Dr. Scott Fitzsimmons:

I thank the Senator. Like others, she has given us a variety of really interesting questions. I will start with her first question, which was around how I would assess Irish citizens' understanding of neutrality or types of alignment. I would completely agree with one of her own descriptors, that our understanding is quite romantic. That has certainly been reflected over the last few days, because there has been a kerfuffle in the news over this. It is, and I really do not mean to be insulting in any way, a little bit detached from reality. Another way to put that is that it is somewhat based on myths. Every country has myths. It is completely normal to have myths about one's history and character. Virtually every country believes things about themselves and believes that the rest of the world thinks things about them that may not always line up perfectly with reality. To give an example, I would imagine that the vast majority of people in this country do not know that we were almost a founding member of NATO. We decided that we wanted to leverage the United States to put pressure on the UK over the North. The Americans said "No, those are the terms of our agreement", so when they would not back up their end, we said that at least for now, we would not join NATO. That "for now" has turned into several decades at this point.

Our attachment to the concept of neutrality is also based on a misunderstanding of what that entails in reality, as I suggested in my opening remarks. One-sided alignment is not nearly as catchy a term, but that is the reality of Irish foreign policy. We do have allies. They will help us. They are never going to abandon us and that goes beyond the EU. As I said earlier, I am very confident that the United States and almost certainly Canada would help Ireland if it were actually to be attacked. This is greatly downplayed, as is the fact that the UK looks after our air defences. This has been an agreement since the 1950s and I still think that the vast majority of Irish citizens do not know much, if anything, about it. They are clinging to a myth. They love that myth but it is not really closely aligned with the reality of how Ireland actually looks after its own national defence.

There is also a misunderstanding about what being a fully aligned country means. Let us look at the commitments in the Treaty of Lisbon on the EU side, and specifically Article 42.7. It basically says that if a member state is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, then the other member states will have an obligation to provide aid and assistance, within their power. That is very similar to what Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty on the NATO side says. It says that if one of the alliance members gets attacked, it will be treated as an attack on all members but like the EU treaty, it does not specify what the response has to be. It would be ridiculous for Ireland to play a role equal to that played by countries like Germany, the United States or the UK. Our primary role would most likely be much like Luxembourg's primary role, which is to look after ourselves and free up resources. Let us say we actually had jet fighter aircraft. One of our roles could be to use them on a more regular basis than under normal peace-time conditions, which would free up British aircraft to go deal with whatever problem is occurring, presumably in eastern Europe, which is the most likely area where either the EU or NATO will have to operate. If that is the reality, and I am being somewhat speculative here, that is not nearly as scary as what I feel many Irish citizens and elected officials fear, which is that if we were to join NATO, the Irish would be treated the same way they were treated during the First World War.

The fear is that we would be thrown into the guns and chewed up like meat that nobody cares about at all and that we would just be hamburgers. That is simply not the reality of how NATO or the EU have operated. Every EU or NATO member that has participated in an operation overseen by those organisations has enormous control over how its personnel are used, how many are sent and for how long, and what missions they are going to participate in. In the Balkans, only some NATO members contributed any resources at all. The others did not and it was not the end of the world by any means. In Afghanistan, only four members of NATO, which has dozens of members, took part in regular front-line combat operations. Those four countries were America, Canada, the Netherlands and the UK. That was it. Great powers, including France and Germany, said they were not comfortable with doing so and did not. There is no reason to think that if Ireland were to become a member, it would be unable to operate in exactly the same way.