Ireland and Switzerland are having versions of the same debate about neutrality |
Until recently, the UN Security Council’s right to veto Irish military engagement in peace operations abroad has not had the effect of inhibiting any such missions. It is largely a theoretical constraint – a reassuring domestic symbol of the triple lock enacted through the Nice Treaty to restrain notionally warmongering governments, supposedly hell-bent on diluting neutrality.
Now, however, the Government’s contentious desire to undo the provision, which allows the US or Russia to determine our deployment of more than 12 soldiers abroad, is coming into conflict with pressing new geopolitical realities.
On the one hand, the increasingly dysfunctional and gridlocked Security Council – which is hamstrung by permanent members’ vetoes – has proved unable to approve any new peacekeeping missions in 12 years.
That reality will unfortunately see the termination in December of the near-50-year Unifil mission to Lebanon, at the behest of the US and Israel. Ireland is still contributing large contingents to the mission – 300 today – which continues to play an important role, albeit imperfectly, in constraining both Israel and Hizbullah. As a disappointed Minister for Defence, Helen McEntee, warns, “What we’re seeing here is exactly what we are seeing happening in Gaza when you have nobody on the ground able to monitor.”
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