Ireland’s Ambassador Kevin Kelly at Idea Exchange: ‘India follows a policy of strategic autonomy and multi-alignment, that doesn’t mean it is politically neutral’

We like to say that we have a values-based foreign policy. It perhaps sounds very grand, but it is something we aim for every day and is something which is becoming increasingly difficult in today’s world, where everything happens in an instant, sometimes in response to a social media post. It’s very difficult for countries to have a very clear and consistent set of values. But I’m proud to say that we have had a degree of consistency. It comes from our experience of imperialism, famine, fighting for our independence and forced emigration… Such history may seem far away but it is very alive in how we approach life, how we relate to our big neighbour Britain, how we value being part of the European Union (EU), how we navigate our relationship with the big powers, how we look at acts of aggression like that of Russia against Ukraine, how we look at the Middle East, Gaza and Palestine. What has happened since the horrific Hamas attack in 2023, the subsequent plight of the Palestinians is very much a domestic issue in Irish politics.

Ambassador of Ireland to India Kevin Kelly. (Express Photo By Amit Mehra)

Shubhajit Roy: How do you define that values-based foreign policy when Israel has also been under attack from groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran?

Just because we are sometimes perceived, along with countries such as Spain and Norway, as being so-called ‘pro-Palestinian’, that certainly does not mean that we are anti-Israel. We have been a very consistent advocate for the two-state solution. We utterly condemned the actions of Hamas. We have been very clear about Iran and the threat that it posed to its neighbourhood, and that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon.

It is a source of real disappointment for us that Israel has closed down its embassy in Dublin because it wasn’t happy that Ireland recognised Palestine as a state. We recognised Palestinian statehood not as an anti-Israeli act, but because we felt the moment had come when the prospect of a viable Palestinian state — and a two-state solution — was under serious pressure and threat, and it was therefore time to show support. We made that decision along with Norway, Spain and some other countries.

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We have fantastic relations with the US — partly because of the huge Irish diaspora of 35 million people in the US. We need to navigate that relationship while holding on, as much as we can, to our principles and values. We have managed to do that.

We want to see a more functioning UN (United Nations). We want to see Security Council reform, an end to veto. We are very committed to the EU because we believe we are much stronger within a group of like minded nations with shared values and common interests than outside. While zealously safeguarding our sovereignty as an independent nation, as a member of the EU we have agreed to pool some of that sovereignty to make us stronger.

Shubhajit Roy: Since we are on principles and values, how does Ireland see the attack by the US and Israel on Iran?

Like every country in the world, we have watched with consternation the ongoing war in the Middle East. We understand that Iran has not been a positive force within the neighbourhood or in the world. We do recognise the threats that Iran has posed, but our strongly held view is that problems, conflicts and difficulties need to be resolved peacefully through diplomacy.

Shubhajit Roy: You mentioned about the US being in a very difficult state. President Trump’s posts about wiping out a civilisation seemed to many to mark a new low in public discourse by world leaders. How do you view this kind of language?

That kind of language is not something we use. It is one thing to wage a war against an unjust regime or to target military assets, which often happens in international conflict, but in any conflict, parties have to abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law. We have always been very firmly opposed to any targeting of civilian infrastructure, hospitals or facilities and energy infrastructure. It’s also about our shared future. Ultimately, attacks on energy infrastructure are also going to affect us all.

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Shubhajit Roy: The war in Iran has sort of decimated the country. Khamenei has been replaced by a more hardline younger Khamenei. The IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) leadership has been replaced by a more hardline IRGC leadership. At this point, do you think the objective of helping the people of Iran has been achieved?

When a country is in the state of war, the more moderate voices get drowned out and that definitely is the risk. I think EU has been pretty clear in its response. What needs to happen, first of all, is a ceasefire. Then there needs to be some move towards rebuilding the legitimacy of the government within Iran. That’s where the EU and European countries can play a role. We had reopened our embassy in Tehran recently. Many of our diplomats have had to operate under very difficult circumstances, evacuate and return. If we got to a situation where at least there was a sustained ceasefire, an end to the hostilities, then we could see a return to creating a space for the moderate voices to play a future in the development of their country.

Shubhajit Roy: A ceasefire has now been agreed to by the two sides but Israel seems to be going after Lebanon and that has become a challenge.

We have heard that Israel has agreed to a separate track of peace talks with Lebanon. There was confusion once the plan for ceasefire was announced, because I think we all assumed Lebanon was part of the picture. Then it became clear that it was not. We have called on Israel to stop the bombardment of Lebanon. Like India, Ireland has peacekeeping soldiers in UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) in south Lebanon. Nobody is suggesting that Hezbollah has not been a terrible rogue actor but for Israel to continue with a bombardment at this time is less than helpful. Happily this separate Israel/Lebanon peace talks track should allow the space necessary to make progress in the Islamabad talks.

Shubhajit Roy: How do you see Pakistan as a credible mediator in the ceasefire talks?

It has been interesting to see how Pakistan, along with Turkey, Egypt and a few others have managed to get us to a point where there is at least a process that can hopefully lead to a ceasefire. Hopefully, Pakistan is in a good position to be able to navigate this. Pakistan has managed to develop a good relationship with the Trump administration. It hasn’t always been an easy relationship between Pakistan and Iran, but they have managed to have access within that regime. Ireland is on record as expressing our support for these talks to succeed.

On Ireland’s foreign policy | ‘We have a values-based foreign policy… I am proud to say that we have had a degree of consistency. It comes from our experience of imperialism, famine, fighting for our independence and forced emigration’

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Shubhajit Roy: Ireland has been critical of Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Four years on, do you see any endgame for this war?

Ireland, along with most of the EU, has been very clear that we do not describe this as a war between Russia and Ukraine. We describe it as an unprovoked act of aggression by Russia against Ukraine. It has been a big wake-up call for Europe because we have war within our continent at such a huge scale for the first time in a very long time. We’ve seen a massive inflow of Ukrainian people into Ireland. They were provided with huge support, but that does put pressure on the systems. Several of the domestic challenges that many countries are facing in Europe and beyond are a direct consequence of Russia’s aggression.

We have enjoyed the luxury of being a militarily neutral country because we didn’t feel that we were in the line of fire. That has changed our calculation. Our government has said very clearly that even though we’re militarily neutral, we’re not politically neutral. We will remain a neutral country but this has not prevented us from providing a huge amount of funding to Ukraine, not just for humanitarian response but also non-lethal defence support.

We’ve had to increase our defence expenditure massively. We have not and we will not join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), but we have seen countries like Sweden, who are long partners of us in terms of neutrality, joining NATO as a direct consequence of Russia’s war. If Putin’s calculation was to protect itself from an expanding NATO, it has backfired spectacularly because NATO has actually grown in this period of time.

Ambassador of Ireland to India Kevin Kelly. (Express Photo By Amit Mehra)

Shubhajit Roy: Trump is not very impressed with NATO right now. Is the US’s reliability as a partner in NATO in question?

Ireland is not a member of NATO and therefore we are not qualified to comment here. I know that Mr. Trump has been very critical of NATO. Perhaps in some ways, however, the pressure that he has put on NATO countries to increase their defence expenditure has worked. Most European countries have significantly increased their defence spending as a consequence of some of these criticisms but we did see that when it came to the threats on Greenland, the European countries were very firm and united and with positive effect.

Shubhajit Roy: With President Trump in office, what do you predict can happen in the next three years?

Ireland has managed to maintain our relationship not just with the Democratic administration but also the Republicans. We do always use every opportunity that we have to maintain that dialogue with President Trump. On what is going to happen, the one thing we have learnt from recent events is that the world is a very unpredictable place and it is almost impossible to predict what will happen.

I am hopeful that after the events of this weekend we are back from the brink of the very significant threats. The war is something that we really don’t need in terms of all the other challenges that the planet is actually facing.

Shubhajit Roy: India and Ireland have a long shared history. How have you seen the trajectory change in the last 75 years?

We’ve had a very interesting history. We share our anti-colonial history, our struggle for freedom. The Chittagong uprising here was inspired by the 1916 uprising in Dublin. Even before that, we had many Irishmen coming to India. Many of the poorest Catholics, who were unemployed labourers, couldn’t find jobs at home. What did they do? They joined the Raj, they joined the army. They didn’t necessarily believe in an empire, but they ended up in India. Then, some generations later, after independence, we shared notes on our Constitution.

For the last 30 or 40 years, our relationship has been sleepy — maybe as Ireland was developing in the EU, dealing with our own economic crises, Brexit. Our focus in Asia was overly on China and Southeast Asia, and perhaps we missed an opportunity to deepen our engagement with India. I am really working hard to build that relationship. It’s good in terms of trade. About 10 per cent of the total EU trade with India is through Ireland. We are one of the major investors in many sectors, but there is so much more we can do. We have already had four ministerial visits this year. I am working to get our Prime Minister to come to India. We had External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in Dublin last year.

We are trying to build political, institutional and people-to-people links. Now almost two per cent of our population is Indian. For the first time, we’re bringing the Jaipur Literature Festival to Ireland next month.

Shubhajit Roy: Ireland has also become a destination for Indian students. What is your plan to attract more students?

About 10,000 students a year come from India to Ireland. In the EU we are the second highest after Germany. They come to us because it is English speaking, we have a nice ecosystem of US and other multinationals based in Ireland, massive international pharma companies; we also have this two-year visa scheme so that students, once they graduate with a master’s degree, can get a work permit to study in Ireland and they get snapped up very often by big multinationals.

I would like to see our universities open up campuses in India and partner with Indian universities because I think the market is huge. I’m in active discussions with some of our top universities to look at the opportunities. The Indian government is also very actively trying to provide incentives for universities to do that.

Damini Nath: We saw anti-immigrant protests and race riots in Ireland last year. What has your government done to assure the safety of refugees and immigrants, particularly Indians?

When I was growing up, Ireland was a very homogenous place, but now 17 per cent of the people living in the country were born abroad, and 17 per cent of the people born in the country are living abroad. So it has been a huge change. It has become much more multicultural. In most cases, we have really embraced that, but there has been backlash at times. Sometimes it’s nothing to do with Indians or people of colour. When people feel that systems are under pressure, they can’t buy houses, find accommodation, get into schools, there’s sometimes backlash.

Last summer, there was the most horrific attack against a young Indian professional who was working with a big US multinational. He was attacked by some young hoodlums. The outrage was immediate in defence and support of this man. This was terrible, not just for the victims of those attacks, but for the Indian community. The political leaders spoke out absolutely strongly. The Indian community were brought into government buildings to hear their concerns and find out what support could be provided. Our police force set up special protection units to support Indian community representatives… Many of these perpetrators are teenagers, young juveniles that operate under a different criminal jurisdiction. But there have been prosecutions and the investigations are still going on.

Shubhajit Roy: India has strong relations with Israel and Iran, and the US has long been a strategic partner. Do you think India could have stepped up diplomatically to play the mediator’s role?

I think India is in a strategic position. It does command the respect of many of the antagonists. I know that Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar has been in regular contact with both sides. Prime Minister Modi has been in contact with various antagonists in this conflict, including President Trump. He has also had discussions with Prime Minister Netanyahu. Even though India has a very careful policy of strategic autonomy and multi-alignment, like us, that does not mean it is politically neutral. I am sure India has been very consistent in saying that it wants a peaceful end to this conflict.

Siddharth Upasani: India and Ireland’s bilateral trade stands at roughly €18 billion, with two-thirds in services. With India having signed a free trade agreement with the EU, are there concerns in Ireland about wages or job losses?

We are really positive about this. It is partly because those are areas that we feel we can do more business with India. These are not necessarily areas that are going to pose a threat to our farmers… I do hope to sell more Irish whiskey, which is premium.

When it comes to services, I think we are going to see a change. It’ll be more high-end, high-tech, AI.

In Europe, people have an image about India that it is very difficult, bureaucratic and protectionist. The fact is that India now has signed this free trade agreement with the EU, UK, and with the US, and it is opening up for business, wanting to do much more.

In a world which is so polarised and volatile, market diversification is important. When Brexit happened, we were very keen to make sure that we were diversified away from an over-alliance on the UK market, which we are.

Saptarshi Basak: You said that Ireland is quite clear that Iran can’t have nuclear weapons at any cost. Why?

Well, Ireland was one of the first countries to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty. We are one of the most proudly neutral countries. We are very much against any kind of expansion of nuclear weapons. We have been calling for all countries, including the current nuclear powers, to reduce their arsenals rather than increase them, to put additional protections in place. So we are not in favour of any new countries adopting nuclear weapons.

Aakash Joshi: What kind of actions should reinforce what you call ‘values-based’ diplomacy, beyond just words of condemnation?

I think words, statements and dialogue do matter. If I look at my own country, Ireland, we are faced with this dilemma very much. After the truly unacceptable attacks by Hamas on Israel that led to the attack on Gaza and the subsequent war and death of thousands of people, we’ve very clearly spoken out against that. What does it mean? We took action then. We ultimately had been holding off for many years in terms of formally recognising Palestine as a state, so we took that action.

The next action that is under active consideration at the moment is in terms of banning settlement products, produced from illegal settlements. We have spoken out unequivocally against the illegal Israeli expansion into the West Bank. There is a bill that is going through our parliament, it’s being scrutinised at the moment in Ireland, in terms of banning the sale of or the import of any products into Ireland that have been produced on what we consider to be illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands.

When you have a dialogue with a country, it doesn’t mean that you necessarily agree with everything about that country. If we were to take that position, we wouldn’t have peace in Northern Ireland now. It means people with opposing views try to reach an agreement.

Nikhil Ghanekar: What message do recent wars and the sudden killing of national leaders send globally? Could this push more countries to pursue nuclear weapons, increasing the risk of a new international crisis?

We can talk about the UN being very challenged at the moment but we use every opportunity to promote multilateralism and the UN. We take every opportunity at the UN to call for a reduction in the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It’s about international law, multilateralism and returning to the legitimacy of the UN. I think we have to do that, and it starts at the top. If you look at the United Nations Security Council, it is designed for a different time by the victors of World War II. It needs to be reformed and Ireland has been one of the countries consistently calling for that. We know that India has also been consistent in calling for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. Ireland has been very clear that India deserves to be represented in the Security Council. We believe that Africa is seriously underrepresented. We would like to see the abolition of the veto. There has to be a serious reform of the UN. It is going to have to be led by the UN General Assembly and by countries like India and smaller countries with a proud history of UN engagements like Ireland.