ABSTRACT
This chapter opens with a brief review of Ireland's foreign policy goals and means. While Ireland shared with The Netherlands and Denmark quite limited means, at an even lower quantitative level, its foreign policy goals were quite distinctive. The chapter considers external environment of Irish foreign policy. The Irish State emerged from its wartime neutrality to greet a world with unfamiliar preoccupations. From 1946, economic stagnation and mass emigration (at an annual rate of 35,000) served to underscore the inherent limitations of this policy. The nature of post-war Irish political culture was that of a rurally based and essentially conservative society. From the state's foundation, a vigorous, declaratory anti-Communism marked Irish political culture in which religious denunciations of Communism and persecution of the faithful in Russia were routine, and the epithet 'Red' or 'Communist were terms of political abuse.
