Operation Sophia: When Ireland’s Open Border Agenda Undermined Neutrality

Rhetoric is meeting reality this week as the Irish government began the legislative process of dispensing with the ‘Triple Lock” mechanism putting requirements on UN, Cabinet, and Oireachtas approval for any deployments of more than 12 Defence Forces personnel.

Thanks to the initiative, Ireland may now deploy (drumroll, please) 50 soldiers for sandbag duty in Donbass. This is just enough military might to grant Irish ministers bragging rights at the European Council.

With an eye on future peacekeeping missions to Ukraine and an understanding that Ireland cannot juggle commitments to an increasingly dysfunctional UN in tandem with EU remilitarisation, the government is also hoping to avoid a doomed referendum on the matter by sneaking the issue past the Oireachtas.

The quagmire that is Irish defence policy is coming to a head thanks to the new White House occupants and a moribund war effort in Ukraine with decades’ worth of unsupported rhetoric colliding with blunt geopolitical realities.

While Irish troops have valiantly filled in UN-mandated ventures from Lebanon to Congo for decades, it is worth remembering one half-forgotten mission that chipped away at Irish neutrality over the past decade.

Operation Sophia, an EU-backed naval operation beginning in 2015 to ferry migrants on the Meditteranean to Italy, was the quintessential grey area when it came to the Irish neutrality question.

A nominal humanitarian mission spearheaded by the LÉ Samuel Beckett to assist in search-and-rescue missions, many at the time believed that the naval mission crossed the line into a full-blown military operation due to the fact it was directed by the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). 

Accused of mission creep due to the fact Operation Sophia eventually resulted in Defence Forces personalle training Libyan coast guards often under the control of local warlords it is estimated that 50,00 migrants were taken to Europe on account of the work done by Irish and other European seamen.

Heavily criticised by a study from the British Parliament for having incentivised more illegal migration and having played into the hands of smugglers. An additional role of Operation Sophia included enforcing a naval blockade around Libya, arguably crossing into non-humanitarian grounds.

While the subsequent role of Irish soldiers in Libya partaking in mercenary work has been lambasted in the press, very little consideration was given to Operation Sophia at the time, not just to its implications on Irish neutrality but the dangerous mingling between humanitarian work and military deployment.

This was the same decade that saw Irish charities dangerously mixed up with US foreign policy in Ethiopia and Syria as well as the secondment of the Army Ranger Wing to French military operations in Mali ostensibly to fight terrorism, one sees a pattern by which human rights rhetoric is utilised to hack away at residual Irish sovereignty on the world stage.

Mass migration, whether that be when it is weaponised against a nation, used as a chip to placate our EU partners such as the recent influx of Ukrainian refugees into Ireland, or when it comes to politically sensitive asylum seekers, is part and parcel of hybrid warfare.

Eventually shut down in part due to Italian grievances at the amount of migrants washing up on their shores, Operation Sophia was a dark chapter in Irish international affairs and one that opened the door just that further for EU military integration.

In functional terms, Irish neutrality has been dead for decades, not helped by a feckless electorate allergic to defence at a national level, but let’s not forget the so-called humanitarian rhetoric that hastened the process as we see the Defence Forces take up positions in Donbass and Kursk.