Jack Lane

 

“The ghost of Roger Casement  is beating on the door.”(Yeats).

Casement  was hanged for his writings and actions in the first World War.  The one published book in his lifetime was “The Crime against Europe”  where his views were spelt out before the War was launched by the UK in August 1914.  The reasons for not going to war were clear and reflected the  accepted view of mainstream Liberalism.  The UK contrived this war to destroy the German state because of its  competitive successful state:  and it proved be a disaster for Europe. 

Operating its ‘balance of  power’  strategy, the Government found a pretext to make sure that the war had to happen when a suitable opportunity arose:  and so it did on August 4th, 1914.  

As that war—and the way it ended at Versailles—made it inevitable that it was only a matter of time before another war on the same  British principles would occur.  That second war was to remove  the British and European Empires from the world stage, as well as reducing Britain to being a vassal of one of its offspring, the US.  The latter now treats this vassal  and the other European  vassals with contempt. 

The crime of destruction that began in 1914 has reached its culmination with a Europe—in the form of  the European Union—in its death throes today and seeing its only hope of a  resurrection lying in a contrived war against Russia over the defence of  its compatriots in Ukraine.

Like the great fraud of 1914 about the War being “for the freedom of small nations” this is   proclaimed to be for “the territorial integrity of Ukraine”.

Ukraine was a geographical expression, known as Borderlands,  until the Bolsheviks made it a state in 1921.  Its nationalism was to distinguish itself by its genocidal actions against Jews in WW2. 

Russia  was to give it independence in 1991—along with  the others states which it had liberated from their fascism in WW 2. 

Within the Soviet Union, Ukraine was a multi-national state left to its own devices.  Like some other nationalisms in Eastern Europe.  Nevertheless, its liberation from fascism by Russia is now regarded as oppression.  If anything, this only confirms that their  inherent nature was fascist.

The most contrived argument for this war against Russia over Ukraine centres on the charge that Russia’s Special Military Operation itself formed sufficient grounds justifying such a reaction. Russia acted against the territorial integrity of Ukraine:   an action automatically described as illegal and  contrary to UN principles.  This argument is repeated ad nauseam, again being aired by Micheál Martin when welcoming Zelensky on 2nd December 2025:

“We believe in the principles of the UN Charter, in the sovereign equality of all states, and in the obligation on members of the United Nations not to use or to threaten the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”

But any actual  reading the UN  Charter and  resolutions on such a situation as Ukraine since February 2014  refutes this.

Article 1, outlining the UN’s most basis laws, makes no mention of territory or territorial  integrity.  What it includes is a demand—

“To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;”

In other words what matters is the self determination  of  peoples, not territory, which is a secondary, subordinate issue.  Treatment of people, not territory is the issue.  

Ireland is independent today because it did not accept the “territorial integrity of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland ” that  had been legally proclaimed for  over 100 years and constantly asserted during that period to counter attempts at  Irish Independence.  

Micheál is promoted as a historian. He must surely see the point!

Several other national liberation movements would never  have happened if the people concerned accepted the territorial integrity argument of their oppressors.  Ireland became a model for oppressed nations precisely because we rejected such assertions by another state.

To make the position  crystal clear the UN General Assembly passed a detailed resolution on 27th October 1970, which spelt out  the forms of self-determination by a people that are legitimate.  These are:

“Every State has the duty to promote through joint and separate action universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms in accordance with the Charter.

The establishment of a sovereign and independent State, 

the free association or integration with an independent State 

or the emergence into any other political status freely determined by a people constitute modes of implementing the right of self-determination by that people.

Every State has the duty to refrain from any forcible action which deprives peoples referred to above in the elaboration of the present principle of their right to self-determination and freedom and independence.  In their actions against, and resistance to, such forcible action in pursuit of the exercise of their right to self-determination, such peoples are entitled to seek and to receive support in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter.”

(United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2625  (XXV), emphasis added)

Micheál’s political legacy is defying  and misjudging Irish public opinion—as he attempted to do in a spectacular war in both the Presidential Election and the last referendum on the Family. 

In the process he is demoralising and wrecking his great party and its heritage.  Yet he feels confident enough to defy the considered wisdom and experience of the then 127 states of the UN and repeat the mantra about territorial integrity of Ukraine.  Between them, those states and their statesmen and women had more political experience than Micheál could ever hope to even  dream of.  Rhetoric and word-mongering, as with language itself, never adequately  define the  reality of  experience. 

So, according to the UN, what we know as unionism is legitimate, as is separation, as is any form of devolution—which the Eastern Ukrainian Oblasts had inherited and wanted to keep—provided that any of these forms is what the people concerned want. 

But the coup of February 2014 changed all that.  I assume it is accepted by all that a coup d’état against a legitimate  state  is illegitimate:  there is no need to consult the UN to show that.  However, the resounding silence from Micheál and others condone it in this instance.

Anyone with an elementary knowledge of what the Ukrainian nationalists did—with the support of the US and the EU in February 2014—will realise that the Ukrainian state established by the coup of that month breached these principles.  Kiev launched a war against a national minority, a people, simply because the Ukrainian nationalists, now and historically, could not abide or cope with a multi-national state. 

This is a regular problem for many nationalists.  That was the cause of the current war. The SMO was aimed at stopping that 8 year war against a minority.

Micheál,  if he does not learn from his history, might recall an event in his own lifetime as a politician, an event that resonates on a micro scale with what happened in Ukraine.  In 1969 the forces of the state launched a pogrom against the national minority in Northern Ireland.  The minority understandably appealed for help to their fatherland.  But  the fatherland and its leader Jack Lynch “stood idly by”  (to quote himself) and the  minority was left to its own devices. 

The device this minority chose was to set up an army, the Provisional IRA,  which went to war against the state and—after a 25 year War—eliminated the grievances that  had  culminated in the pogrom.  War works.  There are winners and losers and the winners decide what the War was about.

And the EU will learn that lesson, with knobs on, if it ever contrives to get  its War with Russia. It  will, assuredly, come to regret what it wished for. 

Jack Lane