Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Irish cooperation with NATO is centred around the country's historic policy of neutrality in armed conflicts, which allows the Irish military to deploy on peacekeeping and humanitarian missions where there is a mandate from the United Nations (UN Security Council resolution or UN General Assembly resolution), subject to cabinet and Dáil ...
O'Dea said that joining the battlegroups would not affect Ireland's military neutrality, and that a UN mandate would be required for all battlegroup operations with Irish participation. Green Party foreign affairs spokesperson John Gormley condemned the decision, saying that the government was "discarding the remnants of Irish neutrality". [57]
Conversely, had Ireland been invaded, the United Kingdom had drawn up secret plans to intervene in Ireland with the collaboration of the Irish Government to push Germany back out, known as Plan W. [62] Ireland was invited to join NATO but did not wish to be in an alliance that included the United Kingdom. [22]
Defence Minister Micheal Martin said a national debate on defence was needed.
Three of NATO's members are nuclear weapons states: France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. NATO has 12 original founding member states. Three more members joined between 1952 and 1955, and a fourth joined in 1982. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has added 16 more members from 1999 to 2024. [1]
Ireland continued its policy of military neutrality during the Cold War, and before soldiers in the Irish military, the Defence Forces, can be sent abroad, Irish law requires approval from the government, the Dáil Éireann, and the United Nations, which has been referred to as a "triple lock" on Irish neutrality since the early 2000s. [242]
But from 2003 on, after the astonishment of other neutral states, the Austrian government supported neutrality again. [17] The eventual participation of Austria in the battle groups, initiated in 2004, [18] is a further example for Austria's reduced definition of neutrality resembling more a military non-alignment than the former active neutrality.
The Irish government has followed a policy of military neutrality through non-alignment since before World War II, and the country is consequently not a member of NATO, [14] although it is a member of the Partnership for Peace and certain aspects of PESCO.