John Halligan’s determination to bring peace and democracy to North Korea, as outlined to Sean O’Rourke on Friday, were immediately dismissed by many as a meaningless gesture.
Others may be eagerly – if anxiously – anticipating his mission to meet with Kim Jong-un alongside his fellow humanitarians Shane Ross and Finian McGrath and wondering if this is what the world needs right now.
But that would be to look through the wrong end of the binoculars – the real question may be what do Halligan, McGrath and Ross need right now?
Halligan is leading the charge here. He is going the extra mile for peace, and on his own time too, as he appeared on Sean O’Rourke and put his reputation on the line by laying out his plan to convert Kim Jong-un to the joys of democracy.
Halligan didn’t see what the problem was as he responded to O’Rourke’s questions and those of the listeners who suggested he’d be better off solving problems closer to home before tackling world peace.
Irish politicians are routinely accused of spending too much time on local issues so it was novel, if nothing else, to hear one position himself as a global statesman, a man prepared to do whatever it takes for world harmony by establishing cultural relations in an alien land.
If Halligan succeeds, it may take off and we might soon see, say, Boxer Moran heading to Catalonia to prevent a rerun of the Spanish civil war.
Halligan, who was once a member of the Workers Party, did tentatively suggest that the world didn’t have these problems when his old party had links to North Korea, before conceding under no interrogation whatsoever that there was no connection between the two things.
As he explained to O’Rourke there was once a time when, “North Koreans attended the Fleadh Cheoil in Clonmel” and he wanted to restore those connections, even in these more troubled times.
Whether a Fleadh Cheoil in Clonmel, or anywhere else, would be enough to distract Kim Jong-un from his nuclear ambitions right now remains to be seen. But let’s just say it’s unlikely.
Nonetheless, every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and if these cultural exchanges are the starting point for the expedition of Halligan, McGrath and Ross into the heart of darkness then we can’t dismiss them.
If Halligan is the front man, others in the party of peace have a lot to gain too.
After the brutal dismantling of Ireland’s Rugby World Cup bid and the ongoing rail dispute, Shane Ross badly needs the bounce which removing the fear of nuclear annihilation from the planet and pacifying northeast Asia would bring.
Like Alan Partridge when he didn’t get a second series, Minister Ross is sitting in his car looking for two positives, “one to cancel out the negative and another one, just so I can have a positive.”
If somehow the lads could set Kim Jong-un on the right path then that could certainly be said to be a positive, not just for the reputation of the ministers, but for the world at large. We’d all be winners.
Yet Halligan did concede that his overtures were unlikely to yield immediate results, but that shouldn’t stop him.
As he pointed out, he travelled to the West Bank recently and talked to both sides in the conflict there. Perhaps only the old fashioned manners of Sean O’Rourke prevented him from saying, “and look how that worked out” at that point. Halligan now will attempt to work what I suppose we can call his magic in Pyongyang
It must be said that by Friday evening we have heard nothing from Ross and McGrath, but Halligan assured O’Rourke that “both of them have agreed to go.” And in their holiday time as well.
Perhaps Ross was like Billy Crystal’s character in City Slickers, a slightly reluctant participant who has to be persuaded that a cattle drive across the Great Plains is the best way of dealing with whatever problems they have, rather than spending a more sedate vacation as he’d initially intended.
Given their record in government, Halligan’s plan to talk sense into Kim Jong-Un accompanied by Ross and McGrath might have led people who were listening to the interview to instinctively google “concrete bunker global thermonuclear war” while abandoning all other weekend plans.
Halligan is unaware if they will meet the “top man” during their mission to Pyongyang but as he stressed the urgency of the whole thing, it seemed like our top men needed to get on this right away.
“We have two choices in dealing with North Korea…the choices will be will there be war or will there be peace?”
When Halligan puts it like that, it’s hard to argue, although many would see that he is pursuing the third way: talks which have no bearing on whether there will be war or peace.
But that would be the cynical view. “What is there to lose by attempting to talk peace with North Korea as I have done with the Palestinians and the Israelis?” Halligan asked, even if he also provided the answer to his question by the end of the same sentence.
Yet, in that spirit, their trip should be encouraged and we should ignore any feeling that the reputation of the country is at stake or even, as one sceptic suggested, that the “credibility of a senior government minister is on the line here.” That ship may well have sailed.
Indeed, by the end of his interview, Halligan’s ambition seemed to have diminished a little as he encountered the hostility of the listeners. “It’s an idea, that’s all it was,” he said, sounding like a man trying to explain to his wife how he had blown up the kitchen while trying to save money by brewing his own craft beer.
It may be natural to wonder, then, if Halligan is really ready for the frustrations which will come as he attempts to wrestle Kim Jong-un’s finger off the nuclear button, or even get the North Koreans back to a Fleadh Cheoil in Clonmel.
“We are prominent politicians, whether people like it or not,” Halligan said. And once again, nobody could dispute that his words contained a deep and all-encompassing truth.
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