Jennifer Horgan: Why I could never send my children to war — and neither should Ireland

Because that’s exactly what’s happening. Daily, voices are trying to chip away at Ireland’s commitment to peace. Globally, military expenditure is increasing. In 2024 it was $2.46 trillion. Meanwhile, children go hungry.

It’s not that I don’t believe in war, it’s more that I can’t believe in it because it makes a mockery of how I live. Considering the fear and pain I waded through, just to bring three tiny lives into the world, I can’t believe in it. I could never direct my children to take up arms against other people’s children. It would be illogical.

I agree with our President when he argues that there is a growing rhetoric, one of impatience, that calls for “war as a state of mind.” Like my daughter, I’m turning the dial, reminding myself that all life is precious, reminding myself that the simple act of saying so is a power.

I am turning the dial. Saying it again into the silence: all life is precious.

We are told that policymakers in the EU are in a state of “disbelief” about Ireland’s position on defence. Their disbelief stems from the state of mind to which President Higgins refers. They simply can’t conceive of an alternative way of seeing, one that prioritises human life over everything.

I am turning the dial, proud to live in a state that sets an example for a world stuck on repeat, still teaching its citizens that war is the price for freedom. 

I believe war signifies the end of freedom. What you do to someone else, you do to yourself. What you do to somebody else’s child, eventually, you do to your own child. Peace must be our only aspiration.

But even here in Ireland, on our streets, we are misdirected towards violence. Even here, in a country referred to by academic John O’Brennan as the “ostrich” of Europe, our commemorated dead are all men who endured violence and war. Some day, Irish cities will celebrate people who sustained life too.

Certainly, in the most drastic final throes of self-defence, violence becomes the final arbitrator. But only as a very final, desperate measure, only as a very last resort. We must be realistic about our defence. Colin Sheridan referred to our Defence Forces as a ‘rotting house’ in an article for this paper. We are not going to become a military force overnight. Our state of mind in this regard is important, and we must not turn it towards war.

For some, it’s already shifting. These are the ones who say we were never neutral anyway, implying it wouldn’t be any great shift to let neutrality go.

The word ‘neutral’ is indeed misleading, but we have always been a militarily non-aligned country — a peace-keeping one. That is what makes us different and important. We have made mistakes certainly, and our history of neutrality is imperfect, but that doesn’t make it disposable.

And while I hear people question our neutrality, I never hear anyone breaking down the absolute madness of war and the great harm there is in assuming its inevitability. We share the horrors of war retrospectively. Why? Why not remind ourselves again and again what war does and doesn’t achieve?

Supporters of past violence always claim that such violence was inevitable. Terrorists say that bombings had to happen, explosions that blasted civilians up off their own streets, returning them in smithereens. People will say Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to happen. They will say such things without any possible proof, because we never got the opportunity to live through an alternative.

And we must not forget our personal power. Quoting Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali said: 

Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue.

Found guilty of draft evasion and stripped of his boxing titles during Vietnam, he never wavered. This reminds us of our power as individuals and as a non-militarily aligned country. We can disrupt the depiction of war as inevitable, and that is a hugely worthy act of defiance.

We can switch the dial — if even slightly.

Writing in The New York Times, Tom Wicker, following Ali’s statement, asked: “What would happen if you had 100,000 Muhammad Alis?” Ali knew such defiance could bring war to a stop. He refused to kill other “poor people in the mud” for a country that had treated his people appallingly. He saw the blatant lack of logic in an oppressed boy being sent out to kill other oppressed boys. 

Black people are still overrepresented in the American army; 21% of soldiers are black, versus 14% of black people in the general population. Russian regions experiencing the highest rates of poverty have mobilized the largest share of conscripts to be sent to fight in Ukraine. Nothing about war has changed — not really. It still rewards the few and destroys the masses.

Diplomacy must be Ireland’s only role now — to maintain our misnamed ‘neutrality’. To focus on our unwavering belief in diplomacy and peace. We are not neutral. Rather, we are committed to peace. This is actually a moment of great possibility. We have an opportunity to become leaders in peace and reconciliation, informed by our own dreadfully violent past.

Mark Boyden, an environmental educator and decades-long researcher of neutrality, living in West Cork, told me this week about travelling through India in 1981. He was struck by how many Indian newspapers were covering Ireland’s hunger strikers. When he asked why they were so invested in Ireland, people explained that India viewed Ireland as a fellow victim of colonialism. 

This, says Mark Boyden, is key to our power — Ireland is viewed globally as an honest broker, a country with certain values, and a certain moral rectitude, which is now so very badly needed in an increasingly polarised world.

“Fine,” he continues, “acknowledge the historical ambivalence of our ‘neutrality’ — but as a nation find the courage and leadership to realise that history is alive and that we have every right to develop and proclaim a fresh definition of a dynamic neutrality which is of service to the world, and will be of far greater benefit to Ireland than mindlessly joining in an arms race, the finish line of which is littered with destruction and suffering.” 

It is vital that our Taoiseach turns up at the White House next month. Politicians who champion our neutrality and simultaneously argue against the meeting misunderstand our purpose as a nation now and into the future. Turning up does not mean agreement. It does not mean support. Turning up means a willingness to protect the small part we play in world politics, representing an increasingly unique way of seeing and being in the world.

We must remember the great John Hume now too, who said: “The job of politicians, first and foremost, is to prevent conflict through the management of difference.” Hume reminds us to “spill our sweat and not our blood.” Individuals and individual countries can change the world in small, incremental ways. We must hold on to the mindset of peace, especially when everyone else in the room is tuning into war.

Mark Boyden left me with the most beautiful mythopoetic image to summon up a new sense of our neutrality. He likened Ireland to the black salmon, the one who doesn’t go with the flow, and in that choice confers great benefit upon her wider community.

My daughter, the one who switches off my radio, likes the image. I do too.