The Polish and Irish people have suffered too much historically, due to wars and occupation. Poland’s central European location makes its borders difficult to defend. Ireland’s isolated Atlantic ‘island behind an island’ location left it vulnerable to abusive British imperialism. Poland and Ireland achieved independence after World War I. While Ireland avoided the devastation of World War II by remaining neutral, Poland was invaded by both Germany and the Soviet Union. Up to six million Polish people were killed during World War II, about half of whom were Polish Christians and half were Polish Jews. How many Polish and Irish citizens will die if World War III occurs? 

This is not just a hypothetical question. If the militarisation of Europe and the wider world continue at its present pace, and if the promotion of peace, justice and the proper rule of international laws continue to be ignored and destroyed, World War III seems inevitable. 

After the end of the Cold War peaceful coexistence and global cooperation in the interests of all humanity, should have been prioritised. NATO should have been disbanded after the Warsaw Pact alliance ceased to exist. Instead, the US has used NATO to try and achieve full spectrum global domination, by waging wars of aggression against Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere in breach of the UN Charter. Such ongoing wars are not being fought to achieve peace, democracy, freedom or justice. They are mainly resource wars being fought by the ‘west against the rest’ of humanity. Resource wars have been ongoing for several centuries involving slavery, settler colonisation and multiple acts of genocide and crimes against humanity. The European perpetrators used the excuse of bringing European and Western civilisation to the colonised. The US, with less than 4% of the world’s population is experiencing resources shortages, is now trying to maintain its full spectrum dominance by abusive military force but is risking financial bankruptcy. The Trump administration is not only targeting the vast resources of Russia and Ukraine but has also been targeting the resources of Venezuela, Greenland and Canada and is prepared to use military force to achieve this. The United Nations, which is meant to be the foundation of international laws, is being targeted and denied its vital core funding. By discrediting the UN and undermining the rule of international laws, and using threats of sanctions, trade tariffs and regime change, the US has created a global criminal protection racket with NATO as its enforcer. The Trump led Board of Peace is attempting to usurp the UN’s primary role of maintaining international peace. The Charter of Trump’s Board of Peace (BoP) has been cynically drafted along the lines of the UN Charter but is outrageous in its attempted scope and objectives and is dominated by the self-appointed Donald Trump. The UN Security Council appeared to give Trump’s BoP some legitimacy on 17th November 2025 when it passed Resolution 2803 (2025), in the context of a peace agreement on Gaza. However, the Charter of Trump’s BoP as announced in Davos on the 22 January 2026 attempts to set up the BoP as a virtual replacement for the UN, so as to maintain US dominance of global finances and access to an undue share of the world’s limited resources. The true nature of this Board of Peace was indicated on 11 February 2026 when indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu accepted Donald Trump’s invitation for Israel to join the BoP for Gaza, even while Israel was continuing to commit genocide in Gaza. 

It is vital for humanity that the global criminality that is being perpetrated by the US with the active complicity of its Western and other allies, is challenged and replaced by a much-improved system of global jurisprudence. Human ingenuity created the nuclear weapons that could cause the destruction of all life on Planet Earth. That same human ingenuity must now be used to prevent such a catastrophe. 

After Ireland was allowed to join the UN in 1955, Irish neutrality developed from its isolationist neutrality during WWII into active or positive neutrality. This included support for the decolonisation process and global justice. Ireland played an important role in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in the 1960s and in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) adopted in 2017 and has participated in UN peacekeeping since 1958. I served as a military peacekeeper with the UNEF II mission in the Sinai Desert in 1973/74 alongside a Polish peacekeeping logistics battalion. When Poland joined the European Union in 2004 tens of thousands of Polish citizens came to live and work in Ireland and continue to make significant economic and cultural contributions to Ireland. 

Humanity now faces a multitude of existential interconnected crises, including environmental destruction and global warming, conventional wars and genocides, potential nuclear wars, migration crises, and the violations and virtual destruction of the rule on international and humanitarian laws. Far too little is being done to deal with any of these multiple crises, any one of which could provide the spark that could ignite a nuclear holocaust.

There is an urgent need to halt the militarisation and wars and focus on creating peace by peaceful means. We must avoid the Orwellian stupidity of trying to make peace by making war. Defending national territories or the borders of Fortress Europe in this age of hypersonic nuclear missiles, is not just a pipedream, it’s a potential nightmare. What needs to be defended is the best interests of all our national and global citizens, and this can only be achieved by peaceful non-violent means, the foundations of which must be based on the proper rule of international laws. 

Now is the time for sovereign states including Poland to abandon military alliances, especially NATO and join the nonaligned movement, as a first step towards adopting national policies of active permanent neutrality. Possession of F35 fighter jets, thousands of armoured vehicles and hypersonic missiles are not an asset to the people of Poland, or the people of Europe, they are a liability. The Russian people have also suffered many invasions including the Napoleonic wars and Hitler’s Nazi German crimes against humanity. The Russian people do not want World War Three and neither do the people of Europe and the rest of humanity. Its time to offer the open hand of peace instead of the closed fist of violent wars. We, the people, must prevent our reckless leaders from leading us into World War Three. Otherwise, future generations of humanity may not exist. 

Edward Horgan

Dr Edward Horgan served as a senior officer in the Irish Defence Forces and is a former UN peacekeeper in the Middle East. He is an active member of several Irish and international peace groups and completed a PhD Thesis on international peace and reform of the United Nations in 2008.  This article first appeared in the Polish language in the Polish weekly newspaper”Myśl Polska” through the good offices of PANA member Bartosz Poiska, who translated the piece into Polish.