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United Nations

Irish diplomacy at the United Nations (UN) constitutes a compelling chapter in the history of Irish foreign policy. Ireland entered the organization as part of a sixteen-nation package deal in 1955 after being denied membership for nearly a decade by the Soviet Union's veto in the Security Council. Led by an array of distinguished diplomats, including Frank Aiken, Ireland's minister for external affairs from 1957 to 1969, Frederick H. Boland, permanent representative to the UN from 1956 to 1963, Liam Cosgrave, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Tadhg O'Sullivan, Máire Mhac an tSaoi, and Sean Ronan, the Irish delegation assumed a prominent role in the General Assembly throughout the late 1950s and 1960s. It mitigated Cold War tensions, promoted decolonization throughout Africa and Asia, mediated disputes in South Tyrol and Kashmir, and participated in numerous peacekeeping operations.

PROMOTING NATIONAL INTERESTS

Two themes have consistently underpinned Irish policy at the United Nations: national interests and the international order. With regard to the former, Irish governments have usually assigned priority to one of the many interests they have pursued at the UN. For instance, in 1956 John Costello's interparty government determined that Western victory in the Cold War was the primary interest to be furthered at the United Nations, and so the Irish delegation consistently supported the United States and its allies in the General Assembly. The cardinal aim of Eamon de Valera, who was taoiseach during the Twelfth General Assembly in 1957 and the Thirteenth Assembly in 1958, was the reduction of international tension generated by the Cold War, support for movements for self-determination across the Southern Hemisphere, and the interaction of these two world-historical forces. For de Valera's successor, Seán Lemass, as well as for Irish leaders over the past several decades, the paramount interest pursued at the UN has been the promotion of a stable international system within the framework of Ireland's equally pressing national objective, namely, economic development. At the same time, all Irish governments, regardless of their particular priorities, have uniformly acted upon a genuine community of Irish national interests at the United Nations. Irish diplomats have advocated the primacy of the rule of law in international affairs, ardently defended small nations invaded by their larger neighbors, championed human rights across the globe, particularly in Tibet and South Africa, and supported the political aspirations of national minorities.

PROMOTING INTERNATIONAL ORDER

The accumulated effect of these diplomatic endeavors signals the second theme of Ireland's policy at the United Nations: It has consistently upheld the integrity of the international order. The Irish delegation's efforts in this regard began in earnest at the Twelfth General Assembly, when it established an overtly independent identity with its infamous "China vote." In a sharp departure from the majority of other Western European nations, and its own position in the previous year, Ireland voted in favor of a discussion of which government should represent China in the UN, the communists in Beijing or the nationalists on Taiwan. This vote is often misunderstood: it was a procedural one in favor of a debate on that question only, not a ballot in favor of Beijing representing China (Ireland actually voted against just such a motion in 1961). Still, the vote certainly roused the ire of the United States, and in so doing earned Ireland the respect of many other members of the General Assembly, especially within the growing Afro-Asian bloc, but also among Western European delegations who privately concurred with its position.

With the Irish delegation's independent reputation now established, it assumed a prominent role among the middle powers, or mediators, in the General Assembly (Sweden, Denmark, Malaysia, Yugoslavia, and others), which thus enabled it to propose initiatives designed to reduce international friction. In 1957 Frank Aiken outlined a complex troop-withdrawal plan for Central Europe, whereby NATO and Warsaw Pact forces would simultaneously retreat equal distances from various flash points along the Iron Curtain. Aiken asserted that his blueprint sought "to diminish political tension in Europe and to avert the danger of war, which is all the greater as long as soldiers of opposing armies stand face-to-face." It was not taken up by either side in the Cold War, but the following year Aiken did develop his nascent conception of neutralized spaces between warring parties into a formal "areas of law" proposal and applied it to the Middle East and other hotspots across the globe.

Ireland's most striking effort to ameliorate international tension was its nuclear nonproliferation initiative. Starting at the Thirteenth General Assembly in 1958, Frank Aiken, with the tireless assistance of the Irish diplomatic service, pushed nuclear nonproliferation to the top of the UN's agenda. In 1961 the General Assembly adopted an Irish-sponsored resolution whose operative clause laid the foundation for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968. Aiken told the General Assembly that the fundamental purpose of a nuclear nonproliferation convention was "to prevent the danger of nuclear war becoming greater during the period of time it must take to evolve and strengthen a generally accepted system of world security based on international law and law enforcement." A treaty, in other words, would buy time "for the gradual evolution of a stable world order."

IRELAND AS A MEMBER OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

During the 1970s the General Assembly underwent a gradual radicalization due to the emergence of a confident Afro-Asian bloc. This process, combined with an American-led retreat to the Security Council, meant Ireland's high profile in the National Assembly dimmed. At the same time Ireland had to reconcile its own policy at the United Nations with those of the other members of European Economic Community (EEC), a process that accelerated after Ireland joined the EEC in 1973 and gathered momentum in the 1980s and 1990s as the EEC evolved first into the European Community and then into the European Union, while eventually embracing a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Still, the Irish delegation quietly continued with its constructive work at the United Nations, especially in the field of peacekeeping. This noteworthy Irish tradition began with missions in 1958 (the Observer Group in Lebanon, or UNOGIL) and in 1959 (the Truce Supervision Organization along the Israeli-Egyptian border, or UNTSO) and was consolidated by Ireland's substantial contribution to the UN's peacekeeping operation in the Congo, Force de l'Organisation des Nations Unis en Congo (ONUC), which lasted from 1960 to 1964. Just as ONUC was ending in June 1964, Irish troops shipped out to the UN Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), where they still remain. Irish soldiers have served in Kashmir, Lebanon, the Golan Heights, Afghanistan, Iraq, Namibia, Central America, Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere. Ireland has participated in more than twenty-five UN missions, plus several European Union operations. Through these efforts Ireland has backed up its rhetoric at the UN. Indeed, along with nuclear nonproliferation, peacekeeping has been one of Ireland's most significant contributions to the international order.

Ireland's peers in the General Assembly have recognized its important contribution by electing it to important UN bodies: the Committee on South West Africa, the Congo Advisory Committee, the Security Council on three occasions (1962, 1981–1982, and 2001–2002). Likewise, Irish representatives have assumed prominent leadership roles: Frederick Boland was named chairman of the Fourth, or Trusteeship, Committee in 1958 and president of the General Assembly in 1960; Eamon Kennedy was appointed as rapporteur of the Committee on South West Africa in 1959; Conor Cruise O'Brien was selected as Dag Hammarskjold's personal representative in Katanga in 1961; General Sean McKeown commanded the UN peacekeeping force in the Congo (ONUC); and Sean MacBride served as UN commissioner for Namibia. Continuing this tradition, in 1997 Kofi Annan, the secretary-general of the UN, appointed Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, as the United Nations high commissioner for human rights.

SEE ALSO European Union; Lemass, Seán; Neutrality; Politics: Independent Ireland since 1922

Bibliography

Kennedy, Michael. Ireland and the League of Nations. 1996.

Keogh, Dermot. Twentieth-Century Ireland. 1994.

O'Brien, Conor Cruise. To Katanga and Back: A UN Case Study. 1962.

O'Brien, Conor Cruise. Memoir: My Life and Themes. 1998.

Skelly, Joseph Morrison. Irish Diplomacy at the United Nations, 1945–1965: National Interests and the International Order. 1997.

Joseph M. Skelly