Dominic Carroll from The Irish Neutrality League explains why the purpose of jettisoning the Triple Lock would be to dismantle Irish neutrality.
The government is preparing to scrap the Triple Lock. That’s the law that determines the circumstances in which the Irish Defence Forces can be sent abroad. The government currently requires United Nations authorisation before joining overseas military missions (that’s one element of the Triple Lock; the other two elements are Cabinet and Dáil approval). But if it succeeds in scrapping the Triple Lock, the government intends to join EU military missions even if they lack United Nations authorisation.
Would these be peacekeeping missions? Hardly. The EU is preparing for war. We know this because it keeps saying so. On 9 March, the Irish Times reported that “European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is clear that the EU is preparing for war”. That same week the European Council President, Charles Michel, declared that “If we want peace, we must prepare for war.” In the Irish Times article, the author, Pat Leahy, reported that he had recently “spoken at length to two senior members of the Government about this, both highly engaged at EU level. Both say the same thing: the EU is preparing for war.”
As a neutral country, one would have expected the Irish government to recoil in horror at where the EU is headed. However, both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil fully endorse the EU’s escalating militarism, and make no secret of it. (The Greens are on board, too, though with some pangs of conscience.) They have been stung by repeated criticism that Ireland is “freeloading” off NATO rather than pouring money into building up a “credible” defence force. A well-managed opposition to neutrality (provided with acres of space in the Irish Times) now insists that Ireland must “grow up” and pay for an army that’s “fit for purpose”. However, the public’s steadfast attachment to neutrality (around 60% want Ireland to stay neutral) is making it difficult for the Irish government to prove its worth in Europe.
So neutrality is being picked apart, thread by thread.
Already, Ireland is a member of NATO’s misnamed Partnership for Peace – a waiting room for full NATO membership – and of PESCO, the EU’s “defence cooperation” arrangement.
The EU is wholly subservient to the US in military matters, and Ireland plays its part by permitting American military aircraft to refuel at Shannon on their way to wars across the globe. Numerous US military planes have recently been tracked to Israel after refuelling at Shannon, with the government raising no objections.
The (proxy) war in Ukraine has also been used to further undermine neutrality. First, “non-lethal” aid in the form of flak jackets was sent to Ukraine, then the Irish Defence Forces provided training to Ukrainian sappers so they could clear a path through minefields for their advancing army, and then the Irish Defence Forces provided rifle training. In other words, lethal aid to an army at war from a country insisting it’s still neutral against all the evidence to the contrary.
But ditching the Triple Lock would be the most significant breach of what little is left of Ireland’s neutrality as it will remove a major obstacle to Ireland’s full integration into the EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). As of now, the Department of Foreign Affairs website acknowledges that Ireland’s role in EU defence arrangements is restricted by the Triple Lock:
During the course of the evolution of the EU’s CSDP, our EU partners have always fully respected Ireland’s sovereignty, independence and neutrality. The legal guarantees given by the European Council in June 2009 confirmed that the EU’s security and defence policy does not affect or prejudice Ireland’s traditional policy of military neutrality. The deployment of contingents of more than twelve Irish troops to any conflict zone or CSDP mission cannot proceed without what we call the ‘triple lock’ of UN authorisation, Government approval, and Dáil approval.
It’s clear that if the Triple Lock is scrapped the Irish Defence Forces will ramp up their involvement in EU military structures (and the Department of Foreign Affairs website will need to be updated). Even as things stand the Irish Defence Forces is a participant in one of the EU’s Battlegroups, described by the EU as “multinational, military units, usually composed of 1,500 personnel each and forming an integral part of the European Union’s military rapid reaction capacity to respond to emerging crises and conflicts around the world”. The EU has nineteen Battlegroups fielding more than 30,000 soldiers. When they were first formed, in 2007, a BBC defence expert wrote: “The European Union has quietly acquired what might be described as a standing army.” As yetthe Battlegroups have not gone to war, so the Irish government claims neutrality has not been breached.
The EU – and Ireland – has become bolder since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In its Strategic Compass for Security and Defence, the EU declared its intention to “develop full spectrum forces”. To blunt public opposition to its escalating militarism, it has preached a “catechism of security” (a term coined by the political analyst Perry Anderson to describe the basis of US foreign policy): that is, distortions of ideology and exaggerations of insecurity. Governments and the media now routinely promote alarmist scenarios of vulnerability to external attack, and insist that “our values” are intrinsic to security: that is, democracies must face up to autocracies.
With this narrative firmly embedded in politics and in the media, and with many people believing it, the EU is making the most of the fear it has stoked up to build a Rapid Reaction Force. Initially, this will be comprised of 5,000 troops, but will be expanded when the EU senses the time is right, and will take on the characteristics of an army under central command. This will likely be the EU army that defenders of Irish neutrality have warned about for decades and which militarists have laughed off as scaremongering.
This escalating militarism is underpinned by politics. Ireland and the EU are Atlanticists: that is, they are led (dominated) by the US – economically, politically, militarily. Zbigniew Brzezinski, a leading US security architect, disparaged European countries as no more than “vassals, tributaries, protectorates, and colonies”. He designated the EU as “the Eurasian bridgehead for American power” (The Grand Chessboard, 1997). Of course, the EU knows full well howlittle respect the US has for it, but is comfortable with the prospect of long-term US patronage/domination.
There can be no doubt that the US arming of Ukraine is one outcome of the Brzezinski Doctrine. The US is clearly intent on defeating Russia for its own purposes and as an object lesson to China. The war in Ukraine may well be the opening phase of a long-term global military conflict. Which is whythe EU is “preparing for war” and why the Irish government is being cajoled into playing its part.
Ireland’s neutrality and the Triple Lock are impediments to Ireland’s ambition for full EU military integration. Popular support for neutrality has, for now, prevented the government from ditching it. But the proposal to scrap the Triple Lock has generated little public debate and no opposition among the government’s backbench TDs, so there is a real danger it will be abolished.
However, this is not a foregone conclusion. The anti-war movement is small but not ineffective, as we showed last year when successfully discrediting the government’s showcase forum on defence and security. In the Dáil, left-wing parties have made government ministers squirm at they call into question the government’s commitment to neutrality. If the anti-war movement can build more opposition to the scrapping of the Triple Lock, we may succeed in thwarting the government.
