Tánaiste Simon Harris has fast-tracked a draft law ready for cabinet, to repeal Ireland’s triple-lock deployment of the Defence Forces. The triple-lock mechanism currently requires any overseas deployments of more than 12 Defence Forces members and requires the approval of the Government, Dáil Éireann, and the UN Security Council.
Pitched as a move to shore up Irish sovereignty in an increasingly unstable world, Irish leaders have used the triple-lock as a whipping boy for Ireland’s nascent attempt to re-militarise. However, undoing the Defence Forces deployment restrictions may see more Irish boots on ground in Western interventionist missions such as in the Western Balkans, Lebanon, and near future, Ukraine.
With the Starmer government drawing headlines in Britain for declaring the readiness of the British government to deploy its military in Ukraine, it appears Irish officials now look to London for their international policy in the absence of their Democratic partners governing the United States.
The proposed change by removing the UN Security Council’s veto power over Ireland’s international peacekeeping missions could push Ireland into interventionist missions by removing the approval of the UN Security Council as a safety-valve for Irish overseas deployment.
Currently, the triple lock ensures that Ireland only engages in peacekeeping missions with broad international legitimacy, requiring a UN mandate, but with its removal, Ireland could deploy troops based solely on the Government and Dáil’s decision.
This might lead to political pressure from Irish allies such as the European Union to participate in military operations that go beyond traditional peacekeeping. While Ireland is not a member of NATO, it cooperates with the organisation through the Partnership for Peace programme, and has been known to cooperate with NATO and EU forces on peacekeeping missions in the Western Balkans.
In Kosovo, Ireland currently participates in peacekeeping through the UN, but the removal of the triple-lock might allow involvement in EU or NATO military operations that could take a more proactive role in regional security.
The Irish Defence Forces have already assisted in training Ukrainian forces through the EU Military Assistance Mission, and with calls for peacekeeping in a post-war ceasefire, Ireland could be swept up in a dangerous security game it is not prepared to play.
United Nations peacekeeping operations operate with the consent of conflicting parties, but contemporary EU and NATO operations tend to involve “peace enforcement” which can include direct military intervention outside of the realm of defending local civilians. Once Ireland removes the UN triple-lock, it could join military operations that may be controversial and be disadvantageous to its diplomatic relations with countries such as Russia, China, and a new United States government which has entirely eschewed the interventionist policies of its past.
Though it is fundamentally a good thing that Ireland is beginning to distance itself from its crack-pot vision of a multilateral world, there is serious concern that Irish officials cannot be trusted with their own sovereignty, and would buckle to European or British pressure on defence and security policy under terms which would not be to the state’s benefit.
The government insists that Ireland’s military neutrality won’t change, but this move could be a stepping-stone towards deeper European Union military integration, as NATO appears to be on the back-foot.
How the Irish government addresses Article 29 of the constitution, which forbids the state taking part in European Union “common defence pursuant to Article 42 of the Treaty on European Union” will be an interesting matter for the future.
French President Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders have toyed with the idea of a new European security architecture independent from the United States. Should this idea come to fruition, Ireland would likely participate, as our spineless political class would undoubtedly submit to continental political pressure.
The grand irony of the reversal of the triple-lock mechanism, is that the United Nations for all its wretched irrelevancy, could be better trusted than Simon Harris or Micheál Martin to enforce the principle of restraint in military intervention missions.
With the triple-lock removed, we risk allowing Irish politicians to use our Defence Forces as mere checker-pieces on the grand chessboard, all for the interests of an increasingly delirious European political class whose ranks they seek to join.
Though at the surface level the reversal of the triple-lock appears to be a positive development for Irish sovereignty, it could become the swan song of Irish military neutrality as Irish leaders bend the knee to Berlin, Paris and Brussels.
Max Keating is a student of history and politics at University College Dublin. He is currently studying on exchange at Sciences Po Strasbourg.