Irish Examiner view: Tough times give rise to hard choices on Irish neutrality
Irish troops on duty with the 124th Irish-Polish Battalion in Unifil, Lebanon, with members from the armed forces of Malta and Hungary. File Picture: @DefenceForces
This, together with plans to dramatically enhance our military capability — fighter jets, an actual working naval service, and substantially increased personnel numbers — as well as the provision of hundreds of millions of euro in aid to Ukraine, are already lighting a flame under the age-old political hot potato that is Ireland’s military non-alignment.
This has been the subject matter of often incendiary discourse since the Second World War, or The Emergency as was known in Ireland. The decision, made by Éamon de Valera and his government in 1939, to keep Ireland neutral during that war was controversial then and is now still.
Whether or not that stance was a shambles and a cloak under which covert Irish support was granted to the Allies is still debatable.
But, in the light of an increasingly fragile global security framework and increasing pressure on Ireland to commit to some form of European peacekeeping role, our minds will become increasingly focused on our responsibilities — not only in the defence of our sovereign territory, but that of Europe as a whole.
With European leaders having agreed at the weekend to intensify political and military support for Ukraine in reaction to last Friday’s Oval Office debacle in which Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was deliberately humiliated by a thuggish Donald Trump and his cronies, Ireland will, inevitably, be called upon to choose sides.
Whether that will, in turn, force our nation into reassessing our neutrality remains to be seen. There is plenty we can do today to support Ukraine without any change to that bedrock of our diplomacy and sovereignty.
Sinn Féin yesterday spoke out on the matter, saying the triple lock is necessary to maintain Ireland’s neutral stance and its removal would cause “significant risk” to our long-standing position. Others will undoubtedly follow.
In a realistic summation, the Tánaiste and minister for foreign affairs and defence, Simon Harris, when asked if Ireland would deploy peacekeeping troops to Ukraine, said it would be difficult for the country to “recuse” itself from participation.
With Europe seemingly on a path towards a cohesive defence strategy, Ireland’s position on neutrality is under scrutiny here and abroad. For now, peace should be everyone’s ultimate aim and anything we can do to facilitate that should be championed.
There is something which is either perversely humorous or deliciously ironic in the fact that as Elon Musk singlehandedly torches America’s federal bureaucracy, his car-making enterprise — Tesla — is suffering a sales implosion as customers disassociate themselves from the entrepreneur.
An element of the chicken coming home to roost can be applied to the situation as the unelected ‘czar’ of the department of government efficiency (Doge) is getting a sharp reminder that his wealth, and access to the ear of the US president does not immunise him from the public’s wrath.
In Europe alone, sales of Tesla models halved in January to 9,945 units, down from the 18,161 sold in the same month last year, suggesting that his persistent meddling in European politics — as well as his incendiary antics in Washington — have provoked a consumer backlash.
His inflammatory use of the Nazi salute recently, tied in with revelations about his family apartheid background in South Africa — where his father was an active supporter of the neo-fascist Eugène Terre’Blanche — raised many questions about Musk’s personal politics.
His backing of the far-right German AfD party, as well as his cheerleading for right-wing leaders such as Argentina’s Javier Milei, has soured many people’s attitude towards Musk, as well as turning them away from purchasing his automobiles.
In various recent polls across America, it has emerged a significant number of citizens — nearly 2:1 — disapprove of his activities as Doge boss. By a similar margin, they also dislike his gaining access to their data.
It is pretty clear by now that Americans are paying close attention to Musk’s activities and don’t like what they see. It appears to be a similar situation in Europe.
It was heartening to read in yesterday’s of how storm-hit communities in Leitrim and Cork are working to become increasingly self-sufficient.
In the wake of storms such as Babet, Dara, and Éowyn, the people of places such as Killargue in Leitrim and Midleton in Cork banded together to see what they could do communally to prevent a repetition of the devastation wreaked upon them.
Many people in those communities — and indeed so many others dotted around the country — felt abandoned by the State in the wake of losing their homes, their businesses and pretty much everything else.
What inspired them was that, although there was an international response to downed power lines and disrupted water supplies, ministers and local leaders could only offer "this must never happen again" platitudes. Many in their community felt they had been totally forgotten by the authorities.
They felt too that there were no central or local plans to deal with what had happened. The sad part is that they were and are correct in that assumption. While we are now — for however long — in a fallow weather period, we know it will not last and extreme climate change-driven weather patters will visit us again sooner than later. Are we prepared? No.
The Government, the local authorities, and electric, water, and internet utility providers need to come together in a co-ordinated and coherent fashion to lessen the impact of such events.
