I thank you Chairman, Deputy Brendan Smith, the Vice Chairman, Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan, and the members of the committee for the invitation to appear before the committee to discuss the implications of Brexit for Irish foreign policy.
I am honoured to present the summary points taken from a full paper in preparation for a submission to the Oireachtas committee. The paper is based on theoretical frameworks and robust empirical evidence.
When I was first approached to speak on the topic, the question of the nature of Irish foreign policy was the first to come to mind. If Brexit is the independent variable in this political equation - the causal mechanism that has effects on Irish foreign policy - the question of the nature of the dependent variable remains. What is Irish foreign policy? How do we know what is the foreign policy of Ireland? These questions are central to addressing key questions surrounding the effects of Brexit on Irish foreign policy.
The topic of foreign policy assumes the exercise of state sovereignty in the execution of policy aimed at influencing external events and actors in the interests of the state. This is normally a function undertaken by a government in a democracy on behalf of and reflective of the values, identities and interests of a majority of people in the state. Two parts of the dependent variable issue need to be identified. The first is what foreign policy is and the second is to which state it relates. The answer for most people would be self-evident, but I assure the committee that in the case of Irish foreign policy the answers are not what we might expect. I will explain why. Before I get into the substance of the presentation, I wish to point out that perhaps the majority of the members of the committee will not like what I have to say. Nonetheless, I will pull no punches in the presentation in accordance with the need to put these points on the record for the people.
In summary, I have three main points to make. First, Irish foreign policy today bears no relation whatsoever to the foreign policy of the State as established and practised in the first 60 years of the existence of the State. Ten fundamental changes have materialised, five of which involve complete U-turns in policy during the past 40 years, in particular, during the past ten years. As a result of these U-turns, my analysis can only meaningfully focus on what is left of Irish foreign policy and the future of these remnants in the wake of the UK exit from the European Union.
The second point is that the European Union today bears no relation to the form of regional co-operation and organisation established almost 60 years ago in the area of security and defence. I will outline the radical changes the EU has undergone, especially in respect of the common foreign and security policy and the common security and defence policy. I will explain how in some ways these have hastened the cause of Brexit and constitute the context that will have significant potential negative effects on what is left of Irish foreign policy.
The third point relates to charting the approach of the Government to Brexit based on the evidence of key Brexit discourses. This also helps to explain why Irish foreign policy has undergone such radical transformation in recent years. Crucially, it helps to explain why its potential demise in the future is inevitable unless the Government's approach returns to the role expected of it in a normal functioning democracy. Although this third point is rather foreboding, there is some hope for a turnaround in Irish foreign policy fortunes. However, the realisation of this hope and goal depends on the response of the members of this committee, the Oireachtas, the media, NGOs and, in particular, the activism of Irish public opinion.
I will set out what I referred to as the dependent variable of Irish foreign policy. Presumably, the point of asking for an analysis of the effects of Brexit on Irish foreign policy implies that there is some merit in seeking to understand what Irish foreign policy will look like in the wake of the UK exit from the EU.
To begin, I will focus on an outline of the "before" picture of Irish foreign policy. Although Ireland was an identifiable nation for many centuries, there was no official Irish foreign policy due to lack of statehood, autonomy and independence. Despite the absence of sovereign representation and agency, we can know the values and identity of Irish foreign policy through the discourses and practices of pivotal Irish leaders throughout our nation's long history, namely, Theobald Wolfe Tone in the 1700s; Daniel O'Connell in the 1800s; and Pádraic Pearse, James Connolly and Seán Lester in the early 1900s.
Having established independent statehood in the wake of numerous rebellions, including the Easter Rising of 1916, the War of Independence and the subsequent Civil War, we can identify the official ethos and elements of Irish foreign policy through the discourses and practices of official State figures, such as the former Minister for External Affairs, Frank Aiken, and the former Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, up until the mid-1900s. There is a remarkable consistency of the ethos and elements of Irish foreign policy in the discourses and practices of these leaders over several centuries.
In two key periods, the early 1960s and the early 2000s, this consistency was broken and most elements of Irish foreign policy were abandoned and replaced, respectively, with European-mandated strictures in the context of Ireland's pursuit of membership of the European Economic Community and the European Union legally created by the Lisbon treaty. As a result, Irish foreign policy is now characterised by a struggle between the Government supporting interests-based EU common security and defence policy ambitions in contrast to State actors, such as mass public opinion, NGOs and non-governmental political parties, all of whom continue to adhere to the centuries-long norms of Irish foreign policy, such as independence and the values associated with neutrality.
What is Irish foreign policy today? When I explored the elements of Irish foreign policy norms through several centuries, I found that in the 1700s and 1800s peace within and outside Ireland was seen to be dependent on Irish independence. I will outline the foreign policy norms of Wolfe Tone and O'Connell. First, they were accorded through the values and policies of self-determination; anti-imperialism; Third World solidarity, in the form of being against African slavery and black racism in the USA; the rejection of famine, whether war-induced or political; slavery; and anti-war attitudes. Second, they were accorded through a reliance on international engagement and diaspora. Third, the norms served the need for justice, rights, resistance, non-retaliation, religious tolerance and the emancipation of the subjugated. Fourth, the norms were based on a patriotism that was almost exclusively Irish, themed with non-belligerency and non- aggression. Fifth, the norms were linked to the notion of a just war and neutrality in seeking to avoid being dragged into the wars of Britain and other great powers.
After the 1916 Rising and the establishment of an independent state, Éamon de Valera repeated these central norms of Irish foreign policy as articulated by Wolfe Tone, O'Connell and de Valera's 1916 comrade, Pádraic Pearse. He said that Ireland's contribution to world peace was based on the nation's self-determination and independence and that the corollary of Ireland's self-determination and independence was peace with neighbours and the world.
Gaining independence gave Ireland several options. It permitted the inclusion of these norms at the level of the individual, such as a personal rejection of conscription. It provoked an intensification of the norms of self-determination, independence, anti-imperialism and multi-level international engagement, including with diaspora. Furthermore, it added the opportunity to pursue several goals. I will outline these goals. The first was normative-based global institutional co-operative engagement. This was specifically conditional on the purpose and effectiveness of the engagement. The second was a constitutional commitment to peaceful resolution of disputes. The third was armed neutrality. The fourth related to the policies of UN peacekeeping. The fifth related to decolonisation. The sixth related to disarmament. The seventh related to anti-big power politics. The eighth related to non-membership of military alliances. The ninth related to an untied development aid policy underpinned by solidarity with the developing world as well as non-governmental organisation and missionary links. The tenth related to the facilitation of a normative, globally-focused Irish patriotism specifying that a good Irish patriot is a good member of the global community and an apostle for the rule of law in international affairs. I will return to this patriotism in the final part of my presentation.
Ireland's history of oppression is infused with her peace policy ethos and norms as well as her contribution to the world in the context of the conception of her national role. The 1980s was the last time the Government held that neutrality permitted what it termed the positive merits of Irish foreign policy. These merits included UN peacekeeping, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, decolonisation narratives or initiatives, opposing South African apartheid, accepting refugees, opposing US funding of South American paramilitaries, increasing aid to the Third World, and supporting Palestinian self-determination.
As I mentioned, there have been several Irish foreign policy reversals and shifts in policy. Given the time constraints, I only have time to advert to five of these. The first policy reversal was the extension of EU political co-operation into military affairs. Until the end of the 1980s, successive Governments were against any EC role in military affairs or security and defence policy. This was affirmed in the Dáil by Deputy Collins:
Our positive neutrality is aimed at the promotion of peace as has been clearly established already by Ireland's traditional attitude to decolonisation, disarmament and peace-keeping issues in the United Nations.
It is being suggested that European political co-operation should be extended to military affairs. We are totally opposed to this idea.
The second reversal was the merger of the Western European Union, WEU, military alliance with the EU, and the third was signing up to the WEU's mutual defence clause or any version of a collective defence commitment. Again, that was stated in the Dáil. By the early 2000s, however, the Government had reversed all three positions.
With regard to the second policy reversal, namely, the WEU-EU merger, in June 1995 the governing Christian Democrats and the then German Foreign Minister, Mr. Klaus Kinkel, separately called for the EU to play a more significant defence role, proposing the gradual merger of the EU with the WEU, the European arm of NATO, and demanded the neutral states join it. In opposition, the then Fianna Fáil leader, Mr. Bertie Ahern, rejected the WEU-EU merger planned for inclusion in the Amsterdam Treaty. He stated, "We do not want to see the EU-WEU amalgamation or the incorporation in the treaty of alliance obligations or nuclear doctrines." In Government offices some months later, on 15 June 1999, the then Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Fianna Fáil's David Andrews, stated in the Dail that the question of integration of the WEU as an institution into the EU was problematic and should be dropped, and that the related issue of the WEU's Article V mutual defence commitment should be left to one side. At EU level, however, the Ahern-led Government had actually agreed to the WEU-EU merger in 1999, including the final element, which was the transfer of the Article V mutual defence clause to the EU. This happened through the draft 2004 constitution for Europe, which was reconstituted as the Lisbon Treaty and ratified by the Irish Government in 2009.
The third policy reversal concerns Ireland's WEU membership and the assumption of its mutual defence clause. Ireland's WEU membership through the "back door" of a merger of the WEU with the EU overturned official Government policy stated in the White Paper on foreign policy in 1996. It stated, "the Government will not be proposing that Ireland should seek membership of NATO or the Western European Union, or the assumption of their mutual defence guarantees." This was subsequently reiterated by the Ahern-led Government in Parliament when it was stated "Ireland was not a member of the WEU and had no intention of joining it." Past Irish leaders would have resisted the undemocratic, dishonest and potentially patronage-ridden tactics employed by the four big EU powers to secure the merger. The paper goes into that detail.
The fourth foreign policy reversal concerns the meaning of the concept of "military neutrality". By early 2004, neutrality had been narrowed down to a definition comprising the non-membership of "pre-existing military alliances with mutual automatic obligations". To fit the neutrals' proposed constitutional amendment for states' military responses to be optional rather than automatic, the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Brian Cowen, had proposed to the EU that the wording should be, "it may request that the other Member States give it aid and assistance by all the means in their power". The Irish Government and those of other neutral-states failed to have their amendment adopted during the negotiations over the constitution. The WEU's automatic mutual defence clause was inserted into the full text of the constitution that became the Lisbon Treaty, which, once ratified, resulted in the eradication of Irish "military" neutrality and effectively changed the Government's military neutrality concept to mean membership of this merged WEU military alliance.
The fifth and final policy reversal I will talk about concerns adopting what was called the "sharp end of peacekeeping" in the Petersberg Tasks and NATO-led missions. Mr. Bertie Ahern had agreed with the statement in the 1996 White Paper on foreign policy that "neutrality has come to be regarded as a touchstone in terms of our approach to international relations" and he added that "we are under no obligation to associate with pre-existing Cold War and nuclear based military alliances, even for peace-keeping purposes." Mr. Ahern reversed this policy seemingly without any level of serious debate regarding the legitimacy or effectiveness of PfP-linked NATO peace support or WEU Petersberg Tasks crisis management operations, stating a need to accept what he called organisational realities in Europe and the settled preference of all our partners to work mainly with and through existing structures in developing the European common foreign and security policy, CFSP. These are effectively the WEU and NATO. The Government was more concerned with constructing the EU as a global actor, seen through its claim that Ireland should participate to "signal the strength of the EU's capability to undertake a robust and large-scale mission."
Academics argue that the Irish Government has been neither honest nor realistic in executing "a clear move away from traditional UN operations in favour of the post Cold War model of 'tendered out' or delegated peace support operations." Neutral states have traditionally resisted power politics and high-intensity military operations, to the extent of questioning the motivations behind interventions in the Middle East, Africa and Asia by larger powers during the Cold War era. It is supposed that, in the post-Cold War era, "the end of purely alliance-driven policies left more space for an altruistic or value-driven foreign policy". Ireland's attributes as a neutral, post-colonial state with no history of interference or exploitation in other states make her a good peacekeeper and potentially a provider of good offices in conflict resolution. However, uncritical involvement in interests-oriented CSDP robust military interventions in Europe's near abroad will reduce Ireland's standing and defeat ethical foreign policy goals.
I will turn to the second part of my paper to consider the EU's ethos of a CFSP and a common security and defence policy, CSDP. Professor Giandomenico Majone is an academic who has written extensively on the EU. In this book, he states he has identified EU operating principles. The first is that integration has priority over all other competing values, including democracy, and the second is that EU decision-makers follow, wherever possible, the strategy of a fait accompli - the accomplished fact that makes opposition and public debate useless. The third is that ultimate ends are largely irrelevant. What counts, according to Professor Majone, are procedures and the expansion of European competences. He is largely correct. These strategies have been in evidence throughout the decision-making on EU policies, such as the introduction of monetary union, to the merger of the final elements of the WEU military alliance with the EU through the adoption of its mutual defence clause through Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union, as amended by the Lisbon Treaty. They are exemplified in the traumas inflicted on this State from multiple repeat referendums on Nice and Lisbon treaties, which were rejected due to the fact their foreign policy elements were seen to violate fundamental principles of Irish foreign policy and neutrality, to the imposition of an €85 billion debt on this State, which has been used to pay for what is arguably the reckless behaviour of financial institutions based on Wall Street that are still unregulated today.
Turning to foreign policy, the European Commission and Council have sought the eradication of neutrality. My paper goes into detail on this. Mr. Charles Haughey argued the following in Dáil Éireann from the Opposition benches:
Those who consciously or unconsciously are seeking to force us to abandon our neutrality are foolish in failing to appreciate the potential value of Irish neutrality to the Community in the international arena. Our neutrality emphasises the peaceful nature of the Community ...
Arguably, successive Irish leaders have failed to resist the demands from the EU to eradicate Irish neutrality.
The European Commission was equally hostile to the continuation of Austrian, Finnish and Swedish neutrality during their accession negotiations and suggested neutrality be effectively defined out of existence because of its incompatibility with future EU defence policy. The concept was narrowed to just one characteristic, non-membership of a military alliance, which meant the broader "active" neutrality policy attributes were stripped out. It was renamed "military neutrality".
In October 2002, the European Commission identified a new priority as an information topic for dissemination, "the role of the European Union in the World". The EU's CSDP main objective is enhancing the EU's image as a global actor. As Alyson Bailes said, regarding the genesis of the European security and defence policy, ESDP, in 1999, no one talked much at the time about doing something for the "good of the world" and many people were thinking about the good of Europe.
Arguably, the ESDP and CSDP are driven by France's desire to create a "Europe puissance" or European superpower against the "hyperpuissance" or hyper-power United States of America in the context of a perceived unipolar world created by the end of the Cold War.
One of the reasons for the lack of a common foreign policy at the EU level and the slower development of EU military capabilities, which should be capable of rivalling US capabilities, is the United Kingdom's traditional respect for what it calls the "special relationship" with USA and a desire to maintain NATO as a priority over and above the EU military alliances created by the WEU-EU merger.
With the UK exiting the EU’s common security and defence policy, CSDP, as part of Brexit, Ireland will be missing the one big state partner that was aligned with its own interests in trying to slow down the militarisation plans put in place for the EU to create what José Manuel Barroso has called a “post-imperialist" empire.
The EU-funded Ireland for Europe lobbying organisation, which campaigns to persuade Irish people to vote "Yes" to EU treaties in referendum campaigns, has pointed out that Ireland has never chosen to use its veto in EU negotiations. This is in contrast to countries like Denmark, a similarly sized state with a similar population, which has regularly exercised its veto and has actually opted out of the CSDP to protect its perceived interests. Ireland’s inability and unwillingness to use its veto, combined with the lack of the restraining effect of the UK on French and German military ambitions through the EU after Brexit, means that Ireland will, without doubt, acquiesce in becoming part and parcel of the EU's CSDP. She will, at best, abstain from military missions under permanent structured co-operation if they are not aligned with Irish foreign policy values and at worst, participate in such missions to be considered truly European or "one of the lads".
On 14 November 2016, the Council of the European Union adopted conclusions setting out the level of ambition and the way forward on the future development of EU security and defence policy and on implementing the EU's global strategy in this area. The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the head of the European Defence Agency, EDA, proposed an implementation plan on security and defence in October 2016. A European Commission report is forthcoming, entitled the European defence action plan, and the leaders of the institutions of the EU and NATO concluded a joint declaration which was signed in Warsaw recently.
We must remember that the CSDP is an intergovernmental policy at EU level and the European Parliament has no role whatsoever in terms of decision-making. European Parliament co-decision had been a key demand of pro-EU campaigners in Irish referendum discourses, linked to their demand that the Irish people should fully support the EU's CSDP, but such democratic oversight through the European Parliament has never been achieved.
The EU seeks to develop the arms industry in Europe through establishing a European defence technological and industrial base, EDTIB. It seeks to “be able to respond with rapid and decisive action through the whole spectrum of crisis management tasks covered by Article 43" of the Treaty on European Union, TEU. The European Council highlights the importance of the mutual defence clause in Article 42.7 of the TEU in the achievement of this goal, along with the practice of CSDP missions or operations outside the EU’s borders. These missions require member states to allocate a sufficient level of expenditure for defence, as called for by the European Council in June 2015. The Council is seeking enhanced EU financial instruments, as well as “financial solidarity and other forms of burden sharing” for this purpose, which sounds like an ambition to introduce an instrument for defence spending similar to the eurozone's European Stability Mechanism, ESM, to which Ireland has committed €11 billion worth of assets. The European Commission President, Mr. Jean-Claude Juncker, has made no secret of the fact that he seeks “a new approach to building a European security union with the end goal of establishing a European army” and a number of German Government figures backed this call in November 2016. In this respect, the EU is attempting to put in place the European defence community that was called for before the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community and EURATOM in the 1950s.
Finally, I wish to deal with the Irish Government's approach to Brexit and the consequences for Irish foreign policy. I see some contrasting values and interests of the Irish and British Governments in their respective leaders’ Brexit speeches, that is, the speeches of the British Prime Minister, Theresa May and the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny. In his Brexit speech, entitled, Ireland at the Heart of a Changing European Union, which was delivered on 15 February 2017, the Taoiseach said the following:
We are being buffeted by strong external forces — of politics, of economics and of technology. The greatest of these, of course, is Brexit. ... We must make sure that we shape that future for ourselves. I firmly believe that we can. My purpose today is to explain how.
He went on to say that in 2016:
as we commemorated the Centenary of the Easter Rising, we recalled the achievements of the revolutionary generation. ... It was a year of renewal — renewal of our sense of ourselves and of the values we hold dear. It is those enduring Irish values that will guide us safely through the stormy seas in the years ahead. The values of freedom and democracy, of openness, of tolerance, of community, of solidarity and of respect for others.
As members may notice, the Taoiseach's list of Irish values omits the 1916 values of anti-imperialism, independence, global patriotism and solidarity, specifically with colonised and decolonising nations. The Taoiseach went on to say:
our values are European values, too. They are the common values that animate our European Union. They are the values that bind us together as a Union of democratic states, working together for the greater good of our common European home.
My central point is that this narrative fails to recognise that in some respects, European Union foreign policy is driven by French foreign policy ambitions, cloaked in European multilateralism, to achieve "great power" or "global actor" status to rival US "hyper-puissance". These are not Irish foreign policy values in a traditional sense. The Taoiseach continued thus:
Three years after the Rising, in 1919, the First Dáil met to formally declare our independence. ... But that message contained an essential and abiding truth about Ireland — we are a European island nation.
The Taoiseach is wrong because what the "Message to the Free Nations of the World” actually said was that Ireland:
believes in freedom and justice as the fundamental principles of international law, because she believes in a frank co-operation between the peoples for equal rights against the vested privileges of ancient tyrannies, because the permanent peace of Europe can never be secured by perpetuating military dominion for the profit of empire but only by establishing the control of government in every land upon the basis of the free will of a free people.
These are the values, namely, resisting vested interests and ensuring peace in Europe through national sovereignty based on what the people of Ireland want in terms of their foreign policy.
The Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed on 6 December 1921. On 19 December 1921, Arthur Griffith said in Dáil Éireann:
It is the first Treaty that admits the equality of Ireland. ... We have brought back to Ireland her full rights and powers of fiscal control.
Successive Governments have actually given up control of this State’s fiscal policy through the EU bailout programme, which is something I go into forensic detail in my longer paper. These decisions on fiscal sovereignty indicate the fate of what is left of Irish foreign policy, which may also be sacrificed for the EU’s ambitions.
In his Brexit speech, the Taoiseach argued that as members of "a Union with other like-minded democracies who share our values and interests, we have a much more powerful voice on the global stage". However, I would argue that we have diluted our voice on the global stage to align with EU interests. I provide in my paper the example of a reversal of Irish policy on Palestine. In July 2014 Ireland abstained in a UN General Assembly vote calling for a Gaza inquiry. A media report by Shona Murray explaining this change in Irish foreign policy claims it was:
a strategic vote to abstain, in line with all EU members, who are members of the Human Rights Council. The reason why they say they did that is because this draft resolution didn’t pertain to investigating breaches of international humanitarian law on both aides, and it didn’t explicitly condemn the firing of rockets from Hamas into Israel.
In fact, the resolution did explicitly condemn the firing of rockets into Israel. This is just one among several examples that stand in contrast to the Taoiseach's claim that “our interests are absolutely best served from within the Union”.
The Taoiseach also said the following:
If we believe in a vision of a bright future for our continent and for our European values, then we must place that vision at the heart of our discussions. Otherwise, we will be playing into the hands of those who do not share those values, or that vision. But let me also make one thing absolutely clear – Ireland will be on the EU side of the table when the negotiations begin. We will be one of the 27.
I argue that in this adopted identity as a "European island" rather than a "global island", the latter being in the title of the last official position statement on Irish foreign policy by this State, the Taoiseach has failed to recognise that the job of the leader of this State is to defend Irish values and interests and to be on the side of Ireland when negotiating Brexit.
I will also touch on the future of Irish foreign policy post-Brexit, as that is where the meat of the discussion will be after this presentation. Ireland is now called one of the PIIGS, or Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain, after the bailout debacle. I argue, although it is controversial, that the real pigs are the successive Irish leaders, who could be named "Napoleon" or "Squealer", while the people of the nation are reflected in other Animal Farm characters like the horses, "Boxer" and "Clover". The EU common foreign and security policy and common security and defence policy, as they are currently developed and as they will develop according to stated EU plans, are arguably incompatible with Irish foreign policy values of anti-militarism, anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, independence based on a resistance to big power foreign policy agendas, peace promotion impartiality and solidarity with other smaller decolonised and decolonising nations.
