Colin Sheridan: What’s next for our selective neutrality?

While the nuances of the supposed world order have shifted more than any other time since the Marshall Plan was adopted in 1948, Ireland’s posture, the tánaiste assured us, would remain static.

This — despite reports of Russian submarines conducting exercises in our waters, despite an obvious pivot from conventional peacekeeping operations with the UN toward the EU model of military compatibility, despite a history of declaring ourselves neutral and uninvolved, and the parallel reality of us being anything but.

He concluded his riposte: “While I would once again underline that there are no plans to change our policy of military neutrality, we must be cognisant of the changed geopolitical context and wider threat environment in Europe. For this reason, the Government is committed to broadening and deepening Ireland’s international security engagement as well as our domestic efforts to ensure the security of our country.”

This was an important, if rather subtle, qualification, because the “security engagement” he speaks of is the very cartilage that connects our neutrality on paper to our partiality in practice.

Much of the current discourse domestically centres on our potential future involvement with Nato. The same discourse ignores the fact that for 14 years, from 2002 until 2016, Ireland contributed officers and senior NCOs from our Defence Forces to the US-led war-fighting mission in Afghanistan.

The first of those were deployed within months of the American ground invasion following the September 11 attacks, and the commitment continued — unbroken — for over a decade.

While protests continued at Shannon Airport objecting to the US military using the facility as a halfway house for its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Ireland was a very active contributing country to that war effort, albeit in non-combat roles. 

There is no greater support in military terms than boots on the ground, even if it is only seven pairs of boots.

While the conflict in Afghanistan morphed from straight war-fighting, or International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), to a Nato-led, non-combat mission (resolute support), Irish involvement was consistent, and not at all restricted to background roles in bomb disposal or logistics.

Officers were routinely deployed in sensitive staff appointments with exceptional security clearance under British and US command at mission headquarters in Kabul and were highly regarded by mission leadership given their proficiency with language and military doctrine.

A total of 42 countries contributed troops to Isaf, including all 30 members of Nato. In that context, well-educated, English-speaking operators were a coveted resource.

When Ireland discontinued its commitment in March 2016, it barely caused a ripple at home. In Kabul, it was viewed as strategically and politically regrettable.

Be it seven troops, or 700, every country mattered, especially if they were “neutral”, as support from non-Nato members such as Ireland gave a veneer of credibility to a mission that was always morally dubious, and militarily troubled from beginning to end. Long before it concluded, it was considered by those planning and fighting it to be an unwinnable war.

The mechanism by which neutral Ireland could deploy some 210 personnel over 14 years to one of the most ill-judged conflicts in contemporary history lies in our participation in something called Partnership for Peace (PfP), which the State joined in 1999. The Government’s website says the aim of the PfP is to “enhance stability and security throughout Europe”.

It states: “Ireland’s engagement with Nato remains within our policy of military neutrality but reflects the potential benefits to Ireland from engaging in the networks that Nato provides.”

Under the programme, the Defence Forces has contributed troops to Nato-led missions in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, as well as in Afghanistan. Our involvement in Kabul did not require approval through the controversial “triple lock” rule, as the threshold for triggering the rule is the commitment of an excess of 12 personnel.

In Afghanistan, our commitment never exceeded seven. For that reason, and the fact none of our service people was injured or killed, our involvement never became as controversial a topic in the Dáil or media as it might otherwise have been.

While it was never a secret, the majority of the public was ignorant of it. 

I’d go so far as to say there were serving members of the Defence Forces who never knew their colleagues were deployed in an active war zone.

While the context of this quirk in our neutrality is hardly revelatory, it is instructive to note as the focus intensifies on our military impartiality that the small print has always existed. One could argue it has afforded us the “invisible” support from states such as the US and the UK who continue to fill strategic gaps in our national security we have either been unwilling or unable to plug ourselves.

'Wakeup call for the State'

Speaking exclusively to the Irish Examiner last weekend in his first interview as Taoiseach, Mr Martin evoked the palpable worry of many EU member states regarding continued Russian aggression in Ukraine as a wakeup call for the State, citing a need for Ireland to significantly increase expenditure on our “defence capability” in line with its European partners.

“There’s no awareness in Ireland about this at all,” he said of the Russian threat. “It’s not that Europe wants a war — it doesn’t, obviously it doesn’t want a war — but there’s real fear in Europe about the Russian agenda.”

While future Nato membership was not discussed, the inference clearly is that we, the Irish people, are ignorant to what the Taoiseach believes to be legitimate threats to our state security and, under his Government, this will need to change.

How such a shift in zeitgeist will manifest itself will be interesting, given recent polling confirmed an overwhelming number of the public believes we should not alter our policy on neutrality, and, as evidenced in Lebanon last November, our military is far more comfortable in traditional peacekeeping roles rather than fighting a dubious enemy.

Which brings us to the Defence Forces.

When Lieutenant General Seán Clancy assumed his role of chief of staff in September 2022, he took charge of an institution reeling from a retention and recruitment crisis, and the fresh disgrace of the Women of Honour scandal which laid bare an underbelly of bullying and misogyny within the organisation that had been festering for decades.

A helicopter pilot, Lt Gen Clancy was not of the army, the dominant branch of the forces, and was, as such, viewed as a progressive candidate unburdened by the legacy stigma of old-school values that dogged the military internally for years.

He was a fresh face who publicly acknowledged the challenges of the role while stating the requirement for change.

Not long after his appointment, the Commission on Defence published its report recommending significant changes for the Defence Forces, including an overhaul of the organisation’s “capabilities,

culture, high-level command and control structures, HR and staffing and to the level of defence provision in Ireland”.

Rebuilding a rotting house

In effect, Lt Gen Clancy was handed a text to work from, a playbook to rebuild a house rotting from within. To the outside eye, the Defence Forces is often viewed as a beacon of excellence, especially in the context of overperforming in hostile environments overseas.

As it proved in incredibly challenging circumstances in Lebanon late last year, that reputation is justified.

Internally, however, it has become a seeping wound. A malfunctioning human resources model has led, over decades, to discontent throughout all ranks. A pervasive culture of bullying and misogyny has crippled morale. Per the brief prepared for the incoming minister for defence last month, the strength of the Permanent Defence Forces stood at 7,557 personnel, over 2,000 below its prescribed establishment of 9,739.

In August 2024, the Irish Examiner reported that the army employed fewer than 6,000 for the first time in living memory.

As per the commission’s recommendations, a strategic head of HR was appointed in September 2023. While it is understood that improved recruitment and retention is only part of their remit, 18 months later, big challenges remain.

Further compounding a sense of disillusionment within the ranks is the departure of Lt Gen Clancy to Brussels, where he will begin his leadership of the EU Military Council in May, along with a dozen staff.

His exit comes roughly halfway through a typical term for a chief of staff, and while his successful candidacy for the top military job in Europe is understandably viewed as a feather in the Government’s cap, it amplifies one of the key complaints of many ordinary members of the Defence Forces: its obsession with careerism.

Units, the spine of the organisation (think battalions based in barracks in Finner, Dundalk, Limerick, and Athlone), are grossly undermanned, making the completion of routine duties difficult.

The high attrition of officers in leadership appointments, moved on due to promotion or overseas commitments, ensures continuity in barracks is perennially problematic. Operational readiness (a metric by which a soldier is considered capable of performing duties, exercises, and operations) is compromised by an ageing profile in the ranks, and a shortage of suitably trained medical personnel to administer and sign off on key criteria.

These issues pre-existed Lt Gen Clancy’s tenure as chief, but perhaps what the Defence Forces needed most in the wake of abuse scandals, a recruitment and retention crisis, and a culture of ill-discipline played out in public throughout this past year is stability.

The Government will argue Lt Gen Clancy’s appointment serves a greater good, but at the tactical level, as he departs to Brussels with a dozen officers as the organisation struggles to meet its longstanding commitments to missions such as Unifil, it has a whiff of the senate fiddling while Rome burns.

A new chief of staff will be appointed soon, and whoever is chosen will inherit an arguably even more damaged vessel than was handed to their predecessor. Any trend away from traditional peacekeeping with the UN towards EU/Nato-aligned operations brings with it many existential quandaries Ireland will have to address in the short term. What it can achieve with a dysfunctional Defence Forces limping to the assembly area may prove a costly question to answer.

Like all families, the military will not like hearing the quiet part said aloud. But things are not what they once were and protesting “twas ever thus” is not good enough when lives are on the line.

Decisions made coldly in Newbridge and Dublin have very real consequences for the lives of serving soldiers and their families.

Facing up to the nuances of our selective neutrality while acknowledging the malaise within the institution charged to defend it may be the first step to recovery.