Irish neutrality and the full truth about the Russian invasion of Ukraine

There’s a man called Gallagher writing in the Letters section of the Irish Times this morning. Since he gives his address as Lviv, Ukraine, you can be pretty sure he’s writing about the invasion of  Ukraine and the south of Ireland’s attitude to it.  His letter centres on Irish neutrality.

“To all those Irish who are afraid that a non-neutral Ireland would get caught up in some highly unlikely protracted fight, I ask, aren’t some things in life worth fighting for? Independence, dignity, freedom, a chance at a prosperous future? If the Irish have lost sight of that, I’m not so sure the core elements of this national identity mean much to anyone anyway.”

With an effort I’ll pass by that talk by an Irishman about independence and freedom.  

This is a fairly rousing final paragraph in Mr Gallagher’s letter; it also is emotive and blurred.  He sees the chances of  the south of Ireland getting caught up in “some highly unlikely protracted fight’ as remote – but isn’t that exactly what he’s calling on the south of Ireland to do now? Go in militarily with the EU, all guns blazing?

He’s also emphatic earlier in the letter on a point that the great majority of people in the West have accepted: that Putin is intent on Making Russia Great again. Gallagher lists other countries like Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia as feeling the need to defend themselves against marauding Russia. 

A look at 2014 in Ukraine suggests that it’s not quite that simple. In 2014 President Barack Obama told CNN that the US had “brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine”: in other words, the US was involved in the coup in Ukraine in February of that year. The US and the EU supported the overthrow of the democratically election government in  February 2014, and while the EU wasn’t as deeply involved as the US,  it was supportive of regime change.

If we accept this uncomfortable fact, then it’s clear that Putin is intent not on recreating the USSR but on making sure that countries which border on his are not part of a hostile Western coalition. Hence his concern that Ukraine might join the EU or even Nato. 

That doesn’t excuse the slaughter and displacement of so many thousands, even millions of people by the Russian army. Putin is a ruthless man. But so would Joe Biden be, if Russia brought Mexico, say, or any South American country under its protective umbrella. 

Let’s remain clear-eyed on the whole Ukraine affair. Putin is merciless, but there is a history  that explains if not excuses what he is doing. 

Which is why the south of Ireland would be very, very foolish to throw away its traditional neutrality. Any war can be pitched as a good v evil struggle.  The truth is often murkier. 

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