In 1949, when America’s ambassador handed Ireland’s foreign minister an invitation to join NATO, the answer was a polite no. Ireland wanted no part of an alliance including Britain, its former coloniser, which it blamed for dividing the isle into a mainly Protestant, British north and a Catholic, independent south. In later decades the Irish were leery of being dragged into America’s global crusade against communism or, more recently, its “war on terror”. Neither chimed well with Ireland’s generally anti-colonialist foreign policy.