“Irish neutrality has meant whatever the government of the day has needed it to mean”. Other ‘neutral’ countries could be tarred with the same brush. Take Sweden, during World War 2. When the Axis was doing well, Sweden transported Wehrmacht troops on its railway system. Later, once the Allies had gained the upper hand, Sweden trained Danish and Norwegian volunteers so that they could liberate their homelands from the Wehrmacht.
Only Switzerland can afford to be neutral. No dictator will invade Switzerland because the Swiss are the custodians of his numbered bank account.
Austria is just the same. Whereas Sweden and Finland headed straight for NATO when the war in the Ukraine began, Austrian politicians have been pathologically avoiding starting any discussions of what our neutrality means or whether it is still necessary.
For no longer being neutral would mean Austria having to stop waffling on about being a bridge between East-West…a neutral place where great powers may meet. That schtick has been going on for decades – but it was always a sham; what it really means is being able to play everybody on all sides while never having the courage to articulate a single, clear opinion.
Sounds like a very smart stance to me! There are enough bloodthirsty, warmongering evil killers out there.. NATO doesn’t need another one! What IS needed is another intelligent, peacemaking interlocutor- we have far too few of those..
In fact the Swiss airforce shot both German and allied aircraft over Swiss territory,numbered bank accounts not withstanding.Even now Swiss volunteers keep rifles at home ready for action.
Your mention of Switzerland reminds me that the Swiss did favour the Allies a bit eventually. They turned a blind eye to American agents exfltrating into Campione d’Italia (the bit of Italy inside the Ticino Canton).
> Even now Swiss volunteers keep rifles at home ready for action.
True, and also true of young Swiss doing their national service. But they do not keep ammo at home and the Swiss claim that their rifles have been designed NOT to take conventional sizes of ammo. I’ve worked in Switzerland for a number of years and I certainly got the impression that they are not leaving anything to chance. They even have a lot of those dreaded tunnels for military defensive purposes.
German dead in the two world wars? c. 7million. British? About 1.4 million. French? Maybe 3 million. Swedish? A few dozen volunteers who fought for Finland against Russia, plus Raoul Wallenberg.
Sweden did its job: it looked after the Swedes.
Samuel Gee
6 months ago
ponce
[pɒns] VERB poncing (present participle) BRITISHINFORMALseek to obtain (something) without paying for it or doing anything in return:“I ponced a ciggie off her”SIMILAR:be a pimpbe pimpingBRITISHINFORMALlive off a prostitute’s earnings:“he was arrested for poncing on the girl”
Very wise. Inherently one’s biggest enemy is yourself.
Peter Joy
6 months ago
Reading this, I couldn’t help but think of The Irish Navy, by The Dubliners….
The Clнona, the Meabh and the Mucha
The pride of the Irish navy
When the Captain he blows on his whistle
All the sailors go home for their tea
While the army is off in the Kongo
In Cyprus or some foreign parts
Our navy is strained to the limits
Deploying it’s nautical acts
One day from the Russian invader
Defending our very odd fish
We found it was just the red herring
From the signals we got from the dish
‘The Clнona, the Meabh and the Mucha
The pride of the Irish navy
When the Captain he blows on his whistle
All the sailors go home for their tea
Each year they go on manoeuvres
To prepare for defence they are keen
Sometimes it’s the Lakes of Killarney
More often the pond in the Green
The canal it could be of assistance
In defending our own holy ground
But due to proposed legislation
We’ll have to sail all the way round
The Clнona, the Meabh and the Mucha
The pride of the Irish navy
When the Captain he blows on his whistle
All the sailors go home for their tea
We are a seafaring nation
Defence of our land is a right
We’d fight like the devil all morning
Provided we’re home by the night
The Clнona, the Meabh and the Mucha
The pride of the Irish navy
When the Captain he blows on his whistle
All the sailors go home for their tea
Last edited 6 months ago by Peter Joy
Peter Joy
6 months ago
‘Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2020 raised the question of just how much assistance Dublin can provide Kyiv without rendering neutrality completely meaningless. More recently, and more in keeping with the principle of neutrality, Ireland, unlike most western countries, urged Israel to comply with international law in responding to the Hamas terror attacks.’
Uh? What possible meaningful support could a small, agrarian country like Ireland – with a modest gendarmerie of an army, a navy of a few fishery patrol vessels and no air force at all – provide to Ukraine, a whole continent away?
But oh no! Not Threats from Global Evilitude?! The Manichean Struggle of Light v Darkness? Pah. Sorry to disappoint Northrop Grumman Inc, but Ireland doesn’t need defending from anyone bar illegal trawlers, drug smugglers and the World Economic Forum’s Kulturkampf – and the same would go for an independent Scotland too.
As for the second sentence: urging Israel to comply with international law? Why, what a dangerous, radical, controversial and revolutionary proposition! How absolutely shocking! Ugh! Down with this appalling ‘neutrality’ thing! They’ll be saying there are two sides to the Palestine-Israel conflict next!!
I was waiting for the author to get to the well-known Irish anti-semitism. Ireland isn’t neutral when it comes to Israel.
Jürg Gassmann
6 months ago
It is telling that an article about Irish neutrality has a picture of the American president.
Cam Marsh
6 months ago
For a decade after 1999 the Irish had considerable presence in Kosovo (KFOR). Initially a transport/logistics company based in Camp Clarke, 15km south of Pristina under control of HQ KFOR their mission was to provide, on order, equipment and material lift to military units in KFOR and to humanitarian organisations working with the UN. In October 2004 the 8 Irish Transport Company was replaced by a Mechanized Infantry company, designated the 27 Infantry Group, and increased the overall commitment from 110 personnel up to over 230. The company operated as part of a Multinational Task Force (Centre) alongside soldiers from Finland, Sweden, and the Czech Republic. This Task Force was commanded by an Irish General for 12 months in 2006 – 2007. (From the Irish Defence Forces Website)
R Wright
6 months ago
Given how poorly they fought in Katanga it is likely a good thing that they do not re-arm.
And, when it comes to fulfilling its international responsibilities to other European countries by securing its own airspace, it can always quietly rely on the air force of an armed forces it affects to despise in public. I imagine those armed forces only tolerate it because they can well imagine what a joke any air defence Ireland would provide would be if its neighbours insisted on it.
Juan Manuel Pérez Porrúa
4 months ago
“The Dublin Government”? The Irish government; Ireland’s government.
Jürg Gassmann
6 months ago
Small countries are always at the mercy of big bullies, and in that respect, the US is no less a bully than other great powers. And as the example Ukraine shows, no-one should be under any illusion about the US umbrella – as US senators are saying, the Ukraine war is a great investment for the US since it is killing Russians and weakening Russia without anyone else (that matters) dying.
The international standing of neutrality depends in where the US stands – so long as the US is neutral, neutrality is a Good Thing. As soon as the US takes a side, neutrality is denigrated as cowardice, vacillation, siding with the enemy, etc.
It is already clear that the Ukraine war will end with a total defeat of NATO – a NATO moreover that will have completely divested itself of ammunition and equipment. The EU’s militaristic “foreign policy”, which consists of acting as an extension of NATO, is bankrupt. Once this is all over, we’ll need some grown-ups and actual diplomats, not wanna-be ministers for war of an entity that has no army, and rebuild the credibility of Europe and its constituents.
Sophy T
6 months ago
‘Otherwise, there was a very real possibility that Churchill could order a pre-emptive invasion to deny the island to the Germans.’
I don’t understand this sentence.
The British and then the Americans did the same thing in neutral Iceland in WW2 to deny the Germans any occupation there and prevent them from using it as a strategic base to further Hitler’s war against the Allies. Churchill’s logic – thankfully never carried out, had the same purpose, to prevent Ireland from being invaded and subjugated by Nazi Germany (see Operation Green/ Unternehmen Grün) and being used as a base for the invasion of Britain. In the unlikely event that Ireland had been occupied by Nazi Germany, it would have made the liberation of Western Europe a much taller order.
Napoleon tried to invade Ireland for the same purposes as Germany would’ve had, and his fleet nearly succeeded but for adverse weather conditions off the southern Irish coast. The British government then reinforced its stranglehold on the island of Ireland, including full unification with Britain in 1801. A great deal of the subsequent violent history proceeds from that point, but the British government was almost certainly right to take the action they did at the time, as a simple matter of self-defence.
…Great Britain’s PM had in place a provisional contingency plan…in case the Blueshirts rose against the Republic with a view to offering the Treaty Ports to the Third Reich, from which to conduct the Battle of the Atlantic. And bearing in mind the visceral hostility that many in Ireland maintain towards the British to this day…which was even worse then…it would have been remiss of him not to…
The hatred you refer to was less visceral and less widespread than you imagine, even back then.. our civil war with its atrocities made the population wonder if British occupation hadn’t been all that bad!
Hatred of the English (never British) today is virtually non existing (apart from the tiny few nut jobs that every country has) as witnessed by the Queen RIP walking freely among the people of Cork, arguably Ireland’s most anti English county of all. People need to come up to date.. GB had a visceral hatred of Germans, sure but that was 70+ years ago and there was some justification…then.
“Hatred of the English (never British)…”
I never understood why the Scots always get a pass, not just by the Irish but by all those who seek to denigrate Britain’s past. The Scots played a huge role in Britain’s colonies, particularly in Ireland. India was pretty much run by Scots and West Indian cricket teams are full of people with Scottish names.
My uncle, Con Cremin, served as Ireland’s ambassador to Hitler’s Germany and spent the war in Berlin.. his sole function was to con (!) the Germans into leaving us alone. Churchill berated DeValera in public for staying neutral but in secret was totally happy with Ireland’s neutrality.. to re-invade Ireland and man it against a German attack (to protect the UK’s Western coast) was more that the UK could afford.. neutrality was the better option for GB by far.. Churchill’s berating deValera was just a show to keep Germany on Ireland’s side. They also had Lord HawHaw but the Irish govt. had no part in that (afaik). By the way we mined all our ports + airports and were set to blow up amap of vital infrastructure if EITHER side invaded! Hence we called WW2 The Emergency!
Last edited 6 months ago by Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
6 months ago
You say Irish neutrality is whatever its government wants it to be sounds like an insult perhaps but in practical terms it makes perfect sense. Its opposite, being hamstrung into unwanted, foul conflicts is hardly smart is it?
In Ireland we have a phrase: An Irish solution for an Irish problem. Our approach gives us the best of all possible worlds: International acceptability as
▪︎an freelance broker
▪︎an acceptable peacekeeper
▪︎a non belligerent interlocutor
and as such, we have minimal expenditure on killing equipment (why not call it what it is?) and maximum influence (for a tiny state).
Instead of kowtowing to appalling NATO actions (warmongering, expansion and an aggressive stance ..it’s supposed to be defensive fgs!) we could have acted a mediator and made a real contribution to peace in Ukraine; but out vassal government did the opposite.
So, mock us all you like but we will keep our funny old neutrality and yes, WE will decide what it means and how to apply (within intl. law of course) and be a real force for good in the world and the rest if you can keep your warmongering and peacock posturing to disguise your wicked, murderous, neo-colonial, one world order, US sycophancy and get on with WW3 which seems to be the objective. In the words of Sam Goldwin: Include us out!
“If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilisation then you must be prepared to accept barbarism.” – Thomas Sowell
Expansion of NATO is not “appalling”. Ireland freeloads off NATO. Fair enough, it’s a rational move. Why wouldn’t Ireland save money on defence if it can? That’ll work fine provided Ireland isn’t once again “used by Britain’s enemies in attempts to open up a western flank.” That has been the problem since the Reformation.
If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilisation then you must be prepared to accept barbarism.
What an idiotic statement. Provoking war is barbarism.
Neither of the two prominent wars now going on (plus the less prominent ones) were inevitable. Both were warned about and would have been easy to avoid.
…by the Ukrainians accepting Czar Putin as their rightful liege lord, in his effort to rebuild “the Empire of all the Russias”…and the Israelis either abandoning their cherished and wholly legal state and going to exile again…or disarming, and letting Hamas use their tunnel network as a slaughterhouse and mass grave, I assume?
No doubt you believe Britain’s near-millennium in Ireland was all for the betterment of the Irish so why would Ireland be a danger to Britain’s western flank?
Britain’s near-millennium in Ireland can be divided into pre and post-Reformation periods. Before the Reformation, the Norman kings were just one of a number of local rulers on a divided island; there was no country called Ireland and never had there been. The idea that the English were oppressing the Irish during this period has no basis in fact. After the Reformation, the island of Ireland stayed Catholic, the rest of the British Isles went Protestant. From that point on, Ireland became a threat to Britain as a bridgehead for Catholic Europe to invade the British Isles and restore Catholicism. Britain’s relations with Ireland between the Reformation and 1922 can largely be defined by Britain fearing the restoration of Catholicism via Ireland. This threat reappeared during the Second World War, hence the reference in this article.
Should any enemy in the future seek to attack Britain, they might use Ireland as a bridgehead. Ireland may need an army to defend itself against Britain’s enemy or to defend itself against Britain.
Did PIRA harm a member of your family? If so your veiled hostility is understandable. If not, your understanding of Irish history is as simplistic as the most tedious teenage republican.
And your ad hominem is a very poor substitution for an argument. Very telling.
If you have a counter argument, then please make it. Otherwise your contribution is no more than a meaningless slur.
Not every encounter is an argument and ad hominem would nowadays imply your character is being traduced. I’m quite willing to indulge anti-Irish interpretations of history from people who bear the scars of republican violence or whose families are affected. Nevertheless, I much prefer the ‘veni vidi vici’ strand of British anti-Irish sentiment. You surely know how Britain “went Protestant” so you might want to look into why protestantism was less successful in Ireland. There were sincere efforts to turn the Irish away from Catholicism and those efforts weren’t always unsuccessful. Likewise consider perusing medieval English law in Ireland or perhaps the enslavement of Irish in the Caribbean might pique your interest. It became such a profitable business British slavers even enslaved many Britons. Accounts from enslaved (non-Irish) noblemen who bought their freedom make for grim reading.
My comment was not an anti-Irish interpretation. I’m American so why would I care?
I pass no judgement on the whys and wherefores of the reformation. I merely stated the fairly mainstream interpretation of Anglo-Irish relations as being largely shaped by Britain’s paranoia of Catholic Europe using Ireland to attack Britain. Had Ireland not remained Catholic then British attitudes towards the Irish would have been totally different as would everything that stemmed from such attitudes. This is not a controversial viewpoint.
That you find this offensive or “anti-Irish” is puzzling.
An ad hominem is just a fallacious strategy of tackling the man not the ball. That is all. I’m not accusing you of libelling me.
Ireland was a threat to Britain because of the brutal and rapacious treatment of the Irish, which after the ‘reformation’ ensured they mostly remained Catholic. Entirely sincere protestant proselytization was hampered by political reality: the British wanted Irish land, not Irish protestants.
Your arguments are the familiar fare of Ulster loyalists and their American admirers, whose interpretations of history can be reasonably described as anti-Irish.
For example, the Cambro-Normans despised the Irish. They weren’t just another set of brutal warlords. Their laws and other writings sometimes have the flavour of Imperial Japanese reports from occupied China.
This is not true. The Old English in Ireland before the Reformation (or Hiberno-Normans) particularly those beyond the Pale assimilated with Irish culture and remained Catholic after the Tudor conquests and the arrival of the mostly-Protestant New English.
The treatment of the Irish by the Normans was not remarkable for being brutal and rapacious and the Irish had it much better than the Anglo-Saxons had a couple of hundred years or so before.
Your persisting with the ad hominem is tiresome. An argument is an argument; it doesn’t matter who’s making it. We are all impartial; what matters is whether our analysis is impartial.
British history might be quite different if the Normans had ruled Britain as they ruled Ireland (which is not to downplay the ferocity of the Norman conquest of Britain). It’s true many Normans became partly or fully Gaelicized over time but Norman assimilation in Ireland is largely myth.
If Norman-ruled England has an equivalent of the Statutes of Kilkenny, forbidding marriage between ‘Engleis’ and Irish, then I’d be interested to know of it.
Furthermore, Norman French survived as the common tongue of the ‘English’ in Ireland long after it faded in England*.
The papal nuncio Rinuccini, among other Catholic foreigners throughout Irish history, noted that the Catholic “Old English” typically sided with the English even long after the English turned protestant (and hostile to English Catholics).
The point remains: Ireland was a threat to Britain because the Irish were viewed as barely human and treated as such by the Normans and later Britons.
Are you aware of the efforts to colonize Ireland with European protestants? In spite of limited but sincere efforts to protestantize the Irish, most British officials had no interest in converting the Irish to their new religion and as such Ireland would always remain a threat.
*As recently as the late 20th C. there were still aristocrats in England who spoke Norman French.
I’m Thomas Sowell’s worst fan! I think the guy is deluded..
Ireland WOULD be freeloading off NATO if we had enemies to defend ourselves from but as of now, we don’t have an enemy in the world.. Indeed we are rated “Best country in the World”.. If we do ever make an enemy of a powerful bloc its as likely to be USUK as anyone else! Then we’ll seek support from whomsoever we choose. It might well be Russia or China both of which we have good relations with and neither of which ever, ever did us one bit of harm! Would that it we so in the case of every powerful nation!!
“If we do ever make an enemy of a powerful bloc its as likely to be USUK as anyone else!” – You just invented that bizarre fantasy to give you the opportunity to pretend that there’d be the faintest chance of your palling around with Russia or China. It’d be interesting to see how much longer US presidents would fawn over Ireland if that ever happened. I’m sure that the Ukrainians are reassured by your conviction that Russia has never acted against Ireland’s interests.
“I’m Thomas Sowell’s worst fan! I think the guy is deluded..”
That explains a lot. However, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’ve never actually read any of his work. A lot of lefties wail against Sowell without ever being able to counter his arguments. Sowell’s line his hardly novel: Si vis pacem, para bellum.
You have missed my point. In the Second World War, Ireland also had no enemies. However, Britain did, just as Britain had enemies in France and Spain for most of its history. Since the Reformation, France and Spain and, briefly, the deposed Stuart dynasty, have used or threatened to use Ireland as a bridgehead against Britain. Had Hitler tried that, or threatened to try that, Britain would have occupied Ireland.
Britain’s bad treatment of Ireland stems almost entirely from the threat Ireland posed as a bridgehead for Catholic Europe (or the Stuarts) to attack Britain. Had Ireland broken with Rome as well, Britain and Ireland would have had very different relations.
If Hitler had invaded what would you have done with the Jewish people, hand them to the Gestapo ?
Churchill’s greatest fear was the U Boat menace. Denying British ships to the Irish ports helped the Nazis and increased the number of sailors killed.It was not until the U Boat menace was defeated in mid 1943 was it possible to bring the large number of American troops and their equipment to the UK for the invasion of France which could not begin before mid 1944.
You obviously don’t know much about submarine warfare.. if British ships used Irish* ports the U-Boats could’ve just sat offshore and dealt with them like shooting fish in a barrel!
* You seem to forget NI ports WERE of course available but not much used for that same reason.. a ship’s best defence against a submarine was to get ‘lost’ in the vastness of the ocean.. coming into (an undefended / undefendable) harbour makes it a sitting duck!
Bases for RN ships and anti- submarine flying boats. One of the problems was that in the centre of the Atlantic convoys either had reduced protection or even none at all because RN ships and flying boats had to turn back because of lack of fuel due to distances .
16 min 25. At beginning of war convoys could be escorted for 300 miles from coast. Use of Irish ports and airfields would have extended coverage further into Atlantic. The further the ship is away from the coast, the larger the area the U Boat has to search. The World At War – A Matilha – U-boats no Atlântico 1939 – 1944 – YouTube
Until mid 1943 the most important Battle of WW2 was the Battle of the Atlantic and Germany was close to winning it in 1942. The Atlantic not only supplied Britain but enabled supplies to be taken to USSR. Without the USSR receiving supplies from June 1941 could it have survived until early 1943? The USSR lost vast amounts of equipment and industrial capacity in 1941 and 1942 and time was needed to rebuild the factories in the Urals.
There wouldn’t have been that many. Ireland has a tiny Jewish population per capita. You’d have thought it would be an ideal country to settle in given that it famously has no enemies. I wonder what else has been putting the Jews off.
Minus 10 for that? Gee, I thought I was right-wing, but UnHerd really does seem to be attracting a large constituency of exceptionally narrow-minded, warmongering neo-Beitar/ League of Empire Loyalists/ John Birch Society reactionaries these days.
Would you state which NATO actions concern you. It was the murder of Muslims at Srebrenica by Christian Serbs in 1995 which has done much to fuel Islamic terrorism. Should the EU and NATO have ignored actions by Serbs from 1992 in the former Jugoslavia.
“Irish neutrality has meant whatever the government of the day has needed it to mean”. Other ‘neutral’ countries could be tarred with the same brush. Take Sweden, during World War 2. When the Axis was doing well, Sweden transported Wehrmacht troops on its railway system. Later, once the Allies had gained the upper hand, Sweden trained Danish and Norwegian volunteers so that they could liberate their homelands from the Wehrmacht.
Only Switzerland can afford to be neutral. No dictator will invade Switzerland because the Swiss are the custodians of his numbered bank account.
Austria is just the same. Whereas Sweden and Finland headed straight for NATO when the war in the Ukraine began, Austrian politicians have been pathologically avoiding starting any discussions of what our neutrality means or whether it is still necessary.
For no longer being neutral would mean Austria having to stop waffling on about being a bridge between East-West…a neutral place where great powers may meet. That schtick has been going on for decades – but it was always a sham; what it really means is being able to play everybody on all sides while never having the courage to articulate a single, clear opinion.
Sounds like a very smart stance to me! There are enough bloodthirsty, warmongering evil killers out there.. NATO doesn’t need another one! What IS needed is another intelligent, peacemaking interlocutor- we have far too few of those..
Well that would rule Ireland out then particularly under Varadkar’s leadership.
However we’re not short on weasels who want safety and prefer other people pay for it.
In fact the Swiss airforce shot both German and allied aircraft over Swiss territory,numbered bank accounts not withstanding.Even now Swiss volunteers keep rifles at home ready for action.
Your mention of Switzerland reminds me that the Swiss did favour the Allies a bit eventually. They turned a blind eye to American agents exfltrating into Campione d’Italia (the bit of Italy inside the Ticino Canton).
> Even now Swiss volunteers keep rifles at home ready for action.
True, and also true of young Swiss doing their national service. But they do not keep ammo at home and the Swiss claim that their rifles have been designed NOT to take conventional sizes of ammo. I’ve worked in Switzerland for a number of years and I certainly got the impression that they are not leaving anything to chance. They even have a lot of those dreaded tunnels for military defensive purposes.
Wow, tunnels.. like Hamas, what does that say about the Swiss? Not a lot I guess..
Like most Americans.. especially the mountainy folks.. but the enemy they fear is their own Feds!
German dead in the two world wars? c. 7million. British? About 1.4 million. French? Maybe 3 million. Swedish? A few dozen volunteers who fought for Finland against Russia, plus Raoul Wallenberg.
Sweden did its job: it looked after the Swedes.
ponce
[pɒns]
VERB
poncing (present participle)
BRITISHINFORMALseek to obtain (something) without paying for it or doing anything in return:“I ponced a ciggie off her”SIMILAR:be a pimpbe pimpingBRITISHINFORMALlive off a prostitute’s earnings:“he was arrested for poncing on the girl”
…nicely put…
When we find an enemy we’ll seek support.. as of now we don’t have any.. we only 3ver had one!
Very wise. Inherently one’s biggest enemy is yourself.
Reading this, I couldn’t help but think of The Irish Navy, by The Dubliners….
The Clнona, the Meabh and the Mucha
The pride of the Irish navy
When the Captain he blows on his whistle
All the sailors go home for their tea
While the army is off in the Kongo
In Cyprus or some foreign parts
Our navy is strained to the limits
Deploying it’s nautical acts
One day from the Russian invader
Defending our very odd fish
We found it was just the red herring
From the signals we got from the dish
‘The Clнona, the Meabh and the Mucha
The pride of the Irish navy
When the Captain he blows on his whistle
All the sailors go home for their tea
Each year they go on manoeuvres
To prepare for defence they are keen
Sometimes it’s the Lakes of Killarney
More often the pond in the Green
The canal it could be of assistance
In defending our own holy ground
But due to proposed legislation
We’ll have to sail all the way round
The Clнona, the Meabh and the Mucha
The pride of the Irish navy
When the Captain he blows on his whistle
All the sailors go home for their tea
We are a seafaring nation
Defence of our land is a right
We’d fight like the devil all morning
Provided we’re home by the night
The Clнona, the Meabh and the Mucha
The pride of the Irish navy
When the Captain he blows on his whistle
All the sailors go home for their tea
‘Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2020 raised the question of just how much assistance Dublin can provide Kyiv without rendering neutrality completely meaningless. More recently, and more in keeping with the principle of neutrality, Ireland, unlike most western countries, urged Israel to comply with international law in responding to the Hamas terror attacks.’
Uh? What possible meaningful support could a small, agrarian country like Ireland – with a modest gendarmerie of an army, a navy of a few fishery patrol vessels and no air force at all – provide to Ukraine, a whole continent away?
But oh no! Not Threats from Global Evilitude?! The Manichean Struggle of Light v Darkness? Pah. Sorry to disappoint Northrop Grumman Inc, but Ireland doesn’t need defending from anyone bar illegal trawlers, drug smugglers and the World Economic Forum’s Kulturkampf – and the same would go for an independent Scotland too.
As for the second sentence: urging Israel to comply with international law? Why, what a dangerous, radical, controversial and revolutionary proposition! How absolutely shocking! Ugh! Down with this appalling ‘neutrality’ thing! They’ll be saying there are two sides to the Palestine-Israel conflict next!!
I was waiting for the author to get to the well-known Irish anti-semitism. Ireland isn’t neutral when it comes to Israel.
It is telling that an article about Irish neutrality has a picture of the American president.
For a decade after 1999 the Irish had considerable presence in Kosovo (KFOR). Initially a transport/logistics company based in Camp Clarke, 15km south of Pristina under control of HQ KFOR their mission was to provide, on order, equipment and material lift to military units in KFOR and to humanitarian organisations working with the UN. In October 2004 the 8 Irish Transport Company was replaced by a Mechanized Infantry company, designated the 27 Infantry Group, and increased the overall commitment from 110 personnel up to over 230. The company operated as part of a Multinational Task Force (Centre) alongside soldiers from Finland, Sweden, and the Czech Republic. This Task Force was commanded by an Irish General for 12 months in 2006 – 2007. (From the Irish Defence Forces Website)
Given how poorly they fought in Katanga it is likely a good thing that they do not re-arm.
The Irish fought magnificently in the Congo.. the ambush in Niemba was an aberration. Check the facts.
Siege of Jadotville
Not true, in point of fact.
Had much close combat experience yourself, have you?
Ireland has only ever had one enemy and it isn’t Russia or China
And, when it comes to fulfilling its international responsibilities to other European countries by securing its own airspace, it can always quietly rely on the air force of an armed forces it affects to despise in public. I imagine those armed forces only tolerate it because they can well imagine what a joke any air defence Ireland would provide would be if its neighbours insisted on it.
“The Dublin Government”? The Irish government; Ireland’s government.
Small countries are always at the mercy of big bullies, and in that respect, the US is no less a bully than other great powers. And as the example Ukraine shows, no-one should be under any illusion about the US umbrella – as US senators are saying, the Ukraine war is a great investment for the US since it is killing Russians and weakening Russia without anyone else (that matters) dying.
The international standing of neutrality depends in where the US stands – so long as the US is neutral, neutrality is a Good Thing. As soon as the US takes a side, neutrality is denigrated as cowardice, vacillation, siding with the enemy, etc.
It is already clear that the Ukraine war will end with a total defeat of NATO – a NATO moreover that will have completely divested itself of ammunition and equipment. The EU’s militaristic “foreign policy”, which consists of acting as an extension of NATO, is bankrupt. Once this is all over, we’ll need some grown-ups and actual diplomats, not wanna-be ministers for war of an entity that has no army, and rebuild the credibility of Europe and its constituents.
‘Otherwise, there was a very real possibility that Churchill could order a pre-emptive invasion to deny the island to the Germans.’
I don’t understand this sentence.
The British and then the Americans did the same thing in neutral Iceland in WW2 to deny the Germans any occupation there and prevent them from using it as a strategic base to further Hitler’s war against the Allies. Churchill’s logic – thankfully never carried out, had the same purpose, to prevent Ireland from being invaded and subjugated by Nazi Germany (see Operation Green/ Unternehmen Grün) and being used as a base for the invasion of Britain. In the unlikely event that Ireland had been occupied by Nazi Germany, it would have made the liberation of Western Europe a much taller order.
Napoleon tried to invade Ireland for the same purposes as Germany would’ve had, and his fleet nearly succeeded but for adverse weather conditions off the southern Irish coast. The British government then reinforced its stranglehold on the island of Ireland, including full unification with Britain in 1801. A great deal of the subsequent violent history proceeds from that point, but the British government was almost certainly right to take the action they did at the time, as a simple matter of self-defence.
…Great Britain’s PM had in place a provisional contingency plan…in case the Blueshirts rose against the Republic with a view to offering the Treaty Ports to the Third Reich, from which to conduct the Battle of the Atlantic. And bearing in mind the visceral hostility that many in Ireland maintain towards the British to this day…which was even worse then…it would have been remiss of him not to…
The hatred you refer to was less visceral and less widespread than you imagine, even back then.. our civil war with its atrocities made the population wonder if British occupation hadn’t been all that bad!
Hatred of the English (never British) today is virtually non existing (apart from the tiny few nut jobs that every country has) as witnessed by the Queen RIP walking freely among the people of Cork, arguably Ireland’s most anti English county of all. People need to come up to date.. GB had a visceral hatred of Germans, sure but that was 70+ years ago and there was some justification…then.
“Hatred of the English (never British)…”
I never understood why the Scots always get a pass, not just by the Irish but by all those who seek to denigrate Britain’s past. The Scots played a huge role in Britain’s colonies, particularly in Ireland. India was pretty much run by Scots and West Indian cricket teams are full of people with Scottish names.
My uncle, Con Cremin, served as Ireland’s ambassador to Hitler’s Germany and spent the war in Berlin.. his sole function was to con (!) the Germans into leaving us alone. Churchill berated DeValera in public for staying neutral but in secret was totally happy with Ireland’s neutrality.. to re-invade Ireland and man it against a German attack (to protect the UK’s Western coast) was more that the UK could afford.. neutrality was the better option for GB by far.. Churchill’s berating deValera was just a show to keep Germany on Ireland’s side. They also had Lord HawHaw but the Irish govt. had no part in that (afaik). By the way we mined all our ports + airports and were set to blow up amap of vital infrastructure if EITHER side invaded! Hence we called WW2 The Emergency!
You say Irish neutrality is whatever its government wants it to be sounds like an insult perhaps but in practical terms it makes perfect sense. Its opposite, being hamstrung into unwanted, foul conflicts is hardly smart is it?
In Ireland we have a phrase: An Irish solution for an Irish problem. Our approach gives us the best of all possible worlds: International acceptability as
▪︎an freelance broker
▪︎an acceptable peacekeeper
▪︎a non belligerent interlocutor
and as such, we have minimal expenditure on killing equipment (why not call it what it is?) and maximum influence (for a tiny state).
Instead of kowtowing to appalling NATO actions (warmongering, expansion and an aggressive stance ..it’s supposed to be defensive fgs!) we could have acted a mediator and made a real contribution to peace in Ukraine; but out vassal government did the opposite.
So, mock us all you like but we will keep our funny old neutrality and yes, WE will decide what it means and how to apply (within intl. law of course) and be a real force for good in the world and the rest if you can keep your warmongering and peacock posturing to disguise your wicked, murderous, neo-colonial, one world order, US sycophancy and get on with WW3 which seems to be the objective. In the words of Sam Goldwin: Include us out!
“If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilisation then you must be prepared to accept barbarism.” – Thomas Sowell
Expansion of NATO is not “appalling”. Ireland freeloads off NATO. Fair enough, it’s a rational move. Why wouldn’t Ireland save money on defence if it can? That’ll work fine provided Ireland isn’t once again “used by Britain’s enemies in attempts to open up a western flank.” That has been the problem since the Reformation.
What an idiotic statement. Provoking war is barbarism.
Neither of the two prominent wars now going on (plus the less prominent ones) were inevitable. Both were warned about and would have been easy to avoid.
…by the Ukrainians accepting Czar Putin as their rightful liege lord, in his effort to rebuild “the Empire of all the Russias”…and the Israelis either abandoning their cherished and wholly legal state and going to exile again…or disarming, and letting Hamas use their tunnel network as a slaughterhouse and mass grave, I assume?
Utterly wrong on both counts.. you give simple-mindedness and naivety a bad name!
Right on!
Using force to defend civilisation is not provoking war. It’s hardly a novel idea: Si vis pacem, para bellum
No doubt you believe Britain’s near-millennium in Ireland was all for the betterment of the Irish so why would Ireland be a danger to Britain’s western flank?
Britain’s near-millennium in Ireland can be divided into pre and post-Reformation periods. Before the Reformation, the Norman kings were just one of a number of local rulers on a divided island; there was no country called Ireland and never had there been. The idea that the English were oppressing the Irish during this period has no basis in fact. After the Reformation, the island of Ireland stayed Catholic, the rest of the British Isles went Protestant. From that point on, Ireland became a threat to Britain as a bridgehead for Catholic Europe to invade the British Isles and restore Catholicism. Britain’s relations with Ireland between the Reformation and 1922 can largely be defined by Britain fearing the restoration of Catholicism via Ireland. This threat reappeared during the Second World War, hence the reference in this article.
Should any enemy in the future seek to attack Britain, they might use Ireland as a bridgehead. Ireland may need an army to defend itself against Britain’s enemy or to defend itself against Britain.
Did PIRA harm a member of your family? If so your veiled hostility is understandable. If not, your understanding of Irish history is as simplistic as the most tedious teenage republican.
And your ad hominem is a very poor substitution for an argument. Very telling.
If you have a counter argument, then please make it. Otherwise your contribution is no more than a meaningless slur.
Not every encounter is an argument and ad hominem would nowadays imply your character is being traduced. I’m quite willing to indulge anti-Irish interpretations of history from people who bear the scars of republican violence or whose families are affected. Nevertheless, I much prefer the ‘veni vidi vici’ strand of British anti-Irish sentiment. You surely know how Britain “went Protestant” so you might want to look into why protestantism was less successful in Ireland. There were sincere efforts to turn the Irish away from Catholicism and those efforts weren’t always unsuccessful. Likewise consider perusing medieval English law in Ireland or perhaps the enslavement of Irish in the Caribbean might pique your interest. It became such a profitable business British slavers even enslaved many Britons. Accounts from enslaved (non-Irish) noblemen who bought their freedom make for grim reading.
Nothing in your comment contradicts mine.
My comment was not an anti-Irish interpretation. I’m American so why would I care?
I pass no judgement on the whys and wherefores of the reformation. I merely stated the fairly mainstream interpretation of Anglo-Irish relations as being largely shaped by Britain’s paranoia of Catholic Europe using Ireland to attack Britain. Had Ireland not remained Catholic then British attitudes towards the Irish would have been totally different as would everything that stemmed from such attitudes. This is not a controversial viewpoint.
That you find this offensive or “anti-Irish” is puzzling.
An ad hominem is just a fallacious strategy of tackling the man not the ball. That is all. I’m not accusing you of libelling me.
Ireland was a threat to Britain because of the brutal and rapacious treatment of the Irish, which after the ‘reformation’ ensured they mostly remained Catholic. Entirely sincere protestant proselytization was hampered by political reality: the British wanted Irish land, not Irish protestants.
Your arguments are the familiar fare of Ulster loyalists and their American admirers, whose interpretations of history can be reasonably described as anti-Irish.
For example, the Cambro-Normans despised the Irish. They weren’t just another set of brutal warlords. Their laws and other writings sometimes have the flavour of Imperial Japanese reports from occupied China.
This is not true. The Old English in Ireland before the Reformation (or Hiberno-Normans) particularly those beyond the Pale assimilated with Irish culture and remained Catholic after the Tudor conquests and the arrival of the mostly-Protestant New English.
The treatment of the Irish by the Normans was not remarkable for being brutal and rapacious and the Irish had it much better than the Anglo-Saxons had a couple of hundred years or so before.
Your persisting with the ad hominem is tiresome. An argument is an argument; it doesn’t matter who’s making it. We are all impartial; what matters is whether our analysis is impartial.
British history might be quite different if the Normans had ruled Britain as they ruled Ireland (which is not to downplay the ferocity of the Norman conquest of Britain). It’s true many Normans became partly or fully Gaelicized over time but Norman assimilation in Ireland is largely myth.
If Norman-ruled England has an equivalent of the Statutes of Kilkenny, forbidding marriage between ‘Engleis’ and Irish, then I’d be interested to know of it.
Furthermore, Norman French survived as the common tongue of the ‘English’ in Ireland long after it faded in England*.
The papal nuncio Rinuccini, among other Catholic foreigners throughout Irish history, noted that the Catholic “Old English” typically sided with the English even long after the English turned protestant (and hostile to English Catholics).
The point remains: Ireland was a threat to Britain because the Irish were viewed as barely human and treated as such by the Normans and later Britons.
Are you aware of the efforts to colonize Ireland with European protestants? In spite of limited but sincere efforts to protestantize the Irish, most British officials had no interest in converting the Irish to their new religion and as such Ireland would always remain a threat.
*As recently as the late 20th C. there were still aristocrats in England who spoke Norman French.
I’m Thomas Sowell’s worst fan! I think the guy is deluded..
Ireland WOULD be freeloading off NATO if we had enemies to defend ourselves from but as of now, we don’t have an enemy in the world.. Indeed we are rated “Best country in the World”.. If we do ever make an enemy of a powerful bloc its as likely to be USUK as anyone else! Then we’ll seek support from whomsoever we choose. It might well be Russia or China both of which we have good relations with and neither of which ever, ever did us one bit of harm! Would that it we so in the case of every powerful nation!!
“If we do ever make an enemy of a powerful bloc its as likely to be USUK as anyone else!” – You just invented that bizarre fantasy to give you the opportunity to pretend that there’d be the faintest chance of your palling around with Russia or China. It’d be interesting to see how much longer US presidents would fawn over Ireland if that ever happened. I’m sure that the Ukrainians are reassured by your conviction that Russia has never acted against Ireland’s interests.
“I’m Thomas Sowell’s worst fan! I think the guy is deluded..”
That explains a lot. However, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’ve never actually read any of his work. A lot of lefties wail against Sowell without ever being able to counter his arguments. Sowell’s line his hardly novel: Si vis pacem, para bellum.
You have missed my point. In the Second World War, Ireland also had no enemies. However, Britain did, just as Britain had enemies in France and Spain for most of its history. Since the Reformation, France and Spain and, briefly, the deposed Stuart dynasty, have used or threatened to use Ireland as a bridgehead against Britain. Had Hitler tried that, or threatened to try that, Britain would have occupied Ireland.
Britain’s bad treatment of Ireland stems almost entirely from the threat Ireland posed as a bridgehead for Catholic Europe (or the Stuarts) to attack Britain. Had Ireland broken with Rome as well, Britain and Ireland would have had very different relations.
If Hitler had invaded what would you have done with the Jewish people, hand them to the Gestapo ?
Churchill’s greatest fear was the U Boat menace. Denying British ships to the Irish ports helped the Nazis and increased the number of sailors killed.It was not until the U Boat menace was defeated in mid 1943 was it possible to bring the large number of American troops and their equipment to the UK for the invasion of France which could not begin before mid 1944.
You obviously don’t know much about submarine warfare.. if British ships used Irish* ports the U-Boats could’ve just sat offshore and dealt with them like shooting fish in a barrel!
* You seem to forget NI ports WERE of course available but not much used for that same reason.. a ship’s best defence against a submarine was to get ‘lost’ in the vastness of the ocean.. coming into (an undefended / undefendable) harbour makes it a sitting duck!
Bases for RN ships and anti- submarine flying boats. One of the problems was that in the centre of the Atlantic convoys either had reduced protection or even none at all because RN ships and flying boats had to turn back because of lack of fuel due to distances .
16 min 25. At beginning of war convoys could be escorted for 300 miles from coast. Use of Irish ports and airfields would have extended coverage further into Atlantic. The further the ship is away from the coast, the larger the area the U Boat has to search.
The World At War – A Matilha – U-boats no Atlântico 1939 – 1944 – YouTube
Until mid 1943 the most important Battle of WW2 was the Battle of the Atlantic and Germany was close to winning it in 1942. The Atlantic not only supplied Britain but enabled supplies to be taken to USSR. Without the USSR receiving supplies from June 1941 could it have survived until early 1943? The USSR lost vast amounts of equipment and industrial capacity in 1941 and 1942 and time was needed to rebuild the factories in the Urals.
There wouldn’t have been that many. Ireland has a tiny Jewish population per capita. You’d have thought it would be an ideal country to settle in given that it famously has no enemies. I wonder what else has been putting the Jews off.
Minus 10 for that? Gee, I thought I was right-wing, but UnHerd really does seem to be attracting a large constituency of exceptionally narrow-minded, warmongering neo-Beitar/ League of Empire Loyalists/ John Birch Society reactionaries these days.
“People who disagree with me are exceptionally narrow-minded,” is a weak argument.
Would you state which NATO actions concern you. It was the murder of Muslims at Srebrenica by Christian Serbs in 1995 which has done much to fuel Islamic terrorism. Should the EU and NATO have ignored actions by Serbs from 1992 in the former Jugoslavia.