Fintan O’Toole: Ireland’s traditional policy of military neutrality must not be confused with everyone else’s understanding of the term, via IrishTimesOpEd
That could change if, say, Russia were to attack subsea cables in Irish waters – a possibility that is not unimaginable if the war in Ukraine continues to escalate. But as things stand, “parlour games” is a pretty good description of some of the debate.
For – and here you may hear a tiny Riverdance of angels on the head of a Fáinne pin – our traditional policy of military neutrality must not be confused with everyone else’s understanding of the term.What everyone else understands by military neutrality is that a country that adopts it invests heavily in its own defence forces so that it can resist threats without relying on alliances. And that it does not allow any foreign military forces on its national territory.
I don’t think most historians see this episode as an example of the principle of neutrality in action. It was probably more a case of Haughey seeking to match Thatcher’s gunboat diplomacy with his own showboat diplomacy. So how do we get to some honest consistency on all of this? Only by starting with clarity about what we are not trying to do, which is preparing the ground for Ireland joining a military alliance.
That discussion is not about Nato or an EU army. It’s about whether we want to have the capacity, for example, to patrol our vast, and increasingly important, territorial waters. It’s about how we define Ireland’s “security” in the age of climate chaos, mass migration and the rise of authoritarianism.
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