Taoiseach Micheál Martin furrowed his brow and gave his best concerned priest look to the phalanx of cameras and microphones facing him as he entered the summit of EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday.
“The people of Europe find it incomprehensible that Europe does not seem to be in a position to [put] pressure on Israel and leverage on Israel to stop this war in Gaza,” he told reporters.
The EU needs to “support the Palestinians and put pressure on Israel” to stop the “continuing slaughter of children and innocent civilians”, he said.
Ireland “would be seeking some mechanisms to ensure that this war stops and that humanitarian aid gets into Gaza”, Martin added.
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Martin seemed genuinely exasperated at the EU’s inability to agree a stronger position on Gaza and the blockade that has caused a humanitarian crisis in the enclave.
Ireland and several other EU countries want to take some action against Israel, such as suspending the free-trade agreement, in a bid to pressure the Israeli government of Binyamin Netanyahu to cease attacks and allow sufficient humanitarian aid into Gaza. But Israel’s supporters in the EU won’t let that happen.
[ Situation in Gaza is ‘abhorrent and unbearable’, Ursula von der Leyen saysOpens in new window ]
Later, inside the summit venue, EU leaders would continue the wrangling about Israel’s trade agreement that had tied officials up in knots for days before the summit. As expected the conclusions spoke about the “dire” humanitarian situation in Gaza; but no further action was agreed.
The truth, as Martin surely knew on his way in, was that nothing the EU said or did was going to make much difference to the people of Gaza.
It’s not just that the EU is unable to find a common position, though that is noteworthy in itself. Rather, it’s that the whole way that international relations are conducted is changing.
An age in which the soft power of diplomacy, international law and cultural clout mattered is giving way to the hard reality that military might – and the will to use it – is what matters.
The most consequential thing to happen this week was not the EU’s painful deliberations about what it should or shouldn’t say about Gaza. It was when seven US Air Force B-2 stealth bombers dropped 14 “bunker-buster” bombs, each weighing more than 13.5 tonnes, on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
This is the world that Donald Trump is remaking. The voice of the EU, and the voice of Ireland, is becoming harder to hear in it.
Barely a hundred miles away, 24 hours before the EU leaders sat down together, the leaders of the world’s most important military alliance were accommodating themselves to this new reality.
After years of allowing their military strength and capacity to wither, Nato countries are embarking on the biggest build-up of forces that Europe has seen since before the second World War.
[ Ireland backs €150bn defence plan as EU moves to rearmOpens in new window ]
It is prompted by two things: the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the US president’s unwillingness to continue American security guarantees to Europe unless Europe pays more for its own defence.
So on Wednesday, Nato leaders agreed to push annual spending on defence of 5 per cent of national income by 2035 – a collectively gargantuan sum that will mean most countries will more than double their defence budgets.
What this will mean on the ground is not yet clear. But Nato chief Mark Rutte said it would amount to a five-fold increase in the alliance’s air defences and would also add thousands more tanks and armoured vehicles to its arsenals.
The EU has got to take on aspects of hard power. Some form of genuinely collective defence ... including a European army of a quarter of a million troops, mainly on the eastern borders
— John O'Brennan
All this will be paid for with money that could otherwise be spent on other things: public services, welfare, productivity-enhancing infrastructure, tax cuts. And politicians would prefer to be spending on those things; they are, after all, more popular with voters. But they are facing a changed world.
It is a world to which the EU – and by extension Ireland – seem unsuited. We are more jaw-jaw than war-war, but the tide is firmly in the other direction.
“You could argue that we are seeing the complete breakdown of the rules-based international order that has been there since 1945,” says John O’Brennan, professor of European politics at Maynooth University.
“The EU was very comfortable with that world. In fact, for a long time, the world was becoming more like the EU – more co-operation, more agreement between countries, an emphasis on trade bringing countries together. Now that’s in retreat. The US and China want a world dominated by great powers.”
How does the EU respond to this?
“The EU has got to take on aspects of hard power,” says O’Brennan. “Some form of genuinely collective defence ... including a European army of a quarter of a million troops, mainly on the eastern borders.”
He stresses that this is likely to be on an opt-in basis, and Ireland will not or could not be forced to join. But he thinks it is evitable; a changed world makes it so.
From one perspective, the EU’s weakness when it comes to hard power has always been there. The union was, says the former diplomat Rory Montgomery – who served, among other posts, as Ireland’s ambassador to the EU – “built for legislating and making budgets”.
The bloc’s double standards on Ukraine and Gaza have destroyed its credibility
— Aidan Regan
On foreign policy, he says, the bloc’s clout, despite recent reforms and initiatives, is “not remotely on a par with its economic strength”.
That weakness, he agrees, is much more glaring now.
For Ireland, says Montgomery, our foreign policy “has never really wanted or had to take account of the realities of hard power – what our President says reflects how many people feel. But, like it or not, it’s a reality.”
“We talk about our closeness to the US. In some ways it’s true. But what is the main vector of US engagement with Europe? It’s Nato.”
UCD professor of political economy Aidan Regan says that we are at a “transformative point in history.”
“It’s power politics now,” he says.
For Regan, however, the EU is at fault for not using its soft power to work against Trump’s transformation of the world. For example, he says, the EU’s position on Gaza, where it has declined to use the power it has on trade by suspending ties with Israel, is “shameful”.
The bloc’s “double standards” on Ukraine and Gaza, he says, have destroyed its credibility. As a result, the idea of the EU as a champion of liberal values and the rules-based world order now faces a “legitimacy crisis”.
“The EU is the author of its own weakening,” says Regan.
Doesn’t that mean that Ireland’s voice in the world is also diminished? Not so, he says.
“I actually think that Ireland’s credibility has increased,” Regan says, because of the country’s outspoken position in support of the Palestinians. He references, approvingly, Martin’s obvious frustration with the EU’s position on Gaza in Brussels.
“In North Africa, in the global south, Ireland’s position has been noticed and people appreciate it. These are the countries that will matter in the future. There is great disappointment about the EU. But Ireland’s credibility has increased.”
O’Brennan and several others who spoke privately in Brussels and Dublin this week have a less optimistic assessment of the future.
“We’re going into terrain that is going to be uncomfortable for Ireland,” he says. “We should start thinking about that now.”
