Mick Clifford: No place for neutrality in current times

Ireland has committed €9m to the EU's total €500m worth of arms and aid to the Ukrainian military. Presumably, any Irish representatives left the room when the EU decided to donate the money

Flowers and messages left outside the Ukraine Embassy in Ballsbridge, Dublin. If Putin does succeed in killing his way to success in Ukraine, what’s next? He may try to keep going, pushing into the Baltics, subjugating more people to his will. Picture: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Has anybody out there got one of those tracker devices? You know the ones that are seen in the movies, where the device is placed in a suitcase full of cash to keep tabs on where it goes and who has possession of it.

We could do with a tracker device right now to ensure that our money is put to proper use in the battlefield that is engulfing Ukraine.

Last Sunday, the EU responded to the spectre of war in Europe in the 21st century by committing €500m worth of arms and aid to the Ukrainian military.

As a constituent member of the EU, this country was obliged to put its hand in its pocket. We came up with 1.9% of the total bill, amounting to €9m.

We are on board, on the side of democracy over authoritarianism, standing in support of those being slaughtered by an aggressive, invading force. However, there is a catch — one that requires our tracker device.

The Irish contribution is to go only towards “non-lethal” spending. This, we were told, is to comply with the programme for government, which states: “Within the context of the European Peace Facility, Ireland will not be part of decision-making or funding for lethal force weapons for non-peacekeeping purposes.”

No doubt Vladimir Putin factored in the constraints of the current Irish administration’s programme for government when gauging how severe the West’s reaction would be to his aggression.

Presumably, any Irish representatives left the room when the EU decided to donate the money, as the programme insists the State is removed from any decision-making on lethal-force weapons.

Now comes the tricky bit. How are we going to trace the money that this State is contributing to ensure that it is ringfenced to be used exclusively as the Irish Government has instructed?

The only possible way to observe this money is to present it in cash and use a tracker device to trace where the money goes and call a halt if it comes within an ass’s roar of anything that could be categorised as lethal.

Ireland standing aloof

Such is the ludicrous position in which this country finds itself while the world reels in shock as Russian president Vladimir Putin’s tanks roll through Ukraine.

We, wedded to an outdated concept of neutrality, are standing aloof, above the fray, pure as the driven snow, lecturing the rest of the world that all you need is love.

Last week the EU effected a major policy shift. The decision to donate monies for military aid was an acknowledgement of the world as it exists today. A bloc that espouses democratic values can no longer stand aloof from a conflict in which an authoritarian dictator pursues dreams of an empire through violence and mayhem.

Look at Germany, a country rightly obsessed since the Second World War with avoiding any form of military intervention anywhere.

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine marks a turning point,” Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, said last Saturday.

“It threatens our entire post-war order. In this situation, it is our duty to do our utmost to support Ukraine in defending itself against Vladimir Putin’s invading army.”

The end of the Cold War was supposed to have heralded a new era in which liberal democracy took hold and spread like wildfire across the globe. The West and its values had won. The authoritarian Soviet Union had collapsed in on itself. Democracy was coming to a town near you.

Things didn’t work out that way. Instead of building on its strengths, western capitalism turned in on itself. Markets were let rip, inequality rose, the basic tenets of democracy were, in places, undermined.

An insane war in Iraq was followed by an equally insane economic bubble that burst in 2008.

Inevitably, those who were left behind in the harsh new world order turned elsewhere for solutions and came up with preening strongmen such as Donald Trump, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and Brexit, a form of populism that promised to turn back the clock.

Meanwhile, the really serious dictators in Russia and China reaped the benefits of economic globalisation and kept an iron grip on power, biding their time until they could once more rebuild empires.

Putin saw his opportunity with Ukraine. Whether or not he has underestimated the unity of the West remains to be seen.

If he does succeed in killing his way to success there, what’s next? He may try to keep going, pushing into the Baltics, subjugating more people to his will.

In such a milieu it is inevitable that China will move against Taiwan.

Pretence of neutrality

That’s the world in which we now live. Yet, in this country, a pretence persists that we can remain above it all, comforted in the belief that others will do our dirty work for us in order to preserve our way of life.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin recently told the Dáil that Ireland “is not politically neutral but is militarily”. Is that really sustainable in today’s world?

Martin also called Putin “a bully and a thug”.

So we don’t like the bully but we can put forward People Before Profit/Solidarity TD Richard Boyd Barrett to explain to the bully where he’s going wrong and cajole him to put down his arms in the name of peace and harmony.

“Putin is the Hitler of the 21st century,” Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said last week.

So does he want to emulate Éamon de Valera and sit on his hands while the dictator kills and burns?

To be fair to Dev, that was a different time and a cogent case could be made for remaining neutral during the Second World War. Not now, though.

What about the government-in-waiting, Sinn Féin?

Up until the invasion, the party did a soft-shoe shuffle with Putin, considering him a handy foil to outdated notions of imperialism. Meanwhile, the Shinners regularly pass around the bucket among US-based millionaires for donations.

With the best of both worlds, why would the party ever want to abandon neutrality?

There is no appetite in this country to join a body such as Nato. However, we are part of the EU and membership has brought huge benefits. So, when there is a policy shift within the union, surely it is incumbent on this State to acknowledge that it also must do what is required to defend the values western Europe espouses.

Those who claim to stand for peace put forward the silly binary proposition that either we are neutral or we become part of the so-called military-industrial complex. That’s grand for a student debate but bears no resemblance to the world as it actually is.

Once upon a time, neutrality was an Irish solution to an Irish problem. Those days are gone and the slaughter in Ukraine should prompt a proper debate on how exactly we bring to a close the State’s shambolic policy.