Why Micheál Martin should not visit Donald Trump for St Patrick's Day
US president Donald Trump, centre, and vice president JD Vance, right, clashed with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office last Friday over a deal to end the war against Russia. Picture: Andrew Harnik/Getty
This debate has become all the more urgent in the light of the abhorrent treatment of president Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the hands of Donald Trump and JD Vance in the Oval Office last week.
For those who emphasise the importance of upholding the values Ireland is supposed to stand for in the international arena, the argument is simple: The visit should not take place.
Two reasons in particular are proffered. The first concerns Gaza. Ireland has continually expressed rhetorical support for Palestine, as Gaza experienced catastrophic bombardment by Israeli bombs and guns over the last 18 months.
Most of those weapons and armaments were supplied by the US. The recent release of the grotesque AI-generated “Trump Gaza” video only served to underline Trump’s support for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and his complete indifference to the human tragedy of the Palestinians.
Glossing over US support for Israel constitutes a gross betrayal of the Palestinian people. The failure to enact the Occupied Territories Bill suggests Ireland’s fear of Trump’s wrath won out over any normative commitment to the Palestinian cause.
The second reason revolves around the nature of the new regime in Washington DC. We need to examine, and be clear-eyed about, who and what we are dealing with in Trump 2.0.
This is a very different beast to the first Trump administration, where there were people such as General John Kelly — his chief of staff — who acted as a restraining force on the would-be emperor’s worst instincts. They are all gone now.
In their place is a bizarre collection of sycophants and lunatics who are all practiced in the art of “working toward the Führer”. There are simply no restraints on Trump’s darkest ambitions.
The entire world saw this new reality last Friday. An authoritarian president and his braying deputy, presenting for all the world like a mob boss and his underling enforcer, tried to pummel into submission the heroic leader of a country which has been enduring Russia’s brutal occupation for more than three years.
The Churchill statue in the Oval Office must have been close to a state of exorcism.
The Irish delegation now runs the real risk that the appalling scenes we saw play out in the Oval Office last week could be repeated on March 12. Trump has obsessed for years about the EU “cheating” the US on trade.
On occasion, he has singled out Ireland for attention. His commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, has more than once stated that it is “nonsense” that Ireland runs a trade surplus with the US “at our expense”.
Lutnick will be crucial to the implementation of tariffs in the weeks to come, if Trump proceeds — as he says he will — against the EU. What if Lutnick is the last administration official to “have Trump’s ear” before the meeting with the Taoiseach? What if Trump excoriates our EU partners and friends? What does the Taoiseach do? Does he stand there and be browbeaten, or does he fight back by speaking the truth to Trump?
More important than the likelihood of a public relations disaster, what Ireland risks in going to Washington is too close and uncomfortable an association with an increasingly lawless authoritarian regime that is slowly enveloping its tentacles around every major institution in the US.
Imagine the following historical counter-factual.
It is 1938. Hitler has just browbeaten the president of Czechoslovakia, Edvard Beneš, into surrendering his country to the rapacious Nazi state. What would Ireland’s leaders have done if we had the same kind of dependence then on German foreign direct investment as we do on US foreign direct investment today? Would we have gone to Berlin, paying homage to the Führer as he devoured small countries like ours in his immediate hinterland? Would we have ruthlessly pursued our own self-interest, as all around us our allies succumbed to predatory fascism?
The moral depravity of Trump and his acolytes — on ample display throughout his first month in office — should have cautioned the Irish Government about the dangers of presenting at the White House as supplicants or vassals.
Vast amounts of diplomatic time have been devoted to so-called “Trump whispering” in recent months. What this amounts to is a refusal to confront the reality: That the US government has been taken over by a ruthless mafioso gang, completely amoral and pitiless, and prepared to sell every ally down the river for personal benefit and televisual spectacle.
US foreign direct investment in Ireland supports at least 210,000 well-paying jobs. To deliver a snub to Trump at this point would potentially put many of those jobs at risk — especially when Ireland is already on Trump’s radar for the €36bn trade surplus we run with the US.
To insult Trump by cancelling this visit might well invite his ire and “special attention" in the trade war with the EU, which he is about to institute, especially given his proven sensitivity to personal slights.
Ireland has had a long and enduring relationship with the US. It traverses party loyalties and temporal power structures. It encompasses strong familial and cultural no less than socio-economic and political ties. However, this is a moment when we have to choose whose side we are on: Is it with the emerging axis of Russian-American authoritarianism or with decency, democracy and our European partners — including Ukraine? Who are we as a people in 2025? That is what the Government has to decide.
- John O’ Brennan is a professor in the Department of Sociology at Maynooth University and director of the Maynooth Centre for European and Eurasian Studies.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
