Role of the Irish People in the Wider World

by Ed Horgan

[This article is part of a series called Answering Ireland’s Call: Thoughts for a new republic (Freagairt ar Ghlaoch na hÉireann: Smaointe ar phoblacht nua). The series will publish articles discussing the reunification of Ireland but within the context of early 21st Century ills such as the climate crisis, capitalism and fascism. If you like what you read, please share the articles far and wide. If you have insights and ideas on the subject and want to make a contribution, the project team would love to hear from you via irelandscall@mailbox.org. This article was also published on ZNetwork.]

In this article I focus mainly on the role and importance of individual people, including Irish people, rather than on states, countries, governments, or international organisations, who are described by historian and political scientist Benedict Anderson as imagined communities. Individual members of humanity, on whose behalf these imagined communities should exist, should be the primary responsibility of all governmental organisations. All of humanity are experiencing a series of interconnected and potentially existential crises at present.

These crises include,

1. The serious risk of nuclear war, due either to the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine, and elsewhere.
2. Existing conventional wars including those in Sudan, DR Congo, Somalia, Ethiopia, Yemen, Myanmar, Armenia / Azerbaijan, and elsewhere. 
3. The environmental crisis which may be reaching a tipping point beyond which remedial actions may not be possible. 
4. All these other crises are combining to cause global refugee and migration crises. 
5. Our destruction of and interference with nature may well result in an increase in medical pandemics such as Covid.

All our communities imagined or otherwise, from the local to the global should be working tirelessly on behalf of all the over eight billion individual people who combined make up humanity. Individuals and small communities can no longer exist in splendid peaceful isolation. We have become interdependent and need to cooperate in all our best interests. Many governmental type organisations are controlled by various elite and powerful individuals and groups, who misuse their power to promote their own personal or elite group short-term interests, at the expense of the wider interests of humanity. The interdependence that is necessary for human survival applies equally to all living creatures including humans, from the largest mammals to the tiniest organisms. The biodiversity of nature on our planet is vital for the survival and prosperity of all living creatures. There is an urgent need for the reform of constitutions at national levels, and the UN Charter, which should be the equivalent of a global constitution. We must cooperate together towards creating a one world community, in which there are no outsiders, or others. 

For historical and other reasons, Ireland and the Irish people provide a good example of the problems that need to be overcome, and the possible solutions. Like all other communities we have made serious mistakes but have also provided examples of cooperation and altruism at international level. A united Ireland is likely in the coming decades. It is the people who live on this island we must unite and not the mythical four green fields. The inequality that existed before independence has continued ever since, perpetrated by the interests of the elite at the expense of the majority, leading to enforced emigration. Many of our Irish diaspora experienced serious poverty. We must include the best interest of our Irish diaspora in our efforts to forge a just society for all who live in Ireland and for all humanity. The most positive aspect of Irish history since independence has been our foreign policy of active neutrality since we joined the United Nations, which includes promoting global justice and international peace. If a united Ireland is to happen, it must be an actively neutral united Ireland promoting global justice and not a united Ireland within NATO, or commitments to European or other military alliances. The present Irish Government has announced plans to abandon the Tripple Lock mechanism whereby a UN mandate is necessary for Irish military serving overseas. Replacing UN peacekeeping missions with European Union neo-colonial missions, or NATO bogus humanitarian missions means the abandonment of active Irish neutrality and Ireland joining resource wars of the West against the Rest.

At global level we must recognise and rectify the flaws and abuses of the nation state. Genuine accountability for such abuses must be established. The concept of the nation state arose from, or was ‘invented’, due to a series disastrous religious wars leading up the Treaty or Peace of Westphalia in 1648. It helped to establish the sovereignty of states but failed to protect the sovereignty and best interest of the peoples of those states. The Westphalia Treaty was intended to promote peace but abuses of the powers of those nation states let to further wars between nation states, including two disastrous world wars. European colonial exploitation was perpetrated under the guise of civilising the indigenous populations, in what frequently amounted to acts of genocide. In the 20^th century national myths were used to justify the unjustifiable, including the concept of American exceptionalism, German nazi super-race, French Francophone African exploitation, and the corruption of Marxist ideology in the Soviet Union under Stalin and in China under Mao Zedong. While such abuses cost multiple millions of lives, humanity did not have the capacity to destroy itself and Planet Earth until the invention and use of nuclear weapons.

In this 21^st century global peace cannot be achieved by making global war. Peace by peaceful means including active neutrality, must replace the full spectrum dominance being perpetrated by the West against the rest, using NATO as their protection racket enforcers. Any type of international polarisation in a world armed with up to 13,000 nuclear weapons must be avoided. In the interconnected vulnerable world that we now live in, war in any part of the world is a danger to us all. Mutually assured destruction (M.A.D) is not a rational global security policy, it is madness and amounts to nuclear terrorism.

Restorative justice and accountability must be essential elements of a new global jurisprudence system. Accountability and reparations should also be imposed for past and more recent abuses of power and for resource wars and wars of aggression. Such accountability for crimes against humanity and crimes against the environment is vital to prevent such abuses into the future, if humanity is to have a peaceful future based on justice and fairness.

We, the people, must take control of all our communities, from the local to the global.