After visiting the Republic of Ireland every few years for over two decades, my family and I moved to Maynooth, County Kildare, from the United States three years ago. While the two countries share much in common, some striking differences stand out.

One contrast is the absence of militarism here, even though the Irish are patriotic. Ireland has a population of just over five million, and its defense forces (óglaigh na héireann) have little more than 7,500 personnel who, in addition to their commitment to defend this island nation, usually conduct peacekeeping missions under the auspices of the United Nations in the Middle East and Africa. On the rare occasion I see Irish soldiers on the news, they are returning from such a mission, wearing their blue berets and being welcomed home at the airport by their loved ones. At present, Ireland spends only 0.21 percent of its gross domestic product on defense, although the government plans to increase its defense spending by 50 percent by 2028.

The United States, on the other hand, with a population of just over 342 million, is a superpower with more than two million military personnel (1.31 million on active duty and 765,495 National Guard/reserve troops). It spends nearly 3 percent of its G.D.P. on defense. Whenever I return to the United States, the nationalism and militarism, along with the “support the troops” mantra, is palpable. All that is absent in Ireland. 

A related difference is Ireland’s policy of military neutrality, which it has been committed to for more than a century. In fact, the roots of Ireland’s neutrality go back to the late 18th century and the father of Irish Republicanism, Wolfe Tone.

Connected with this stance is the “triple lock mechanism.” These are the three steps that must be taken before more than 12 members of the Irish Defence Forces can be sent abroad on peacekeeping missions. The first is a decision by the Irish government, the second is an approving vote by the Dáil (Ireland’s house of representatives), and the third is authorization from the U.N. Security Council.

But with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the threat posed to undersea cables in Irish coastal waters by Russian “shadow ships,” and the rising menaces to cybersecurity by foreign states and criminal organizations, Ireland’s neutrality, as well as its triple lock mechanism, is now being reconsidered.

Because of the threat from Russia and because of the Trump administration’s wavering support for NATO, other nations on this side of the Atlantic are expecting Ireland to do its part to provide for its own defense and to contribute to European security. Indeed, Finland in 2023 and Sweden in 2024 ended decades-long neutral status by joining NATO. In recent weeks, the foreign minister of Austria has also suggested abandoning neutrality, presumably to join NATO.

Still, most Irish citizens want their country to maintain its neutrality and military nonalignment. According to one poll, reported in The Irish Examiner earlier this year, 75 percent of people polled support the current policy, and in a more recent poll in The Irish Times, 63 percent continue to back neutrality.

Anti-war, demilitarization, and other peace and justice groups, such as the Dublin-based Afri, have been vocal in their opposition to anything that may undermine or abandon neutrality, including Ireland’s increasing participation in NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) scheme, which does not directly involve the military but is still a form of cooperation with a military alliance.

Is Ireland stretching neutrality to the limit?

To be sure, two decades ago, when Ireland allowed U.S. military aircraft to use Shannon Airport during the war in Iraq, I found myself wondering whether the Emerald Isle, as one former senior Irish diplomat put it, “had stretched the concept of neutrality to the limit.” Even if Ireland does not belong to any military alliance, permitting the United States to use an Irish airport, I speculated then, has the appearance of taking sides.

There is also the problem of free-riding. For instance, Britain’s Royal Air Force occasionally scrambles fighter jets to intercept unidentified aircraft in Irish airspace because Ireland, which has no fighter jets, is incapable of doing so itself.

In Afri’s report “A Force for Good? Reflections on Neutrality and the Future of Irish Defence,” several contributors, including the peace activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire, advocate the peaceful resolution of international disputes and nonviolent approaches to peacekeeping. As Ms. Maguire puts it, “Violence is always wrong…. Violence is never right.” Such a viewpoint, though, is not shared with most other supporters of neutrality. While a majority of the Irish wish for their nation to stay neutral, they are not necessarily pacifists.

Of course, neutrality is understood and practiced in different ways by different nations. Switzerland adheres to an armed neutrality, with compulsory civil and military service and a force of 150,000 military personnel solely for the purpose of self-defense. For Switzerland, neutrality does not mean pacifism in the face of external aggression. In contrast, Costa Rica has a demilitarized neutrality and a police-based model for domestic security.

It seems to me that Ireland’s approach to neutrality, which has actually not been static but has evolved across the decades, stands somewhere between that of Switzerland and Costa Rica. One might say that Ireland’s principled but flexible approach to neutrality is its own charism, or talent.

In “A Force for Good?” the political scientist Karen Devine observes that “Ireland’s colonial and postcolonial experiences, with the derived values of the promotion of self-determination, anti-imperialism, and anti-militarism,” have left their mark on its version of neutrality. She suggests that “Ireland’s neutrality-based foreign policy approach is such a valuable resource in the realm of international relations and the promotion of peace.” Unlike Mr. Maguire, Ms. Devine does not seem to assume that peacekeeping entails only nonviolence. She highlights how the vision of Frank Aiken, who was Ireland’s minister of foreign affairs at the U.N. during the 1950s and ’60s, includes a “peacekeeping capacity” that “restrict[s] their armaments to police level.”

While different from Switzerland’s armed neutrality, Ireland’s commitment to peacekeeping in places like Lebanon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and its limited force akin to policing, is a distinctive approach to practicing neutrality. It differs from Costa Rica’s neutrality, in which the police-based model of security is internally focused rather than outwardly to keep the peace internationally.

Curiously, neutrality is rarely addressed in Catholic social teaching, aside from Pope Pius XII’s 1941 Christmas address recognizing that “smaller States cannot be denied their right, in keeping with the common good…to the adoption of a position of neutrality in the conflicts between nations.” Pope John XXIII, too, affirmed neutrality, citing his predecessor, in “Pacem in Terris” in 1963.

One of the things that attracted my family and me to Ireland is its distinctive approach to neutrality. Even though today’s world makes this commitment more complicated and difficult, I hope Ireland can keep on peacekeeping on.

Tobias Winright is a professor of moral theology at St. Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth, Ireland, and an associate member of Las Casas Institute for Social Justice, Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University. Among his books are Serve and Protect: Selected Essays on Just Policing (2020) and the T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Ethics (2021).