This article by Eoin Ó Murchú first appeared in Unity, the weekly publication of the Irish Communist Party.
THERE’s a real danger of war confronting – not a war in far-away places about which we know nothing, but a war which will involve our own children.
More and more resources are being devoted to military purposes, and more and more scaremongering is taking place to win our acquiescence in the war plans of the Western militarists.
Even nuclear war is no longer unthinkable, even though such a war would destroy the whole world we live in and end humanity.
The failure of the US-Israeli attack on Iran to eliminate the clerical regime there, increasingly obvious, has highlighted a growing strategic incoherence in US military planning.
It is clear that Trump badly miscalculated when he launched the war against Iran (at Israel’s behest), and serious questions arise as to what he will do.
It is very hard to know because Trump is such a chameleon, but one thing is clear: his driving motive is personal glorification.
The question then arises? Can Trump stand being publicly exposed as a loser, as someone who launched yet another disastrous war despite promising not to.
One thing about nuclear war is that no one will be left afterwards to pass judgement. Will Trump replace the old NATO slogan of Better Dead than Red with Better Dead than Trump shown up as an eejit.
This is the context in which we have to examine the incredible Shared Prosperity, Shared Seas, Shared Ties document agreed by the Taoiseach Micheál Martin and the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
This maps out a plan for increased integration of Irish military resources with the British military. It is back to the empire with a vengeance, with the only bit missing the handing back to Britain of the so-called Treaty Ports – in Berehaven, Haulbowline and Lough Swilly.
This is a clear and disgraceful abandonment of any semblance of an independent or neutral Ireland. It is being sold by the government on the premise of a non-existent threat to Ireland supposedly from Russia.
No one has made any effort to explain what rational objective Russia could have in attacking Ireland; instead we are being sold a message that we are under threat and must join in a military alliance with Britain and Europe to defend ourselves.
It is obvious, despite all the pretence, that this is a final abandonment of neutrality, but that is the policy we should return to, turning our back on military adventures and return to campaigning for world peace and for non-war solutions to differences between states.
That was the motivation when Ireland spearheaded the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (signed incidentally by Iran but not by Israel). This showed what could be achieved by a neutral nation repudiating war and colonialism.
What we all need to understand is that the danger of nuclear war has increased substantially. First, there is the unpredictability of Trump and how we will react to what looks like the failure of his Iran war. Can he live with the humiliation?
Then there is the failure of NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine to defeat Russia, and an increasingly hysterical call through the European Union and Britain to up the ante, to plough even more resources into a project in which nuclear war is a real possibility.
We are told, of course, that the war is a result of Russia’s inability to resist the draw of its imperial past. But why is this ‘threat’ only existent in Europe, to the west of Russia?
The states in Russia’s east have no such concerns, and their expenditure on ‘defence’ (as the war machine is euphemistically called) is miniscule compared to that of Europe where social welfare is being cut to allow for expanded military budgets.
The Russian threat is a figment of the propagandists’ imagination. But one which the people of Ireland, of Britain and of Europe could have to pay for with our lives.