Liz Cullen, a member of DiEM25 and a signatory of the peace pledge Lex Innocentium 21st century, presents an assessment of the risks and consequences for achieving and maintaining peace in today’s turbulent world.

At an informal EU summit in Brussels at the start of the month the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland said that the government is “not opposed” to giving the European Investment Bank (EIB) the flexibility to finance military spending. He also hinted that in the future Ireland could support joint borrowing at EU level to support the arms manufacturing industry.

“the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war…

but we have no more urgent task.”

– John F Kennedy, June 10, 1963

Although, I was too young in 1972 to vote in the referendum on joining the European Economic Community, or the EEC, as it was called then, I remember the slogan “Markets in Europe, jobs at home”. Recent developments however, have shown that the EEC, now the EU, is far more than a “market”; it is a rapidly changing entity, for which we have been given no roadmap. Many of our laws and policies are now decided by unelected bodies who are primarily responsible to the EU, not to Dáil Éireann or any national parliament.

In 2016 it was estimated that we had over 123,000 EU rules, international agreements and legal acts that affected people across the EU. These included 1,683 EU Directives, 12,915 Regulations, 15,561 decisions, 5,337 international agreements and 16,592 EU Court Judgements. The majority of these directives and regulations (85%) were agreed privately in approximately 300 committees of civil servants from EU member states. While some of these laws were welcome, particularly those concerning environmental matters, other issues are a cause of concern. I specifically refer to issues relating to defence and military matters. I was surprised to learn that as far back as 2016, NATO announced that “the European Union is an essential partner for NATO”, and eight years later, in a complementary fashion, the European Council stated that NATO is an “essential partner of the EU, sharing the same values and strategic interests”.

This was copper-fastened in 2024, when Ursula von der Leyen asserted that “the EU-NATO partnership is a cornerstone of our security. NATO is a nuclear armed military alliance, with a militarized response to threat. Its website proclaims that “Nuclear weapons are a core component of NATO’s overall capabilities for deterrence and defence, alongside conventional and missile defence forces”. Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, and Turkey host US nuclear weapons under NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements, and have the capability to deploy them with US authorisation.

It concerns me that NATO, and some of its member states have a very disturbing history; they have cost the lives of millions of people in illegal or unjustified wars in Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere. The description of NATO by Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University as “a clear and present danger to world peace, a war machine run amok” is appropriate.

Successive polls over the years have clearly demonstrated the desire of the Irish population to be peacemakers. However, when concerns in relation to issues of defence and military matters were raised in the run-up to the re-run of the Nice and Lisbon referendums, they were summarily dismissed by government politicians and, to a large part, the media. Concerned citizens were labelled as “Eurosceptic”, “right-wing” and scaremongering; fears of the military implications of these referendums, the possibility of a European army and that our long valued policy of neutrality might be threatened were discounted.

Irish people were reassured that Ireland would become militarily involved abroad only if three conditions were fulfilled, namely, the authorisation of the UN, the agreement of the government and Dáil approval – the Triple Lock. Following this reassurance, both the Nice and Lisbon treaties were passed the second time – the only times that EU referenda were rerun in any EU country. Michael Martin would like to ”reform” this reassurance by effectively dismantling it. This is a betrayal of the wishes of the Irish people and of our democracy.

In March 2023, the government decided to withdraw approximately 130 Irish peace keeping personnel from the Golan Heights to ‘ensure that the Defence Forces have the capacity to fulfil their commitment to the EU Battlegroup 2024/2025’. A Battle group is a military unit of 1,500 soldiers, adhering to the Common Security and Defence policy of the EU.

This sounds a lot like a European army to me. Lieutenant General Sean Clancy, current Chief of Staff of the Irish defence forces is the chairman of the EU’s Military Committee, and Ireland is currently involved in 16 European Defence Agency (EDA) projects including the joint procurement of weapons. This agency was established to encourage military cooperation within the EU, and to strengthen the EU’s military industry.

Moreover, since 2001, successive Irish governments have been eroding Irish neutrality by allowing the US military to transit through Shannon Airport and Irishvairspace while waging wars of aggression against Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.

A further concern, arising from the passing of the Lisbon treaty was Ireland’s decision to join PESCO (Permanent Structured Cooperation), after only a two hour Dáil debate; the “cooperation” referred to collaboration in military affairs, and the treaty came with many legally binding obligations for Ireland including:

• To commit to agree on common technical and operational standards of forces to ensure interoperability with NATO
• To ensure that all projects make the European defence industry more competitive
• To spend 2% of our GDP on defence
• To simplify and standardise cross border military transport in Europe for enabling rapid deployment of military material and personnel

In the interests of peace and security,  this dangerous  push towards NATO entanglement has to be resisted. This is vitally necessary for fostering genuine international solidarity and cooperation.

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