Irish neutrality is a good example for Europe

With EU Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, calling for a “common European army” as a “deterrent against further Russian aggression on the continent”, the Lisbon Treaty hawks are coming home to roost. 

NATO’s proposed expansion into Georgia and Ukraine sparked off conflicts and Russian annexation of South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Crimea.

Likewise, the establishment of a European army, in addition to a NATO one that should have been made redundant after the end of the Soviet Union, will heighten tension with Russia. Vladimir Putin is not Adolf Hitler, and what is happening in eastern Ukraine is not a rerun of 1939, right-wing racist aggression. Such dangerous right-wing tendencies are resurfacing in western political and military circles, not in the east.

All European states have armies, and arguably too many armaments, and Britain, France and Russia have nuclear weapons. Uniting all these into two super-armies would be a disaster, and would risk nuclear war. In matters of war and peace, there is far more strength and common sense in a diversity of views and of strategies. It was not appeasement that led to WW2, but European fascist doctrines of “uno duce, una voce”, combined with rampant militarism.

The diversity of foreign policy that Europe needs includes positive neutrality by Ireland and other European states, combined with common sense. Common sense, however, is becoming uncommon in Europe.

Edward Horgan

Newtown

Castletroy

Limerick