at the cost of increased scrutiny from the European Commission on Malta’s more insalubrious problems, which has allowed Labour to re-invent sovereignism as a defence of Malta’s turf in the face of intrusions by pesky MEPs and foreign critics.

Muscat under the spotlight

While under Joseph Muscat the party still paid homage to Mintoff’s legacy, anti-colonialism was no longer the fashion within the Labour Party.

After 2013 Malta was gripped by the fever of an economic growth which thrived in its role as a service hub for the global economy, including its dark side of shell companies, corrupt dealings and the sale of passports.

Ironically it was in defending Malta’s turf on this slippery slope that Muscat found himself re-evoking the party’s sovereignism against scrutiny by MEPs and international bodies like the Council of Europe, which intensified after the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Joseph Muscat began life as PM of an EU member state who viewed American dominance as a fact of political life

Against this backdrop, Malta fostered a friendly relationship with the USA which enhanced the new government’s pro-western ‘respectability’ and also affirmed by antagonism towards Vladimir Putin’s Russia. But it was fatally undermined by the assassination of Caruana Galizia, which threw a spotlight on Malta’s darkest secrets.

Unlike Sant, Muscat did not withdraw from the PfP, an agreement controversially reactivated by Richard Cachia Caruana by the PN in 2008. But with veteran George Vella anchored in the foreign ministry, it also remained clear that Malta was still stuck to its red lines on SOFA, kept intact by previous Nationalist administrations despite their pro-Western orientation.

Under the spotlight

The reputational damage from the Caruana Galizia assassination may well have rendered the country more vulnerable to outside pressure, something which added a new twist to the SOFA plot while strengthening the case for enhanced cooperation with the US in tackling organised crime and oil smuggling.

While signing a SOFA may just represent a pragmatic step to bolster cooperation with an influential world power which has similar agreements with over 100 nations, more than an epochal realignment, the vulnerability of Malta’s position brought about by its poor governance, raises questions on whether it is being bullied by a big power in a moment of weakness. For unlike Mintoff’s brinkmanship which saw him extracting money from the West so as not to switch to the other side, in this case Malta lacks any bargaining chips. It remains to be seen whether its vulnerability will make it more disposed to give even more leeway to US military interests, including more frequent visit by military vessels in its ports and dockyards, which could be facilitated by any exemption for US military personnel from local justice.

For as post-Second World War history shows, US imperial appetite often grows as it eats. And for Malta, the allure of spending by military personnel may offer short-cuts in the post-COVID recovery period, but at the cost of a lurch to the pre-1979 past, when Malta’s economy was dependent on British military spending, thus reversing Dom Mintoff’s greatest achievement.