We all think about and dis­cuss the com­plex area of for­eign affairs dai­ly, some­times so sub­tly that it’s unno­ticed even to our­selves.

I do it a lot.

I do it with fam­i­ly, with friends, with col­leagues and I do it on social media and else­where. Even with strangers and adver­saries. I do it on radio and through oth­er media. So I have decid­ed to set out here, for clar­i­ty and also per­haps for respect­ful debate, my own con­sid­ered posi­tion on major for­eign affairs issues and per­spec­tives and how I approach the big issues that shape all of our lives.

A Per­spec­tive:

I think we all have an innate trib­al ori­en­tat­ed instinct to pick a side. It’s human, it feels sat­is­fy­ing, it rais­es pas­sions and it gets the blood flow­ing. It’s nat­ur­al. It’s also so innate an impulse that it’s child­ish, even infan­tile, but it can be hard to repel.

So I exer­cise that impulse, which is strong inside me, through sport in gen­er­al and foot­ball in par­tic­u­lar. Put a foot­ball match on between any two teams from any coun­try in the world and I’ll quick­ly pick one and fol­low them through­out the game. I have two teams I have fol­lowed in this way through­out my adult life, many oth­ers that I like too. My teams, my sides, my ‘camp’!

That base impulse has no place how­ev­er in pol­i­tics or the con­sid­er­a­tion of the life and death issues involved in for­eign affairs. And yet it’s remark­able how that very base impulse dri­ves so many agen­das, indi­vid­u­als, par­ties and even coun­tries in the area of for­eign affairs. Very often con­sid­er­a­tion of seri­ous polit­i­cal issues feels like ‘pick a side’ between what are pre­sent­ed as oppos­ing camps and, just like with foot­ball, once we pick a team we usu­al­ly stick with it come hell or high water.

But pick­ing Celtic or Rangers, Dun­dalk or Sham­rock Rovers, Liv­er­pool or Man U is not the same as pick­ing Biden or Trump, pick­ing Putin or NATO, pick­ing Pales­tine or Israel. Engag­ing that part of our instinct in Pol­i­tics (‘camp­ism’) is the road to hell through idio­cy and it can result in entire pop­u­la­tions and groups vot­ing against their own best inter­ests, sup­port­ing inhu­man and unjus­ti­fied war and con­flict, and doing so with a pas­sion that is trib­al, is unwa­ver­ing and is immense­ly dan­ger­ous.

WORLD VIEW

Here’s my world view. Mil­i­tar­i­ly there is no ‘good guys vs. bad guys’ sce­nario. Our part of the world is cur­rent­ly dom­i­nat­ed mil­i­tar­i­ly by two com­pet­ing impe­ri­al­ist blocks. One is NATO led, described as a defen­sive alliance, but is in effect 32 coun­tries and grow­ing that pro­motes a sin­gu­lar eco­nom­ic neolib­er­al ide­ol­o­gy which push­es extreme greed and eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty, includ­ing wealth trans­fers from the very poor to the very rich.

The oth­er is a Russ­ian led fas­cist impe­ri­al­ism led by an oli­garch class that stole the assets of the peo­ple of the for­mer Sovi­et Union and is head­ed by a dem­a­gogue deter­mined to build a fascis­tic alliance west­ward across Europe.

Pick a side? No thanks.

NATO is effec­tive­ly head­ed by the Unit­ed States and I have opposed Unit­ed States impe­ri­al­ism my entire adult life. I oppose it in Cuba, in Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca, into Europe and beyond. I also oppose Russ­ian impe­ri­al­ism. The Sovi­et Union died in 1991 and its wealth should not have been stolen by Putin and his oli­garch class and mis­used to turn Rus­sia into a fas­cist war mon­ger. I oppose Chi­nese impe­ri­al­ism too, which by com­par­i­son is cur­rent­ly most­ly eco­nom­ic in nature but that also con­tains threats in areas like Tai­wan and beyond, Tai­wan being a nation which itself can be argued by some to be a pawn of Amer­i­can impe­ri­al­ism.

In fact, put sim­ply, I just oppose impe­ri­al­ism. I’m anti-impe­ri­al­ist, and whether it be in the East or the West, the North­ern or South­ern hemi­sphere, I utter­ly reject the camp­ist impulse to choose my ‘favourite impe­ri­al­ist’ and to defend that choice like I am sup­port­ing a favourite foot­ball team. The world is much more com­plex and impe­ri­al­ism much more per­va­sive and evil than that.

And here’s the bad news – the ‘good guys’ sim­ply do not exist and address­ing that real­i­ty with a camp­ist ‘pick a side’ analy­sis is the pol­i­tics of the school­yard.

TOO SIMPLISTIC?

That’s a sum­ma­ry. It’s not a the­sis. It is after all a post, a Blog, not a book. But, for the record, I read exten­sive­ly about pol­i­tics from Cuba to the US, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, Argenti­na, Chile, Rus­sia and the Sovi­et Union, from the Mid­dle East, and much of Africa. I’m also a stu­dent of World War 2 and all of its hor­rors and its often unlearned lessons, and that includes con­sid­er­ing the devel­op­ment of mod­ern day Europe and the Euro­pean Union.

So we can take any of these issues in great detail and dis­cuss them in iso­la­tion, many of us do so all the time, but the more I read and learn the more it becomes obvi­ous. There’s no vir­tu­ous bat­tle between ‘good and evil’ in these mat­ters and campist’s oper­at­ing on the basis that there is (for what­ev­er rea­sons, and some do it sim­ply and cyn­i­cal­ly for oppor­tu­ni­ty) is a non­sense.

Let’s look at some cur­rent exam­ples and see can we find the good guys.

USA vs RUSSIA

These states were allies in the defeat of Nazi fas­cism but even then the fault lines were extreme and the after­math of WW2 was a decades long ‘Cold War’ and arms race that brought the world to the nuclear brink. ‘The West’ won that war when the Sovi­et Union col­lapsed in 1991 and the Sovi­et ter­ri­to­ry then fell into the hands of oligarch’s. When Yeltsin gave way to Putin Rus­sia soon became a repressed dem­a­goguery where oppo­nents are rou­tine­ly killed (includ­ing with spe­cial­ly devel­oped poi­sons), free speech and per­son­al free­doms are repressed, a free media no longer exists while Putin’s warped view of his­to­ry is indulged by him to jus­ti­fy impe­ri­al­ist inva­sions and inter­ven­tions abroad. Just this year he even explained his view that Hitler had no choice but to occu­py Poland in 1939 because Poland refused to lie down and sim­ply sur­ren­der to his want for move ‘liv­ing space’. This is what Putin’s apol­o­gists are stand­ing over. This is who they sup­port. This is what they defend when they run inter­fer­ence for Moscow.

So, faced with this mad­ness, the US must be the ‘good guy’s’ right?

Hmm­m­mm.

Since 1962 the USA has imposed an ille­gal and immoral block­age on the tiny island nation of Cuba just 87 miles south of the Flori­da Keys. This block­ade is opposed annu­al­ly by prac­ti­cal­ly all of the Unit­ed Nations except the US itself and Israel (we’ll get to them) and it has result­ed in dread­ful hard­ship since, com­plete­ly and delib­er­ate­ly stunt­ing the devel­op­ment of mil­lions of Cuban lives for over 60 years. It’s a mas­sive 6 decades long human rights abuse by a super­pow­er on a tiny nation with approx­i­mate­ly the same land mass as Ire­land.

Cuba’s sin? In 1959 a pop­u­lar rev­o­lu­tion in Cuba threw out the regime that the US had imposed to run the coun­try. And who was that regime? The US mafia dons, drug lord’s and pimps led by ‘Lucky Luciano’ and oth­ers that the US had decid­ed were to run Cuba for them as a tax free hedo­nis­tic hol­i­day camp for Amer­i­can excess. John F. Kennedy, as a young man, was among the priv­i­leged abusers and sowed some of his ample ‘wild oats’ in Havana. After the Cuban’s threw out the pimps and drug deal­ers Kennedy plot­ted a re-inva­sion at the Bay of Pigs which the Cubans defeat­ed shock­ing him to his core. Kennedy then, in a fit of pique, imposed the Cuban Block­ade and the Unit­ed States has insist­ed on main­tain­ing it ever since while also har­bour­ing ter­ror­ists who have been com­mit­ting hor­ren­dous ter­ror­ist acts in Cuba for years. They blew a plane of ath­letes out of the sky while oper­at­ing out of South Flori­da. What? You nev­er heard that on CNN?

So you still think that the Unit­ed States are the ‘good guys’? That I’m obsessed with Cuba, or some oth­er con­ve­nient line?

That’s an abridged, but accu­rate, sum­ma­tion of Cuban/US rela­tions over recent decades. There’s much more. And there are many more coun­tries. Here are just a short selec­tion coun­tries that suf­fered US ‘inter­ven­tions’ since the Cuban block­ade was imposed:

- Chile 1973

- Cam­bo­dia 1975

- El Sal­vador 1981

- Nicaragua 1981

- Lebanon 1982

- Grena­da 1983

- Bolivia 1986

- Philip­pines 1989

And on and on it goes. The list is end­less. Then there was the invent­ed wars that destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan for the com­plete­ly made up ‘weapons of mass destruc­tion’ that has today, decades lat­er, returned Afghanistan to the crazed abu­sive cult that is the Tal­iban.

What have all these inter­ven­tions got in com­mon? Our media will scream ‘free­dom’, or ‘democ­ra­cy’ or ‘our val­ues’. But actu­al­ly many of the inter­ven­tions were to over­throw demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed Gov­ern­ments. Why? Because, just like Cuba, these coun­tries had decid­ed not to fol­low US led eco­nom­ic dic­tates to impose its eco­nom­ic neolib­er­al­ism with its inbuilt greed and inequal­i­ty on to their people’s.

The ‘democ­rats’ don’t like that kind of democ­ra­cy. And so US impe­ri­al­ism was used to over­throw democ­ra­cy and force these coun­tries to act in US inter­ests, often with hor­ren­dous human con­se­quences.

So the USA vs Rus­sia? It’s sim­ply neolib­er­al impe­ri­al­ism ver­sus fascis­tic impe­ri­al­ism. Pick your camp? No thank you. I oppose both. I’m anti-impe­ri­al­ist. There are no good guys. The cur­rent iter­a­tion of this con­flict is Ukraine and it was Putin that invad­ed it. Unpro­voked. Geopol­i­tics is a real­i­ty, ten­sions are always present, but nobody invad­ed Rus­sia. That’s a sim­ple fact. And that impulse alone allied to the fact that Putin has no oppo­si­tion with­in Rus­sia and has now declared his admi­ra­tion of Hitler makes him, and his fas­cism, the great­est of all the great threats to glob­al peace today.

PALESTINE vs ISRAEL

If Putin is cur­rent­ly the great­est threat to world peace Netanyahu’s Israel isn’t far behind. Since Israel assas­si­nat­ed its own peace seek­ing leader, Yitzak Rabin, Netanyahu has been in and out of pow­er always push­ing toward his geno­ci­dal des­tiny. He effec­tive­ly and suc­cess­ful­ly pro­mot­ed Hamas over the more mod­er­ate Fatah know­ing full well that his dread­ed night­mare, an inter­na­tion­al­ly accept­ed free Pales­tine, was less like­ly under Hamas extrem­ism.

And he was right.

So now we have Israel on tri­al for geno­cide at the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice with the Court hav­ing already decid­ed that it has a case to answer. Israel, the Jew­ish home­land, and geno­cide. How anti-semit­ic and trag­ic is that?

So Hamas and its spon­sors are my ‘camp’? My ‘side’? Like hell they are. Hamas are an evil that have inflict­ed hor­rors on their own peo­ple while spon­sored by Iran, which also inflicts mul­ti­ple hor­rors of its own peo­ple. The per­se­cu­tion, mur­der, beat­ing and impris­on­ment by Iran of young women because they don’t want to wear a Hijab is hor­ren­dous. The seg­re­ga­tion of sub­way trains on a gen­der basis last year, the crim­i­nal­is­ing of women talk­ing to men in uni­ver­si­ties and the estab­lish­ment of an app to encour­age cit­i­zens to inform on women who show an ankle or a neck in pub­lic are bar­bar­ic abus­es from the dark ages by a misog­y­nis­tic regime that we should all con­demn.

That Iran spon­sored the Hamas ter­ror­ism, mass mur­der and mass rape of upwards of 1000 inno­cent Israeli civil­ians on Octo­ber 7th is a war crime and bla­tant act of ter­ror­ism that wasn’t just bound to, but was designed to, cat­a­pult Israel and Pales­tine from a peri­od of wan­ton Isre­ali impe­ri­al­ism and racism against Pales­tini­ans into the cur­rent human­i­tar­i­an cat­a­stro­phe pushed by Netanyahu’s geno­ci­dal nature.

The price, as always, is paid in inno­cent blood, par­tic­u­lar­ly that of Pales­tin­ian women and chil­dren. And if Iran is ulti­mate­ly respon­si­ble for Hamas’s abhor­rent and self-defeat­ing ter­ror­ism then Israel’s reac­tion is the direct respon­si­bil­i­ty of the Unit­ed States and, to a less­er extent Britain and the Euro­pean Union.

Found any good guys yet?

No. Me nei­ther. Hor­ror after hor­ror all fuelled by extrem­ist impe­ri­al­ists of all sorts. I reject the need to join, or to sup­port, or to pro­pa­gan­dise for any of these ‘camps’.

IRISH NEUTRALITY

And amid all this chaos, this mur­der­ing mania, here on this wet lit­tle swamp on the edge of Europe we, Ire­land, sit safe­ly in our ‘triple lock’ ‘neu­tral­i­ty’. On the Irish left neu­tral­i­ty is an arti­cle of faith, an unques­tioned and unques­tion­able dog­ma hand­ed down the gen­er­a­tions like a sacred cow. We left­ies love our ‘neu­tral­i­ty’.

Let’s leave aside now as an inter­est­ing irrel­e­vance any dis­com­fort some of us have with how our new nation some­how found itself neu­tral in the face of Nazi fas­cism, even express­ing con­do­lences on the death of Hitler long after gas cham­bers were dis­cov­ered. The first Nazi con­cen­tra­tion and exter­mi­na­tion camp was lib­er­at­ed by the Sovi­et Union in Maj­danek Poland on July 24 1944. Hitler shot him­self on April 30 1945 and two days lat­er Eamon De Valera called Ger­man Ambas­sador Eduard Hempel to express his con­do­lences on behalf of the Irish peo­ple. Mind bog­gling.

I sup­port Irish neu­tral­i­ty.

We are a small nation on the edge of Europe with a proud peace keep­ing past and a strong inde­pen­dent voice, includ­ing on the cur­rent hor­rors in Gaza. But are we neu­tral? We are of course part of a Euro­pean Union which has its gen­e­sis in the com­mon will to avoid war in Europe after WW2. The EU how­ev­er is an eco­nom­ic alliance (I’d like to see it return to be more focussed on a social union) but it is not a mil­i­tary alliance and I fun­da­men­tal­ly oppose Ire­land becom­ing part of an EU wide mil­i­tary alliance.

That is not to say how­ev­er that things are fine as they are. We sim­ply aren’t ‘neu­tral’ in any real sense. On the one hand we have an air­port in Shan­non which acts mil­i­tar­i­ly as part of the Unit­ed States and which has been utilised in wars and inter­ven­tions that are moral­ly rep­re­hen­si­ble and legal­ly ques­tion­able.

That’s not neu­tral.

On anoth­er hand it appears that our skies are rou­tine­ly patrolled by the Roy­al Air Force (RAF) and our seas, the largest of any Euro­pean nation and of a scale a mul­ti­ple of the size of our land mass, are effec­tive­ly unmon­i­tored by Ire­land as a ‘neu­tral nation’. Instead they are a scene of reg­u­lar mil­i­tary manoeu­vres by the Rus­sians, and Amer­i­cans, the British and any nation that wants to real­ly. As to our open­ness to cyber-attack and nefar­i­ous influ­ence through dig­i­tal means and espi­onage? I don’t think any­body, even Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters, believe we have real secu­ri­ty and inde­pen­dence in these regards.

Are we a neu­tral state or are we a vas­sal state?

It seems to me in the dirty game of geo-pol­i­tics and com­pet­ing impe­ri­al­ist blocs our best hope is that we aren’t noticed and in this regard I am often per­plexed that some of those who shout loud­est about our sup­posed ‘neu­tral­i­ty’ are also the ones most vehe­ment­ly opposed, as a mat­ter of faith it seems, to any increase in defence spend­ing. Rest assured though that the strat­e­gy isn’t work­ing, the com­pet­ing impe­r­i­al blocs notice us. We are noticed!

I do not believe an Ire­land that is unable to at least mon­i­tor and patrol its own air and seas, and which spends a pathet­ic 0.23% of GDP on ‘defence’, can claim to be effec­tive­ly neu­tral. We are wide open. I sup­port an active neu­tral­i­ty and this would require an imme­di­ate and sub­stan­tial ongo­ing increase in spend­ing on sur­veil­lance and secu­ri­ty to close to that expect­ed of NATO nations, 2% of GDP. But I am firm­ly of the view that we should use that spend­ing to deliv­er an effec­tive neu­tral­i­ty and cer­tain­ly not to join any mil­i­tary alliance be that NATO, EU based or oth­er­wise.

CONCLUSION

I could go on and I’m sure oth­ers will point out oth­er con­flicts, of which there are many, and there will sure­ly be many more to come too. I do hope how­ev­er that in terms of set­ting out my approach to key con­flicts, to impe­ri­al­ism, to ‘camp­ism’ and to Ireland’s place in these mat­ters that this blog will be of some inter­est.

Thank you for read­ing.