Ireland, Disarmament and Non-Proliferation

Abstract

In this introduction to Irish Studies in International Affairs I share the normal duty of presenting the papers with two other colleagues—Mervyn O’Driscoll and Jamie Walsh of University College Cork, who organised the symposium on disarmament and non-proliferation, hosted in Academy House, Dublin, in March 2014, from which nine of the first twelve papers in this issue are drawn. As organisers of the event I will leave the honour of introducing those papers to their piece, which follows, but will add my own thanks to all the symposium participants for making their papers available for publication in this year’s volume. This allows the journal to deal comprehensively with a topic that has been explored frequently in individual papers over the years, indicating an ongoing Irish interest in the matter. The range of topics covered by the seminar papers and the expertise involved is impressive, and the human dimension of the debate could not be captured more appropriately than by the inclusion of the testimony by Ms Setsuko Thurlow, survivor of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb attack. We are again grateful to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for its support for the symposium itself, and for its on-going support for the journal. I would like to thank in particular the then Minister of State at the department, Joe Costello, TD, for speaking at the symposium and for making his contribution available for inclusion in the journal. In addition to the papers directly related to the symposium, three additional papers on disarmament and non-proliferation are included in this volume. A paper by Mervyn and Jamie argues that the Irish contribution to the first Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference, in 1975, was important in establishing the credibility of the treaty as an instrument of international law. Saira Bano of the University of Calgary offers a clear and critical analysis of the Indian government’s successful negotiation of international acceptance of its nuclear trade deal with the US, despite its not being a signatory to the NPT, and argues that the deal undermines international