Gavin Mendel-Gleason examines why Ireland has moved away from neutrality.
The arrest and imprisonment of veteran peace campaigner, Margaretta D’Arcy, for intruding onto the runway at Shannon Airport on 7th October, 2013, in protest over the use of the facility by the US military, has again thrown into stark relief Ireland’s status as a formerly neutral State.Irish neutrality’s legal basis is established in the Constitution. It is further strengthened by Statutory Instrument (SI) No 74/1952 introduced by Taoiseach Sean Lemass. Statutory instruments are those laws which are not made directly by the Dáil but instead are introduced by a body delegated powers. The order bans the use of Ireland by foreign military aircraft.
However, the Irish Government continues to allow the use of Shannon Airport for US military operations. Approximately 5000 US troops passed through Shannon Airport every week in 2011. In addition to this the airport was utilised by many military cargo.
NATO is further interested in expanding into Eastern Europe, in pursuit of a policy to surround and pressure Russia and Iran.
The US has also used Shannon for illegal CIA operations. These operations included the transport of kidnapped victims, some of whom were citizens of EU countries, to a network of foreign “black” prisons, often in countries which torture can be conducted with impunity.
Ireland has also supported US military operations in foreign countries. In the diplomatic cables leaked by Chelsea Manning to Wikileaks, 63 relate to Afghanistan, many of which talk about collaboration. One 2009 cable from the US Embassy in Dublin to Washington reports:
“Our interlocutors all stressed that Ireland recognizes the importance of success in Afghanistan, and that, despite budget constraints, Ireland will continue to participate in international efforts there”. (leaked cable 09DUBLIN510_a)
However, the policy director in the Irish Department of Defence is apparently fearful of public opinion against Irish involvement in NATO on the basis of neutrality as we see in another cable:
“[The] Assistant Secretary General and Policy Director in the Irish Department of Defense, told Poloff there was a slight possibility Ireland would send two military trainers to Afghanistan to help train Afghan security forces. Ireland hopes to ratify an EU Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and a NATO Partnership for Peace SOFA, in 2010. In deference to fears of awakening neutrality-based opposition to the SOFAs, the two SOFAs will apply only to Irish troops outside of Ireland and not/not to non-Irish troops in Ireland. U.S. troops transiting to Afghanistan and Iraq through Shannon airport in Ireland will continue to be handled informally.” (leaked cable 09DUBLIN545)
The combination of the use of Shannon Airport and the cables show plainly that Ireland already participates in NATO, the world’s largest military alliance. NATO’s geopolitical strategy is primarily dictated by the interests of the US.
A world empire, the US has military bases in Germany, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Japan and many other countries besides.
NATO is further interested in expanding into Eastern Europe, in pursuit of a policy to surround and pressure Russia and Iran into compliance with US geopolitical objectives. This lead the US State Department to spend $5 billion supporting pro-western and rightwing forces in the Ukraine in an attempt to bring the former Soviet state into its orbit. As in other former Soviet states, the aim is to position NATO bases in this country which directly borders Russia.
But what is so bad about being a compliant vassal state of the US empire? The US is directly responsible for some of the greatest modern atrocities, from Vietnam which left some 3.8 million dead through to the Iraq war which left at least a half a million dead. No other state has such a bloody record in the modern period.
The US has also shown that its foreign policy objectives are directly hostile to any sort of experiment with socialism no matter how democratic and popular. It assisted in a the extermination of socialists in Indonesia by the military in 1965, in the coup against the democratically elected communist Salvadore
Allende in Chile in 1973 and funded death squads throughout most of Latin America from the 1960s to the present. In 2002 the US also assisted in an attempted coup against the very popular and democratically elected Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.
This list is very incomplete but it demonstrates the importance of understanding what a dangerous, anti-democratic and anti-socialist force the US is internationally. It is important that progressives attempt to utilise our legal stance of neutrality to remove Ireland from acting in collaboration with US geopolitical objectives.
Gavin Gleason is a coordinator of the Left Forum.
