Fergus Finlay: With this war in Ukraine, the days of Irish neutrality are well behind us

We must be prepared to do whatever is asked of us, to send whatever is needed, to help Ukraine and to seek to defeat Putin in whatever way is necessary. We must be ready to join whatever alliance is necessary.

Because there is only one choice now. There is evil in the world, and no country can absolve itself from the struggle against it. If it isn’t stopped, it can only spread.

Of course, we’re a small country, and we don’t have an awful lot in the way of military resources. But whatever we have, we have to be prepared to give.

Since Hitler, the world has never faced an autocratic tyrant with so malign a set of intentions. And Hitler didn’t have the unthinkable weaponry that Putin has at his command. If the world — including us — isn’t resolved to stand against it, there is no future.

Just so there’s no misunderstanding — I don’t believe it’s enough for us to say that while we remain aloof from any military alliance, we are, of course, on the side of democracy. That might have cut it once, but it’s no longer enough.

My late father hated violence of any kind. As a proud Irishman, he never argued against his country’s policy of neutrality in the Second World War. But he also believed that everyone had a moral duty where Hitler was concerned. So he joined the British Army for the duration of the war.

Like him, I have always hated war and violence, even the thought of it. Right now, I think of children terrified in the face of bombs, families being torn apart by this war, fathers leaving their families at borders and going back to be killed or injured in the defence of their freedoms. 

Every time I think of them, I think of my daughters and my grandchildren. What if it were them? How would they cope? How much pain can people endure?

But apart from a hatred of violence, I’m also someone who always believed in Irish neutrality. In the 1990s, I was one of a group of people who worked hard to see it written into Ireland’s first, and so far only, white paper on foreign policy. To make it official government policy.

Neutrality was written into the document as the cornerstone of our security policy and a core value of our foreign policy. In some of the later referenda on European treaties, we went further. We put language into our Constitution, in Article 29, saying that we would not join a European common defence agreement.

I look at some of the sentences in that white paper now, that I was so proud of at the time, and I can only wonder at how woefully inadequate they are in the face of evil: “Successive Irish governments have taken the view that in the event of a major international or European conflict, the security of the State could best be preserved by the adoption of an attitude of neutrality.”

And: “Neutrality represents an attitude of impartiality adopted by a state towards the participants in a conflict and recognised as such by the belligerents.”

If we had said at the time that, in the event of an authoritarian dictator willing to go to war with much smaller neighbours in pursuit of selfish and ego-driven purposes, we could best preserve our security by turning our backs — and if necessary being ready to surrender all our values — it would have been just as meaningful.

We must change our position. For as long as a dictator like Putin is allowed to hold sway and to use any fascistic tactic he chooses, we have to be ready to join whatever alliance is necessary to defeat him.

We see already that there are elements in the US willing to turn a blind eye to Putin’s wanton cruelty. Rather than confronting his evil, they’d prefer to attack and undermine their own president. They are led, of course, by the charlatan Donald Trump, who spent every day of his presidency — when he wasn’t trying to blackmail and bully the president of Ukraine — behaving like a complete lickspittle to Putin. 

Nobody — and it should never be forgotten — did more to empower and enable Putin than Trump did.

At the same time nobody else, it seems, believes that it is right at this time to go to war in Ukraine — to send troops to fight on the ground — because nobody can predict where such escalation would bring us. Even without escalation, Putin is willing to drop dark hints and suggestions about the deployment of nuclear weapons.

But Finland shares a border with Russia that is more than 1,000km long; Estonia and Latvia have long Russian borders; Lithuania has Russian territory to the south and is completely surrounded to its east by Belarus, now firmly established as little more than a large Russian military base; Poland too has Belarus as its next-door neighbour.

If Ukraine is subjugated and itself becomes a base for further Russian expansion its immediately neighbouring states include Moldova, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania — all with land borders to Ukraine.

With the exception of little Moldova — perhaps the poorest country in Europe — all of these ancient nations are part of the EU. As are we.

A threat to one of them is a threat to all of us. We cannot ever again say, if one of them is attacked: “What a terrible shame. But you do understand, don’t you, that we’re neutral.” Those days are over.

In the months and years ahead, we must be prepared to accept responsibility for at least our share of the humanitarian tasks that will accumulate from this terrible war. The support that families will need will be immense, the rebuilding may well take years. In some ways, though, that’s the easy bit.

The harder bit is sanctions and protest. We need to be proactive — if, for example, Aughinish Alumina needs to be taken into State ownership and out of the hands of a Russian oligarch; we cannot hesitate.

If no one else is prepared to name Putin as a war criminal, and demand that he be investigated by the International Criminal Court, we must. If others do it, we must support them. We need to do whatever we can to ensure no safe havens for Putin and his henchmen.

Of course, we should be suspending diplomatic relations with Russia and sending the ambassador home. Anyone who saw Sergei Lavrov’s interview with David McCullough on RTÉ saw only a liar and a propagandist brilliantly exposed for what he was.

The hardest part might yet be to come. It may ultimately be necessary for Ireland to be part of something that will confront this madness with arms.

I never in my life thought I would say this, but if it happens, we cannot shy away.