Carol Fox: Irish reputation as peacekeepers will be damaged by ties to nuclear-armed Nato
A joint declaration on EU-Nato co-operation was agreed in January, stating that a European defence must be 'complementary to, and interoperable with Nato'. Picture: Ana Brigida/AP
We will be told there’s no question of joining Nato but our neutrality has to be “redefined”. Part of that “redefining” is an ever-closer partnership with nuclear-armed Nato through the Partnership for Peace (PfP).
We’ll cooperate with a nuclear military alliance, make our Defence Forces and military weapons interoperable with that military alliance, conduct exercises with that alliance (sure, we already supply an airport at Shannon to the US military), but we will still call ourselves “neutral”.
Polls have shown overwhelming support for neutrality. People don’t regard it as being a partnership with a nuclear alliance. Our neutrality has always involved a partnership with the United Nations.
Why would we throw away a unique and influential status that other states envy? We are highly regarded for promoting peace through disarmament: The Irish initiated the Non-Proliferation Treaty, NFZs, the recent Irish-sponsored UN Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear weapons. The UN treaty prohibiting cluster bombs was negotiated in Dublin.
Our partner Nato believes in nuclear weapons and uses cluster bombs in warfare. The US is about to join the UK in exporting cancer-inducing depleted uranium weapons to Ukraine. It doesn’t like — or sign — the UN treaties we recently championed. It plays wargames that run counter to all our disarmament work.
Last November, Nato held a two-week exercise in Europe, Steadfast Noon, to train non-nuclear Nato aircrews to carry out nuclear strikes.
Yet our partnership with Nato progresses. Ireland has fulfilled many of its Partnership for Peace interoperability and equipment goals. Last month, Cork hosted the Chiefs of European Navies Conference, to discuss military challenges facing Nato and European navies. Attendance included: European Military Staff (EUMS), Nato’s Allied Maritime Command (MARCOM), and United States navy personnel. Next year, Irish soldiers will travel to Indiana to participate in Nato
exercise Thor’s Hammer, countering IEDs and drones.
Nearly all our EU partners are in Nato. EU treaties have brought closer coordination in defence and security policies, including a mutual defence clause. Ireland has managed — thanks to the people voting down two EU treaties because of their military provisions — to get special dispensation from some EU military matters.
However, the Nato/EU links are solid. A joint declaration on EU-Nato co-operation was agreed in January, stating that a European defence must be “complementary to, and interoperable with Nato”.
Last month, Tánaiste Micheál Martin reassured the Dáil that there is “no appetite” for the EU to be militarised or for an EU army. Given how obviously militarised the EU now is — with a feast of military activities — his comments are simply laughable. There are numerous military committees and a European Defence Agency, a European Defence Fund with €8bn for arms production and technology, and a €6bn-funded European Peace Facility which helps finance EU military activities outside the EU.
Simon Coveney, with an obvious appetite for an Irish slice of this lucrative cake, last October hosted an arms conference at the Aviva Stadium, called — wait for it — “Building the EcoSystem”.
For its armed wing, the EU already has battlegroups and the Pesco permanent enhanced security cooperation project. To add to the mix, in May 2021, 14 EU countries proposed a 5,000-strong rapid military response force that could intervene early in international crises.
Reuters reported that: “EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, had chided the EU for reluctance to intervene more abroad, particularly in failing states such as Libya.”
One of those 14 countries was Ireland. This Rapid Deployment Capacity (RDC) force will be established by 2025 with land, air, and maritime components, have its first live exercise this autumn… and it will be financed by the European Peace Facility.
The triple lock, (Government/Dáil approval and a UN mandate for sending troops abroad) is something the Government is upfront about: The UN mandate must go. It is no longer “fit for purpose”. But fit for what purpose?
UN mandates grant legitimacy to peace support and crisis management missions.
The DFA’s own website lauds Ireland as “being the only nation to have a continuous presence on UN and UN-mandated peace support operations since 1958”.
We currently have about 550 defence personnel serving abroad, the bulk of them UN peacekeepers in Lebanon and Syria. The spectre of Russian and Chinese Security Council vetoes is thrown up but the only example given of Irish forces ever being kept from a peacekeeping operation is Macedonia in 1999 because of a Chinese veto.
In fact, Mr Coveney told RTÉ’s Tony Connelly in March 2022: “I can’t think of an instance where Ireland has wanted to send troops on a peace-keeping mission to a part of the world and has been prevented from doing so because of the triple lock, not yet, at least.”
Well the time has come. The “purpose” that the triple lock is no longer fit for is deeper involvement in non-UN-mandated military operations, including those by the EU’s new RDC rapid reaction force which our Government helped to create.
What it needs is a country pushing for peace and demilitarisation, a country dedicated to the peaceful settlement of international
disputes, as described so eloquently in Article 29 of the Constitution, a constitution our Government has pledged to honour and uphold.
Let’s hold them to it.
- Carol Fox, Peace and Neutrality Allliance (PANA) and Swords to Ploughshares (STOP)
