There has always been great talk in Ireland that Ireland is a neutral country. Nothing could be further from the truth. The evidence for this is based on our 900 years of occupation by British Imperialism. Non-neutrality was reinforced by the outcome of the 1922 counter-revolutionary civil war in Ireland. Irish neutrality, or the hope of Irish neutrality, ended there. The outworking of the counter-revolutionary civil war ensured that the British Empire would retain its authority in Ireland to the present day. This is even more true of the six north-eastern counties of Ireland which are still occupied by Britain and are, therefore, a constituent part of NATO. None of this will the Dublin ruling class ever concede, in their race to end the nominal neutrality of the 26 counties.
An editorial which was really more of a manifesto to fully bury any neutrality we might have in the Business Post on 23rd March 2025, about sums up the craven, but dangerous, attitude of the Dublin ruling class and their compliant media. They are committed to supporting imperialist wars no matter the human cost, they want to force the Irish people to become part of NATO and to lavishly spend much needed public money on military hardware of death, while abandoning all our social justice issues here.
The editorial is very keen to point out that all governments need to protect the security of their citizens, but what it doesn’t mention is that if you become aligned with warring factions then you’re bound to be a target. The editorial has nothing but the highest of praise for the new Ministerial Council on National Security. This it appears is the answer to all the prayers of the ruling class and their capitalist friends, especially in the military industrial world. This military junta, we are told, will meet at least three times a year to decide the fate of our sons, daughters, nieces, nephews and grandchildren, who they will be sending to be slaughtered on battlefields in foreign countries, fighting rich men’s wars. This new military junta is staffed by the great and good in the ruling class; none other than the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, the Minister for Justice, the Garda Commissioner, the Defence Forces chief of staff and the director of the National Cyber Security Centre. How many spaces have been created for the working people of Ireland to have their say on whether we send our children to war or not?
The Taoiseach said, apparently, that the purpose of this junta is to “allow increased coordination and assessment of Ireland’s national security needs capabilities and risks”. Is that not the job of the existing intelligence agencies that do all this monitoring already? The Taoiseach also said it was a government response to “an increasingly complex and challenging geopolitical and security situation across the world”. The next obvious question here would be: who has created this increasingly complex and challenging geopolitical security situation across the world? Is there any chance that the ruling class in Dublin and indeed elsewhere, will ever consider that it was indeed their Yankee, Zionist and European friends, who have caused all this mayhem throughout the world, for centuries? But no of course, it’s Russia and China who are the bad guys at the moment. Could it be that the growing strength of the BRICS organisation is more what this is all about, than any real threats from either Russia or China, and in particular the world-wide economic power of China?
The Dublin administration has invented four main reasons why the Triple-Lock system, and particularly the UN part of it, has to be gotten rid of. Their first point is that the UN undermines Irish sovereignty. Tánaiste (at the time) Mícheál Martin stated in the Sunday Business Post in November 2023 that “The Triple Lock allows the five permanent members of the Security Council, like Russia, to bind Ireland’s hands in our international engagement… and that there’s something morally wrong in giving an authoritarian and aggressive imperialist power like Putin Russia a de facto veto on how we, as an independent Republic, deploy our troops”. China wasn’t mentioned this time, but are the other three permanent members of the security council – Britain, America and France – not imperialist, authoritarian or aggressive? So, they are, tactically, not mentioned as part of the “veto team”. However, all of the UN and its “vetoists” were not a threat when Irish soldiers were “peacekeeping” around the world. No mention in all of those years of an “undermining of Irish sovereignty”. Why? Are they still committed to that part of the UN Security Council?
Point number two by the Dublin ruling class is that we are not to conflate Irish neutrality with the Triple-Lock. Fianna Fáil MEP Billie Kelleher, quoted in the Irish Examiner, said: “our neutrality will not be affected by Triple-Lock change”. Would you believe him? Especially as he also refers to anyone opposed to their ending of neutrality as “a gang of neutrality hawks”, and especially those of us on the left. That means that two thirds of the twenty-six counties are “neutrality hawks”, according to an Irish Times/Ipsos poll in 2022.
The third point being made by the Dublin ruling class is that the Triple-Lock is not fit for purpose. And in particular it’s the UN part of the Triple-Lock system that is “problematic”.
Far from it not being fit for purpose, it is in fact serving precisely the purpose it was created for: keeping Ireland out of wars and protecting Irish neutrality. Using lame excuses about threats to undersea cables, when the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which is right in the middle of a NATO-controlled area, was mysteriously blown up by, as yet, unidentified forces. However, it will be noted that American fracked liquefied gas is now being supplied to Europe. A very diplomatic and peaceful way to “balance the books”. We don’t see any deep discussion about any of this in the mainstream press or by government ministers.
The fourth and final point, that the “government in Dublin” is using to justify ending neutrality and therefore, our sovereignty, is that “we must deal with the world as it is now”. If we were to take that statement to its logical conclusion, then since the foundation of the 26 counties, we would have changed our position on neutrality many times, but we didn’t. Yes, the world is always changing, and the reason for that change is capitalism, imperialism and wars of expansion and aggression by imperialist powers. That’s why the world changes. Why is it that the engineered Ukrainian war is suddenly a great reason to end our neutrality? Hardly because we agree with NATO and nuclear bases in Ukraine? Hardly because we support the American stated plans to wipe out Russia, Iran, China, Gaza or anyone else who gets in the way of their imperialist ambitions? Or is it to support the enrichment, through weapons of death, of those financing the military industrial companies around the world?
Do the Irish people, North or South, want to be a part of that murderous gravy train?
