Pat Leahy: War in Ukraine will change Irish politics

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia is an event that will alter the course of history and is unlikely to leave any of us untouched. How do we begin to process and interrogate the meaning and consequences of the past 10 days? First, look to recent history. This is the fourth enormous change in the past two decades or so.

The first came with the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11th, 2001, which heralded two decades of conflict between the West and radical Islam, brought untold human suffering and ultimately inflicted enormous damage on the US, undermining its ability to intervene around the world.

Its final act was the chaotic withdrawal of the US from Afghanistan last summer and the abandonment of its people to the Taliban. But despite the history-making nature of these events, they had little effect on Irish politics.

The second was the financial crash of 2008, and the age of austerity that followed in Western economies and was especially acute in Ireland. The response of many European policymakers to the near collapse of the global financial system and the deep recession that followed – now disavowed by many of them – translated the economic reverses into political upheaval, decimating many established parties and exchanging stability for volatility around the continent.

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In Ireland it ended the old political order that had been established for nearly a century by scything down first Fianna Fáil and then Fine Gael, halving their combined support, and – eventually – forcing them to share power in order to keep it. That process has yet to see its next phase, but it is clear that even when prosperity returned, the old political allegiances did not.

Climate change

The third change is not an event, but a process, and may yet turn out to be more significant than the first two. It is the realisation that climate change will profoundly affect our societies in the years to come. This is happening in two ways.

Firstly the changes in our natural environment – in the weather we experience, the biodiversity we enjoy and the agriculture these enable – will not leave our everyday lives untouched. For some people who are affected by extreme weather events and other manifestations of a changing climate, that impact will be profound.

Secondly, our society will be affected – perhaps more immediately – by the measures now taken by governments to moderate global warming in the coming decades. The planned rise in fuel prices, the decarbonisation of industry and society, the reorganisation of work, transport, agriculture and home-heating – all these will mean changes in how we live our lives.

They will not be popular with everyone, to put it mildly. And those changes, stemming from policy decisions, will have political fallout. The effects of all this have only started to make themselves felt in Irish politics.

Consequences

The consequences of Russia’s invasion will be every bit as unpredictable as the events and processes described above. But I think it is safe to conclude that the following is likely:

1: Irish neutrality, as we have known it, is unlikely to survive the crisis. Europe is rearming and reorganising its defence plans with an urgency comparable to the late 1930s, and moves to establish a coherent and working European defence will be discussed as early as next week by EU leaders at a summit in Versailles.

Nato will remain the bedrock of European defence against Russia, but the EU will be a more important part than ever before, and now Ireland must decide whether it will play a role in this. We either definitively take part in defending the EU militarily or we don't: either way the previous nod-and-wink approach has run out of road.

2: The reminder that the world can be a dangerous and malevolent place will beget a new seriousness in national and European politics. There will be less time and space for the trivial. Nowhere will this be more evident than the coming debates – including potentially a constitutional referendum – on neutrality and defence.

Heretofore considered a political irrelevance, this issue will now be at the very central of government decision-making and political contention. This will be difficult for Fianna Fáil, which nurtures within its ranks many old-style adherents of traditional neutrality. It will be more difficult still for Sinn Féin which (though it obviously does not eschew violence for political ends in all circumstances) is also a long-time opponent of a common EU defence .

Expect sharper dividing lines in domestic politics, with a greater role being played by international affairs and the attitudes of the parties to them. EU politics will become more important: perhaps MEPs like Mick Wallace and Clare Daly might have a harder job being re-elected now. In the Dáil on Thursday Leo Varadkar drew the lines clearly: Our political system and the values of liberal democracy that underpin it are "Western" values, he said. We need to defend that system. The Solidarity/People-Before-Profit TD Paul Murphy responded on Twitter with repeated vomiting emojis.

Lots of people in this country might have difficulties with the West and its behaviour in recent decades in places like the Middle East and Africa. But I suspect given the choice between Western liberal democracy and Russian (or Chinese, for that matter) totalitarianism, they won't see equivalence between the two.

3: The current economic challenges of inflation are likely to intensify, at least in the short-term. After that a more uncertain world and the economic volatility it presents will only heighten the need for a prudent domestic policy which prioritises debt reduction, public spending discipline and careful investment. Solving every political problem by throwing money at it is an approach better suited to less threatening times.