Perfectly reasonable for academics to call for Ireland’s neutrality to be kept under active review, writes Michael Sanfey
There’s a song that used to be sung by football fans to taunt the rival team’s supporters – ‘Oh you’re all very quiet over there’. This ditty applies well to some Irish academics and public intellectuals who have long been supportive of Ireland joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
However, the situation regarding NATO’s future is so uncertain that any suggestion that Ireland would join it at this time looks downright ludicrous.
The changed political climate is due in large part to President Trump’s overall approach of ‘weaponised uncertainty’ and outlandish 18th Century Right of Conquest ‘diplomacy’ – e.g., his plans for the Panama Canal, Greenland, and the idea to ‘clean out’ Gaza.
Defence
Not long before taking office for his second term, he called for NATO members to spend 5% of their GDP on defence. This is simply not going to happen. Italy for example, currently spends 1.5%, set to reach 1.6% in 2027. Thus the 5% target is for most current NATO members an utter pipe dream. And if you were an ordinary NATO member, why would you ramp up NATO-related military expenditure when it looks increasingly unlikely that the US under President Trump would honour its Article 5 NATO Treaty obligation to come to the aid of a fellow member who suffers attack.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on February 15, President Zelensky of Ukraine called for a European army. This seems unlikely to happen in the short-to-medium term and speaking on the margins of the Munich conference Taoiseach Micheal Martin said that a European army was not on the agenda.
President Trump has initiated talks with Russia to end the war in Ukraine but has totally sidelined other NATO members – including EU NATO members – in the process.
They appear unable to influence a situation crucial to their own security in a meaningful way”
France – the EU’s only nuclear power since the departure of the UK following Brexit – convened an emergency meeting of ‘select’ European leaders in Paris to discuss the situation, but increasingly European Heads of State and Government (HOSGs) have an ‘All the King’s Horses’ look about them – i.e., they appear unable to influence a situation crucial to their own security in a meaningful way.
Critical
A head of steam had been building on the part of those who are highly critical of Ireland’s long-standing policy of military neutrality. But when you ask them what precisely they want Ireland to do, or what organisation(s) they would like Ireland to join, they tend to be rather vague. Take the example of UCD Prof. Ben Tonra. In a recent column for the Irish Times, Prof. Tonra argued in favour of Ireland revisiting its policy of military neutrality. He rightly contended that in Ireland’s case military neutrality has not equated to political neutrality. However, he sees our policy of military neutrality as being selfish, and not only that – in Ireland’s case he believes we have elevated that policy into ‘myth making’. I followed-up with Prof. Tonra in an effort to clarify exactly what he wanted us to do. In his reply he said he did not advocate joining any alliance, but that he felt it behoved us to engage more directly in EU security and defence structure and planning.
I also contacted Prof. Eunan O’Halpin of TCD and he told me that he is not suggesting that Ireland would suddenly join NATO “in full combat gear” as he colourfully put it. But he does believe that Ireland needs to have as close a relationship as possible with those who defend us against military, air and naval threats. He also raised a question about how proponents of Irish unity would address the question of how best to protect all-island security.
He doesn’t believe Europe can any longer count on the United States. Importantly he also thinks that this won’t end with Trump”
Prof. John O’Brennan of Maynooth gave me a detailed response. He told me he had been very much in favour of Ireland joining NATO for most of the last two decades, not least on the basis of his knowledge of the Baltic States and Central and Eastern Europe. However, he said that he had somewhat changed his mind about NATO me membership, to a large extent because he doesn’t believe Europe can any longer count on the United States. Importantly he also thinks that this won’t end with Trump.
Fraud
Prof. O’Brennan said he saw our neutrality as an imaginative fraud which we stumbled into but then embraced with vigour. He thinks we should cease the sanctimonious and holier than thou attitude when most of our peer states in Europe do more than we do in respect of money spent on international development and also commitments to international peacekeeping.
He would like to see Ireland participate in a new EU defence and security alliance, resourced by new EU borrowing, which includes a security guarantee similar to NATO’s Article 5. He cited what he described as significant movement within the European Commission, with the appointment of a new Commissioner for defence plus significant resources being potentially moved into defence from unspent EU Multilateral Financial Framework (MFF) and ‘Next Generation’ funds.
Dan O’Brien of the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA) – a noted advocate for Irish NATO membership, could not be reached for comment – likewise Prof. Trine Flockhart of the EUI School for Transnational Governance who last year in an article for International Affairs noted that as well as being a military alliance, NATO also had a role as a community of shared values – which clearly no longer holds.
For now, Ireland should continue with its existing policy.
The ‘holier than thou’ argument lacks traction, and in any event there is arguably plenty of ‘holier than thou’ sentiment to go round”
It is perfectly reasonable for academics and others to call for Ireland’s policy of military neutrality to be kept under active review. The thing is that one can rest assured that the relevant Irish authorities are already doing that. After all, what are Brussels-based EU working groups for? The ‘holier than thou’ argument lacks traction, and in any event there is arguably plenty of ‘holier than thou’ sentiment to go round, including on the part of some of those clamouring for us to end our military neutrality.
For perfectly valid reasons Ireland didn’t join NATO when the organisation was set up in the late-1940s. Back in the 1980s, I recall that the then Secretary General of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Sean Donlon – hardly someone given to holier than thou attitudes – spoke to a group of young diplomats before they embarked on their first posting. Asked about Ireland’s military neutrality, he saw it not as an article of faith but rather in pragmatic terms as a policy that had served the country well. That was sensible then and is sensible now, always allowing that we are in a much less settled period, geopolitically.
The best course for Ireland is to maintain military neutrality at least for the time being, while playing an active part in EU negotiations on new security and defence-related structures.