Ireland is having an “esoteric” debate about ending the triple-lock on sending Irish soldiers abroad while other European Union states fear invasion by Russia, former Green Party MEP Ciarán Cuffe has declared.
The “visceral fear” felt by Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania that Russian leader Vladmir Putin could order the invasion of their countries is “almost impossible to understand” for an Irish audience, he said.
Speaking at the Patrick MacGill summer school in Glenties, Co Donegal, Mr Cuffe, who is now the co-chair of the European Green Party, said the Baltic states are debating whether to pull out of an international agreement banning landmines.
“Why? Because these countries want to have a belt of landmines ready if Putin comes across the border. We can have an esoteric discussion of the triple lock. But in those countries, it’s what might happen tomorrow or the next day,” he said.
READ MORE
[ Poll shows Ireland’s attachment to neutrality is strong but nuancedOpens in new window ]
Eastern European EU states worry about mobilising soldiers in 24 hours: “It’s a debate we’re not even thinking about here. We’re still wrestling with [a report] that said our army, our defence forces are 40 years out of date. I think we have to come to grips with that.”
Speaking on the Gaza crisis and Ireland’s stand on the issue, Mr Cuffe urged an Irish audience to remember that “the legacy of the Holocaust casts a very long shadow over central Europe.
“When I talk to my colleagues in Germany or Austria, they are so hard-wired into protecting the state of Israel, they find it incredibly difficult to recognise the magnitude of human slaughter of Palestinian people that is occurring.
“However, public opinion is changing in Germany,” he said, adding that the European Green Party now favours the suspension of parts of the EU-Israel association agreement that do not require all EU states to agree.
Ireland’s focus on the Gaza crisis is understandable given our history as a postcolonial country: “We do find it so strong and so close to our own history. So, we have to act on that,” he said,
Meanwhile, Dr Eoin Drea, senior researcher at the Brussels-based Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, warned that Ireland’s positions on neutrality and defence spending have damaged the country’s standing.
“I always get anxious talking about Ukraine in Ireland because I really want Irish people to know that in Brussels, Ireland is not viewed as a credible voice, as a serious voice on security and defence,” he said.
Ireland is talking about buying a towed sonar array to track Russian submarines “interfering with our undersea cables, but on some days, we don’t have enough sailors even to put a ship to sea. So, what are we going to tow this sonar array with?”
Before the Ukraine crisis, few other EU states took any notice of Ireland’s attitudes on defence and neutrality, he said: “There was a lot of ignorance about the Irish situation before Ukraine. We were out on the western seaboard, we didn’t matter.”
Since then, however, it has become clear to other EU states that the United Kingdom “takes care” of Ireland’s security and defence: “If there’s a Russian fighter that buzzes by Irish airspace, it’s RAF jets that are scrambled to meet them,” he said.
Meanwhile, trust in democracy has fallen significantly over the last 25 years across western countries because of voters’ “lack of faith” in traditional political parties’ ability to tackle problems, former minister for Europe Lucinda Creighton said.
Scandals in nearly all western countries have led to “an erosion of trust in the consensus around the political order”, the former Fine Gael TD said.
Traditional centre-left and centre-right political parties have “struggled to capture the attention of younger voters” and have been unable to use social media tools to connect with them, unlike populist parties.
Blue-collar and middle-class workers “just don’t have the same hope and positivity and sense of opportunity that they might have done in the past”, leading to a lack of faith in the liberal order, she went on.
Equally, populist or right-wing parties in Poland, Germany, France and elsewhere have successfully “adopted quite radical left-wing policies, but coupled them with some right-wing narratives”, she said.
