Draft circular by the Department of External Affairs
'Ireland's attitude to NATO'

1. The attention of officers abroad is drawn to the terms of D.C. Circular No. 4/53,¹ particularly to paragraph 3 of that Circular in which it is pointed out that notwithstanding the Taoiseach’s general endorsement of the previous Government’s unwillingness to support NATO so long as Partition subsists, his statements emphasised the impossibility of ascertaining at the present time the normal reactions to the Atlantic Pact of the Parliament of a united Ireland.
2. During the course of a half hour radio interview with the Ambassador at Washington on March 29th, 1953, the following questions were asked and answered:-

   Q. How about your relations with Great Britain and Northern Ireland and your connection with the United Kingdom?

   A. This whole question has changed. There is now no problem between Great Britain and Ireland except the outstanding problem of national unity. The ending of partition in Ireland is the main policy of any Irishman worthy of the name. Our people in the North and in the Twenty-Six Counties can live together as quietly and as peacefully as Irishmen of Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connaught can live together in Washington or New York.

   Q. What is the guiding policy of Ireland’s foreign relations?

   A. Ireland’s foreign policy is based on a settled desire and aim to promote, insofar as we can, the peaceful, progressive and harmonious development of mankind. You may ask what influence we have. We have twenty-five million people in the United States of America, we have people in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India – in every country of the world – who want peace, a peace based on Christian principles applied to individuals, families and to the communities in which they live.

   Q. What is Ireland’s reaction to the various international organisations which have sprung up since the war? I refer to the United Nations, NATO and the various European economic bodies. On what basis does Ireland decide whether or not to join these groups?

   A. Ireland was excluded from the United Nations by the veto of Soviet Russia. We made an application and Russia vetoed us. This was regarded as the highest compliment ever paid to us. Mr. Truman, desiring to show the world that Ireland would not be ostracised raised the status of the Head of your Mission in Dublin to the highest diplomatic rank and our President raised the Head of the Mission in Washington to the same rank. This was a gesture to show that Ireland belongs to the international society.

   I am glad you mentioned other bodies. Ireland has been a member of the Council of Europe, of OEEC and Mr. Paul Hoffman, when he was conducting the policy of integration, said that Ireland had made the best contribution to this policy.

   Ireland was a member of the League of Nations; she sought to become a member of the United Nations. She is a member of the other organisations which sought the co-operation of all countries. NATO is a military alliance. One article of the Treaty requires all nations to recognise the existing geographical frontiers. If we became a member we would have to recognise the border in Ireland, and you would have to fight against us if we sought to put an end to it. We want unity and we want peace. We propose to have unity without civil war. Our country is partitioned. If we went into the Organisation, we would bind ourselves to the recognition of the permanence of the border. The unity of Ireland is as inevitable as the unity of your great country. You had to fight a civil war for it. No vital British or American interest is served by partition. Let us be like every other western country which is a member. Let us have applied to our country the democratic principle by which the majority of the people would decide the destinies of the people as a whole; then we would be free to take whatever attitude our people as a whole think proper towards any pact or treaty or other international instrument of any kind.

   Q. What you say is in a sense an expression of a policy of neutrality; is this also a policy of isolationism?

   A. It is neither neutrality nor isolationism. It is a policy of non-participation until we are satisfied that the principles of the North Atlantic Treaty, which we entirely accept, are going to be applied to us as well as to every other member of that group. Why should we be the only member of Western Europe to be excluded, by the policy of our great neighbour, from ruling the whole of our people?

3. Reports in Irish newspapers and periodicals emphasised the Ambassador’s statement that Ireland’s policy is ‘a policy of non-participation until we are satisfied that the principles of the North Atlantic Treaty, which we entirely accept, are going to be applied to us as well as to every other member of that group’.

[matter omitted]

6. For the guidance of officers abroad it is emphasised that the primary objective of Ireland’s foreign policy today is national reunification although Ireland is anxious to play the largest possible part consistent with her situation and resources in helping to bring about conditions of peace and prosperity in the world. Ireland’s Constitution affirms in Article 29(1) her devotion to the ideal of peace and friendly co-operation founded on international justice and morality.

   Ireland's attitude towards neutrality is similar to the attitude towards NATO in the sense that so long as partition exists the policy of the Government in the event of World War III would be one of neutrality unless attacked, with the understanding that the Irish Government would not allow the national territory to be used as a base for attack on Britain or the United States.

   As in the case of NATO the attitude of a thirty-two County Government towards neutrality cannot be anticipated.