Defence Forces Review 2008

Ireland’s first engagement in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: An Assessment
This ended the distinguished career of Colonel Justin McCarthy. He was the first Defence
Forces officer to lead an overseas deployment of Defence Forces personnel to a UN mission
and the first to serve in three different UN peacekeeping operations. Tragically, he was also
the first Defence Forces officer to give his life in the performance of UN peacekeeping. To
date, he also remains the most senior of the 85 Defence Forces fatalities on UN operations.
McCarthy’s death preceded by ten days the tragedy of the Niemba Ambush, when nine Irish
soldiers lost their lives, and was understandably overlooked in the scale of that catastrophe.
However, these deaths so early in the ONUC mission were a harsh coming-of-age for the nation,
as Ireland became aware of the cost that was to be borne in the cause of peace. Participation in
UNOGIL established Ireland’s place ‘amongst the nations of the world’, UNTSO continued
a tenuous engagement in peacekeeping, for Ireland. The experience contributed to the state’s
learning process about peacekeeping, and participation in ONUC followed. At that critical
juncture in Cold War world politics. Ireland established itself as a reliable member of the UN
peacekeeping ‘club’ of neutral and non-aligned states. Involvement with the UN and other
organisations in the cause of peace has continued since then and has now become an accepted
dimension of Defence Forces service and of Irish foreign policy.
Co n c l u s i o n
Since joining the UN, Ireland has participated in over 30 peacekeeping missions dispersed
over the five continents. Being without colonial baggage and remaining uncompromised by
superpower affiliations or influence, Ireland also established an enviable reputation as an
impartial ‘honest broker’ over this period. It has, through its involvement in peacekeeping,
lived up to the expectations of those for whom participation in and commitment to the UN
organisation was the grand strategy to establish Ireland’s place on the world stage. This
achievement is now a matter of historical record and one to which the Defence Forces
peacekeeping operations have made a significant contribution. The genesis of that Defence
Forces involvement in peacekeeping operations remains UNOGIL, closely followed by
UNTSO, the mission in which the Defence Forces have retained a continuing unbroken
presence since December 1958.
Upon reflecting on the significance of the UNOGIL, UNTSO and ONUC missions, there is a
requirement for proper recognition of the path-finding role of Colonel McCarthy and his 49
Irish UNOGIL colleagues. At a personal level, their 1958 experience of foreign soldiering in the
cause of peace infused 50 Irish participants with a personal confidence in their professionalism.
They also had confidence in their training and a belief in their ability to hold their own on the
international stage. In the first instance, these officers were dependant on, and sustained by,
the national military training that they had received. Deployed to an international organisation
run by a multinational military staff, they found their training compared more than favourably
with other military officers from more combat-experienced armies. Considered from the UN
perspective the quality, strength and flexibility of these resources provided by Ireland was
impressive, as was the speed with which they were deployed to the mission area. This positive
performance from a first-time participant in peacekeeping marked Ireland as being eminently
suitable for the ‘peacekeeping club’ of reliable, neutral and non-aligned nations. Having
proved itself in these early unarmed missions, Ireland and its Defence Forces undoubtedly
became a future contender for early consideration for challenging peacekeeping missions.
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