Activist Neutrality

By Jan B. Tucker

Activist Neutrality is an important contribution to world peace

Activist neutrality, unlike traditional hands off neutrality, involves contributing peacekeeping soldiers to United Nations missions designed to keep combatants at arms length and to protect civilians. This policy means that a country must expect casualties. Many Irish soldiers have died or been wounded doing this service for humanity. But while this is a heavy price to pay, the price of ignoring armed conflicts may well lead to even higher prices as local conflicts escalate into regional or world conflagrations.

I emphasize that these missions are under the auspices of the United Nations, which, unlike NATO, has better checks and balances built into the Security Council to insure that there is wide consensus for the mission. Without that consensus, so-called peacekeeping missions conducted by one bloc of nations or another may well lead to more destabilization and sow the seeds for longterm regional conflict.