Dr. Edward Burke:

No, it is not gone beyond reform. The UN, including the Security Council, clearly needs to remain. We are going through an extremely difficult period. Since 2014, since the invasion and annexation of Crimea, it has been particularly difficult. We are also seeing tensions now with European states, not least our own, wanting to do more in respect of the occupied territories and Gaza. That is extraordinarily difficult as well. We are concerned about our peacekeepers in Lebanon. We are going through an enormously taxing period. There have been other taxing periods in the past. I think we should not be too despondent yet. However, Chapter VIII of the UN Charter is important. There has perhaps been in this country a sense that everything must go through those P5 on the Security Council for us to be able to do things in Europe that are peacekeeping or peacebuilding efforts. It is important that we take some European responsibility, that we can do things. Countries, for example, the government in Sarajevo and so on, want us to do things. It could simply be about trying to prevent the situation in Libya from escalating further in terms of a naval mission like IRINI, for example. There is nothing wrong with that. It is completely consistent with how the UN Charter was designed to allow member states to do that. In some ways we are boxing ourselves in unnecessarily. Chapter VIII is very clear that, if there is peace enforcement, you do need a UN Security Council resolution. These missions we are talking about are not Chapter VII peace enforcement.

I would also say that we need to be careful about absenting ourselves entirely from things like responsibility to protect. Ireland is saying that we are a huge advocate of R2P, the responsibility to protect, that we should never have what happened in west Africa or Rwanda again, and that UN member states should step forward and use responsibility to protect. However, we are also saying that we do not do war fighting or Chapter VII. If you go to Oslo or Stockholm, that is not what they say. They do not say they are going to completely absent themselves from war fighting, including responsibility to protect. Responsibility to protect is very important, whether it is Sierra Leone, Liberia or elsewhere. It is important that there is UN intervention if necessary to save lives. We need to be careful about assuming that our peacekeepers will never engage in war fighting under responsibility to protect. It is very important to recognise that sometimes we do need to conduct peace enforcement. It is sometimes necessary, to prevent genocide, for example.

Ireland needs to look to Sweden and other countries in being a little bit more candid and possibly more ambitious in what it does for the UN. Various people in the UN General Assembly in New York will say Norway has really established a reputation for peacebuilding across the board, mediation, development and resolution 1325. Norway is exceptional. It is also a NATO member state as well as being an exceptional UN member state. We are not joining NATO. I am not advocating for Ireland to join NATO. We will not find ourselves in a treaty obligation like Article 5. Nonetheless, when it comes to the European Union, we need to be clear with our public that there are certain obligations about the EU when it comes to maritime security or the Mediterranean, including trying to deal with situation in Libya, which is extremely dangerous and threatening, not least to the people there. IRINI is necessary to try to help that and prevent weapons coming in to exacerbate the conflict in Libya. If Russia wants to strip away that UN Security Council resolution because it was arming a party, General Haftar, in Libya, providing arms to a faction there and therefore wants to get rid of an EU mission, we should think very carefully about whether it is the right thing for the EU to decide that the policing of the Mediterranean and its efforts to bring stability in the southern Mediterranean are something it cannot do any more because Moscow says "No". Indeed, in Bosnia, the Bosnian Government has really appreciated EU assistance and wants more of it to help peacebuilding in that country. Are we simply going to say no, we cannot do that either as an EU member state?

Is that our policy? Is it what we are telling other EU member states to do? It would be highly regrettable.

In some ways, the Irish public is confused because we need to explain our EU position a little better as regards what is the Common Foreign and Security Policy, CFSP, what our political community is, what Europe needs and the fact that a major land war is going on in Europe right now. Our democracy is under attack from Russian sponsored disinformation. Critical infrastructure is being attacked. The Russians carried out the Salisbury attack and assassinations in Germany. We have seen murder on our streets sponsored by the Russian intelligence services. We are in a threatening time when we need to fight for and work hard for the survival of European democracy. Therefore, if it comes to trying to prevent the exacerbation of armed conflict in the Mediterranean or anywhere else, the EU may need to engage in peacebuilding efforts there and have naval missions, and if Russia threatens the EU, perhaps we need to think carefully about our response to that.