[of the UN, which] caused them to mistrust resolutions which fix blame and cause more conflict than they settle» (Fox 1965: 782).

If Ireland was less determined to demonstrate its independence in relation to the US and to the EEC after 1960, it nonetheless remained committed to issues like disarmament, peacekeeping and decolonisation. For instance, it radicalised its stance against apartheid during the 1960s, even if it was not perceived to be doing so by its critics at home (Dorr 2002: 118). In addition to its commitment to peacekeeping and disarmament, it also played a significant role in 1967 in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Miller 2005: 37-39).

The idea that the late 1950s was the ‘golden age’ of Irish foreign policy is a myth to some extent, not so much in relation to that period –which certainly deserves to be celebrated– as to that which followed and which should be seen as a ‘silver age’ rather than a ‘fall’.

European membership and the UN

To a large extent, Ireland’s stance at the UN has been maintained throughout the decades. Several studies of European votes at the UN have been conducted, and they all confirm the distinct position of Ireland on the issues of disarmament, decolonisation and human rights, and its practical approach, focused on achieving concrete results.

After Ireland’s accession to the EEC in 1973, one could have expected Ireland to modify its position in the UN, where European states strive to ‘speak with a single voice’. But if European Political Cooperation (EPC) did produce a high degree of unanimous votes among the Nine between 1973 and 1975, Lindemann identifies Ireland and France as the two countries that «topped the league» for voting in minorities (1976: 265). Hurwitz, who focused on issues of decolonisation in 1973-74, finds that Ireland demonstrated «a very strong commitment to self-determination» (1975: 441), its score of 0.67 being much closer to the average of non-European states (0.70) than to that of the EEC (0.19). Foot, who studied the 1975-77 period, concludes that «the Irish Republic was in a minority voting group most often», generally on Third World issues (1979: 352-353).

In the 1980s, the issue of apartheid in South Africa also divided the members of the EEC, with Ireland once again «willing to go it alone or to vote in the minority voting block» (Laffan 1988: 71). In the early 1980s –the period of the ‘New Cold War’– Guilhaudis described Ireland and Greece as having broken ranks with the Western bloc at the UN over the principle of nuclear deterrence (1985: 110). More generally during that decade, Holmes, Rees and Whelan conclude that «Ireland has consistently been identified as a progressive state among the Europeans in the UN, particularly with regard to Third World questions, and that identification has survived the joining of the European Community» (1993: 174). And indeed, between 1984 and 1990 for instance, Ireland was always among the top three EC countries as far as its willingness to vote alone or in a small minority is concerned (Gillissen 1995: 150).

If joining the EEC did require Ireland to cooperate with its partners in the field of foreign policy, this did not lead to a unanimous European position being imposed on Ireland by the bigger member states. In 1985, Ireland and Denmark’s voting patterns put them in a group separate from the other European member states, along with Sweden (Kim and Russett 1996: 643-644). Prior to the 1995 enlargement, Ireland was closer to Sweden than to the EU majority, notably on issues linked to security and disarmament (see table 3).

Not only was the Irish Government able to maintain a high degree of freedom in the formulation of its foreign policy at the UN, it was also able to contribute to the formulation of a European consensus on several issues. Thus the Middle East proved too divisive for the Nine to reach agreement until the 1980 Venice declaration, a declaration that was shaped to a significant degree by Dublin (Miller 2005: 91-92). In the same way, Ireland was able to advance its agenda within EPC in relation to Latin America (Kirby 1992: 126-127).

Table 3: Average distance from the EU majority, 1979-94

 (Minimum distance is 0, maximum 100) 

          Source: adapted from Luif (2003: 32-35).

Since the end of the Cold War and the establishment of a Common Foreign and Security Policy for the EU with the Maastricht Treaty, the situation has changed to a certain extent: there are fewer controversial resolutions submitted at the UN General Assembly and the member states of the EU have made increased efforts to coordinate their foreign policies, in particular at the UN (Johansson-Nogués 2004: 7). The result is a higher rate of unanimous EU votes. A study of the 1990-2002 period carried out by Young and Rees concludes that «Ireland’s neutral and progressive voting history has been changing since the 1990s» (2005: 207). Luif’s study of the 1979-2002 period reaches similar conclusions: Ireland’s voting pattern has changed, evolving towards greater harmonization with its European partners.

Yet both studies also stress that Ireland is consistently among the states most willing to vote alone or in a minority. Thus Ireland still had the third highest number of divergent votes (87), after France (138) and the United Kingdom (144), two countries that must be considered as somewhat apart from their European partners because of their status as permanent members of the UN Security Council and as nuclear powers with former colonial empires. It is almost inevitable that they should vote apart on issues relating to decolonisation and nuclear weapons for instance. The fact that Ireland immediately follows them in the league of EU member states willing to vote alone or in a minority testifies to the resilience of Ireland’s foreign policy identity as projected on the UN stage.

Most of the votes on which Ireland diverges concern nuclear and colonial issues in fact. Nuclear disarmament in particular is an issue of concern for Ireland, while on Middle East questions, Ireland is the «EU country with the largest distance from the EU consensus» (Luif 2003: 49). Overall, Ireland has the most progressive record of all EU states for the 1990-2002 period (Young and Rees 2005: 205).

A study of Ireland’s 2003-2005 voting record shows that those trends have been maintained to some extent, even though the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 led to deep divisions between EU members and to significant variations in some national foreign policies. Thus the rate of EU unanimity fell sharply in 2003, but since then it has returned to a level comparable to that of 1999 despite the 2004 enlargement which brought in 10 additional states. If one looks at the isolated and minority votes among the 15 EU members during this period, France and the United Kingdom are still by far the most divergent member states, but Ireland stands among the other member states most willing to vote apart from the majority, though it is clearly reluctant to vote alone, more so than Spain for instance (see table 4).

To sum up, if there are strong Europeanising tendencies within the CFSP group at the UN, enhanced by the post-Cold War context, one cannot draw the conclusion that Irish foreign policy has been substantially modified. In fact, there has been a strategy on the part of the Irish Government in recent years to promote its standing within the UN, notably through the New Agenda Declaration of 1998, which aimed at relaunching the Non Proliferation Treaty, and the official Irish commitment to devote 0.7% of its GDP to Official Development Aid. In the same way, Ireland’s successful bid for a Security Council place in 2001-2002 shows that the Government is keen to retain its national influence within the organization.

Table 4: Isolated and minority votes at the UN among EU 15, 2003-2005

 

 

Source: adapted from United Nations (2003-2005).

This is consistent with the official position that Irish foreign policy is about values and enlightened self-interest, i.e. the promotion of multilateral diplomacy. How can this be explained? One reason is the fact that Ireland is a small country where the UN enjoys considerable popular support because of the Irish record within the organisation. This is the interpretation proposed by Mulhall in his study of the foreign policy specificities of small states:

When small states uncover a worthwhile international role there is a tendency for them to want to stick with it. It becomes a matter of national pride for a small state that it can, against the odds of power politics, make a positive contribution in world affairs. This factor will probably apply no matter how ambiguous the national benefits of this stance may be. Ireland’s habit of outspokenness on disarmament issues and the recollection of its successes in the non-proliferation area have conditioned in Irish foreign policy an enduring conviction that further potential for honest brokerage exists. This contributes an important element to the arguments for resisting any drift towards alignment. (1986: 14-15)

Twenty years after this statement was made, subsequent events seem to confirm it, in relation both to the EU and to the US.

Ireland and the United States

Another limit to the independence of delegations at the UN comes indeed from American lobbying. The disagreement between Ireland and the United States over Chinese representation at the UN has already been mentioned. If the shift in Irish foreign policy after 1960 can be linked to the context of an Irish application to join the EEC, the American dimension is also relevant: Lemass wished to secure American support for Ireland’s application as well as increased American investments in Ireland. He was more of an Atlanticist than his predecessor Eamon de Valera and, aware of the possibilities created by the election of John F. Kennedy to the White House, he was hoping to restore Irish-American relations to a sounder footing (Skelly 1996: 234). As to the Irish UN delegation, Conor Cruise O’Brien’s departure in 1961 –he was seconded to the UN General Secretariat– gave more weight to Frederick Boland’s pro-US stance.

So Ireland’s foreign policy became more receptive to American pressures in the 1960s, a time when Washington’s influence within the UN was still paramount (Cruise O’Brien, 1967: 197-198). However, by the 1980s Washington had become increasingly isolated. In a context of renewed US-USSR rivalry, the Non-Aligned Movement had established itself as a coherent and effective bloc, while the EEC tried to uphold a more moderate line. As a result, the United States was the state which most often found itself alone opposing a resolution (Marín-Bosch 1987: 718).

This loss of influence prompted the US Congress in 1984 to demand an annual report from the State Department on voting practices within the UN, in particular those of countries receiving US aid. The first reports thus recorded all countries’ voting alignment with the US and the USSR, and stated the amount of American aid each received. The methodology of the reports was modified somewhat at the end of the Cold War, since the countries’ voting patterns are no longer compared to that of the Soviet Union, and the amount of US aid is no longer mentioned. But they still provide interesting information on a state’s bilateral relations with the USA.2

As far as Ireland is concerned, the reports show a remarkable consistency in its voting coincidence with the US between 1989 and 2005: it has always been among the 3 EU states most distant from the American voting pattern, with an average alignment of 54.68% (see table 5). If one compares this to the average of the other EU states that have been members since 1989, it is the second highest rate of divergence after Greece (54.52%).

Table 5: Alignment on US positions at the UN among selected EU states, 1989-2005

 

Source: adapted from US State Department (1990-2006).

There have been some variations, but they are mostly due to the policy shifts of other member states. Thus, between 1989 and 1996, Greece and Spain were much more inclined to diverge from US positions, with Ireland generally in third position. After 1996, however, the voting pattern of Greece and Spain changed significantly, moving closer both to the EU average and to the US, while Ireland maintained its previous rate of alignment. The result was that between 1997 and 2004 Ireland was systematically the most distant EU state from the US.

If one compares the difference between the voting records of Greece, Ireland and Spain with the EU average for the entire 1989-2005 period, Greece is first with 7.16, followed by Ireland with 7, and Spain with 4.56. Yet the average deviation from the EU average is much higher in the case of Greece (8.07) than in the case of Ireland (4.77), which confirms the fact that Ireland has been more consistent3 .

Since the EU enlargement of 2004, Ireland has once again been in third position in terms of divergence with American voting patterns. This is due to the arrival of two new member states, Malta and Cyprus, that deviate significantly both from the American position and from the EU average. In fact, before their accession to the EU, their voting coincidence with the EU was lower than that of Turkey, another candidate state (Luif 2003: 46).

Table 5: Alignment on US positions at the UN among selected EU states, 2004-2005

 

Source: adapted from US State Department (2005-2006).

Ireland’s persistently high level of divergence from the United States may seem surprising, given the fact that both countries enjoy privileged historical, social and economic relations and that Dublin exerted great efforts to win Washington’s support for its Northern Irish policy from the 1980s onwards, with considerable success. But its voting record at the UN shows that it is determined to preserve an independent stance within the organization. It has apparently dissociated its bilateral relations with the US from its UN policy to some extent4 .

Conclusion

Despite undeniable fluctuations over time, there is a strong element of continuity in Ireland’s UN policy. It has consistently upheld values which it considers important, in particular in the fields of self-determination, nuclear disarmament and human rights. While it has had to comply with the requirements of European solidarity and with American pressures, it has maintained a distinct profile within the organization, proving that its foreign policy is indeed «a statement of the kind of people [the Irish] are» (Department of Foreign Affairs 1996: 55). It is still keen to preserve its identity as projected on the world scene, an identity which can be summarily defined as progressive and constructive.

The 1996 White Paper promised an annual report on Ireland’s voting record at the UN in order to make Irish foreign policy more accountable and transparent. The idea was to encourage academic study and public debate of Irish foreign policy (Department of Foreign Affairs 1996: 1). This promise has not been kept insofar as the present author is aware, perhaps because of the methodological difficulties involved in compiling such a record. It is a pity because it prevents a better understanding of a policy which is remarkable in many ways and which certainly deserves to be better known.