I thank the Chairman and members for the invitation to appear before the committee to discuss Ireland's neutrality and, in particular, the differences between the concepts of political neutrality and military neutrality. At the outset, I thank Dr. Edward Horgan, author of public petition No. P00072/12, and his peace activist colleagues, Dr. John Lannon and Ms Margaretta D'Arcy, for their work in bringing the attention of the Oireachtas to this vital aspect of Irish foreign policy.
By way of background, I hold a bachelor of arts degree in politics and Spanish from UCD, a masters of arts in European integration from the University of Limerick, a postgraduate diploma in statistics from the University of Dublin, Trinity College, and a PhD in political science from Trinity. I wrote my PhD dissertation on public opinion and Irish neutrality. I am a lecturer in international relations at Dublin City University, where I teach Irish foreign policy, European Union policy and politics, and international relations and political science theories and research methodologies at bachelor, master and doctoral levels. My scholarship on Irish foreign policy, neutrality in Europe and public opinion on foreign policy is published in the top-ranked Institute for Scientific Information journals in the world, including Cooperation and Conflict, which is ranked 21st in the world for international relations scholarship, and regularly features in those journals' most-read and most-cited indexes. Despite the fact that Ireland is seen as one small state among the 193 in the world and its neutrality is a foreign policy orientation that is not a focus of attention in the global foreign policy realm, I manage to publish on the subject of Irish foreign policy in the top 100 scholarly journals in the world because I use innovative theories such as critical constructivism, elite socialisation, Europeanisation and the rational public hypothesis to analyse our foreign policy. I enhance the relative importance of Irish foreign policy by drawing comparisons with other states' foreign policies.
I do not mean to bore members with these seemingly mundane details. I am saying all this to highlight that my work is double-blind peer reviewed by the best scholars in the world, frequently undergoes an additional round of special "hostile" peer review and is subject to a further final round of editorial review. That is to say, it has been interrogated in minute detail and found to have met the highest scholarly standards of quality and academic credibility. The rigour and veracity of my research on Irish foreign policy is also seen through my receipt of several prestigious national and international scholarships, including a Chevening scholarship, funding from the Irish Research Council and Fulbright awards. The scholarly work I will present today is different in many ways from that published by think tanks funded by the European Union or the Government for political purposes. I will return to this point at the end of my presentation.
I am honoured to address the question of the difference between political neutrality and military neutrality. As members can see, I have focused in my paper on three main themes. The first concerns the fact that there are two concepts of neutrality in the debate on and formulation of Irish foreign policy, namely, neutrality and military neutrality. However, only the first of these concepts exists in international law, has been practised by states over centuries and is recognised as a bona fide foreign policy norm. There are no adjectives or prefixes associated with the term; it is simply "neutrality".
The second point is that Irish people support the concept of neutrality, not the concept of "military neutrality". In a democracy, any Irish Government is obliged to implement this preferred neutrality policy in the international sphere as Irish foreign policy. The third point has to do with the domestic and European environment in which neutrality exists, which is dominated by EU-funded agents that are quite hostile to the truths about neutrality. The Irish people have a right to have full transparency in regard to the moneys received by those agents, which enable them to achieve dominance of anti-neutrality discourses in the media in Ireland.
I will now deal in more detail with the concept of military neutrality, a concept that does not exist in international law. It is not a recognised practice of states and is not considered a traditional foreign policy norm in the international system. "Military neutrality" is a term created by governments of neutral states which sought membership of the EEC-EU as a way to agree at the EU level to the progressive framing of a common defence policy leading to a collective EU defence and the eradication of neutrality while, at the same time, telling their electorates at home that the neutrality of the state is retained. The definition of the term has changed over time. For example, on 11 March 1981, as main Opposition finance spokesperson, Garret FitzGerald referred to it as meaning non-participation in a military alliance and not being a member of NATO, the Western European Union or any other alliance.
Various Ministers and leaders have proffered different definitions since then, reflecting the variation in responses to developments in EU security and defence policy ambitions. On 18 January 2003, the then Minister for Defence, Michael Smith, stated, "There is no such thing as, if you like, complete military neutrality." That same year, the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Cowen, defined military neutrality as "non-membership of military alliance, and specifically, non-membership of an alliance with a mutual defence commitment". In 2004, then Government adviser, Martin Mansergh, stated that military neutrality is defined as non-membership of "pre-existing military alliances with mutual automatic obligations", and asserted that Ireland's foreign policy tradition is only "partly described as neutrality". The Irish Government, post-Lisbon treaty ratification, effectively redefined the concepts of "military neutrality" and "non-participation in military alliances" to mean, first, Irish membership of the WEU military alliance through the back door of a merger with the EU and, second, Ireland's assumption of the WEU's Article V mutual defence clause. In figure 1 of my paper, I have mapped the EU mutual defence clause and the changes in regard to that clause over time versus corresponding changes to the Government's concepts of military neutrality.
Scholars have concluded that the term "military non-alliance" has been defined in such a way as to have "close to no meaning at all". The decision to aid belligerents in war is against neutrality-based foreign policy and incompatible with Article 2 of the Fifth Hague Convention on the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers and Persons in Case of War on Land of October 1907. The Irish Government's decision to permit the transit of hundreds of thousands of US soldiers through Shannon Airport on their way to the Iraq war from 2003 onward violated the international law on neutrality and set this State apart from other European neutrals, which refused such permission. Mr. Cowen insisted at the time that "Irish neutrality is a policy choice and is not defined exclusively on the basis of international legal instruments such as the Hague Convention of 1907". Mr. Cowen maintained, moreover, that the Government had to "define neutrality in a very complex set of circumstances, the value of international friendships and the expectations that come with those friendships". He reiterated the new mantra that "neutrality policy has also been informed by the view that military neutrality on its own is not sufficient to maintain conditions of peace and security internationally."
I move now to the second point examined in my paper, which is to do with Irish public opinion and neutrality. The first point to make is that the Irish public does not define neutrality as non-membership of a military alliance. The assertion by Irish Government elites that their narrow definition of "military neutrality" is likewise held by the Irish public is wrong. That elite view is reflected in the claim by the then Minister for State, Tom Kitt, in 2003 that "the central and defining characteristic of Irish people in this area ... is our non-participation in military alliances". On the contrary, surveys conducted in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s show that an average of just 2.5% of Irish people define neutrality as staying out of NATO or non-membership of military alliances. The Irish public's concept of neutrality is clear-cut and broadly consistent over time, with the top three substantive elements being "not getting involved in war", "independence or staying independent" and "not taking sides in wars, that is, impartiality". Table 1 in my paper sets out the rank order of neutrality definitions offered by the Irish public and the percentage of people who adhere to the concept of military neutrality.
The public concept accords with neutrality in international law and the most strongly supported public concepts closely resemble the wider, “active” concept of neutrality that embodies characteristics such as peace promotion, non-aggression, the primacy of the UN, and the confinement of State military activity to UN peacekeeping, not being involved in wars, and maintaining Ireland’s independence, identity, and independent foreign policy decision-making, especially in the context of “big power” pressure. This is from the 2001-2002 Irish Social and Political Attitudes Survey, ISPAS. The results of 13 surveys from 1981 to 2013 show that Irish public attitudes towards neutrality are also consistent over time. Depending on the question wording and response options available, between roughly two in three and four in five people support neutrality and one in five rejects it. Table 2 in my paper shows these data in detail, grouped by question type. Contrary to the mistaken claims of academics, which are due to the misinterpretation of data, public concepts of neutrality are neither “inconsistent” nor “limited”.
Public opinion on neutrality is based on values of independence and patriotism. The results of a structural equation model analysing ISPAS data, shown in table 3 in my paper, indicate that the more an individual values Irish independence and the prouder an individual is to be Irish, the more that person favours the maintenance of Irish neutrality. The relationship between independence and patriotism is symbiotic. As historian Ronan Fanning surmises, “by the end of the Second World War neutrality had become what it largely remains in the popular mind until today: the hallmark of independence, a badge of patriotic honour inextricably linked with the popular perception of Irish national identity”. Table 3 shows the regression weights of a structural equation model showing the results of this.
Normative democratic theory supports the view that citizens are a wise source of foreign policy, preventing foreign policy designed solely in the interests of elites and even restraining leaders’ war-making proclivities. Gaps between the policy preferences of leaders and citizens are seen as problematic and reflecting different values and interests rather than levels of attention or information. Where public opinion is structured and informed, democratic theory calls for responsiveness by policy-makers. In other words, the Irish Government needs to heed public opinion on neutrality because it is coherent, consistent and based on important and relevant political values and identity.
The third part of my presentation concerns the domestic and international environment in which neutrality is discussed and defined. Irish public opinion on foreign policy is extremely politicised because treaties that extend the scope of the objectives of the European Community, EC, or European Union, EU, are subject to a ratification device of a binding referendum in Ireland. Opinion polls have shown that Irish neutrality is the top substantive policy reason given by Irish people who voted against the Single European Act and the Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice treaties in referendums. As the gap between the "yes" and "no" votes has narrowed in parallel with the expansion of EU foreign, security and defence policy, referendum campaigns in Ireland have become increasingly contentious and fraught because a ratification failure in one or more EU member states means the treaty in question cannot come into force.
In June 2008, the Irish people rejected the Lisbon treaty by a substantial margin of 53.4% against, 46.6% in favour, based on a healthy turnout of 53.1%, and another phase of European integration was brought to a grinding halt. Neutrality was the most divisive issue in the Lisbon treaty referendum campaign. Research showed that “strengthening neutrality” was a major driver of people’s decision to vote "no". Irish voters who rejected the Lisbon treaty to safeguard neutrality were correct because neutrality is incompatible with the European Union's defence provisions enacted through the Lisbon treaty. Table 4 in my paper compares the various elements of neutrality with the EU's common security and defence policy, CSDP. I will not go into detail on that, because it will be made available in the paper.
On the power structure of discourses on Irish and European neutrality, there is evident bias in the research and reporting of public attitudes to neutrality and other European security and defence options. Irish scholars have criticised the "sizeable body of feeling, innuendo and unargued comment in the writings of some politicians, journalists and historians who are clearly unhappy with Ireland’s ambiguous position". One of the many financial instruments at the disposal of the EU is its external relations budget for information programmes, amounting to €10.7 million in 2008. These moneys are expended on "the organisation of visits for groups of journalists” and “support for the information activities of opinion leaders that are consistent with the European Union’s priorities”. These journalist "opinion leaders" dominating the discourses on the EU and neutrality in Irish newspapers and broadcast media shows co-ordinate their positions with the EU's specially funded "academics", the so-called "Jean Monnet" lecturers.
Officially, Jean Monnet chairs are teaching posts with a specialisation in European integration studies. Unofficially, these posts, co-financed by the EU up to a level of 75%, are to encourage “associations of professors and researchers to communicate, teach and [I emphasise] promote European Integration Process”. The public are largely unaware of the extent to which the seemingly objective academics dominating the media discourses in Ireland are, in fact, on the EU's payroll and tasked with promoting the EU's CSDP and concomitant hostile discourses on neutrality. Such agents also dominate board positions in bona fide academic institutions such as the Royal Irish Academy, RIA.
These EU-sponsored journalists and so-called Jean Monnet academics also benefit from further financial resources through EU-funded think tanks such as the Institute of International and European Affairs in Ireland. I am given to understand the European Commission also finances the State broadcaster's European correspondent position based in Brussels. The list goes on. Suffice to say that the truly academic and objective voices on neutrality and EU CSDP are rarely heard and actively suppressed by these agents. The media have a responsibility to ask contributors to declare their affiliations with the EU and the amount of funding they have received over the years for their work on behalf of the EU.
In this final section of my presentation, I highlight some portraits of public preferences that are clearly coloured by the political and policy preferences of the authors who are part of the EU-funded elite. Examples include the omission of key public preferences in the realm of foreign policy from Eurobarometer surveys, and inaccurate reporting of Eurobarometer-type questions by academics in the media. Rabin argues that
... the Eurobarometer has truly become an instrument of governance, as they say nowadays ... it is a tool that, I believe, researchers trust ... The Eurobarometer has now become a tool that we can describe as practical, indispensable and incontestable.
Eurobarometer can only be considered a tool of governance if it does indeed capture the true policy preferences and foreign policy concepts of the publics in the EU. Does it? In a review of EC polling from 1962 to 1982, I found evidence that the balance between the Eurobarometer functions of evaluating public opinion and acting as a tool of politics is skewed towards the latter, evinced through the generalisation of claims as to the truth of "European" peoples’ preferences based on the omission of several cases of populations, in particular Ireland, and the universalisation of claims to knowledge of public foreign policy preferences based on a seemingly politically motivated omission of evinced preferences from the list of options presented to respondents. For example, Richard Eichenberg claims that “the 'neutralist option', so enthusiastically researched by the pollsters, never exceeded 20% in any country” but it is clear from the data I present in table 5 that neutrality was favoured by a majority of 31% in France, sizeable minorities of 29% each in Italy and Belgium, and in figures that greatly exceeded 20%. Anton DePorte volunteered that “reports of neutralism and pacificism in European public opinion” were of concern to elites that feared that “the domestic base of support for the Alliance had been eroded”. Unsurprisingly, given EC's horror at the support for neutrality among NATO member state populations, the neutrality response option was dropped from the questionnaire wording in Eurobarometer surveys conducted after 1979.
Another classic case drawn from media discourse in Ireland involves a pseudo-academic analysis of an Irish Times poll carried out by TNS-MRBI in an article entitled "Poll Reveals a Canny Electorate". The author of the piece, a Jean Monnet, stated that “68 percent of us are quite happy for Ireland to join some form of a common European defence”. In fact, the question asked people to consider the statement, “Ireland should consider joining a future European Union common defence”.
The question definitively did not ask people whether they would have Ireland join a European Union common defence. Instead the respondents of the survey were asked to consider a statement about considering this idea and 68% replied that they would be okay if Ireland considered such a hypothetical scenario.
These EU agents define neutrality in purely negative terms, that is, "notions of pacifism and isolationism", or deny the content of the concept altogether and demand the erasure of neutrality from all discourses, for example, "Neutrality is not a foreign policy and does not even give content or orientation to a foreign policy ... There is no correlation between a position of military neutrality and the content and substance of a foreign policy" and "the content of Irish foreign policy has nothing whatsoever to do with neutrality". Thus "we must, as individuals, stop using the word 'neutrality', which has nothing to do with our foreign policy". These agents could not be more wrong. Despite the EU demands for its removal and the fact that political parties have placed neutrality in a zone of meaningful silence in political discourse, from Wolfe Tone's clearly stated manifesto for Irish neutrality in 1790 up to the present day, the Irish people have consistently advocated a legally correct and normatively vital concept of neutrality and associated it with signifiers of independence, self-determination, global cosmopolitanism, anti-colonisation and anti-imperialism.
I suspect that the names of the three petitioners lobbying the committee today will be added to the list of those luminaries known for advocating the same approach to Irish international relations, following, as they do, in the wake of Daniel O'Connell, Seán Lester, Pádraig Pearse, James Connolly, Frank Aiken and Eamon de Valera. The Irish and Iraqi people owe them a debt of gratitude.
