Dorcha Lee: Defence Forces still languishing in the last chance saloon

An ineffective Defence Forces has dire implications for our sovereignty and our responsibility to international security, writes Dorcha Lee

Wed, 22 Feb, 2023 - 20:00

Dorcha Lee

Life can be very cruel for frogs. Place them in a pot of hot water and they will, I am told, leap free and scarper off. Place them in a pot of cold water and heat slowly, there will be no reaction, until they are well and truly cooked. This is an apt analogy for where the Defence Forces are right now. Everyone knows that the Defence Forces are in decline and their capabilities withering away steadily. But the decline was so subtle it never became the top political issue it should have been, until the damage was done.

Writing in the Irish Examiner in June 2021, I pointed out that the Defence Forces was in the last chance saloon. The army had lost the means to function in a modern conflict zone, other than in very limited peace support operations. The air corps had no jet interceptor capability to protect our skies, and the naval service had not got a single warship capable of naval combat. The reserve was down, from 15,000 personnel in 1980 to around 1,700 men and women, leaving the country with no capacity to expand in time of emergency. I also pointed out that the then rate of decline in defence spending was 0.035% per annum, leaving zero funding for defence by 2028.

Two recent articles by the Irish Examiner’s Defence Correspondent, Sean O’Riordan, on the state of the Defence Forces, show that the situation has clearly got worse. The permanent Defence Forces has fallen an extra 400 and is now below 8,000 personnel.

Back in mid-2021, the options for the Government were stark. Stand down the Defence Forces and open the country to unknown risk, or have a massive increase in defence spending to salvage what we can of our sovereignty. The Commission on the Defence Forces was set up and its detailed implementation action plan is expected to be published shortly. Nevertheless, before the commission report was published, it was already superseded by the Russian re-invasion of Ukraine.

War in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine has changed the geopolitical situation in Europe. By supporting Ukraine with military protective equipment, fuel for their fighting vehicles, and combat rations for their troops, we have provided significant and practical support to a beleaguered country in time of war. True, like Austria and Hungary, we have not provided lethal weapons to the Ukrainians, although some of our citizens feel we should.

Within days of the invasion, Finnish president Sauli Niinistö went to Washington, with Sweden’s approval, to discuss security arrangements with president Biden. Within weeks of the invasion, Austrian chancellor Karl Nehammer visited president Putin in Moscow, officially to urge an end to the Russian invasion. In doing so, he inadvertently reminded everyone that Austrian constitutional neutrality was a precondition imposed by the USSR to withdraw its forces from Austria in 1955, a key necessity for that country to become independent. If Russia loses the war in Ukraine, will Austria too, in time, consider joining Nato?

However, the subsequent ‘defection’ of neutral/non-aligned Sweden and Finland to the Nato camp came as a shock. Ratification of both countries’ applications for membership of the alliance is expected after the Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections on May 14. Before 2023 is over, the neutral four — Austria, Finland, Ireland, and Sweden — which dominated UN peacekeeping through decades of the Cold War will be no more.

The war in Ukraine should feature in the ongoing debate on Irish neutrality.

If it widens into a Nato-Russia war, the weak link in Nato defence is the vulnerability of the transatlantic cables off the west coast of Ireland. Russia has the capability of seriously disrupting communications between Europe and North America.

Nato will secure its transatlantic communications whether Ireland is neutral or not. Some Nato officials resent the near total abdication of our responsibility to international security by allowing the catastrophic decline in our defence capabilities to happen. We have been described as a “free-loading Celtic nation on the east coast of the North Atlantic”.

About this time of year, I review my own 10-point ‘threat analysis’ to the State. I start by putting invasion at the bottom, separating it out from climate change, which has been steadily rising over the past decade. However, the latest reports on world climate show that we are approaching the tipping point, where climate change is irreversible, at a much faster rate. Within the lifetime of our children, climate change will unleash resource wars as the planet loses its ability to feed the world’s population. This makes Ireland, with its huge food producing potential, a far more attractive target.

Without an effective Defence Forces to act as a deterrent, we are entirely vulnerable.