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Irish Examiner 22/2/2025

Article

Europe needs more peacemakers and fewer armies.

John F Kennedy spoke these words on 10^th June 1963: “the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war, but we have no more urgent task”.

I joined the Irish Defence Forces on 28 September 1963, and John F Kennedy was assassinated on 22 November 1963. Promoting peace and justice can be dangerous for the peacemakers including JFK. Eighty-six Irish soldiers, many of whom I knew, gave their lives for the justified cause of international peace. Ireland must continue to promote peace by peaceful means only and avoid joining foreign armies and wars of aggression.

The TINA syndrome which stands for “There Is No Alternative” was in vogue after the economic crash and austerity crisis. That TINA syndrome is now being applied to the militarisation of Europe. There were alternatives to the imposition of austerity, and there are alternatives to the militarisation of Europe, which has already played a significant role in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of European people. These alternatives include making peace by peaceful nonviolent means. The costs of militarisation and the destruction of wars is immense.

The estimated world military expenditure for 2023, was $2443 billion. This does not include the huge costs of wars to countries being destroyed. The alternative is to spend most of these billons on conflict prevention, including transforming the UN and restoring the proper rule of international and humanitarian laws and jurisprudence.

A BBC report on 16 February 2025 states that: “Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for the creation of an army of Europe”. Many European countries are reported to be in full war preparation mode. It is not clear whether this would be a European Union (EU) army or wider European army.

Thirty-four European countries have national armies. NATO is the world’s largest regional military force. Twenty-four of the twenty-seven EU states are full members of NATO, and the three neutrals including Ireland are members of NATO’s Partnership for Peace. This might not be so bad if NATO was a genuine defensive alliance. Since the end of the Cold War NATO member states have been waging aggressive resource wars in breach of the UN Charter in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and elsewhere and supporting Israeli war crimes amounting to genocide against the Palestinian people.

The Warsaw Pact was disbanded in 1991 after assurances were given to Russian leaders that NATO would not expand, “not one inch eastward”. Since 1999 NATO has expanded from 19 member states to 32, taking in former eastern European states up to Russia’s borders.

Ireland should avoid entanglement with NATO or European armies. The Irish Defence Forces has been a volunteer army since the foundation of the State. Until the 1990s Irish soldiers had to volunteer before being sent on UN peace missions. Now, they can be compelled to serve on overseas missions including NATO ones. This is one of the reasons that our citizens are unwilling to join the Defence Forces, and why our soldiers are leaving the Defence Forces. Irish positive neutrality is the best way to defend the best interests of the Irish people and the wider interests of humanity. Our neutrality has been virtually ended due to Irish soldiers serving with NATO, proposed abandonment of the Triple Lock, helping to train Ukrainian soldiers to kill Russian soldiers, and serving with EU military Battlegroups, and neocolonial missions in Africa.  If Irish soldiers are killed on such missions their deaths will not have been justified.

After the end of the Cold War the alternatives to the militarisation of Europe should have been a bright new dawn of peace and economic cooperation across Eurasia. A buffer zone of neutral states should have been created from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. That opportunity was lost due to US determination to be the world’s unipolar superpower. Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons and became a neutral state, but this neutrality was ended in 2014. Attempts to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine conflict by the Helsinki process failed. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian people have died. Many more will die unless peaceful alternatives are created to replace the militarisation of Europe. More European armies are the problem, not the solution.

Those who argue that Ireland should defend its people by conventional military means, should consider the likely financial costs and lives lost, and the peaceful alternatives. Neutral Austria is considering purchasing 58 new Leopard tanks at €29,000,000 each.

In this nuclear armed 21st cen­tury, the time to stop wars is now, before they start, if humanity is to have a future.

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Edward Horgan, Commandant (retired), is a former UN peacekeeper. He completed a PhD thesis on reform of the United Nations in 2008

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THE KERRYMAN
19/02/2025

EU lead­ers are in ‘full war pre­par­a­tion mode’, let’s hope it’s not unstop­pable

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SIR,

For­eign Affairs and Defence Min­is­ter, Tánaiste Simon Har­ris, has been briefed that many of Ire­land’s EU part­ners are in ‘full war pre­par­a­tion mode’. War hys­teria seems to have taken hold of far too many inter­na­tional polit­ical lead­ers. Such hys­teria is in danger of becom­ing an unstop­pable force, fuelled by unjus­ti­fied Russo-pho­bia or China-pho­bia and by the human greed scramble for access to valu­able resources.

The pho­to­graphs and videos of the destruc­tion in Gaza and Ukraine should be a warn­ing of the dev­ast­a­tion that may occur in many other coun­tries if com­mon sense and san­ity fail to pre­vail, lead­ing to wars at inter­na­tional or global level. The people of coun­tries dev­ast­ated in World War Two, espe­cially Ger­many, Japan, Rus­sia and China, need to be reminded of the destruc­tion of cit­ies like Ham­burg, Dresden, Stal­in­grad, Tokyo, Naga­saki and Hiroshima.

The pop­u­la­tion of these cit­ies, and world pop­u­la­tion, has increased sub­stan­tially since World War Two. The destruct­ive power of weapons and muni­tions has also increased, as demon­strated by the use of 2,000-pound bombs dropped on the people of Gaza and the 11-ton GBU-43/B MOAB bomb ‘suc­cess­fully tested’ on Afghan people in 2017.

If a major con­ven­tional war occurs, many major cit­ies and their people could be reduced to rubble like Gaza has been. Up to 40 mil­lion civil­ians died due to World War Two. If such a major war goes nuc­lear, all of planet Earth may be reduced to rubble.

Instead of fol­low­ing the example of Sweden and Fin­land, Ire­land must strengthen our pos­it­ive neut­ral­ity and use it to pro­mote peace and justice for all of human­ity and Irish sol­diers must only par­ti­cip­ate in for­eign mis­sions that are under a UN man­date.

In this 21st cen­tury, the time to stop wars is before they start.

Sin­cerely,

Edward Hor­gan, Cas­tle­t­roy,Lim­er­ick.

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THE KERRYMAN
13/03/2025

European re-arm­a­ment has led to two world wars – we won’t sur­vive a third

SIR,

European Union lead­ers includ­ing Irish politi­cians are using Orwellian lan­guage to jus­tify mil­it­ar­ism and pre­par­a­tions for war, while fail­ing to pro­mote peace and recon­cili­ation in Europe and fail­ing in their duties to take all neces­sary means to end the gen­o­cide that is ongo­ing against the Palestinian people.

Irish politi­cians, includ­ing Micheál Mar­tin and Simon Har­ris have described the Rus­sian attack on Ukraine as unpro­voked, unlaw­ful and unjus­ti­fi­able. Yes, it was unlaw­ful and unjus­ti­fied, but it was pro­voked by the unjus­ti­fied expan­sion of NATO up to Rus­sia’s bor­ders, and by the over­throw of the pro-Rus­sian Pres­id­ent of Ukraine in 2014.

On Feb­ru­ary 24, Dan­ish Prime Min­is­ter Mette Fre­deriksen was repor­ted as say­ing that peace in Ukraine may be more dan­ger­ous than the ongo­ing war in Ukraine.

Speak­ing to the press on March 9, EU Com­mis­sion Pres­id­ent von der Leyen stated: “…you’re famil­iar with the 800 bil­lion (euros) pack­age for defence, and that is his­toric. This can be the found­a­tion of a European defence union. We will drive the ‘Rearm Europe’ plan for­ward with full force.”

The rearm­ing of Europe has twice led to world wars in the past. Europe and human­ity will not sur­vive World War Three.

The Irish people can­not be defen­ded by con­ven­tional mil­it­ary means. Pos­it­ive neut­ral­ity pro­mot­ing inter­na­tional peace and justice is the only sane option for defend­ing the Irish people. Eco­nom­ist Cor­mac Lucey (Sunday Times, March 9) estim­ates that the real level of Ire­land’s national debt is €863.6 bil­lion, includ­ing pen­sion liab­il­it­ies.

Spend­ing bil­lions of euros on con­ven­tional weapons will help to bank­rupt Ire­land and its people and do noth­ing to defend them. Ire­land and the EU need to act­ively pro­mote peace in Europe and take all neces­sary means to end the gen­o­cide and chaos in the wider Middle East and else­where.

Sin­cerely,

Edward Hor­gan, Cas­tle­t­roy,

Lim­er­ick.

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The Avondhu

13/03/2025

The Avondhu is a local newspaper circulating in Co Cork, and west Waterford, south Tipperary and south Co Limerick.

Gambling with World War Three

The debacle that unfol­ded in the White House on 28th Feb­ru­ary, had at least one import­ant state­ment, when US Pres­id­ent Trump told Ukrain­ian Pres­id­ent Zelensky: “You’re gambling with the lives of mil­lions, you are gambling with World War Three.”

While the Trump admin­is­tra­tion may be genu­ine in their efforts to pro­mote peace in Ukraine, they are doing the oppos­ite in the Middle East and else­where and risk­ing a nuc­lear war with China. Their act­ive sup­port for the Israeli gen­o­cide against the Palestinian people is doing irre­par­able dam­age to the proper rule of inter­na­tional law. The risk of nuc­lear war has never been greater. Yet, the Irish Gov­ern­ment is dam­aging Ire­land’s pos­it­ive neut­ral­ity by abandon­ing the triple lock, sup­port­ing one side in the Ukraine con­flict and entan­gle­ment with NATO and European Union mil­it­ar­isa­tion.

All this raises the ques­tion as to what pre­cau­tions our gov­ern­ment has taken to pro­tect the Irish people in the event of a ser­i­ous nuc­lear acci­dent in the UK or the use of nuc­lear weapons in Europe or world­wide? Most coun­tries in east­ern Europe have under­ground pro­tec­tion for their cit­izens. If there is a ser­i­ous nuc­lear acci­dent on the west coast of the UK, where can the people of Dub­lin find shel­ter from radio­act­ive fal­lout? If Shan­non Air­port is attacked due to its use by the US mil­it­ary, what pre­cau­tions are in place to pro­tect those liv­ing and work­ing in Shan­non?

The iod­ine pills sent to each house­hold by Min­is­ter Joe Jacob in June 2002 are long out of date. There are no pub­lic under­ground shel­ters. The squad­ron of fighter jets pro­posed by Tánaiste Simon Har­ris will not pro­tect us. Ire­land needs to restore its neut­ral­ity, pro­mote inter­na­tional peace and stop join­ing the war­mon­gers.

Edward Hor­gan, Cas­tle­t­roy,

Lim­er­ick.

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