Defence Forces Review 2008

Ireland’s first engagement in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: An Assessment
Ireland’s First Engagement in United Nations
Peacekeeping Operations: An Assessment 1
Col Richard E.M. Heaslip (Retd)
In t r o d u c t i o n
In the twenty-first century, peacekeeping has become an accepted concept, usually associated
with conflict management and resolution. In Ireland, for most people, it is a term, which is now
synonymous with United Nations (UN) operations. In fact, peacekeeping may be considered
a by-product of the UN’s use of military resources in conflict resolution, and it arose from
a pragmatic response by the organisation to a perceived threat to international peace and
stability in the first decade of the Cold War.
In the early years of the organisation’s history, it deployed unarmed military officers from its
member states to Palestine and Kashmir as independent international witnesses to observe
and report on the conflicts in these regions. These first ventures into ‘peacekeeping’ were at
one end of the military conflict-resolution options tried by the UN. The other extreme of that
spectrum of military options saw the UN engage in the Korean War. Those early years of the
UN coincided with the emergence and intensification of the Cold War. The Cold War placed
an added emphasis on the strategic interests and reach of the superpowers, who also had the
power of veto in the Security Council, with consequential limitations on the UN’s freedom of
action. Nevertheless, the requirement for the use of an agreed limited, international, military
response option remained. This was especially apparent after the 1956 Suez Canal debacle,
when it was in the superpowers’ interest to stabilise a major international flashpoint. To police
this disputed post-conflict zone, a lightly armed. UN-led, military force drawn from nonaligned
and neutral states was deployed in November 1956. This force was mandated by
the Security Council to conduct operations aimed at ensuring peace throughout its area of
operations. It was designated the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF). This type of
force together with the deployment of UN unarmed observers thereafter became a blueprint
for the UN’s approach to containing other potentially destabilising conflicts.
As the UN evolved its approach to conflict resolution, Ireland remained outside the organisation.
It did not gain membership until December 1955 and therefore did not contribute to the early
UN observer missions. However, Ireland was a member of the UN when the concept of
armed UN peacekeeping started to emerge. Even at that early stage, Ireland displayed some
interest in these matters but it did not get directly involved until 1958 when it provided officer
observers for an observer mission in Lebanon. Nevertheless, Ireland’s involvement in UN
peacekeeping is now more widely remembered for, and incorrectly dated from, the Defence
Forces’ participation with troops in the 1960 Congo operation, referred to in UN terms as
Operation des Nations Unies au Congo (ONUC). It is posited in this paper that popular and
academic opinion have both undervalued and often ignored the Irish contribution to the UN
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