Michael McDowell’s Blog-Diplomacy

In an August 20th article written by the former Tánaiste and Attorney General, Senator Michael McDowell castigates the Ukraine peace negotiations established by United States President Donald Trump. 

McDowell characterises President Trump’s negotiation tactics with Russia as a kind of flip-flopping, that the “idiot-king” does not know what he is doing. Perhaps McDowell could chair a peace summit in Dublin, and the US President could hire him as a foreign policy advisor? Perhaps Marco Rubio ought to be sent out of the State Department and replaced by Senator McDowell, who could end this war?

Labelling the President’s search for an end to the war in Ukraine as a “sick charade” and accusing the President of behaving like “an unpredictable, selfish ignoramus, constantly mollycoddled by a group of sycophants” McDowell’s comments are thoroughly indicative of the intellectual failures of Ireland’s leadership class. 

European leaders ought to be ashamed of the fact that they continually blocked any path to peace from the earliest stages of the war, with Britain’s infamous “Bojo” acting as an emissary to prevent the Istanbul peace accords on behalf of the collective West. As NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte called him, “Daddy” Trump has had to step in, and end this conflict on Europe’s behalf, given its leaders’ incapability of engaging in basic diplomacy.

Understandably, Michael McDowell’s name elicits a sense of political nostalgia for older generations, people who reflect fondly on the days of the Progressive Democrats. Yet despite holding serious positions in Irish government, in an era where Ireland still had a semblance of political leadership, McDowell’s foray into blogging has shown nought but unstatesmanly opinions. 

To be an independent representative in the Irish Senate, and formerly the Deputy Prime Minister of the country, someone of McDowell’s stature would be expected to filter his comments in a more diplomatic style. Yet instead, his view-points demonstrate Irish leaders’ subordination to the West’s virtual reality, regardless of party affiliation.

McDowell’s comments on the Ukraine peace negotiations neglect the fact that European leaders cut themselves off from Russia both economically and diplomatically since the beginning of the war in 2022. From this “vantage point” European leaders could say what they wanted about Russia without seemingly having to face any political consequences or fact-checking. As Western media propaganda turned inwards, rather than broadcasting to Russians in so-called “enemy territory” the West engaged in a psychological manipulation campaign against its own citizenry. The need for a ceasefire is repeated by McDowell and German Chancellor Merz, almost as if President Trump’s point that “ceasefires don’t work” has gone completely overhead.

Reports that the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was excluded from the multilateral peace-talks with European heads of state in Washington on Monday should be a sore lesson for Irish officials, that the United States does not respect fake leaders or hollow “plans” to do “something” at an unspecified point in the future.

The President of Finland’s appearance at the multilateral meeting in Washington ought to provide further food for thought to Irish leaders. Humiliated by Trump, the Finn sitting opposite him, was asked “Alex where are you?” as the President looked around the room. Snobbish European elites may delude themselves that this is a sign of Trump’s insanity or cognitive decline to obfuscate the President’s jab at irrelevancy of certain European “leaders.”

In his article, McDowell suggests that Putin will manipulate Ukrainian politics as he has previously done in Moldova and Romania. While there is no doubting the Russian presence in Transnistria, McDowell’s mention of Russian interference in Romanian elections is interesting. Calin Georgescu was barred from running in the Romanian Presidential elections on false accusations of Russian meddling, which has sent European populists in uproar against liberal European institutions so blatantly barring anti-establishment figures from political campaigns.

McDowell is largely discredited as a populist figure, his writings demonstrate complete conformity to the West’s fabricated media narratives on foreign policy events in recent years, yet he is still seen by some as a middle-of-the-road conservative.