It can be difficult at times for a layperson to decipher how much of politics is meaningful and substantive, and how much is something that the Americans have developed a phrase to describe: Failure Theatre.
Failure theatre is when you take on a fight that you know for certain that you are destined to lose, but is intended to demonstrate to your voters that you fight for their interests, nevertheless. The point of it is not to accomplish anything substantive, but simply to portray yourself and your allies as the underdog “goodies” fighting the big bad system, and to clamber up the moral high ground in the process.
In the case of the joint Irish and Spanish letter to the EU commission yesterday seeking a review of the EU’s trade agreement with Israel in light of that country’s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza, failure theatre is the order of the day. There is absolutely zero prospect for success, for the simple reason that any changes to the agreement with Israel would require unanimity at the EU council, and there are far more countries sitting around that table with a pro-Israeli disposition than there are countries that share the biases of Ireland and the present Spanish Government, which is the most left-wing in the EU.
Indeed, evidence that failure is certain might be gleaned from no more complicated fact than that only two countries signed the letter. We can be reasonably certain that, as with any diplomatic operation, the Government in Dublin would have sought more allies than just the Spanish in order to strengthen its position ahead of time when or if this matter comes up for discussion. We must assume that there was not a single other EU member state willing to sign up.
Indeed, as the Irish Times put it yesterday, with their customary sniffiness:
“However a small group of hardline supporters of Israel has consistently blocked or watered down tougher action by the EU, and the proposal to review the trade agreement would be likely to face their opposition.”
The phrase “hardline supporters” is interesting, of course, because when you think about it, others might well say the same about Ireland and Spain (two countries versus twenty five) vis a vis the Palestinian side. But of course, the Irish Times could never concede that Ireland might be on the fringe hardliner side of any debate at EU level. That’s not “who we are“, after all.
At any rate this is, you will not be surprised to learn, a somewhat creative interpretation of the facts: Two countries have signed a document seeking a review of the trade agreement, twenty-five have not. Amongst Israels closest allies in the EU are the Viktor Orban led Government in Hungary – always a villain where the Irish Times is concerned – but also the Governments of Germany, France, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy, and the three Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Whether that constitutes a “small group” is ultimately a matter of interpretation. That it is a group substantially larger than the Hiberno-Spanish axis is not.
Mind you, failure theatre is the name of the game here. The Irish and Spanish proposal will obviously take time to be considered. In the event that the EU commission, who must first make an assessment that there is a case to be made, side with Dublin and Madrid, there will then have to be further time taken to prepare discussions at the EU council. All of this, needless to say, will take months and months. Ultimate failure is certain, but the critical element here is time.
In the meantime, both Dublin and Madrid can postpone the “failure” part of failure theatre, and focus on the “theatre” part. The joint letter is not being written with the purpose of ultimately accomplishing anything – it is being written with the purpose of giving Mr. Varadkar and his Spanish counterpart the chance to fend off rabid demands for yet more action from the hard left in both countries. Now, challenged about their alleged obsequiousness towards Jerusalem, representatives of both Governments can go on television and declare that they have, in fact, taken tough action to effectively propose sanctions on the Israelis.
From an Israeli point of view, all of this is, ultimately, harmless: Whatever one’s view of events in Gaza, it seems reasonably clear that combat operations will not last any more than another few months. Rafah, in the south, is by all accounts the last remaining city with a substantial presence of armed Hamas fighters capable of meaningful military resistance. Meanwhile, the difficulties faced by UNWRA the UN agency responsible for aiding Palestinian refugees, who are in Dublin today to hold a joint press conference with the Tánaiste, is providing the Israelis with a cause of their own to motivate their international support. UNWRA is in Dublin today, self evidently, only because it has been effectively abandoned by Washington, London, Berlin, and Paris on foot of fairly convincing accusations that it has been aiding – advertently or otherwise – Hamas. Without wishing to sound unpatriotic, Dublin is a poor substitute for the support it’s lost internationally.
That, too, is a little bit of failure theatre. At the time of writing, my guess is that Ireland will announce an increase to the funding it provides to UNWRA annually, which won’t be anything like enough to make up for the hundreds of millions its lost elsewhere. That will be another thing Dublin can point to.
Ultimately, none of this will impact the outcome of the conflict one way or another. The point here is not to succeed, but to look good and moral while failing. Something Irish politicians have decades of practice at, in all fairness.