Ireland’s Neutrality do we need to change?

No post about Willie O’Dea can not be complete without the picture. Willie O’Dea was talking today about EU battle groups in Limerick. He gave his speech at the Institute of European Affairs Conference on “EU Battlegroups –Perspectives from Neutral and Non-aligned states”. From Wikipedia “The European Union battle groups is a project done in the context of the European Security and Defence Policy, its aim being the creation of several rapidly deployable units for international intervention and tasks reaching up to full-combat situations. Confusingly, the EU Battlegroups are to be deployable more rapidly and for shorter periods than the long-planned European Rapid Reaction Force.”

Ireland’s position on matters of a military nature are controlled by the so called triple lock mechanism. This basically means that the Government, the Dail and the UN need to agree on action for Ireland to participate in an action and indeed Ireland participation in these battle groups is not going to effect this as Willie O’Dea says

There is no conflict between Ireland’s participation in regional arrangements including EU Battlegroups and our traditional policy of support for the UN. Participation in any EU operation remains a national sovereign decision, and our policy on the “Triple Lock” will not be compromised by participating in Battlegroups.

But is this good enough? The UN is a highly ineffectual organisation. Mr O’Dea said.

In the past two decades we have seen some of the worst atrocities in man’s history. The horrendous carnage in Rwanda and at Srebenica not only appalled and shocked us, it brought home how powerless and ineffective the international community was in the face of such barbarity. The failure to act was not the failure of the United Nations as an institution. It was the collective failure of civilised nations to act together

(Previously on Iran I said)

The Irish government White Paper on Defence of February 2000 says of the UN that it ‘has the primary role to play in the maintenance of international peace and security’. Iran proves the biggest test to this. While the UN is noble and useful in it dedication to peacekeeping if it cannot effect a solution in Iran it shows that the only peace it can maintain is in small backwaters that the rest of the world wants to forget and not in larger countries that pose the true tests to international peace and security.

The UN’s inability to act in the most dangerous cases such as Iran is due to the diversity of the security council. Each member state has its own concerns and is going to act according to them. This is shown in Iran where China is reluctant to act as it has oil interests there. Also Russia has a big contract with Iran for nuclear reactors. This explains why the UN cannot be depended on to act. The interests of Europe are not the same as China the interests of America are not the same as Russia. France interests in Iraq surly clouded its judgement on the war in Iraq. This is due to the five permanent members veto. Israel’s decade-long defiance of resolutions calling for the dismantling of settlements in the West Bank, the genocide in Rwanda, the recent war in the Congo amongst other things show that even when the U.N mainly agrees it cannot produce results.

Mr O’Dea is right when he say “The failure to act was not the failure of the United Nations as an institution. It was the collective failure of civilised nations to act together. But the fact that civilised nations fail to act together is the reason the UN as an institution fails. Also can one call a country like China with it’s human rights record a civilised country and give it a veto.

Willie O’Dea again.

The ambition of the EU to be able to respond rapidly to emerging crises has,and continues to be, a key objective of the development of the EuropeanSecurity and Defence Policy (ESDP).

But does the ineffectual nature of the UN make this ambition impossible? The minister again.

“Today the EU has a range of political, diplomatic, economic and security instruments at its disposal to support conflict prevention, crisis management and reconstruction. It is important that we bring all these to bear in a coordinated and effective manner such that we never again see another Srebenica or Rwanda.”

Is it time we changed our triple lock system from one that depends on the UN to one that depends on the EU. Should we participate more in these EU battle groups which could have prevented some of the genocides that happened on the UN’s watch.

The EU has the ability, indeed it may have the will but do we have the will to join them.?

Update: FG urges abolition of UN troops pact