The sacred cows calf: What has Irish neutrality become?
Building on from the previous blogs about the potential of a full on fascist hegemony fuelled by hate around migration, added to the obvious changes in the security landscape, when we come to Ireland and our much vaunted ‘neutrality’ let’s start with a question we don’t ask often enough: what exactly are we neutral from?
We’re not neutral from NATO—Shannon is effectively a US airbase. We’re not neutral from the EU—we’re deeply integrated into its structures. We’re not neutral from the UK—the Royal Navy and RAF provide the air cover we don’t have. When Russian drones entered Irish airspace last December to shadow Zelenskyy’s plane, we couldn’t respond. The British had to. And the Russian shadow fleet routinely patrol our vast seas.
As I said during the European election I believe we are in fact a vassal state pretending to be neutral.
Irish neutrality has a history worth understanding honestly. In 1938, de Valera negotiated the return of the ‘Treaty ports’ (Cobh, Berehaven and Lough Swilly) from Britain on the understanding that Ireland would never allow them to be used against them. The Spanish civil war was raging then and Hitler and Mussolini were close to their fascist onslaught on Europe. When Europe wide war came Dev declared neutrality—not from pacifism, but because partition meant the national project was unfinished.
What’s less often told is that between 150,000 and 180,000 Irish men volunteered to fight Hitler for British forces. And it wasn’t just individuals. The Irish Army was armed by Britain throughout the war. ‘Plan W’ brought close liaison between Irish and British general staffs. This was a joint defence arrangement developed in the event of a German invasion of Ireland, a defence against fascism.
That’s not neutrality as moral principle. That’s pragmatism in the fight against fascism and it is completely misrepresented in our ‘neutrality’ dialogue today.
Moving into the present International law is clear. The Hague Conventions require neutral states to deny assistance to all belligerents but Ireland has never met that standard and without a properly funded and sourced neutrality – which seems to me would cause as much opposition from the left too – we never could. We’re not neutral in law—we’re militarily non-aligned — but in terms of our defence we rely (and since independence have done) on others.
A 1996 White Paper put it honestly: neutrality ‘has taken on a significance for Irish people over and above the essentially practical considerations on which it was originally based.’ In other words, we turned a contingent historical decision into a sacred cow. Cows don’t stop fascists.
Yet here we are in a rapidly changing situation defending that cow with rhetoric while our defences decay. Ireland spends the least on defence of any EU country relative to its economy. Our Naval Service can sometimes deploy only one patrol vessel to monitor 880,000 square kilometres of marine territory. Nearly 75% of international subsea cables pass through or near Irish waters. Russian spy ships have been caught snooping. We have no air force to speak of. No cyber defence worth the name.
Neutrality, in this configuration, isn’t a policy. It’s an abandonment of sovereignty.
The ‘triple lock’ has been bolted onto this discussion like a ball and chain. It’s preposterous. The “triple lock” requires UN, government, and Dáil approval for Irish peace keeping troop deployments abroad. In practice, it means the US or Russia or China can veto Irish participation in peacekeeping by using their Security Council seats. As Micheál Martin put it last year: ‘Russia should not have a veto, China should not have a veto, the U.S. should not have a veto over where we send our soldiers in pursuit of peace.’
We don’t even trust ourselves to make our own peacekeeping decisions. The government wants to scrap the UN requirement but there is uproar whenever it’s mentioned with claims that this ends neutrality. But what kind of neutrality requires a dictator’s permission to keep the peace?
In the ‘triple lock’ the sacred cow now has a calf!
Here’s where it gets really uncomfortable. NATO, as I argued last time, is paralysed—occupied by a US president doing Putin’s work from inside the tent. Europe will have to build its own defence capacity, whether it wants to or not. The only question is whether Ireland helps build it or again waits to be defended by others.
I’m vehemently opposed to NATO membership. An alliance led by an imperialist US has never been and could never be purely defensive, and Ireland should never join NATO. But when Europe builds its own capacity—and it will—what then?
I believe the only anti-fascist position is to be able to defend ourselves against fascism. If we can’t do it alone (and we can’t) then we have to be part of a defensive alliance that can. Even if that something is imperfect it requires us to grow up as a nation.
I know the objections. I’ve heard them for thirty years. Some are sincere. Most are performances targeting a populist response to a neutrality they themselves misrepresent. Any alternative view is vehemently opposed. Any alternative other view on the left is excoriated. So be it. It is 4 years today since Putin’s second invasion of Ukraine. I opposed it then (and now) and I was attacked here by the leader of the so called ‘Peace and Neutrality Alliance’ accusing me of exposing his family to a nuclear war. For opposing Putin! This is what passes for debate in certain circles. No wonder we are getting nowhere.
Yet when you’ve just faced your own mortality, and in February 2022 I was in the midst of cancer and had just watched family die (my dear sister Kay died the day Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022) you stop fearing the disapproval of those who disagree with you. Through trauma comes freedom and I offer my views as nothing but my views. Don’t like them? Absolutely fine!
So here’s where I’ve landed.
Neutrality isn’t a moral position when it means being defenceless. It’s a luxury of those who assume someone else will always do the fighting. The question isn’t whether Ireland should join some existing alliance. We shouldn’t. The question is whether we’ll help build the defence that I believe Europe needs, or wait to be defended by others?
If we can’t ask this question then that isn’t principled. Refusing to honestly debate these issues is political cowardice and in a world on fire that is an approach that only a country, a nation, that has yet to reach adulthood would adopt. We are a nation, albeit incomplete, for over a century now.
It’s time we behaved like one.
This is the third in a sequence of blogs. The first addressed the rise of fascism with immigration as its fuel. The second argued that the US staying in NATO is worse than it leaving and suits Putin. This is the third: why Irish neutrality, as currently configured, is a fiction that we can no longer afford.