As a Russian diplomat is expelled from Dublin…
Is Ireland’s stance on neutrality simply outdated, cowardly ... and reckless?
IT was apparently the first poison gas attack in Europe since World War II, but it didn’t take place on a battlefield or against a major military installation. It was in an shopping centre in England in Salisbury, on a busy, funfilled Saturday, with families and shoppers enjoying a day off, buying clothes and having lunches and relaxing drinks.
Former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were among the shoppers, until they were found on a street bench overcome by poison, almost certainly administered by the Russian government. Skripal was targeted by the Russians because he’d turned double agent for the British. In their current unforgiving mood, the Russian government apparently wanted to make an example of him, with a slow working deadly poison.
It was a brazen, reckless attack, carried out on foreign soil and with no regard for bystanders or first responders: the policeman who came to their aid was also poisoned. ‘We can get you no matter where you go or where you hide,’ was the message, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, including the British government.
It was the same with the horrible polonium attack on Alexander Litvinenko, another former Russian agent, poisoned at a London hotel in 2006. In the same week, my wife’s family were staying in the same hotel as Litvinenko.
This is how close these wanton attacks come to the general public and to those we know and love.
IN 2006, the British government was regarded as weak in its response to this, just as it has been weak about the arrival of dodgy Russian money into the London property and investment market, or about the intrusion into UK airspace of Russian war planes, testing the limits of British patience and passivity.
However, since the Salisbury attack, the British have acted forcefully, as has the European Union, and both have expelled dozens of Russian diplomats. The US has done likewise, despite the perception that President Trump has been too personally tolerant of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Everyone is getting on board, therefore, to send a strong signal to a Russia that has gradually become an international menace, fomenting war in the Ukraine and annexing Crimea, generating cyber attacks on European computer systems and managing to poison people in the heart of middle England.
It is clear that a bitter and vengeful Putin appears determined to test the West and its defences, as he seeks to restore the pride and sinister power of the Soviet era. Full-scale dry run invasions of Western Europe have been carried out as ‘military manoeuvres’ and Russia’s Syrian involvement has served as a brutal training ground for its generals, after which they can be moved towards the Ukraine and other East European target zones.
Enough is enough and if we do not stand up now, as law-abiding democratic countries, then the situation will only get worse. History has shown us that before.
And it has also come close to home, for Ireland. Both our HSE and ESB networks were interfered with by foreign hackers in the past year, most probably by the Russians. Meanwhile, we have clear evidence of Russian spying in Ireland and we also see their ambition to create a much larger embassy complex in Dublin, despite the small number of Russians actually living here.
This is the backdrop to the Taoiseach’s announcement this week that Ireland would join its EU partners in sending a strong signal to the Russians; that we would also expel a Russian diplomat. This is not just a gesture of solidarity with our British friends and allies in the wake of the poisoning attack. It is also a matter of sending a signal about Russian behaviour on all fronts, including possible social media interference in the UK’s Brexit vote and the US Presidential election.
MANY Irish people welcome this act of solidarity, but some question whether it departs from our traditional policy of military neutrality. This, in all honesty, is an antiquated and almost esoteric debate.
We have never been politically neutral about supporting our EU allies. Even during the Cold War, we were always supportive of the democratic West who shared our values and principles. We were especially supportive too of the United States, with which we have deep family, economic and political ties.
Despite our military neutrality, we kept open the stopover and refuelling facilities for the US military at Shannon airport, which increased greatly with the recent US wars in the Middle East. We didn’t support these wars necessarily, such as in Iraq – and we made this clear – but we broadly supported the Americans in their fight against dictatorship and Islamist terror.
If anything, the world has become even more dangerous, and now we too face threats, not just from volatile and expansive States, but also from Islamic terrorism, something that has changed the nature of military threats and which requires constant and wide cooperation at the most sophisticated levels. Such attacks recognise no borders or sovereignties.
Basically, the world is a rapidly changing place, and we cannot rely on the Americans anymore. The US has become disengaged from Europe and believes the European Union should pay for more of our own defence. And so yes, we have to chip in – we cannot stand idly by. We need to stand firm with our EU partners and even, if need be, with Nato. The distinction between the EU and Nato is not as precise as it once was, although we are still a long way away from Nato membership.
This is not a time for fence sitting by Ireland. It’s bad enough that, with Brexit, the UK has left the EU political table. Granted, the UK is still the bulwark of Nato, but there has been a diminution of energies and an unexpected distraction and division. France and Germany should not be left alone to face this Eastern threat. They are our friends, partners and allies.
The first steps away from our strict military neutrality have already been taken. That neutrality after all, is a relic of World War II when we had no appetite for world war or for ‘fighting on the British side’.
Just before Christmas last year, Ireland joined Pesco – the Permanent Structured Co-operation – a treaty-based framework designed to deepen defence co-operation among those EU member states which are ‘capable and willing’.
THE aim of Pesco is to jointly develop defence capabilities and make them available for EU military operations. According to the EU, ‘this will thus enhance the EU’s capacity as an international security partner, contribute to the protection of EU citizens, and maximise the effectiveness of defence spending’.
It is a limited military participation which our defence forces are more than up for and which they feel is the minimum we should do now in an exposed world of Islamic terrorism, nuclear menace and cyber threats.
Far-left TDs Richard Boyd Barrett and Ruth Coppinger tried to mount a legal challenge against us joining Pesco, but this got nowhere, and nor will it. These TDs are the last defenders of strict Irish neutrality but they are largely motivated by a suspicion of what they see as US-led militarism. Some of their concerns might once have been valid, but they are overblown now and unfounded. The world is changing.
The reality is that we are actually shielded by the Western defence capability which we know well would come to our aid if we were brutally attacked. Just look at how the EU has solidly supported us on Brexit and the UK border, for example. It has always been thus, and we have relied on the military intelligence of our EU partners, just as we have not developed a sufficient standard of our own. And this too will have to change.
In terms of defending Ireland, it is interesting that the same politicians who are happy to see us get a free ride on this are the same individuals who think that we should also get free water, free housing and free bin collections. So no wonder they don’t think we
should pay into, or participate in actually defending ourselves
This is not to say that Ireland’s military neutrality and our long history as a country struggling to be independent has not stood for something, and been seen as a valuable asset on the world stage. It has, and I saw it myself when I worked as a young diplomat in the Irish Foreign Ministry back in the late Eighties and early Nineties.
Indeed, it was brought home to me when I sat at the UN in New York and saw how we were generally perceived, which was in a popular way: yes, broadly pro-Western but also non-aligned, and with links to the developing world through former missions and current aid programmes. The understanding was that we didn’t colonise anyone, but were instead struggling with the effects of colonialism ourselves.
Our unique position was epitomised when I sat in the Ireland seat which, for alphabetical reasons, was located between Iran, Iraq and Israel. None of them were talking to each other, but we were speaking to all three!
However, this was a different era, not so much in terms of these specific countries, but in terms of how the UN General Assembly operated back then, after the fall of communism and in the light of a new euphoric feeling in relation to possible new global cooperation in building democratisation, prosperity and peace.
Since then the world has experienced great danger and new and complicated conflicts, but also increased levels of globalisation and cooperation. We are deeply connected to the outside world now. We are not an isolated island standing apart from world events, as de Valera witnessed when he created our neutrality. World events have come to us.
In this context, standing apart just seems outdated, cowardly and actually selfish. Not to mention reckless, for it is us too who are being threatened – along with our allies. Terror threats come from many sources now, and we can’t always wait for them to come to our soil. Who can forget the heartrending funeral scenes in 2015 of the elderly couple, killed by an Islamic gunman in Tunisia, as the cortege moved alongside the River Shannon in Athlone?
Innocent people, and countries, are being menaced and we have to do our bit. If we cannot afford to build defences ourselves just yet – given our modest military – then let us at least help others to do so.
As a European island, we apparently offer an excellent training ground for the latest in sea and air systems, and drones and surveillance, so let us put that to good use – for all our sakes.
We are in a bigger club now, so we have to pay and play our way. These are dangerous times, and we cannot expect that those dangers won’t come for us. Nor can we simply rely on our friends to look after us when they do.