Populist and anti-establishment candidates in the Irish local and European elections have many policy differences, but on one topic, every single one of them (bar Peter Casey) are agreed: Irish neutrality is a red line for them and they would preserve it at all costs, and spending on defence and weaponry at EU level is a disgrace.
This, I’d argue, is both a policy and a political error.
Let’s start with the politics.
One constant theme of populist candidates in these elections has been to bemoan the arms industry and spending on weaponry, but opinion polls of the public have shown that this is in fact a minority position: The most detailed opinion poll on this topic was conducted by the Irish Times a year ago – that shows that a clear majority of Irish voters want Ireland to “significantly increase its military capacity”, with only a minority – 32% in fact – wanting no increases to Ireland’s military spending.
Even those populists who grudgingly consider calls for increased spending tend to do so in terms of salaries for the troops and the soldiers – “we should pay our defence forces more” – but this isn’t really the issue for Ireland militarily, or at least not the biggest issue. The biggest issue is that the state has a puny army of 8,000, only one serviceable naval vessel, and not one single air interceptor worthy of the name. The state is also the only state in Europe not to have its own radar system to detect incursions into our airspace.
Second, there’s the matter of Ireland’s national waters and the defence of our undersea cables: That same Irish Times poll asked Irish voters whether Ireland should protect its own undersea cables, or seek help from other countries to do so. 48% of people wanted us to seek aid from allies, and 36% wanted us to go it alone. 13% had no opinion.
Going it alone, of course, requires significant increases to naval and air spending, probably in the billions. Seeking help from other countries requires some form of implicit military alliance – we are, after all, asking them to use their military assets to defend us. That’s an alliance, no matter what we call it. The generally accepted alternative to “alliance” in Irish discourse is “arrangement”, but an arrangement for one country to defend another is a military alliance. Given the choice between spending more on our own defence, or entering such an “arrangement”, the Irish public’s view appears clear.
Third, there’s the core matter of neutrality itself: One in every four Irish voters – 26% – would like to see “Ireland’s model of military neutrality change”. That’s a not insignificant constituency, and at present the only party catering to it is Fine Gael. Meanwhile, the market for hard neutrality is a crowded one, running from People before Profit to Fianna Fáil and, well, almost all of the populist right.
The political error here, to be clear, is not that candidates are missing a trick by not advocating NATO membership, but that they are missing a real trick in not attacking the Government over defence: A neutral country should not be reliant on His Majesty’s Royal Air Force and Royal Navy to defend its waters, and yet that’s exactly the position that Ireland is in. Sinn Fein and Fianna Fáil, as supposed “Republican” and “nationalist” parties are very vulnerable on this point, yet by and large are allowed to skate on it without political criticism.
Moving on to policy, the error is obvious: Generally speaking, the disposition of the populist right is that Ireland can avoid conflicts by simply declaring itself neutral and non-aligned. This is a nonsense in practical terms precisely because of the existence of those undersea cables in our waters.
The cables do not simply serve Ireland: Many of them represent the key information technology links between the EU and the United States, and between NATO members on either side of the Atlantic. They are a military target, despite the fact that they are in neutral waters. Neutral countries are generally not invaded because they did something wrong themselves, but because they are strategically important – Belgium was attacked in 1914 because it was vital to the success of the Schlieffen plan to invade France; not because Belgium had any quarrel with the Kaiser. It is not hard to imagine an attack on infrastructure in Ireland for similar reasons: If cutting the EU off from the United States is a strategic objective of their enemies, then the easiest place to strike is in Irish waters.
Further, Dublin is one of the EU’s most important financial and services sectors, and houses vast wealth and IT infrastructure that serves much of Europe. The idea that it would not be a target in a conflict because Ireland is neutral is objectively nonsensical, and displays no understanding of history. Ireland might have been strategically unimportant in a war in the days of world war two – long before the advent of undersea cables or the internet – but the idea that we are of no strategic importance today is a delusion that will survive up to – and only up to – the outbreak of a general war.
Acknowledging these realities does not require anybody to campaign for Ireland’s entry into a general European Alliance, or signing up for NATO. But it does, as a matter of policy, require significant commitment to improving Ireland’s air, sea, and cyber defences. It is astonishing, for example, that the Irish Government has essentially escaped political accountability for the HSE hack which essentially crashed our health services and resulted in an unknown number of deaths.
All of this is because, I think, of an isolationist instinct that runs through some of the nativist or populist right: We want to be left alone on our own island with no interference from foreigners. It is no coincidence that many populists and nativists trace their ideological lineage to the nationalists of the late 1800s and early 1900s, who had similar desires. There’s also the unmistakable influence of modern American populism on the instinct: Donald Trump is an isolationist, therefore that is the correct position. Yet Trump would govern a superpower that will always be able to defend itself with overwhelming force if necessary, while Ireland’s best hope is that other powers might ignore it in a conflict, negating the need for any fighting.
But that’s an 1800’s mindset, in a 2000’s world. Modern warfare is not about land, but about infrastructure. Ireland houses infrastructure that is vital to both our own interests, and, whether we like it, those of Europe and NATO. We have an obligation to defend it, or partner with others to do so.
Most of the electorate appear to recognise this. Irish populists, by and large, are missing a trick by not recognising it themselves.