PB 1 PESCO, Irish Neutrality and the Militarisation of the EU

Contributors Clare Daly TD Seamus Healy TD Maureen O’Sullivan TD Thomas Pringle TD Mick Wallace TD

Lave Broch Niall Farrell Frank Keoghan Prof. John Maguire

Published with the assistance of The People’s Movement and Afri - Action from Ireland January 2019

2 3 Contents

Introduction Clare Daly TD Page 4

PESCO (Permanent Structured Cooperation)

As €200 million warship put out to tender by Government, where now for Irish neutrality? Seamus Healy TD Page 7

PESCO, industry and war Thomas Pringle TD Page 10

PESCO and militarisation Mick Wallace TD Page 13

Irish Neutrality

A Constitutional provision on neutrality is vital Maureen O’Sullivan TD Page 16

Our precarious neutrality Niall Farrell Page 18

‘A vivid impression’: The repressed potential of Irish neutrality Prof. John Maguire Page 20

The militarisation of the EU

Denmark has rejected participation in the militarisation of the EU Lave K. Broch Page 29

The militarisation of the EU! Frank Keoghan Page 31

2 3 Introduction

‘I want us to dedicate further efforts to defence matters. A new European Defence Fund is in the offing, as is a Permanent Structured Cooperation in the area of defence. By 2025 we need a fully-fledged European Defence Union. We need it. And NATO wants it.’ Jean Claude Juncker, September 2017 ‘[With PESCO] We made a huge step forward because for the very first time since the European Union has existed we have a legal frame around the European Defence Union. The beginning of the European Defence Union is here.’ - German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen, February 2018. ‘PESCO has absolutely nothing to do with the creation of an EU army.’ - Simon Coveney, Dáil debate on the motion to join PESCO, 7 December 2017.

As plans for a European army ramp up, and Irish politicians double down on the lie that Ireland won’t be affected by them, there is no better moment for a publication that looks at the implications of a ‘European Defence Union’ for Europe, and for Ireland’s place within it. So I’m very pleased to introduce this booklet and its contributions from TDs Mick Wallace, Thomas Pringle, Maureen O’Sullivan and Seamus Healy, alongside pieces from Danish MEP Lave K. Broch, peace activist Niall Farrell, the People’s Movement’s Frank Keoghan and Professor John Maguire of Afri/Action from Ireland. Ireland – and Europe – currently face questions of historic importance around European militarisation, and we can’t and won’t be silent in the face of them. If we’re to change Ireland’s or Europe’s course we have to act now before it’s too late, and in that regard particular thanks have to go to Frank Keoghan of the People’s Movement for bringing all the contributions in this booklet together. Since it bounced Ireland into PESCO last year with minimal notice or debate, the Irish Government has spent the majority of its time on the issue obfuscating and side-stepping; rebutting claims that nobody has made by repeating ad nauseam that the Lisbon Treaty does not provide for the creation of a European army, while ignoring the fact that everything that is being done at the present moment – from PESCO through ‘unprecedented’ levels of cooperation between the EU and NATO to the European Defence Fund – is in fact laying the foundations for just that. While our Government continues to deny the obvious truth, the EU’s bureaucrats are less coy. Federica Mogherini has called PESCO the ‘definitive leap forward in European security and defence’, and a ‘silver thread between the EU’s operational capacities, capability development initiatives and defence industrial support’. European politicians are even more blatant, with Emmanuel Macron choosing the centenary of the end of World War I to call for a ‘real European army’ – not for the first time – and Angela Merkel following up a week later with a call to ‘work on the vision of one day creating a genuine European army.’ There is no question but that the end-game of all of Europe’s multiplicity of current defence initiatives is for them to coalesce into a European army, but in the short-term, as Frank Keoghan makes clear in his piece, what’s happening while the blocks are being laid for that army is disturbing enough. He highlights the European Intervention Initiative launched in July, to which a variety of Member States who are prepared to act outside the EU’s borders without help from NATO or the US have signed up. He also details a beefed-up European Border and Coast Guard which will operate with executive powers and its own equipment, being deployed ‘wherever and whenever’ along the EU’s external borders as well as in non-EU countries. And that’s not to mention the commitment under PESCO for each signatory to increase defence spending even as Europe already spends €200 billion a year on it; the €13 billion of public money that will be funnelled to the new European Defence Fund between 2021 and 2027; or the huge allocation for military research and development under the €80 billion Horizon 2020 programme.

4 5 All of this, as traced by Thomas Pringle in his piece, is being driven by an arms industry hungry for profit which has been given a seat at the heart of Europe’s decision-making apparatus. And, as Maureen O’Sullivan makes clear, it is also fatally undermining the ‘good name, reputation and respect’ that Ireland has spent decades accruing through the work of entities like Irish Aid and through our UN peacekeeping roles. Quite clearly, we are at a key juncture in European history. And, as many of the writers in this booklet make clear, we are at a key juncture also in the history of Irish neutrality as traced particularly by Professor John Maguire in his contribution. For years Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have chipped away at Irish neutrality – most obviously through the facilitation of US warplanes through Shannon. But with PESCO that chipping at the boundaries of the acceptable has gone a good deal further. At present, all of the signs point to Fine Gael pushing their luck to see how far they can go with our neutrality before the public starts to push back. It’s not just PESCO, of course – it’s US use of Shannon; it’s arms exports and EU Battlegroups; it’s NATO warships in our ports and Irish ships in Operation Sophia. It’s Department of Defence officials ambling around London arms fairs. It’s also our Government planning to shell out €200m on a ‘multi-role’ ship capable of carrying a battalion of soldiers along with landing craft and freight capacity for military vehicles, as detailed by Seamus Healy in his contribution. With all of this as a backdrop, it’s little wonder that Niall Farrell makes the point in this collection that the protections of the Triple Lock and Article 29 are tenuous at best. In his piece, Mick Wallace describes the Triple Lock as a ‘ritual’ – and with the two biggest political parties in the State looking more and more eager to shuck off our neutrality as soon as the time is right, that’s a more than apt description. That’s why all of us who are dedicated to Irish neutrality, and dedicated to neutrality actually meaning something in practice, have to up our game. The Irish public is overwhelmingly behind our neutral status, but there is a concentrated effort by some within the political and media establishment to nudge and massage them into accepting a completely attenuated version of that neutrality – one which joining military alliances and hosting a permanent US military airbase ‘doesn’t contradict’. We need to seize the momentum back. Already the kites are being flown in terms of a wholesale shift away from even the facsimile of neutrality that we enjoy now – with a position paper released in 2018 by four Fine Gael MEPs calling for Ireland to ‘Redefine the concept of [its] neutrality’ to ‘Independent Non-nuclear Defence’. They describe this as ‘a position on security and defence that is open to active engagement in international security operations’. Their paper calls for an increase in defence spending and demands – of course – that Ireland’s defence industry be developed by grabbing a hold of some of the €5 billion a year the EU will soon be shovelling into the European Defence Fund. It also states explicitly that Ireland must be part of any European Defence Union – i.e. any EU army. The fact that a referendum would be needed for that gives us an idea as to where Fine Gael’s strategic thinking is going on this. Their policy paper is part of a strategy to ‘redefine the concept’ of neutrality, and sell to the Irish public a new concept, one that can accommodate everything from public funding of the arms industry to going to war so that – their thinking goes – any future referendum on an EU army would pass. That’s the ultimate goal. The fact that this policy paper from a bunch of relatively obscure Fine Gael MEPs got broad coverage in the national press is evidence that this is in fact a ‘sales job’ designed to push such ideas into the realm of acceptability. It is crucial that we counter it, with the proper answer to their question ‘Can anyone really say for sure that we are now a truly neutral country?’ The danger is that if they and the EU have their way we’ll move from facilitating wars to actively fighting in them. It doesn’t have to be this way. As Lave K. Broch writes in his piece, ‘Danish taxpayers do not pay for EU military projects and Danish soldiers do not wear EU uniforms and participate in EU military operations.’ And Denmark was a founding member of NATO! As a neutral Member State it should not be a pipedream for Ireland to be similarly independent of Europe’s increasing and dangerous militarism. And let us never forget that our neutrality has the potential to be a powerfully subversive force. As Professor John Maguire of Afri writes in his brilliant contribution to this volume, ‘Let’s those of us who value neutrality – along with 78% of our fellow-citizens...apologise for ever having been apologetic about neutrality. We have too often been thrown onto the back foot by the relentless, orchestrated denigration of Irish neutrality and of its potential to help subvert the modern war-machine.’

4 5 There are ways out for Ireland: it was a political decision to enmesh us in PESCO, and it will take political pressure to release us, but it can be done. As Frank Keoghan points out, withdrawal from PESCO would simply involve notifying our intention to the European Council, ‘which shall take note that the Member State in question has ceased to participate’. It’s up to all of us who value Irish neutrality and who abhor militarism to up the pressure on the Government to do just that.

Clare Daly TD, January 2019 Clare Daly is an Independents4Change TD for Fingal

6 7 PESCO ((Permanent Structured Cooperation)

As €200 million warship put out to tender by Government – Where now for Irish neutrality? Seamus Healy TD

‘Integration into Permanent European Structured Military Co-operation (PESCO) involves a binding commitment to increased military spending,’ European militarisation advocate and opponent of Irish neutrality Ben Tonra, Professor of International Relations, UCD told RTÉ. He is the project leader of the Institute for International and European Affairs’ policy group on European security and defence. This body has recently advocated ending neutrality in an opinion piece by its President, Brendan Halligan, in the Irish Times, where he said: ‘Post-Brexit support from Berlin and Paris will come at a cost. As the Franco-German axis reasserts itself, Irish neutrality and corporation tax policies will have to be revisited.’ Current Irish military spending is just below €1 billion per year. PESCO involves ‘alignment’ with NATO. Most of the countries who participate in PESCO are also members of NATO. The NATO requirement for military spending in member states is 2% of GDP. Irish GDP was €334 billion (2017). The 2% target would involve Irish military spending rising to over €6 billion per year. Even if the cost of PESCO involvement does not ultimately reach this level, there will be a very substantial increase over a number of years.

PESCO MEANS NEW AND INCREASED TAXATION Under the European Fiscal Treaty there are severe restrictions on borrowing and on the size and nature of budgetary deficits which can be run. This means that substantial increases in public spending must come from existing or new taxation. We can be sure that any extra taxation will not be levied on the super-rich. This means that extra military spending will come at the expense of provision of housing, health, education and welfare. Indeed Dr Mary C. Murphy of the Department of Politics and Government at UCC said as much recently: ‘There may be an element of ‘payback’ for Ireland in return for the support the state has received from others members of the EU27.’ Dr Murphy was speaking in the final session of the Killarney economic conference, which was chaired by Mark Hennessy of the Irish Times. The conference was also addressed by Arlene Foster, leader of the DUP. She set out possible scenarios in which Ireland might be required to be giving in, in terms of neutrality or taxation, in a debate on the future of Europe. ‘It may open up a lot of difficulties for Irish voters,’ she said. We can also be sure that such spending will also come well ahead of the restoration of cuts in allowances to Defence Forces personnel. Wives and Partners of the Defence Forces (WPDF) have been seeking such restoration for some time. And the extra military spending is already in the pipeline.

HUGE SHIP TO COST €200 MILLION A fourth new ship, LÉ George Bernard Shaw, costing €67million and constructed at a shipyard in Appledore, Devon, has recently joined the Naval Service. But this is dwarfed by the huge Multi-Role Vessel (military as well as rescue) which has already been put out to tender but not yet actually purchase.

6 7 We read recently in the Irish Examiner in an article based on interviews with sources in the Defence forces that the Government may purchase a huge ship from which helicopters can be launched.1 In the recent past, the Government has already spent €250 million buying new replacements for existing Coast Guard vessels rather than refurbishing them. In the Dáil, I asked the Taoiseach and Minister for Defence: ‘Further to Parliamentary Question number 286 of 26th October 2017, the estimated cost of the additional multi role vessel that is proposed for purchase for the Naval Service; if a decision to put the provision of the MRV out to tender has been taken in view of a news report (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. (details supplied) Report from Irish Examiner ‘Navy considers €200m multi-role ship’ He replied: ‘The White Paper provides for the replacement of the current Naval Service flagship LÉ Eithne with a multi role vessel (MRV) which will be enabled for helicopter operations and will also have a freight carrying capacity. It is the Government’s intent that this new vessel will provide a flexible and adaptive capability for a wide range of maritime tasks, both at home and overseas. Planning has commenced on this project and it is intended to hold a public tender competition in due course to cover the supply of the MRV. This, of course, is subject to the availability of funding within the overall defence capital funding envelope. The cost of the MRV will only be known once the tender competition is concluded. The acquisition of a modern vessel will ensure that the operational capabilities of the naval service, as the state’s principal seagoing agency, are maintained to the greatest extent and taking account of the overall policy approach in the White Paper on Defence’. Note the word ‘overseas’ in the reply. ‘It is the Government’s intent that this new vessel will provide a flexible and adaptive capability for a wide range of maritime tasks, both at home and overseas.’ The Taoiseach failed to answer the request for an estimate but did not contradict the Irish Examiner figure of €200 million. The LÉ Eithne, which the ship replaces, has a length of 80 metres. The new ship being purchased has almost double the length at 150 metres. It will be capable of carrying a battalion of soldiers and will carry landing craft to put them ashore from sea. According to the Taoiseach, it will have ‘a freight carrying capacity’. This could include military vehicles.

HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS It is very clear that the ship will be suitable to participate in naval expeditions with the navies of European countries. Participation in Operation Sophia in the Mediterranean is already taking place. This expedition is assisting the return of refugees to detention camps in Libya. Medecin sans Frontiére, the UN Commission on Human Rights and the Foreign Minister of Luxembourg have all, described these detention centres as horrendous centres of violation of human rights outside the rule of law. And there is worse on the way. French President Macron has said that a new military invasion of Libya should be considered. Will Irish troops be put ashore in Libya to die for French interests? It is also well to remember that the recent atrocity in Manchester was carried out by Libyans reacting to the French-British invasion of Libya and the overthrow of Colonel Gadhafi.

1 “Navy considers buying €200m multi-role ship”, Irish Examiner, 12 October 2017

8 9 RESTRICTED POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SOVEREIGNTY But there is a wider context to these issues. Both Dr. Murphy, who is concerned about further dilution of Irish neutrality, and Brendan Halligan who wants to end Irish neutrality have a common underlying assumption. They assume that the 26-county Government is weak and are vulnerable to pressure from foreign powers. Indeed, on fundamental issues the 26-county state has very restricted if any political and economic sovereignty. The last Irish parliament which had strong sovereignty met not around the corner in Leinster house but in the Mansion House almost exactly 100 years ago. Due to a lack of sovereignty could we end up in one set of conflicts due to the use of Shannon by US military forces and in the same or a different set of conflicts due to participation in PESCO? Could our soldiers die in wars between big powers or wars of conquest by big powers? Could atrocities arise in Ireland as they have in the UK and France due to involvement in wars in the Middle East and Africa. And what about the unthinkable? The US, France, Russia and the UK are nuclear powers. Could we become a target in a nuclear war?

CONNOLLY WAS RIGHT Connolly was right. An All-Ireland Republic with full economic and political sovereignty is necessary to ensure that the interests of the Irish people are put first by an Irish government. PESCO is a game-changer because it demands direct involvement by the Irish state and its armed forces in foreign wars. Reversing the decision to participate in PESCO would be a key first step towards restoring All-Ireland sovereignty. Seamus Healy is an independent TD for Tipperary

8 9 PESCO, industry and war!

Thomas Pringle TD

Before I deal with any other key areas of PESCO and threats to Irish neutrality I want to start with the fundamental point that militarisation, EU defence integration and the overall global militarisation agenda is being pushed and shaped by private sector interests. Even as I write these remarks on the dangers of EU military integration to Irish neutrality, leaders in the EU arms industry are about to participate in a conference of their own: the Munich Security Conference. There, EU defence company giants will seek to integrate their defence programmes so Europe can compete with US and Russian defence companies. German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen has repeatedly indicated ahead of the conference that she wants companies to form consortia or to merge so that they can compete with US companies in bids for upcoming contracts. Franco-German military interests seek to develop their defence industries further so that they can control EU defence policy further while globally competing with US and Russian defence companies. Global security will in turn secure Franco-German influence at home in Europe. The process leading to PESCO was in no way a democratic one. A policy group was established by the EU Commission to develop PESCO known as the ‘Group of Personalities’, which mainly included EU arms industrialists intent on finding ways for EU Governments to navigate around national sovereignty and neutrality clauses so that greater EU military integration could be fostered. NGOs, humanitarian organisations, civil society, the academic world, and the European Parliament were reportedly absent from the process. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have essentially signed Ireland up to become a pawn in this very lucrative chess game and will be paying both financially and politically for the privilege. One of the striking things about PESCO is how it caught everyone off guard. Not only was it rushed through the Dáil but it also went under the Irish media’s radar and indeed was passed without much debate by parliaments across the EU. It made me wonder how this could have happened and I think a lot of it was down to linguistics. The language of war usually functions to mask the reality of the violence it intends to inflict. You will hear Government discourse in defence of PESCO speak in terms of euphemisms and grand statements to legitimise itself and dismantle efforts made by critics of war. It’s important to recognise and analyse the discourse around PESCO and statements made in defence of EU militarisation. This linguistic game played by EU militarists will abuse our own terms like ‘neutrality’ and ‘peace-keeping’, words banded around by the Government in defence of PESCO despite the fact that peace- keeping isn’t mentioned once in the legislation. Simon Coveney stated in the Dáil that PESCO would help ‘UN-mandated missions engaged in peacekeeping, conflict prevention or the strengthening of international security.’ Again, this is war discourse attempting to legitimise itself while silencing opposition voices. I believe this is how they were able to keep PESCO under the media’s radar, but it’s also indicative of the power of private-sector interests to steer discourse in their favour and thereby circumnavigate democratic oversight. The Government has stated time and time again that there is no commitment to increasing Ireland’s defence

10 11 expenditure to 2% of Ireland’s GDP and that any increase in real terms relates to meeting the agreed objectives of PESCO and not to Ireland’s overall defence budget. However, in the same sentence the Government states that the figure of 2% reflects a collective commitment by the participating member states to spend 2% of their defence expenditure on research and technology. If Ireland were ever to try to reach this, we would require a fivefold increase in military spending. One way or other it is confirmation that Ireland will be diverting more state money towards EU military cooperation. We can expect that this figure will increase over time with very little parliamentary oversight now that PESCO has been signed up to. If you look closely, the budget is no small number. Under the plan, EU governments have come up with 34 projects including a €5 billion fund for military research along with the existing €100 billion in EU defence spending. Not only will we have to dedicate increasing amounts of our GDP to EU defence spending but it will inevitably lay the foundations for the development of an EU Army. PESCO is a platform for expansion. Its own annex states that ‘A long-term vision of PESCO could be to arrive at a coherent full spectrum force package – in complementarity with Nato, which will continue to be the cornerstone of collective defence for its members’. Another commitment is to spend 20 per cent of our total defence budget on military equipment and research to ‘fill strategic gaps’ in EU defence. PESCO also signs us up to ‘Intensive involvement of a future European Defence Fund’. The purpose is to develop an EU arms industry so that profits can be made by companies who manufacture the means of death and destruction. Many supporters of EU military integration have stated their ongoing support to see a defence component included in the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). Annual assessments will be conducted by the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy to ensure that Ireland is honouring these commitments. Just as the troika was allowed to monitor Ireland’s economic policy in the past, we now have another EU agency monitoring defence commitments. It’s hardly a development that will enjoy the support of the Irish people. As the journalist Peter Teffer said of PESCO: ‘Rather than a reflection of what security means and how to ensure it, the European strategy is dominated by developing and selling new capabilities. Supporting the defence industry has become a goal in itself.’

Neutrality Simon Coveney’s famous last word on PESCO was that it ‘has no implications for Ireland’s policy of military neutrality or the triple lock on the deployment of Irish forces overseas…’ But the implications for Ireland’s neutrality do exist and the Government is already fully committed to participate as much as is legally possible within the confines of PESCO. Simon Coveney again confirmed that quote ‘Where we must disagree, we will make our position clear but this Government is committed to participating in CSDP to the greatest extent possible consistent with our values and constitutional provisions.’ That to me sounds like they intend to bypass the parliamentary process where they can, despite misgivings from opposition. Our neutrality is already compromised on a number of fronts: Since 9/11 over 3 million U.S. troops have passed through Shannon airport on their way to or from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. The airport has also been tied to dozens of flights by aircraft linked to ‘extraordinary rendition’, whereby prisoners seized in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan were shipped to various ‘black sites’ in Europe, Asia, and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Irish companies are already participating in the multi-billion euro global arms market. Export orders linked to military, armaments and defence industries here were estimated to be worth as much as €2.3bn a year. The international defence industry is also being given increased access to the Irish Defence Forces for product testing.

10 11 While fully-functioning weapons systems are not manufactured in Ireland, individual components including software that enable these systems are being shipped from factories all around the country under Ireland’s ‘dual use’ export rules. This refers to products which, though manufactured for civilian use, can also have a military application. Amnesty International have been raising concerns over Ireland’s dual-use exports and their possible link to humanitarian abuses around the world for many years. They point to potential loopholes in Ireland’s dual-use export controls whereby the ‘end-use of item’ information which can be listed as ‘civilian’ can relate to the supply of components to ‘civilian’ companies who then incorporate them into military systems. The logistical support for the U.S. military and CIA at Shannon is already a contravention of Ireland’s neutrality and is contributing to the huge death toll in Syria and other war-torn countries, including the mounting numbers of people fleeing torture, starvation, forced displacement, and a range of other human rights abuses. PESCO has just validated Ireland’s past military involvement while validating any further military engagements into the future. Thomas Pringle is an independent TD for Donegal

12 13 PESCO and militarisation

Mick Wallace TD

In December 2017 a two-hour debate was had in the Dáil before the members voted 75 to 42 in favour of Ireland signing up to PESCO. During the debate the government argued that ‘PESCO has nothing to do with the creation of an EU army,’ that ‘PESCO is about member states making more binding commitments to each other to jointly develop military crisis management capabilities for use in support of Common Security and Defence Policy operations.’ The debate was a sham. The government kept talking about crisis management and peacekeeping, and parroting the EU line that we would be part of ‘strengthening of international security in accordance with the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.’ And if they were not talking about peace on earth it was about getting discounts on a group buy of weapons. We were assured of the voluntary nature of PESCO, that our triple lock mechanism would be protected, and that our neutrality would be respected – as if it has been respected at any time since Shannon began to be used as a forward military base by the US army in 2001. The whole affair is highly similar to the debate surrounding Ireland’s participation in Operation Sophia. The Dáil voted to join this mission in July 2017, though some of us in opposition argued that this was not a humanitarian search-and-rescue mission, as the government was a pains to reassure us it was. We argued that it was in essence a NATO military mission designed to ensure that the EU could derogate from the principle of non-refoulement by outsourcing its border control and interception of refugees on the high seas to Libyan militias. In his reply to one of my questions on the matter in January 2018, the Minister of State for Defence Paul Kehoe was unequivocal when he said that Operation Sophia ‘operates under the triple lock and went through Government and the Dáil, as well as being mandated by the UN. It is not a military mission. We are still saving lives on the Mediterranean and will continue to do so.’ Tánaiste Simon Coveney made similar statements on the floor of the Dáil in July and October. This November, in response to questioning from Deputies Daly, Ó Snodaigh and myself about the fact that after 16 weeks in the Mediterranean, the LÉ James Joyce had returned without saving a single life, the government had altered their official line on the matter. Deputy Kehoe stated ‘I agree with the Deputy [Daly] 100% that it is a military mission, but it is also a UN mandated mission’ and he went on to say ‘I was very clear when we joined Operation Sophia that we were joining a UN-mandated military mission.’ This willingness of the government to deliberately mislead the Dáil and the public about what we are voting on when it comes to military matters brings into question the efficacy of the triple-lock mechanism. I think it is farcical to pretend that our neutrality is being protected through this ritual if the government is prepared to lie about what is, and what is not, a military operation. This trend does not inspire confidence when we are told in no uncertain terms by Tánaiste Coveney and others that PESCO has absolutely nothing to do with the creation of an EU army. I think the reality is that we have signed up to something that is still in its formative stages, that what PESCO is, and will be, is still being debated, planned, and argued about in Europe and elsewhere. Though I would argue that if we examine developments surrounding recent wars, defence policy and the arms trade in general, it is fair to say that the prospect of PESCO being the peacekeeping and friendly cooperation venture we are being promised it will be, is fanciful.

12 13 One of the most worrying developments of the past two decades is the accelerating privatisation of military and intelligence institutions. According to the US-based Centre for Public Integrity, 2.2 million contracts totalling $900 billion in authorized expenditures over a six-year period from 1998 to 2003 were awarded to private defence contractors. As part of these contracts, this also meant that the number of specialists from the arms sector working in the Pentagon skyrocketed – calling into question whether the federal workforce included too many people obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest. Contractors such as General Atomics, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing have contracts worth billions each year and they spend tens of millions lobbying Congress. The historian Gareth Porter wrote recently that General Atomics’ Reaper drones have become so tightly integrated into U.S. military operations in Afghanistan that in the first quarter of 2016 Air Force data showed that 61 percent of the weapons dropped in Afghanistan were from drones. In effect, he argues, ‘the drone war has introduced a new political dynamic into the war system: the drone makers who have powerful clout in Congress can use their influence to block or discourage an end to the permanent war.’ We can see this dynamic laid bare in the recent comments by President Donald Trump when he defended continuing to sell arms to Saudi Arabia for their brutal war of aggression against the people of Yemen because it ‘will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, tremendous economic development, and much additional wealth for the United States.’ We have also seen Trump openly push Europe to spend more on defence, while simultaneously warning European governments not to damage American defence-industry interests in the process. It is questionable however whether we need much encouragement this side of the Atlantic. Some 1.4 million skilled workers are directly and indirectly employed in Europe’s defence sector. France, Germany, and Spain are the 3rd, 4th and 7th biggest arms exporters in the world – much of their sales concentrated in the Middle East, where, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, arms sales have doubled over the course of the last ten years. France, the UK, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Spain, Belgium, Poland, Romania, Czech Republic, Norway, Switzerland, Finland and Greece have all been making money fuelling the war on Yemen. That a handful of these countries have suspended future arms deals with the Saudi regime because of the brutal killing of a journalist and growing dissatisfaction with how Mohammed Bin Salman conducts his affairs – and not because of the war crimes and manufactured famine conditions in Yemen – should give us cause for scepticism when ‘EU values’ are invoked by our rulers. The ‘revolving-door’ phenomenon between industry and government, and the lobbying power of the defence contractors which plagues the American political landscape, are also alive and well in the EU. The ‘Group of Personalities on Defence Research’ was set up in 2015. It gave us the Preparatory Action on Defence Research Fund in October 2016. This paved the way for the European Defence Action Plan, which in the following month proposed the establishment of a European Defence Fund for the joint development of military equipment. The process culminated in the proposal by the European Commission to mobilise €40 billion from member states and the EU’s budget by 2027 for research and development of weapons and military hardware with the European Defence Fund in June 2017, along with the first steps to establish PESCO and the commitment to spend more on defence and on the procurement of military equipment in November last year. The (now-defunct) Group of Personalities had 16 members, 9 of whom were CEOs from the arms industry, the rest were notorious war hawks such as EU’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt, and former Polish defence minister Bogdan Klich. European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly, in an investigation into the group, castigated it for its lack of transparency. She wrote that transparency ‘should have been especially important in the case of the Group of Personalities, given that companies represented within the group could be eligible for funding under the programmes

14 15 that it was advising on. In fact it is the case that companies represented within the group did subsequently receive such funding.’ Again, at the highest levels of EU defence policy formation, we have a situation where the interests of the weapons contractors and their shareholders are being put before the public interest. Tánaiste Coveney says that PESCO will contribute to the enhancement of capabilities for UN-mandated missions engaged in peacekeeping, conflict prevention or the strengthening of international security in accordance with the principles of the UN charter. But ‘International security’ and ‘Principles of the UN’ are worrying concepts. Let’s not forget that when the US and friends destroyed Iraq in 1991, they had the backing of the UN. Likewise with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 – and, shockingly, the UN backed the insane destruction of Libya in 2011. You might think that the UN would learn some lessons on their travels, but no: of late, we have seen the effects of the UN-backed Saudi Coalition, which was unleashed to bombard and starve Yemenis into submission. This followed from an Obama/Saudi/UN deal to go for regime change in Yemen, when they put their puppet Hadi in charge in 2011. Sad to say, but the term ‘International security’, has been used to make more war than peace. So not only have our PESCO allies been profiteering off the creation of the largest humanitarian crisis on the planet in Yemen, they have also profited massively from the regime-change attempts in Syria, as well as the disaster that is Libya. These wars are gifts that keep on giving. A recent Transnational Institute investigation found that the main beneficiaries of border security contracts have been some of the biggest arms sellers in the Middle-East and North-African region, fuelling the conflicts that are the cause of many of the refugees. The contractors profit when they create the crisis and then profit from it again. European leaders cheered the illegal coup in Ukraine which ushered into power an extreme far right, sometimes openly Nazi, administration which has no love for even those inside their own country who have any sympathies with Russia. In March 2015, Jean Claude Juncker said that ‘a common European army would convey a clear message to Russia that we are serious about defending our European values’; our recent trajectory shows that if the EU has values few of them have anything to do with human rights, or the promotion of peace. When we hear talk about defending Europe, we should always remember that Europe has been busy defending itself from the countries on its peripheries by dropping bombs on them in wars of aggression for years, many of which had the blessing of the UN, which is usually referenced in Irish political discourse as a marker for supreme benevolent legitimacy. Denmark, Netherlands, France and Germany were dropping bombs on Syria for years; Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, Italy, France, Denmark, the UK, and Belgium all took part in the disastrous military campaign against Libya in 2011. The Americans have been ‘exporting Democracy’ for a long time now, leading to the death and destruction of millions. Where next will Europe be ‘protecting itself’ from, and ‘exporting peace and stability’ under the banner of PESCO? Mick Wallace is an Independents4Change TD for Wexford

14 15 Irish Neutrality

A Constitutional provision on neutrality is vital

Maureen O’Sullivan TD

On December 14th 2017, it was proposed ‘That Dáil Eireann approves Ireland’s participation in Permanent Structured Cooperation, pursuant to the provisions of section 3 of the Defence (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009.’ That motion, which was passed, put the whole question of Ireland’s neutrality centre-stage. But how many of the public really knew about it – about the significance of the motion and the possible consequences for Ireland? Ireland’s neutrality, despite encroachments – particularly the use of Shannon by US military – has served us well, along with our very considerable reputation on the humanitarian front. I know from my work on the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee and with AWEPA (Association of European Parliamentarians with Africa), that Ireland is highly respected internationally, particularly by countries in the developing world, in the Global South. That respect originated in the work of Irish missionaries and continues with them, with Irish NGOs, with Irish embassies and through Irish Aid. Ireland’s aid is untied and is focused towards the poorest and most vulnerable. Our history – eight hundred years of colonialism, laws depriving us of the right to practise our religion, experience of famine, eviction, emigration, appalling treatment in the countries to which we emigrated – places us where we can really sympathise and empathise with those in other countries whose experience mirrors our own in the course of our history. Ireland played a leading role with Kenya in the design of and then securing agreement on the Sustainable Development Goals. Ireland is trusted and Irish Aid, especially through our bilateral aid programmes, is making a difference. We have played a crucial role in UN peace-keeping missions and our troops are respected for the way in which they carry out such duties in difficult circumstances. As a member of the committee on the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, I have met delegations from conflict-torn countries who meet us to discuss how peace was achieved in Ireland. Peace came through discussion, listening, compromise, consensus-building and mutual respect for conflicting opinions. Again, Ireland is respected for the role taken in those negotiations, all recently highlighted during the 20th anniversary of that Agreement. Ireland has a relationship with the countries of Central and South America, Africa and South-East Asia, different from the relationship of other European countries, because many of those countries were colonial powers while Ireland was a victim of colonialism. PESCO undermines that relationship. Today we are seeing a greater link between security, defence and migration. We know that we have an unprecedented migration crisis in Europe and a global refugee crisis. At present we have some sixty-five million, and rising, refugees and displaced persons across the globe. Yes, the root causes of migration have to be tackled in a meaningful way, but that is a long- term goal and in the meantime we have migrants who are at the mercy of unscrupulous traffickers. And one of the EU’s answers is PESCO!! I know that we had our own version of neutrality during World War Two: Allied troops who crash-landed

16 17 on Irish territory were able to rejoin their units in the U.K. via Northern Ireland whereas German troops were detained in the Curragh until the war ended; weather reports from our Atlantic weather stations in Connemara were given to Allied forces and not to German forces, and so on. And we have ‘our own version’ of neutrality today: the Government tells us that weapons of war or materials of war do not transit Shannon, so that we are not in breach of our neutrality. Leaving that claim aside, surely facilitating troop movements is a weapon of war and certainly not what is expected of a neutral nation? We have a rather woolly definition of neutrality. It is almost as if we were making it up as we go along. Is our neutrality dependent on who is asking? Would we allow the same for Russian troops or Chinese troops? Going back further in history to the Treaty negotiations in London, those in the Irish delegation brought with them the terms of our neutrality – terms to the effect that Ireland was a neutral state, that the integrity and inviolability of Irish territory would be protected and that there would not be permission granted for any action to be taken that would be inconsistent with the obligations of preserving the neutrality, integrity and inviolability of Ireland. There is massive support in Ireland for maintaining our neutrality and that holds across age-groups and other demographic indices. The use of Shannon airport by US forces, and the way questions are not answered regarding rendition- related flights transiting through the airport, as well as reports from the Council of Europe and the UN Committee against Torture, really call in question our ‘neutrality’. Ireland’s joining PESCO is a real threat to our neutrality. Having been part of a group who travelled to Syria recently, I know that there is absolutely no doubt of the very serious threat from Islamic fundamentalism and from Jihadi groups. I believe that Ireland could be a very significant player against terrorism, against atrocities from the many warlords we see throughout the world. But not through membership of PESCO. Then there was the haste with which PESCO happened. I contrast that with other initiatives/proposals, which provide opportunities to make observations and submissions or involve public consultations before decisions are made. I believe that Ireland’s good name, reputation and respect are being undermined and threatened by PESCO. I think we need to remind ourselves of Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union which states that The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights. So, how does that fit with PESCO, the principle of which is to strengthen the EUs military capabilities ‘through specific collaborative defence projects?’ There is an inherent contradiction! I believe that it is vital that we incorporate a constitutional provision on neutrality because that will preclude Governments from abrogating their responsibilities and commitment to neutrality. Maureen O’Sullivan is an independent TD for Dublin Central

RedC Poll, 2016

16 17 Our precarious neutrality

Niall Farrell

Our recently joining PESCO and increasingly strident calls for a ‘real EU Army’ bring into sharp focus the few protections we have in place to protect our neutrality. These hinge around Article 29(4)(9) of Bunreacht na hÉireann and the triple-lock mechanism. Following their defeat in the first referendum on the Nice Treaty the government sought to appease the people in the re-run second referendum, by passing legislation, which became known as the ‘Triple Lock’. The Triple Lock was to ensure that, where the size of a Defence Forces contribution was more than 12 personnel, Irish soldiers would not serve abroad unless there was a UN Security Council mandate, along with Dáil and government approval. But it has effectively been abolished by the Irish government so as to ensure full participation by the Irish Army in the EU Battlegroups. There are currently eighteen EU Battlegroups, each able to deploy 1500 men speedily from different Member States on a rotating basis. Ireland will participate in 2019 as a ‘significant element’ within a German-led EU battlegroup on standby to go into combat. The battlegroups are designed to carry out the tasks mandated by the Common Security and Defence Policy, namely the Petersberg tasks or military tasks of a humanitarian, peacekeeping and peacemaking nature, the latter being a euphemism for combat operations. Ireland will be a member of a battlegroup with partners who do not require a UN mandate. Would it not be viewed as more than a little inconvenient if Ireland were to opt out of a mission because it had not secured a UN mandate – and could we trust the government not to bring in amending legislation? The Battlegroups concept represents the first tentative unpicking of the Triple Lock. It might inspire some confidence if the Government were to agree to enshrine the Triple Lock in the Constitution, to put it to the people in a referendum. I am certain that such an amendment to the Constitution would receive an overwhelming endorsement. Not to do so leaves the way open for a future Irish government to try to dispose of the requirement for a UN mandate, leaving only cabinet and Dáil approval – a foregone conclusion in the current political set-up. And why should Irish participation in military missions hinge on UN Security Council approval in the first place? Isn’t it bizarre that we allow these five nations the power to decide the direction of Irish foreign policy? Why can’t we just stand up for ourselves and act like an independent sovereign state? It is highly relevant that the UN, starved of funding, increasingly tends to ‘contract out’ missions. It shouldn’t be forgotten that then-UN Secretary-General and Nobel Peace Laureate Kofi Annan welcomed the Battlegroups and emphasised their value and importance in helping the UN deal with trouble spots. The NATO-led coalition began its military intervention in Libya, ostensibly to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973. If a similar situation arose and the EU was to decide to send a Battlegroup including Irish troops, would we demur? Hardly! This not unlikely scenario, given the rapid pace of military developments in the EU, underlines the importance of a constitutional amendment. This becomes even more critical when one considers that the German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen has called on a number of occasions during the last year for decisions under the EU’s Common Security and Defence (CSDP) to be made by qualified majority voting (QMV) rather than unanimously – and Germany usually gets its way! ‘We are thinking about perhaps moving towards a majority vote in diplomacy and foreign affairs so that we can respond rapidly to crises and speak with one voice, one European voice,’ she said recently; ‘and so you cannot be blocked by one country.’

18 19 Mr Macron chimed in recently, suggesting that decisions should no longer need the approval of all EU member states: ‘I am in favour of changing the treaties; we reach a point where it must be done. We should not be afraid, but we should also keep in mind that whoever is against can no longer block the others.’ With France, Germany, Spain and one other large country such as Italy commanding over forty percent of the votes under QMV, it doesn’t take a huge stretch of the imagination to see where this would leave ‘neutral’ Ireland! Article 29 (4) (9) of Bunreacht na hÉireann states: ‘The State shall not adopt a decision taken by the European Council to establish a common defence pursuant to article 42 of the Treaty on European Union where that Common Defence would include the State’ (emphasis added). This Article would not seem to be contravened by PESCO, a separate initiative distinct from EU common defence, which latter would require the integration of member state’s defence forces. PESCO is an example of ‘enhanced co-operation’, not complete harmonisation and integration, unlike the establishment of an EU common defence. These procedures allow a minimum of nine EU countries to establish advanced integration or cooperation in an area within EU structures but without the other EU countries being involved. It does not, however, allow for an extension of powers outside those permitted by the EU Treaties. The danger with the provisions of our Article 29 is that the government could support proposals at European Council in order to contribute to unanimity – supporting a decision, without adopting it. Through a re- designation of certain tasks as being common to PESCO or the likes, we could permit common EU military activities without directly contravening Article 29. It is likely that the EU Council and Commission would go along with that because of their pathological fear of referendums. This would be the worst of both worlds; we’d have been complicit in establishing the Army and would remain involved – also with NATO – in PESCO and Battlegroups. So we would be outmanoeuvred and the others would go on to use the EU institutions to pursue their military ambitions. Thankfully, in the case of an explicit move to an EU army, we would most likely – due to the late Raymond Crotty – have to hold a referendum, as it would bring about a change in our foreign policy and would not be covered by ‘enhanced cooperation’ procedures. The articles in this booklet therefore provide timely help in assessing the situation as EU militarisation accelerates. The protections provided by the ‘Triple Lock’ and Article 29 seem tenuous. In the last resort, we must depend on the peaceful instincts of the people and do our best to ensure that they are fully informed. We cannot depend on the government or media to do it for us, but we can take comfort that polls consistently show majority support for neutrality – however ill- defined. We now have an opportunity, and an urgent need, to give it immediate tangible meaning; withdrawal from PESCO, no participation in Battlegroups and rejection of an EU Army. We must urgently reclaim the neutrality narrative from the government and militarist apologists and make it our own. It won’t be easy but we have no alternative.

18 19 ‘A vivid impression’: The repressed potential of Irish neutrality

John Maguire

Why on earth keep going on about neutrality? Aren’t we in a bizarre twilight zone, where the governments who systematically undermine neutrality declare it alive and well, while its defenders, frustrated by such hypocrisy, are almost tempted to declare it dead and buried? After all, what is so special about ‘Irish Neutrality’?

After all, indeed…

THE ‘POSTWAR’ WORLD World War I was centrally a war between European empires, and World War II brought the beginning of the end for them, heralding the era of decolonisation. But as various colonies gained or sought independence they found themselves in a world where great powers still had designs on them. The two major allies of World War II soon entered into a so-called Cold War, where each treated the other as seeking world domination; every gain for one side was seen as a loss for the other. The nuclear arms race began, promising mutually assured destruction. ‘Conventional’ proxy wars flared and subsided. This was the global context in which Ireland joined the United Nations. Our entry had been opposed by the USSR, who saw us as too close to the US and the West, until 1955. That fateful year, in which the Warsaw Pact was set up by the USSR, also saw the Neutral and Non-Aligned (NNA) group hold its first major conference in Bandung. Here was a set of newly-emerging states trying to shape post-colonial independence in a ‘third way’, not beholden to either superpower. Whilst the USSR sometimes offered assistance, this was often as much with a view to thwarting the US and NATO as to promoting a genuinely independent Third World. We need not speculate how much independent human and social flourishing would have been possible if the Stalinist version of socialism had won the Cold War; it lost a contest which – though it didn’t always seem clear at the time – it was probably doomed from the start to lose. The fate of attempts at ‘Socialism with a human face’ in various satellite states did not inspire confidence. Of course Western meddling was often involved – but there was plenty to meddle with. The view from Washington was pithily summed up at a Georgetown dinner party: ‘Foster hates neutrality!’ John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State under President Eisenhower, like his CIA Director brother Allen, was quite clear that US national interests – which providentially coincided with the real needs of the entire world – dictated a prolonged, disciplined, united struggle against the red tide. In this fraught global context, Ireland’s first decade-or-so of UN membership displayed a modest but genuine degree of realism, creativity and courage. We saw ourselves as having a bond with the newly emerging states, and made common cause with them on a number of issues. We participated in peacekeeping, most tragically in the Congo. We endorsed peaceful conflict-resolution, argued for nuclear disarmament, and even dared to back the admission of ‘Red China’ to the UN long before it was endorsed by ‘realists’ in the West. But here we must pause: surely that last paragraph is sadly – indeed, almost comically – delusory? Surely Ireland had no rights, no standing, in this post-war world? Wasn’t ‘Irish Neutrality’ quite unlike any of the values inspiring the ‘Third World’? Hadn’t we shamefully, irremediably, sat out the life-and-death struggle against fascism? Weren’t we simply whitewashing a deplorable failure to defend democracy, passing off a false currency as a bright new coinage?

20 21 NEUTRALITY 1939-45 World War II, the One Good War… It has functioned in Irish debates as the ace, the trump card, the question- stopper in any dispute about neutrality. Isn’t it the territory where the peaceniks dare not tread, the quick- sands of shame, the stain of dishonour they must tiptoe around if their worldview is to present any coherence or plausibility? Maybe it’s time we went there. Nobody wanting to speak with any credibility about today’s challenges can minimise the ethical and other dilemmas posed by Ireland’s response to the outbreak of war in 1939. It was and is entirely reasonable to argue that Ireland should, at whatever cost, have joined openly in the Allied cause. But, all other considerations apart, any attempt to lead the 26 counties into the conflict could well have caused a new civil war.2 However worthy the impulse of many to join the war, and however base the motives of some of those opposing them, there was arguably no other realistic course but neutrality for an Irish government in 1939. The decision was taken by the government of a newly-emergent state, seeking to establish effective self- government after a partially successful independence struggle whose still unresolved conflicts had already fuelled a vicious civil war only seventeen years previously. Even many who disagreed with the policy recognised that its successful implementation was a significant achievement, and a crucial consolidation of sovereignty, by the fledgling state. Unsatisfactory? Yes, like much of life’s complexity; and we can, perhaps must, continue to debate that crucial decision. But we shouldn’t misrepresent the debate or draw false conclusions from it. Professor Diarmaid Ferriter has argued that much recent criticism ‘suggests a diminishing rather than a deepening of historical understanding’ and serves ‘narrow contemporary agendas born of hindsight and current values.’ 3

THE ROOTS OF IRISH NEUTRALITY In the first place, the years 1939-45 did not, and could not, set a permanent template for post-war foreign policy, still less for the world we now inhabit. There was no predetermined path along which Ireland had to develop in the post-war setting: mature life in the real world requires constant choices and sacrifices. Secondly, Irish Neutrality has roots dating from well before 1939, reaching deep into our history. In 1790, as the European empires were consolidating themselves through war, Wolfe Tone argued against allowing Ireland to become caught up in the conflict looming between Britain and Spain. As the empires began to immolate themselves and one another in ‘The Great War’, James Connolly was an equally clear opponent of participation: ‘A declaration of neutrality’, he argued, ‘would make a vivid impression on the world.’ 4 Thirdly, there was a choice: whether rightly or wrongly, the state was able to make a decision, and to take steps to implement it. The central thrust of subsequent criticism of the stance adopted in 1939, whatever the particular arguments employed, has been that in effect there should have been no choice at all: the issue was allegedly simple, albeit stark, and the state has supposedly ever since been ‘playing catch-up’ after its alleged ethical and strategic blunder. The last half-century and more has seen a struggle between those seeking to amplify, and those seeking to extinguish, the potentially vivid impression of Irish neutrality. As the EEC, which we joined in 1973, evolved into the European Union through a succession of treaties, we have had a succession of referendums, thanks to the insistence of the late Raymond Crotty that those treaties raised fundamental constitutional issues.

2 For a nuanced and thought-provoking account of these complexities, see Geoffrey Roberts, ‘Three narratives of neutrality: historians and Ireland’s war’ in Girvin, B. and G. Roberts ed., Ireland and the Second World War: Politics, Society and Remembrance (Dublin 2000), pp. 165-79. 3 ‘Denigrating Neutrality during Second World War has become fashionable’, Irish Times 11th May 2013. 4 See Roger Cole, ‘Introduction’, pp. 4-5, and Francis Devine, ‘A Vivid Impression upon the World: The Irish Neutrality League, 1914’, pp. 6-13, in Cole, R., ed., The Irish Neutrality League and the Imperialist War 1914- 18 (PANA, Peace and Neutrality Alliance, Dublin n.d.). See also the prescient survey in Chapters 5 – ‘The International Context’ – and 6 – ‘The Roots of Irish Neutrality’ in Daltún Ó Ceallaigh, Irish Republicanism: Good Friday and After (Dublin 2000).

20 21 Bunreacht na hÉireann, which came into effect in 1937, contained a profound statement of democracy, rejecting all notions of monarchy, empire and authoritarianism: All powers of government, legislative, executive and judicial, derive, under God, from the people, whose right it is to designate the rulers of the State and, in final appeal, to decide all questions of national policy, according to the requirements of the common good. (Art. 6.1) Our constitution went on to commit our state to ‘peace and friendly co-operation… pacific settlement of international disputes… [and] international law as its rule of conduct in its relations with other States.’ (Art. 29) These principles emerged from our long history of colonialism and empire, including the still-unresolved impact of the Great Hunger, An Gorta Mór. They underlined the destructiveness of aggression and war, the vital importance of democracy, and the necessity for peaceful and law-bound responses to conflict situations. They informed our early UN participation, where along with other likeminded members we made a modest contribution to seeing them implemented.

DENIGRATING NEUTRALITY But it hardly needed the displeasure of the US, Britain or NATO to warn us off actually ‘going native’ with the NNA group. Our own emerging elite were quite determined that the question would never arise: ‘cowardly 1939 neutrality’ became the ideal rod to discipline any of us who took Articles 6 and 29 too literally, or presumed that they were any of our business as mere citizens. This attitude has now mutated into the smug suggestion that we should take our cue from the readiness of other self-declared neutral member-states to go along with EU ‘Battle-groups’ and the like. Heaven forbid that a ‘mini-NNA’ might have emerged within the EU itself – and perish the thought that Ireland might even have taken a lead in it: not at all the kind of enterprise Official Ireland has in mind.5 On the contrary, decades of impression-management, the trashing of any notion of positive, creative neutrality, and crude suppression or distortion of the truth, have facilitated our incorporation into an evolving EU army. The scale of PESCO (Permanent Structured Cooperation) and other recent developments has led some even to see the EU as an emerging empire in its own right.6 Meanwhile, those of us who value neutrality – along with 78% of our fellow-citizens7 – owe an apology: we should apologise for ever having been apologetic about neutrality. We have too often been thrown onto the back foot by the relentless, orchestrated denigration of Irish neutrality and of its potential to help subvert the modern war-machine. In a moment of rich irony, during one of our many wrangles over EU military developments, former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern – he who claimed to be one of only two socialists in Dáil Éireann, and that his heart had been with us in the 100,000 march against the 2003 Iraq War – upbraided his opponents for being ‘so defensive’ about the issues involved…

John Foster Dulles hated neutrality, as do our establishment, not because it is old-fashioned or unrealistic, but because it is a highly relevant, realistic refusal to pursue peace and democracy through arms and aggression. Specifically, it rejects the template of globalised capitalism and militarism which Dulles and company envisaged from the 1940s and which has pervaded the world so banefully since the triumph of the West in the Cold War.

5 The inclusion of Trade with the Department of Foreign Affairs seems to have been accepted as obvious; Justice was never in the running. 6 See various contributions to Cole, R., ed., The European Union: Democracy or Empire, published in 2017 by the Peace and Neutrality Alliance, www.pana.ie 7 http://www.shannonwatch.org/story/new-red-c-poll-shows-irish-people-want-neutrality

22 23 AN EARLY DEBATE: The Bell 1951 And we had our own heated debate as early as 1951. During the Korean War, trades-unionist and peace- activist Louie Bennett questioned in the Irish Times where US economic assistance might lead us: ‘the spectre of war makes some of us think, ‘Whither now?’, on every new evidence of peaceful penetration.’ 8 The Irish Times columnist ‘Aknefton’ grasped the cold-war context, including the link between socio-economic and politico-military developments: No objective-minded person can deny that Irish working-class suspicion is well founded. Every attempt that is made to enhance their living standards is met with hostility. One has merely to think of such socially beneficial legislation as the Social Security Bill or the Mother and Child Scheme to realise this. 9 ‘Aknefton’ was referring to how powerful professional, religious and other hierarchies had deployed the rhetoric of the red scare to thwart a modest measure of publicly-funded healthcare. This was Ireland’s homeopathic dose of a treatment which elsewhere, from Asia to Latin America, branded any straying from the prescribed course of ‘development’ as the thin end of the communist wedge. Nationalist movements, along with even the mildest socialist parties, were branded ‘Communist’. The consequence, along with a disastrous series of wars and military interventions, has been that any dissent or discontent was relentlessly driven towards the further shores of religious fundamentalism. Seán O’Faoláin, writing in his own journal The Bell, did not dismiss the link between US aid and military involvement; rather, he insisted that we should embrace it. We should, he declared, stop ‘snoring gently behind the Green Curtain that we have been rigging up for the last thirty years – Thought-proof, World-proof, Life-proof.’ Bennett admitted ‘the strong propagandist appeal’ of an ‘anti-Communist crusade’. But, she maintained: it is our duty to think out for ourselves the part we should play in the present ideological conflicts. How many of us really believe that a war such as now devastates Korea will defeat communism? O’Faoláin had no time for this: ‘The world of today is an Either-Or world… Nobody is free to dither indefinitely.’10

TOWARDS THE EU: THE TWIN-TRACK STRATEGY EMERGES There was little or no indefinite dithering by Official Ireland a decade later, when they first applied to join the EEC. Dr T. K. Whitaker spelt out the stakes in January 1962 in a memo to the Minister for Finance: [W]e should not ourselves raise obstacles to our being admitted as members of the EEC. To say that we would withdraw our application if membership of NATO were insisted upon would be extremely unfortunate.11

No dithering there – but not much democratic disclosure, let alone O’Faoláin’s brutal candour, either. The official line in the 1972 White Paper was as follows: the Treaties of Rome and Paris do not entail any military or defence commitments and no such commitments are involved in Ireland’s acceptance of these treaties.12 It is worth our while to ponder those slippery little words ‘entail’ and ‘involved’: their many meanings can range, for example, from ‘logically imply’ to ‘currently include’. As the hardware is ever more blatantly unveiled, the question arises of precisely where and when The Big Decision to install the software of EU military developments was clearly and conclusively taken by the sovereign people: 1972? 1987 with the

8 Quoted in The Bell, March 1951, p. 8. 9 Irish Times, 20/1/1951. 10 Quotations are from respectively pp. 18, 10 and 16 of The Bell, March 1951. 11 Quoted in Gary Murphy, In Search of the Promised Land (Mercier, Cork, 2009), pp. 278-79. 12 Quoted in John Maguire, Defending Peace: Ireland’s Role in a Changing Europe (Cork University Press 2002), p. 64.

22 23 Single European Act? Maastricht? Amsterdam? Nice (Part Deux) or Lisbon (ditto)? As the iron fist undeniably began to bulge through the velvet glove with the launch of ‘European Political Co-operation’ in the Single European Act of 1986-87, it was already implausible to maintain that nothing was happening. It therefore became necessary to invoke a transcendental concept of ‘neutrality’ which would remain immune from anything that actually was happening in the terrestrial world. Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald reassured us: The Government are committed to preserving Ireland’s neutral position outside military alliances… [and] it would have been superfluous to include a declaration to that effect in the Act.13 And so it went – and so it goes to the present day. The mandarin mantra runs: ‘Neutrality is sacred, of course, and it means… … …whatever is not happening now… Nothing to look at here…’ What has actually been afoot in the EU and NATO has meanwhile been draped in such Orwellian camouflage as ‘defence’ and ‘humanitarianism’. So long as this works, the mantle of democracy can still be claimed by those who are relentlessly fraying its remaining threads, whilst their critics seem to be reduced to sulking that ‘the people are uninformed’, or else to silent, seething frustration.

WARFARE AND WONDERLAND It is of course bitterly ironic that those who depict neutrality as stemming from a shameful pretence that the Second World War wasn’t happening should so transparently and fatuously deny their own proven complicity with today’s aggressive wars and torture.14 But we must note that, whatever occasional discomfiture it may bring them, there are also distinct advantages for our policymakers in continuing to inhabit this twilight world.

We need no conspiracy theory to appreciate the extent to which – despite their frequent handwringing over ‘misunderstanding’ and regular calls for ‘proper, informed debate’ – it suits the mandarins to become ever more deeply imbedded in EU/NATO structures without needing to face the implications of formally joining NATO and abandoning their pretensions of neutrality. The twin-track strategy allows them to adopt an Alice-in-Wonderland approach, where we are regularly promised decision-jam tomorrow, ‘if ever we were to consider abandoning Neutrality’.

But whenever it’s argued that they – not we – have already conceded far too much, they blithely tell us that we carelessly ate our decision-jam yesterday. The mandarins cherish such nuggets as ‘what Seán Lemass always said’ about being prepared to take on military commitments with EEC membership, conveniently overlooking the fact that he had the sense merely to say it now and then rather than ask the sovereign people to endorse it.

Yet however ludicrous the official strategy may appear, we should not deceive ourselves: it really is working. Though there is no evidence that the Irish people’s commitment to neutrality as a policy has diminished, in a recent poll 59% of respondents did not perceive any conflict between that commitment and ‘Permanent Structured Cooperation’, or PESCO;15 the twin-track strategy at work…

PRODUCT PLACEMENT: MARKETING PESCO But the policymakers themselves are clearly feeling the strain. Their option for concealment has not only been an ethical and political disgrace. It also contained, and still contains, serious dangers for them; they’re playing a highly risky game – and they know it. In autumn 2017 they were explicitly aware that they were on the brink

13 Ibid., p. 66. 14 See various contributions in Lannon, J. and R. Cole, eds, Shannon Airport and 21st Century War, published by www.shannonwatch.org and 3 other NGOs. 15 http://bit.ly/EMIRedCResults2018

24 25 of a further huge betrayal of our – and their – proclaimed principles.

As ever neutrality, now whittled down to an incoherent ‘military neutrality’16, was piously shunted onto the transcendental track – but new sleepers had urgently to be laid on the terrestrial one.

They had recently learned a painful lesson in marketing through the adverse reaction to EU ‘Battle Groups’, and so we are now being fed militarism as a blend of pasta and pesto from our friendly local supermarket: PESCO. This bland-sounding dish was quietly slipped onto the menu without a full list of ingredients – no warning that ‘this product contains NATO’ – let alone a fanfare, in late 2017. Meanwhile the mainstream media were chewing on the latest Brexit crunchie, which they seemed to find more palatable than the tougher fibre of EU militarism. Even our TDs were taken by surprise as the vote was rushed through after a mere three hours’ debate on 7th December. 17 Nevertheless 42 TDs voted against, and a new Oireachtas Neutrality, Peace and Disarmament group held its inaugural meeting in July 2018.18 There is plenty for them to scrutinise. The list of ‘nothing-to-see-here’ has so far, with Irish government acquiescence, yielded for example an EU Common Defence Fund; a joint EU military HQ; EU Battle Groups (in which Ireland participates); a centralised EU military budget and research programme, and a European Defence Agency (on whose board Ireland sits) promoting ‘a single market for defence’. And of course everyone signed up to PESCO gets a CARD: Co-ordinated Annual Review of Defence. So our parliamentarians will not be the only ones assessing our performance within these rapidly-crystallising structures. Our mandarins will assure them, and us, that the money will be doubly well spent: spent prudently, and for worthy purposes. They will breezily dismiss concerns that we will have to reach NATO’s 2% GDP target for ‘defence’ spending. Yet PESCO embodies the Lisbon Treaty’s aim of ‘a more assertive Union role’ contributing to ‘the vitality of a renewed Atlantic Alliance’ 19 – and the only specific target around so far is NATO’s 2% of GDP per annum. It seems implausible that its own ambitions, plus intensified pressure from the US, will let the EU commit to much less. Will Irish ‘defence’ expenditure reach that 2% figure? Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, responding recently to a parliamentary question from the leader of Sinn Féin, usefully confirmed that 2% would amount to ‘around €6 billion’, compared to our current figure of under €1 billion. He dismissed any prospect of our spending so much, and it is far from guaranteed – but the graph is definitely rising, as he also confirmed. 20 A substantial ‘straw in the wind’ is the recent consideration of buying a €200 m. ‘Multi-Role Vessel’, clearly designed to add ‘force-projection’ abroad to any function of local defence.21

Such prospects will spell out the concrete reality of all the shabby sell-outs. One aspect of this reality is the opportunity-cost of diverting large sums from housing, education, health etc. at home.22 Another is the

16 For the incoherence, indeed non-reality, of this concept see, e.g., Karen Devine, ‘Neutrality and the develop- ment of the European Union’s common security and defence policy: Compatible or competing?’, Cooperation and Conflict 2011, 46:334, accessible online at file:///C:/Users/Admin/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INet- Cache/Content.Outlook/GEMEVXVE/Neutrality%20ESDP%20CoCo%20Devine%202011%20(4).pdf . 17 Disgracefully, RTE Radio One held a relatively informative debate, after the vote had been taken… 18 https://www.alicemaryhiggins.ie/news/post/first-meeting-of-the-oireachtas-neutrality-peace-and-disarmament- takes-place. 19 Quoted on p. 12 of Roger Cole, ‘Europe: Empire or partnership of Democratic States?’ in Cole, R. ed. The European Union: Democracy or Empire, (PANA 2017), pp. 10-13. . 20 See People’s News 196, 25th November 2018, at https://www.people.ie/news/PN-196.pdf. 21 An Taoiseach’s reply to Deputy Séamus Healy explicitly envisages ‘a flexible and adaptive capability for a wide range of maritime tasks, both at home and overseas’. It is reported at https://paddyhealy.wordpress. com/2018/02/01/monitoring-defense-expenditure-as-ireland-participates-in-permanent-european-struc- tured-military-co-operation-organisation-PESCO-and-operation-sophia-in-mediterranean/ 22 See for example Kieran Allen, ‘Why is defence spending prioritised over housing?’, Irish Times 15th December 2017.

24 25 nature of the ventures we will engage in – are already involved with – abroad. Armies, navies and air forces nowadays require a specific long-term configuration and doctrine, and cannot easily be switched back and forth between policies: significant changes in policy-direction are not easily reversed. In 2019 the Ranger Wing takes up a central role in a German-led EU battle group on standby, while the recent revelation that Irish soldiers had been serving in Afghanistan for almost a decade points to increased Irish military involvement with NATO. 23 Our navy had worked bilaterally with the Italian navy in Operation Pontus, rescuing African refugees from the Mediterranean and bringing them to Italy; not perfect – addressing the consequences rather than the causes of conflict in Libya – but having some claim to the label ‘humanitarian’. Now, that label has been implausibly pasted over Operation Sophia, in which 25 EU states combine to return refugees to the hell they have just attempted to escape. Minister Paul Kehoe explained to the Dáil that Ireland was now participating in ‘a military mission’.24 One of the saddest of our opportunity-costs is the abject failure to articulate and apply our constitutional principles as active neutrality, a modest contribution to building a fairer and safer world. The cumulative strain of all these contradictions on the ground will ultimately bring the transcendental track crashing to earth as a charred, tangled wreck, sadly reminiscent of the devastation we have joined in visiting on the world over recent decades. Whenever we have warned over those decades about EU militarisation, the great and the bad have breezily dismissed our warnings. They have been free with labels such as ‘scaremongering’ and ‘hysteria’; ‘deliberate deceit’ has been par for the course. During successive referenda many of our fellow-citizens, whilst uneasily conceding a growing validity to our warnings, have felt inclined, even obliged, to give priority to other, non- military, matters which at the time were presented as more substantial or urgent. However worthy or pressing the ‘other matters’ in question, this approach has now, we must respectfully suggest, at last run out of political and moral road: President Macron and Chancellor Merkel have used the centenary of the 1918 armistice to call openly and explicitly for a ‘real EU army’. This call follows Commission President Juncker’s recent gleeful boast: ‘EU defence policy was supposed to start in 1954, we proposed it in 2014, it’s happening now.’ 25 Not only has the decades-long process (in which our governments have always acquiesced) carried us to this point, but the final step is being urged as a logical and natural extension of ‘business as usual’ for a union wanting and allegedly needing to ‘flex its muscles’ on the global stage.26

23 People’s News 197, December 2018, https://www.people.ie/news/PN-197.pdf. 24 See Sally Hayden, ‘No escape for refugees trapped in Libya as search-and-rescue closes down’, Irish Times 28th December 2018, and https://www.kildarestreet.com/debates/?id=2018-11-21a.111. See also Séamus Healy TD, ‘Growing Involvement of Ireland in European Militarisation – New Government Proposal’, in Cole, R. ed. (2017), pp. 25-27. 25 See Justine McCarthy, ‘We can’t stay neutral on an EU call to arms’, Sunday Times 25/11/2018, and Frank Keoghan, ‘Forward to an EU Army!’ in Cole, R. ed. (2017), pp. 27-31. The reference to 1954 concerns the ‘Eu- ropean Defence Community’, a proposal which, we should note, was mooted even before the EEC itself was founded in 1957. 26 Here we must note the ‘Protocol on the concerns of the Irish people’ which was annexed to the Lisbon Treaty in 2013. It is a very strange, and carefully crafted, confection indeed. Though purporting to address our concerns at the level of the treaty text as such, it reads, and largely operates, more like a mere Declaration about that text. The reference to ‘the Irish people’, far from emphasising our sovereignty, serves to dispel any impression that our concerns might be shared by an Irish government. Tellingly, a text agreed at the request of an Irish government clearly sidelines the UN, merely expressing the EU’s respect for its ‘principles’ and preparedness to act ‘in accordance’ with them (as interpreted by whom?). The Protocol appears to allow that member states may decide for themselves how to fulfil the EU’s version of the NATO ‘mutual assistance against aggression’ obligation. However it does not remove or override the basic treaty clause, which says that ‘Member States shall have… an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power’ (Lisbon Treaty, Article 42.7; emphasis added). The statement that ‘The Treaty of Lisbon does not affect or prejudice

26 27 OUR PRESENT PLIGHT: HOPE AGAINST HYPE

The extent of our present plight is explored in a contribution to an intriguing new series from Cork University Press.27 Harry Browne paints a disturbing picture of the failure of our conventional notions of ‘civil society’ and ‘the public sphere’ to grapple with the realities of today’s state and corporate power. The suppression of the truth about Shannon Airport’s role in the ‘War on Terror’ – and about sustained peaceful activist opposition to that role 28 – is tellingly central to his analysis. The most recent instance is the blanket refusal of the Irish media to report on a major conference held in Dublin’s Liberty Hall on 16th-18th November of this year – all except Phoenix magazine, which proudly noted its own unique position, and the Belfast Newsletter. This was the very first conference held outside the US by the Global Campaign Against US/NATO Military Bases – but why did the organisers pick Ireland? Our governments may render themselves increasingly ridiculous by their evasions, but we have Moses and the prophets – as well as the dogs in the street, in the absence of genuine newshounds. 29 Harry Browne’s critique of contemporary society and public debate, and of superficial optimism as to how we can transform them, is initially devastating, and rightly so. Yet it leads him ultimately not to abandon, but rather to reconceive, our struggle for a more humane, convivial world. Whilst not reposing faith in our ‘fatally flawed institutions’, he believes that part of our argument and activism should nevertheless go to insisting that they ‘live up to their dishonest hype, as part of a way of moving toward better institutions in a better kind of society… Thus, we may seek to occupy the fissures in neoliberal hegemony by attaching ourselves to some of its norms while maintaining the coherence of our critique.’ 30 This is particularly relevant when we are understandably tempted to declare once and for all that our constitutional commitments, and the corresponding policy option of creative neutrality, are simply dead and buried. As our militaristic mandarins cosy up to ‘our sophisticated security partners’ in NATO they at least know that their real quarrel with neutrality, both as a policy and as a marker for our poor, battered constitutional commitments, is precisely that it is not immoral, incoherent or outdated, but squarely confronts the hidden horrors of our furtive, shameful facilitation of the ‘War on Terror’31.

CAN WE RECLAIM ARTICLE 29? The twin-track strategy simply cannot be maintained in this new scenario. But the track is not the train, and Article 6 reminds us that we are, or should be, the drivers. There is no good reason in the world to abandon the commitments of Article 29: 1. Ireland affirms its devotion to the ideal of peace and friendly co-operation amongst nations founded on international justice and morality. 2. Ireland affirms its adherence to the principle of the pacific settlement of international disputes by international arbitration or judicial determination. 3. Ireland accepts the generally recognised principles of international law as its rule of conduct in its relations with other States.

Ireland’s traditional policy of military neutrality’ merely recycles previous declarations. Promoting them to the level of a protocol does not as such affect the matter: either the treaty does, or it does not, prejudice Irish neutrality. The remaining content of the ‘Protocol’ recycles, and to some degree specifies, reassurances about particular details of the rapidly-evolving EU military structure. Concluded in 2012, when PESCO was already in the pipeline, it reassures us that member states can freely decide ‘whether to participate in per- manent structured cooperation or the European Defence Agency’, and that Lisbon ‘does not provide for the creation of a European army’. Two down, one to go… 27 Harry Browne, Public Sphere in the series ‘Síreacht: Longings for Another Ireland’ (Cork UP 2018). 28 See Harry Browne, Hammered by the Irish: How the Pitstop Ploughshares Disabled a U.S. War Plane – With Ireland’s Blessing (AK Press 2008). 29 The Phoenix, 30th November 2018. The full videoed proceedings, and other relevant links, can be found on the website of www.pana.ie, who hosted the conference here. See also www.nousnatobases.org. 30 Browne, pp. 120-21. A similar argument is advanced by John Holloway in his Crack Capitalism (London 2010). 31 Defence Green Paper 2013, www.defence.ie/WebSite.nsf/grnPaper,e.g. pp. 7, 12, 22, 26.

26 27 However, not only has Article 6 been flagrantly violated, particularly in the reruns of Nice and Lisbon. Article 29 has also been trivialised, most shockingly by our High Court’s declaration that its provisions are merely ‘guidelines rather than binding rules on the Executive’ in foreign policy. This is but one instance of our judiciary’s self-censoring refusal to fulfil their constitutional role where it is arguably most crucial.32 The whole point of Bunreacht na hÉireann is that states are awesomely powerful contrivances; they must be subject to the effective control of the people, who are in turn responsible for ensuring that they do no harm to other peoples. Whatever mess we allow public authorities to make of our own home, we have no right to license or ignore their destruction of other peoples’ lives and homes abroad. What the reality of PESCO will increasingly teach us, indeed, is that the rigid distinction of ‘home’ and ‘abroad’, if it ever was meaningful, is losing its purchase in today’s world. Nor may we any longer maintain the pretence that ‘ordinary business’ is one thing, and war is an unrelated and regrettable exception to it. This realisation is expressed graphically by Tom Clonan, who on the eve of the 2003 Iraq War grasped the combination of economic and military aggression, and the ‘widespread suffering on an almost unprecedented level’ resulting from their synergy.33 Is it possible to confront our sorry present with a realism that does not despair of all humane futures? Perhaps it is, but it will require digging deeper than what has so far been billed as the ‘debate’ on issues such as PESCO. This in turn will require a radical humility which does not strive to outwit the imperial mentality on its own terms, but rather seeks through argument and activism to rebuild, ‘at home’ and ‘abroad’, from the trampled, neglected soil of human livelihood.34 Of course our current crises are not simply the product of NATO and the West, however unwise and aggressive these have clearly been. If we do indeed live in an ‘Either/Or’ world, the vital choices today are not between ‘sides’ in a catastrophic arms escalation, but between the practice – and industry – of war and that of peaceful, patient, law-bound conflict-resolution. This latter course is compatible with genuine defence and genuine peacekeeping; it is incompatible with the kinds of military doctrines and structures involved in PESCO, let alone ‘a genuine European Army’. Has Article 29 been degraded to mere ‘dishonest hype’ – or can it be made the fulcrum of struggle for ‘better institutions in a better kind of society’? Irish Neutrality is ours to reclaim and rebuild; it was never theirs to barter and betray. There is a lot of work ahead for our already blood-stained hands.35

32 See Horgan, E., ‘Irish Neutrality: Interpreting Horgan v An Taoiseach, 2003’ in Lannon, J. and R. Cole, eds., Shannon Airport and 21st Century War, pp. 36-37. 33 Clonan, T., Whistleblower, Soldier, Spy (Dublin 2013), pp. 166-67. 34 This latter notion comes from Raymond Williams’s 1983 essay ‘Resources for a Journey of Hope’, which still, like Harry Browne’s argument, provides inspiration – along with salutary warnings for today. See Williams, R., Towards 2000 (London 1983), pp. 241-69. 35 My thanks to Andy Storey and Frank Keoghan for comments on drafts of this article, and to Joe Noonan and Karen Devine for comments on aspects of it. I would like to dedicate the article as a small tribute to the memory of my granduncle Frank Corcoran, of ‘London-Irish’ emigrant stock, who with his brother Bernard refused to join the carnage in 1914-18 and who, half a century later, brought his grandnephew to see Joan Littlewood’s ‘Oh, What a Lovely War!’

28 29 THE MILITARISATION OF THE EU Denmark has rejected participation in the militarisation of the EU – Hopefully Ireland will do the same! Lave K. Broch

The EU is rapidly developing its military side and only one member state has rejected participation in the militarisation of the EU. It is not one of the so called neutral countries. It is what some in old days would call a semi- neutral country: Denmark. But why does Denmark reject participation in the militarization of the EU? It is not due to the Danish government. The Danish government actually thinks it is ‘awkward’ that Denmark has a treaty based defence opt-out that prevents Denmark from being part of the militarisation process. Luckily the defence opt-out can be changed only if the Danish people want to do so, but the latest polls show that a clear majority of the Danes support the opt- out, though Denmark was a founding member of NATO. Denmark’s relationship with the EU is a bit complicated and just like in Ireland some referendums have ended with the people saying no to handing over more powers to the EU. Denmark has both a geographically and politically divided EU membership. Two parts of the kingdom of Denmark (Faroe Islands and Greenland) are not part of the EU and Denmark has, for instance, not adopted the euro, the supranational justice policy and the EU defence policy. Many EU-positive Danish politicians have over the years promised things about the EU and very often it went differently. In a referendum in 1986 about the single market the Prime minister at the time, Poul Schlüter, promised that if people voted yes then the ‘union would be stone dead’. But despite that promise and a ‘yes’ in the referendum, a proposal emerged to turn the EEC into a ‘union’. It was the Maastricht Treaty. The Danes voted on the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 and a majority voted ‘no’. The Danish government then started to negotiate with the EU and the other member states. It ended with the Edinburgh agreement where Denmark got treaty based opt-outs on the euro, supranational justice policy, defence and the union citizenship. In 1993 a majority of the Danes approved the Maastricht Treaty; incorporating the opt-outs. The Maastricht referendum was the first referendum campaign in which I took part and one of the main problems I had with the Maastricht treaty was that it opened the way for a militarisation of the EU. My vision was that we should learn from mistakes of the past and work for collective security for all nations. My father was a Danish officer during Second World War and at one point the German soldiers waited on him in his flat but luckily, he was warned and could escape to Sweden. My mother’s father was a Norwegian officer who also managed to escape to Sweden and my family’s experiences during the war have of course influenced me. My dream is that we will create a world where rule of law will matter: not a world with super powers that step on smaller nations and not a world order where we put economic profit over the lives of people – no matter where they live. My greatest fear about what could happen with the EU is unfortunately developing right now. The French and German governments are strong supporters of creating a military union. The EU president Jean Claude Juncker called for a fully-fledged defence union in 2015. For me it is very important that Denmark is not part of such a military project and hopefully Ireland will also choose not to be part of it. The EU’s Lisbon Treaty demands that member states should gradually increase their military capabilities. The Treaty does not ban weapons of mass destruction and it does not demand that military operations will only

28 29 be in self-defence or when there is a UN mandate. Articles in the Lisbon treaty on defence and military are however not valid for Denmark but they are valid for all other EU member states – including Ireland. 25 out of the 28 present member states have joined PESCO (Permanent Structured Cooperation). Only the UK, Malta and Denmark do not take part in PESCO. In PESCO the national armed forces pursue structural integration. The EU has created a Defence Agency that supports the weapons industry and that Agency is treaty-based. Denmark is the only EU member state that is not a member of the EU Defence Agency. The EU has created military battlegroups and when Finland joined the battle groups, its parliament changed a law that prevented Finland from participating in military operations without a UN mandate. Ireland is therefore the only EU member state with a law that demands UN mandates for military operations. Denmark does not participate in the EU battle groups. The EU has established a defence fund that will boost the EU’s weapons industry. Over a decade (2017 to 2027), up to €51 billion of EU subsidies will be granted to the arms industry – as distinct from national subsidies. Many of the weapon producers sell weapons to regimes that constantly violate human rights. The Danish government says that Danish companies can apply for money from the defence fund. In the People’s Movement we believe this is a violation of our opt-out. The Danish defence opt-out means that Danish tax payers do not pay for EU military projects and Danish soldiers do not wear EU uniforms and participate in EU military operations. This is very important for those of us who want a different and more peaceful path. We do not know how the EU will develop. But we can see that the centralisation of power continues in the EU. The EU commission president Juncker has suggested supranational decision-making in the field of foreign policy. One day it might also be suggested in the military area. If neutral countries take their neutrality seriously it is time to reject being part of the military development of the EU. As I see it there are only two options for neutral countries: 1. Get a defence opt-out like Denmark’s, or 2. Leave the EU. But doing nothing will drag you into a super-state over which you will not have control. Saying NO to the EU defence policy does not prevent us from being responsible nations that work for peace globally. We can still participate in the UN’s peace missions around the world and that is a pressing need! We can also help to remove land mines in former war zones and we can stop weapon trade to countries that constantly violate human rights. My wish is that both Ireland and Denmark can work for peace together. We should also look at the Norwegian peace efforts. Norway does not follow the EU terror list and that gives Norway better possibilities to facilitate peace negotiations in the world. Countries like Denmark and Ireland could do the same. It is simply time to walk a different and more peaceful path. Only dead fish go with the flow.

Yes to peace and the rule of law – No to militarisation of the EU.

30 31 The Militarisation of the EU!

Frank Keoghan

The last two years have witnessed a rapid advance in the militarisation of the EU. In 2017, Jean Claude Juncker, EU Commission President proclaimed that: ‘By 2025 we need a fully-fledged European Defence Union. We need it. And NATO wants it.’ Now, Brussels has clearly signalled that military union is the preferred next stage of EU integration and it continues apace. This development is facilitated by the Lisbon Treaty, or EU Constitution, which obliges Member States to support the EU’s security policy ‘actively and unreservedly in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity’ (Art 24.3 TEU). In 2016 Juncker had called for a ‘security union with the end goal of establishing a European army’ while the EU Parliament called for the EU to upgrade its military to be able to use ‘its full potential as a world power.’ The Lisbon Treaty contains a mutual defence clause (Art.42.7 TEU) and a separate obligation to participate in an EU ‘common defence’ - an EU Army. ‘The common security and defence policy shall include the progressive framing of a common Union defence policy. This will lead to a common defence when the European Council, acting unanimously, so decides.’ (Art.42.2 TEU). ‘Member States shall make civilian and military capabilities available to the Union for the implementation of the common security and defence policy …. Member States shall undertake progressively to improve their military capabilities.’ This last provision is a commitment to continual arms build-up amongst EU States – exactly what is envisaged in Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) which Ireland joined in December 2017. The Lisbon Treaty also established the European Defence Agency (EDA), which identifies ‘operational requirements, promoting measures to satisfy those requirements and…shall participate in defining a European capabilities and armaments policy…’ (Arts.42.3 and 45 TEU). This body is now the focus of continual lobbying by Europe’s arms manufacturers, who continually push cross-national integration and a common security and defence agenda. The European Council decided just months after the British Brexit referendum to increase the emphasis on EU militarisation in response to calls by Germany. Britain had opposed greater EU cooperation on defence, seeing this as the preserve of NATO. Now, the Franco-Germans and the Brussels bureaucracy could press ahead on military matters without Britain restraining them – though nuclear-armed Britain has pledged to continue military cooperation. The Lisbon Treaty explicitly recognises the NATO alliance as the prime forum for the collective defence of its members and EU military policy as complementary to but separate from NATO’s. (Art.42.7 TEU and Protocol No.10). However, ‘[t]he current level of cooperation between NATO and the EU is unprecedented,’ according to Elżbieta Bieńkowska, internal market commissioner, while the Conclusions of the July EU Council called for ‘further deepening of EU-NATO cooperation.’ This was reinforced by NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg, following the July NATO summit: ‘We just finished a fruitful meeting on NATO-EU cooperation. Over the past two years, we have achieved unprecedented levels of cooperation and we have been working together in 74 concrete areas.’ In his ‘State of the Union’ address delivered in September, Juncker emphasized his demand for the EU to play a united, powerful role in global policy, repeating verbatim formulations used by German politicians to promote a more aggressive German military policy. He called for ‘Europe to get off the side-lines of world affairs.’ It should no longer be a ‘mere commentator on international events.’ The EU must finally act as a ‘global player’, take ‘its destiny into its own hands’ and become an ‘architect of tomorrow’s world.’ A primary focus in Juncker’s plans was the EU’s militarisation, promising that he would ‘work day and night’ to see the European Defence Fund and Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) become fully operational. He is also aiming ‘to increase defence spending by a factor of over 20.’

30 31 In 2017 the Council of Ministers established PESCO under Arts 42 and 46 TEU. These commit the participating Member States to’ the principle of a single set of forces’, to increasing their military spending to reach specific monitored target levels, and to providing troops for EU combat missions. PESCO is an agreement on greater co-operation on military missions around the world. It enables EU states to co-operate with each other on military projects, services, programmes and procurement and will contain legally binding commitments to increase military expenditure. PESCO originally encompassed seventeen projects. The Irish Defence Forces are participating in the EU ‘Training Mission Competence Centre’ project, which refers to the training of personnel for future missions. Ireland will also engage with the ‘Maritime Surveillance’ project, which aims to provide timely and effective response to threats in international waters. Seventeen more projects have been added recently. At the same time the EU Commission proposed the establishment of a European Defence Fund, EU defence chief, Federica Mogherini, calling it ‘a historic day for European defence.’ Up to 2020, the defence fund will receive an annual €90 million from the EU’s budget – to which Ireland is a net contributor – and €500million for military research, plus half-a-billion euro for military development. It is projected that the fund will spend €49bn between 2021 and 2027 on research into and development of new military technologies, such as robotics and cyber defence. The EU Council asked the European Investment Bank to support these projects, and it has recently changed its rules to facilitate this. Horizon 2020, an €80bn research programme, has also allocated significant funds for military programmes. In October, German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen said that the structures for a European Defence Union have been ‘activated.’: ‘The structures that have been ‘sleeping’ for a long time inside the Treaty of Lisbon; we have activated them. That means we now have a legal framework for a European Defence Union, we have a joint planning process, so that as Europeans we can also develop a structure that tells us when we are going to use our forces.’ EU military interventions in the Balkans, the Middle East and Africa are titled ‘peace-making’ or ‘peace- keeping’. Troops wear EU uniforms on these missions. Their actions are supported by the European Defence Agency, the EU Satellite Centre and the EU Military Committee (EUMC). The latter oversees the EU Military Staff (EUMS) headquartered in Brussels. Simultaneously, the EU Commission is continuing the fortification of the EU’s external borders. The European Border and Coast Guard Agency was established in 2016, with a force of 1,500 members. Original proposals estimated that this would increase to 10,000 by 2027; but a recent proposal by EU Commission President Juncker accelerates this timetable by seven years. He aims to spend €1.3 billion to add an additional 10,000 border guards by 2020. The powers of this proposed force are particularly notable. It would operate with executive powers and its own equipment, being deployed ‘wherever and whenever’ considered necessary along the EU’s external

32 33 borders, as well as in non-EU countries. Its equipment is to include ‘vessels, planes and vehicles, available to be deployed at all times and for all necessary operations.’ It can send its soldiers even if the destination country doesn’t want them, and member-states surrender the legal right to have a monopoly of force within their own borders. For the first time, even before the formal setting up of an EU Army, there will be a pan-EU military force with the right to go anywhere it wants within the EU. There are also eighteen EU Battlegroups, each able to deploy 1500 men speedily from different Member States on a rotating basis. Ireland will participate in a 2019 EU Battlegroup, forming a ‘significant element’ within a German-led battle group on [permanent?]standby. Will Brexit diminish the effectiveness of an EU Army? Hardly, since the old imperial powers, Germany and Britain, have signed a ‘joint vision statement.’ It provides for common steps in training missions outside Europe, in the ‘fight against terrorism’ and in weapons development. Moreover, last month it was decided that Britain (and the US) will have access to PESCO on a case-by-case basis after Brexit. ‘The invited third state should provide substantial added value to achieving the objectives of the individual project (contributing with resources or expertise),’ creating a permanent link between Brexit Britain and the EU Army. More ominously, a review by the Bundestag, the German lower house, earlier this year determined that Germany could legally finance French or British nuclear weapons on German soil in exchange for their ‘protection’. The EU as a whole could do the same, if it changed its budgetary rules as it has already shown a willingness to do. Germany could be granted shared control over the use of warheads under a ‘dual-key’ system, and German ruling circles have renewed a debate about ‘going nuclear.’ A ‘Euro-bomb’ with a German finger on an EU nuclear trigger would be an important step on that road. Meanwhile, France is planning a €37 billion seven-year revamp of its nuclear arsenal, and it seems increasingly likely that they will be able to provide an EU nuclear capability. Upgrades to France’s land-based and sea- based nuclear deterrent will be part of the astonishing €300 billion to be spent by 2025. German bases and German financing would enable it to pose as a ‘guarantor’ of EU security. NATO’s 2018 Summit Declaration characterises the EU as a ‘unique and essential partner for NATO,’ and speaks of a ‘strategic partnership’ between the two organisations while agreeing that capabilities developed under PESCO will be available to NATO and be ‘complementary and interoperable’. ‘Our security is interconnected,’ the document proclaims, while confirming that ‘EU efforts will also strengthen NATO.’ Both will encourage member states which belong to only one of these organisations to participate in the initiatives of the other. Alignment with NATO is stipulated in PESCO’s founding documents and reiterated by the EU leadership at every opportunity. And on 18th May last, the EU Military Staff was confirmed as a ‘guest mission partner’ of NATO’s ‘combined federated battle laboratories network.’ The joint Summit declaration identifies military mobility as a priority, and the EU plans to invest €5.7 billion in this project during the 2021–27 budgetary cycle. Then there’s the nuclear-armed European Intervention Initiative (EII) launched in July. This development is facilitated by the enhance cooperation provisions of the Lisbon Treaty (Art. 20 TEU). Ten EU states including France, Germany and Britain have signed up, prepared to act outside the EU’s borders without help from NATO or the US. The initiative involves ‘joint planning work on crisis scenarios that could ‘potentially’ threaten EU security.’ This is a potential vehicle for post Brexit military co-operation outside the EU framework and would combine Europe’s only two powers with both the military capacity and the strategic will to use force overseas — Britain and France — with a handful of smaller, but willing, EU states. But there’s also a belt and braces approach implicit in the creation of yet another EU army; an ‘anchor army’ in which currently, the Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and, significantly, Netherlands have placed significant sections of their armies under German control and command. This army’s function is unspecified but is plainly a shadow EU Army in case of failure of the Commission’s plans. Not to be trumped, on 13th June the Commission proposed a new €10.5bn Orwellian ‘European Peace

32 33 Facility,’ an instrument outside the EU’s long - term budget, which would improve the EU’s ability to ‘prevent conflicts, build peace, and guarantee international security.’ Federica Mogherini, said: We are taking measures that will facilitate the rapid movement of Member States’ forces in Europe. Furthermore, with the Commission’s support, I am proposing the establishment of a European Peace Facility that will improve the financing of EU military operations and improve our support for actions by our partners.’ The fund would facilitate the EU’s contributions to ‘peace operations’ led by ‘partners’ such as Somalia and the Central African Republic in the shape of ‘infrastructure, equipment or military assistance,’ which Mogherini confirmed could include the purchase of weapons. No wonder Macron, said in April that ‘Europe has its destiny bound with Africa!’ Across the Atlantic, in October 2018, bipartisan legislators in the US passed the National Defence Authorization Act (2018), which includes $6.5 billion to finance the ‘European Deterrence Initiative,’ building military capabilities of EU states near Russia, and contributing to the further militarisation of the EU. Other additional funds support an increase in EU/US military cooperation. This, despite member-states questioning the commitment of the US to European ‘security,’ following Trump’s campaign statements. Overall military spending in the EU countries totals some €200 billion annually. 2 per cent of GDP has been pledged by members of PESCO, to be spent on weapons development and procurement. If Germany alone reaches the agreed target of 2 per cent of GDP, it will have a military budget much larger than the putative enemy’s; Russia’s — and that’s by 2027. (The 2018 Russian military budget is $55bn, while Germany’s is $43bn). In 2016, the EU 28 spent €206bn, while France spent €43bn and Russia €42bn. In 2016, Irelands’ military spending was the lowest in the EU and one of the lowest in the word at 0.3% of GDP; in real terms around €960m per annum, so, the potential Irish military expenditure to reach the 2% level demanded, is an unbelievable €6bn+ per annum or half the total national health budget, our biggest budget item! This is absolutely staggering!! In 2016, the highest levels of military expenditure in the EU were in Estonia (2.4 % of GDP), and Greece (2.1 % of GDP). Aside from the considerable moral, political and ethical considerations associated with militarisation and the increased risk of conflict, this is an appalling waste of resources at a time when the poor are getting poorer and the rich richer. The constitutional amendment permitting Lisbon’s ratification in Ireland included the sentence: ‘Ireland affirms its commitment to the European Union…’ So, Ireland, a supposedly neutral independent State has affirmed a constitutional ‘commitment’ to a superior entity made up of other States sharing the common objective of creating an EU army! Recently, the biennial delegate conference of Connect, Ireland’s largest engineering union, unanimously adopted a motion calling for Ireland’s immediate withdrawal from PESCO. This illustrates a growing public awareness that the cost of involvement in PESCO, represents a new priority in government expenditure, to the inevitable detriment of public goods such as housing, education and health. This, at a time, when members of the Irish Defence Forces and their families are forced to apply for supplementary income benefits because of poor wages and conditions. According to the EU’s statistics agency, in 2016, 117.5 million people in the EU were threatened with poverty or social exclusion – 23.4 percent of its population; corresponding closely with statistics from 2007. The EU has proven incapable of reducing poverty – particularly in the peripheral states. The concentration of resources in Western EU centres of power – and above all in the German hegemonic pole, continue to fuel the EU’s ambitions to achieve ‘global player’ status through the creation of an EU military – industrial complex

34 35 and attendant EU Army in close partnership with NATO. Eventually, all military bases in the EU will effectively be NATO bases. The rush to war continues as Finland brought the number of members of the EII to eleven, while in the same week, on the centenary of the ‘war to end all wars’, Macron called for ‘a real EU Army’ – a call supported days later by Merkel in the EU Parliament. Spain and Slovenia have also enthusiastically climbed on board. Astonishingly, the Commission expressed ‘delight’. One shudders to contemplate their sentiments in the event of conflict! The year 2018 ended with Mrs Merkel, ably supported by Mr Macron and some other EU leaders, calling for the creation of a ‘real EU Army,’ while 2019 opened with the Treaty of Aachen, which established a Franco-German Defence and Security Council. The aim of the Council, according to Mrs Merkel, is to build a ‘common military culture’ that ‘contributes to the creation of a European army.’ And so, the rush to an EU Army continues at an alarming pace. The much - vaunted EU ‘peace project’ has morphed into the EU war project, led by former colonial powers eager to plunder the resources of poorer countries. They have issued a call to arms and we must respond with a call to action. But we must also ponder and discuss whether we wish to continue to be members of the EU war machine. Of course, there is an easy answer in the short term: the government could utilise the simple process provided for in the TEU – ‘notify its intention to the Council, which shall take note that the Member State in question has ceased to participate’. By doing so, we would enhance our neutrality and protect Irish society from the scandalous potential waste of resources that membership of PESCO entails. It could start a process that would include withdrawing from NATOs ‘Partnership for Peace,’ refusing US troops transit through Shannon and withdrawal from EU Battlegroups. It would enable us to adopt a policy of active neutrality with an overriding principle of helping people in crisis situations. It would also prevent us from becoming entangled in great power machinations and conflicts.

34 35 Contacts

Clare Daly has been a TD for the Dublin Fingal constituency since the 2016 general election. She previously sat as a TD for the Dublin North constituency from 2011 to 2016. Telephone: 01 618 3390 Email: [email protected] Website: claredaly.ie https://www.facebook.com/ClareDalyTD/ https://twitter.com/ClareDalyTD Seamus Healy has been a TD for the Tipperary constituency since 2016. He previously served as a TD for Tipperary South from 2000 to 2007 and from 2011 to 2016. Telephone: (052) 612 1883 Email: [email protected] Website: https://wuag.wordpress.com https://www.facebook.com/seamushealytd/ https://twitter.com/SeamusHealyTD

Maureen O’Sullivan has been a TD for the Dublin Central constituency since the 2009 by-election. Telephone: 01 618 3488 Email: [email protected] Website: maureenosullivan.ie/ https://www.facebook.com/public/Maureen-O-Sullivan https://twitter.com/mosullivantd?lang=en

Thomas Pringle was elected a TD for the Donegal South West constituency the 2011 general election, retaining a seat in the Donegal constituency in 2016. Telephone: 01-618 3038 or 074-97-41880 Website: www.thomaspringle.ie Email: [email protected] https://www.facebook.com/ThomasPringleTD/ https://twitter.com/ThomasPringleTD

Mick Wallace has been a TD for the Wexford constituency since the 2011 general election. Telephone: 01 618 3287 or 053 91 26051 Email [email protected] https://www.facebook.com/wallacemick/ Website: mickwallace.net www.twitter.com/wallacemick

Lave K. Broch is a substitute member of the EU parliament for the People’s Movement against the EU in Denmark. Website: broch.dk/ https://www.facebook.com/lavekbroch/ E-mail: [email protected] www. folkebevaegelsen.dk/team/lave-k-broch/ @LaveKBroch

Niall Farrell is organiser with Galway Alliance Against War (GAAW). Telephone: 091-792297 https://www.facebook.com/groups/312442090965/ Email: [email protected].

Frank Keoghan is Secretary of the People’s Movement and General President CONNECT Trade Union. Telephone: O87-230 8330 www.people.ie https://www.facebook.com/peoplesmovementireland

Prof. John Maguire is Emeritus Professor of Sociology, UCC, and a board member of Afri/Action from Ireland. Telephone: +353 (0)1 838 4204 https://www.afri.ie/ E-mail: [email protected] Twitter (@AfriPeace) https://www.facebook.com/afriireland/

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38 39 Clare Daly TD Seamus Healy TD Maureen O’Sullivan TD Thomas Pringle TD Mick Wallace TD

Issued by Clare Daly TD - Telephone 01 618 3390 40 PB 0612