IRELAND is a country which esteems itself well.
It has made a transition through several different ways of defining its character and purpose but through these it has retained a sense of its coherence as a nation, albeit a divided one, pleased with its moral stature in the world and its creativity.
One significant expression of that sense of almost spiritual self-worth is the policy of military neutrality.
Northern Ireland, as part of the United Kingdom is in NATO and therefore is committed to not just participating in any future war against any other member of the bloc but has a long history of manufacturing weapons.
Ground-to-air missiles were made in Belfast and currently the shoulder held anti-tank missile favoured by Ukrainian troops is made there.
The British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer announced last year that production of those missiles would be increased in preparation for a possible expanded war with Russia.
Our sense that we are a good people has been maintained in our wish to be a peaceful people, if not always in relation to each other then in relation to the rest of the world. So we provide the UN with peace keeping forces but do not go to war.
We do not have nuclear power let alone nuclear weapons and even Northern Ireland as part NATO has no big military bases to compare with Scotland’s ports for nuclear submarines.
But as Europe arms for a war it hopes will not come, Ireland’s faux pacifism may come to be seen as an absurd indulgence.
In our neutrality we help fund the defence of Ukraine but not by providing weapons or money for weapons.
The condition on Irish support for Ukraine is that it is ‘non-lethal’.
It is an absurd distinction. In providing even medical support for an army we are reinforcing its capacity to fight and we are endorsing its willingness to confront and kill enemy soldiers.
No help for an army at war is ‘non-lethal’.
We want Ukraine to succeed against Russia but we will limit the practical aid we offer to exclude actual bullets and rockets.
We don’t mind helping to heal the wounds of injured soldiers so that they can get back to the front line, but we will preserve a sense that this is more a virtuous contribution than giving them guns. We leave that to others.
We defend Ukraine in a way that also defends an image of ourselves as above all that sort of thing.
Last month, when President Zelenskyy visited Ireland and thanked us for our support, five military style drones appeared off the Irish coast close to the flight path of his plane coming in to land.
The drones were in a no fly zone and almost in position to attack his plane.
No one can say whose drones they were but their appearance was consistent with a pattern of Russian encroachment into the airspace of countries around Ukraine which have supported that country’s defence.
Should the drones have been shot down? The Taoiseach Micheál Martin has since defended the decision not to intercept them and insisted that they posed no threat to civilians.
One explanation for why they were spared was that shooting at them would have jeopardised people on the ground and other incoming flights. But the drones should have been seen as a possible threat to Zelenskyy or at least as a test of Irish willingness and capacity to protect him.
Russia might think that if it chooses to kill Zelenskyy, Ireland would be a good place to do it. Not being in NATO, a strike on Irish territory would not necessarily trigger the automatic response required of that whole bloc should one of the member countries be attacked.
After his visit, in which he addressed the Oireachtas, the national parliament, Zelenskyy made no criticism of the Irish failure to engage the suspect drones. Instead he praised Ireland and thanked us for the help we have given his country and the refugees who have fled the invasion.
That help has been substantial.
We took in refugees without much of the bureaucratic quibbling that disgraced Britain in the early days of the Russian invasion and we contributed nearly £400m in support.
Zelenskyy said it was a great honour for him to address the parliamentarians of ‘a country that understands the price of freedom better than many in Europe, better than many in the world’.
This was unwarranted flattery. Ireland was an example to many other colonised countries when it fought for independence over a hundred years ago, but it suffered nothing like the scale of carnage and struggle that nearly every country in Europe, including Britain, had to endure to free itself from Nazism during the Second World War.
I find it embarrassing that our inflated sense of ourselves as a noble, risen people should impress the leader of a country facing a real threat.
It would be even more embarrassing if I thought that leader was consciously pandering to our self-esteem, much as he has been doing with Donald Trump.
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