The campaign by the Irish political and military establishment has, over the last number of days, been bolstered by the Governor of the Irish Central Bank and the employers’ representative body, IBEC.
Our people are being bullied by unfounded scare-mongering about a “Russian threat”—the latest being the alleged Russian drones operating in Dublin Bay, without a shred of actual evidence being produced.
This campaign is designed to frighten and confuse people and to lay the groundwork for the recently announced massive increase in “defence” spending. This proposed military spending has more to do with making the Irish defence forces ever more compatible with NATO’s aggressive military strategies than with protecting Ireland from external threats.
The Irish government has ratcheted up its rhetoric, claiming the state must divert massive sums (€1.7 billion) from socially useful and productive spending and gift it to US, British, EU, and Zionist arms companies, as the EU and Britain prepare to openly declare war on the Russian Federation.
All this is happening while the EU and Britain continue to obstruct attempts to secure peace in the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine.
The recent news that a member of the British Parachute Regiment (the butchers of Bloody Sunday) was killed in action in Ukraine shows how close the adventurous policies of the EU/NATO bloc have brought us to direct, rather than proxy, war.
What is very clear is that if the EU and Britain go to war with Russia, it will become a nuclear conflict. No amount of spending on arms will protect Ireland, or any other country in Europe, from such a catastrophe.
The de facto US base in Shannon, the NATO base in Aldergrove, and the data centres dotted throughout the country, which facilitate NATO military actions, have put Ireland in the crosshairs of any Russian response to NATO/EU aggression.
War is not in the interest of the Irish people, the peoples of the EU and Britain, or the Russian people. It is time for rational and sane thinking. The only winners in any arms build-up are the arms companies, and the politicians, media correspondents, and “independent experts”—such as Deloitte Ireland—who have called for increased “defence” spending. Bear in mind that companies like Deloitte make millions “advising” governments to increase military spending, while simultaneously making millions working for the arms industry!
We need spending on housing, health, and education, not on death and destruction.
We call on the Irish people to organise against this attempt by the Irish ruling class to send the children and grandchildren of the working class and family farmers to their slaughter on foreign battlefields for NATO and global capitalism.
We must not allow the Irish ruling class to join those who are prepared to risk nuclear war and the extinction of all life on the planet to maintain the hegemony of the NATO/EU imperialist bloc.
What is needed is an Irish government committed to building a peace strategy: a strategy for demilitarisation and a strategy to abolish nuclear weapons. The forum for such a strategy is the United Nations. It will not be achieved by the Irish state’s further and deeper integration into EU/NATO militarism and aggression.
War is but politics by other means. If we do not learn the lessons of history, we are doomed to repeat its mistakes.
The trade union movement must lead this struggle. It must act in the interests of workers and their families, defend Irish neutrality, and stop the drive towards militarism and war—a war that will inevitably be fought by workers at the behest of the ruling class.
