“I do not believe that Putin’s ambitions will stop at Ukraine. This is our war too and it’s not just happening on Ukraine’s territory. It’s happening all around us, in our seas, and in the form of physical and cyber attacks.
“The people in Ukraine are fighting, sacrificing their lives for European values. Fighting for democracy, liberty and the rule of law.
“The least we can do is provide them with the tools they need to defend their country and their homes – and progress EU accession negotiations as quickly as possible.”
Stirring stuff indeed from Taoiseach Leo Varadkar this week at the Congress of the European People’s Party – basically, the pre-election ardfheis of the group to which Fine Gael is affiliated – placing Ireland very much in the mainstream of European opinion about the war in Ukraine and the threat posed to the EU by a revanchist Russia.
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But while Ireland talks a good game abroad, at home there is no real change in its attitude to defence. It remains somebody else’s job to defend Ireland; meanwhile, we continue to be fond of lecturing others about virtues of peace and neutrality. That is increasingly recognised abroad for the hypocrisy it is.
In the past two weeks I have spoken at length to two senior members of the Government about this, both highly engaged at EU level. Both say the same thing: the EU is preparing for war
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen laid out in stark terms the direction that the EU is likely to take at the EPPs’s Bucharest boondoggle. “We need to move fast,” she said. “The threat of war may not be imminent, but it is not impossible. The risks of war should not be overblown, but they should be prepared for ... That means turbocharging our defence industrial capacity in the next five years.”
Von der Leyen’s speech is the latest signpost to an enormous shift in EU thinking and priorities. And because being an integral part of the EU is the single most important part of Irish foreign and economic policy, this is a big deal for Ireland. It goes entirely unremarked upon here, as if all this has very little at all to do with us. But it does.
In the past two weeks I have spoken at length to two senior members of the Government about this, both highly engaged at EU level. Both say the same thing: the EU is preparing for war. We, meanwhile, are sailing blithely on, without a care in the world, happy to stick our heads in the sand and let someone else defend us, while planning to spend our giant budget surpluses. “Disconnect” is the word they repeatedly used. It seems apt.
The EU and the countries that make it up are not doing any of this in secret. They are talking very openly about it to their electorates, in the knowledge that money spent on upgrading their militaries is money that can’t then be spent on other things that voters like, such as public services and tax cuts.
This week, the Commission unveiled its plan to shift the European defence industry on to what is essentially a war footing, producing armaments for the EU’s – and Ukraine’s – defence quicker and more efficiently. It will take time, but the political will, and the budget, are there.
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In Germany, as Derek Scally explained on the In the News podcast with Sorcha Pollak during the week, the government has completely revised its defence posture and is now overtly preparing for war – in order to deter it. Boris Pistorius, the German defence minister, has a term for it: “kriegstüchtig”. “It’s about being able to go to war so we don’t have to go to war,” Pistorius said.
In the EU member states of central and eastern Europe, the issue has an immediacy and menace that is utterly unappreciated here. Poland, the Baltic Republics, Finland and others are facing up to the threat they feel that Russia poses in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.
If Putin does not lose in Ukraine – and the likelihood that he won’t is even greater than it was a year ago – then there is a real and justified fear that he will test Nato’s mutual defence pact with an attack on one of these countries.
Europe has between three and five years before the Kremlin recovers from Ukraine and poses a serious and immediate military threat to the Baltics, Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas said recently. She is urging fellow EU and Nato countries to quicken their pace of rearmament.
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The threat of another Russian invasion will be greatly exacerbated if Donald Trump wins in November. Trump has already undermined the Nato guarantee that the US would come to the aid of any member attacked by Russia. It is this confluence of an emboldened and militarily aggressive Russia, and an America that may turn away from its historic security guarantees to Europe, that is prompting the EU defence revolution.
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Which brings us back to Ireland’s role in this. Despite fine promises about investment in the Defence Forces and “conversations” about neutrality last year, the pace remains pedestrian and the ambitions limited. Undersea cables, Irish airspace and territorial waters remain undefended – or rather, defended by someone else (ie Nato). Ireland plans to increase military spending to €1.5 billion a year by 2028, a fraction of the 2 per cent of GDP required of Nato members. The bogeyman of Nato membership, much beloved of the pro-neutrality lobby, is a joke. Micheál Martin might as well seek to join the Cork senior hurling team. They wouldn’t have him either.
Meanwhile, the Government this week decided to nominate the Defence Forces chief of staff Lieut Gen Seán Clancy to head the EU’s Military Committee, its highest military body. In fairness to us, we really have some neck. There is literally no end to our chutzpah on this stuff.
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