A Failed Border Poll Is Worse Than Futile
British prime minister Andy Burnham caused a flap when he said holding a poll on Irish unity was “off the table”. To some, his words seemed categorical, dismissive and at variance with the Belfast Agreement, which provides for a poll on Irish unity to ascertain the wishes of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland. It obliges the […]
Ireland is hopelessly undefended and radical review is required
One lesson we can learn from the war in Ukraine is that warfare itself is constantly evolving. When Putin’s invasion started we witnessed his armoured columns driving towards Kyiv and ending in smouldering ruins. Presumably Putin envisaged his tanks rolling into Kyiv utterly unscathed, just as Soviet tanks rolled in to Dubcek’s Prague in 1968 […]
What a shameful, disreputable clown Donald Trump is
Camp Humphreys is the largest US overseas military base in the world. More than five square miles, it contains a huge runway and is home to a garrison of more than half of the 28,000 US army personnel located in South Korea. Its construction was intended to place most US soldiers in South Korea a safer […]
Political violence was the decisive factor in the creation of the Irish Free State
History is necessarily retrospective. Politics is prospective. Good history is concerned with truth. Bad history tries to use a particular version of events for contemporary political purposes. Of course, history is inevitably written and understood from a contemporary perspective. But good historians know that and attempt to carry out their craft in that awareness. One […]
Will Trump call to the Áras for an icy courtesy visit with Catherine Connolly?
It is almost impossible to follow, let alone describe, American foreign policy. The armed conflict with Iran which Donald Trump, for legal reasons, refuses to describe as a war, even though his self-styled secretary for war is nominally in charge, has become ridiculous. With numerous claims of victory, equally numerous claims that the Iranians are desperate to negotiate, […]
Trump’s most loyal supporters – white working-class men – are becoming disillusioned
Reports from Washington suggest the Republican Party has at last become concerned about Donald Trump’s deepening unpopularity and the party’s prospects in November’s midterm elections. It has taken a long time for them to wake up and smell the coffee. Opinion polls suggest near-record levels of unpopularity for Trump’s presidency and growing dissatisfaction among voters with the administration’s […]