Declan Power: Ireland must develop security partnerships and leverage existing arrangements

Despite accusations levelled at panellists on the consultative forums, no one is advocating that we join Nato, writes Declan Power

Badges of staff members in a Nato aircraft. Ireland can pursue security partnerships without the need to join Nato. Picture: Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images

Had most of the protesters at the consultative forums this week decided to stay around for the modules that focused on tangible security challenges facing Ireland, they might have been able to learn something.

The fact of the matter is, despite the accusations levelled at all of us who are panellists on these consultative forums, no one is advocating that we join Nato, myself included, and I have worked closely with them on a number of occasions.

However, many of us who have a professional relationship with security and defence matters would agree that we do need to have a clearer and more focused relationship with a variety of organisations and states, including Nato, in order to address our security needs.

It is now apparent to anyone not encumbered by ideological antipathy that Ireland cannot go it alone on security matters.

A continuing theme of the forums that keeps emerging from differing quarters is the need for Ireland to develop or leverage existing arrangements to share resources and develop partnerships to address security needs in areas such as undersea infrastructure protection, air security, protection against disinformation, and intelligence sharing.

Not to do so would be a willfully negligent act in our responsibilities to ourselves and our partner nations.

Some critics of the forum process claim it to be undemocratic and indeed our President spoke of a “dangerous drift” towards Nato. The reality, however, and somewhat incongruously, is to be found in the words of the late CJ Haughey: “In thinking about our defence policies, we should not resort either to emotionalism or ideology, but rather should calmly and realistically consider every aspect from the point of view of our own fundamental interests.”

This quote is to be found in Conor Gallagher’s book, Is Ireland Neutral? Some of the people protesting and posturing recently should read it, even if just to see what the reality has been about Irish neutrality since its inception as a policy in the Second World War.

The fact of the matter is neutrality is a policy created to serve the twin needs of Ireland to proclaim its independence in course of action and to allow us to pursue a route to keeping the nation safe in a time of insecurity and conflict.

Neither Éamon de Valera nor Haughey nor many other Irish taoisigh considered it anything other than a means to an end and thus it would be shaped as such — sometimes to such a degree that it would be almost unrecognisable from what any dictionary definition or listing in the Hague Conventions would illustrate it as.

Haughey, the great pragmatist himself, summed up neutrality thus: “That policy must be clearly stated and based on the changing international environment.”

The point being here, beware of those well-intentioned people who try to tell you the solution to all of this is to put neutrality in the Constitution.

I’ll be honest here, I was never a fan of the absolutist approach to neutrality that would put it in the Constitution.

It would completely hamstring us in ways we cannot anticipate, which is why I get Haughey’s approach to it and why I believe we need to amend our triple lock mechanism which allows totalitarian states such as China and Russia to have a veto on Irish troop deployments on UN missions.

If Haughey was still around he’d have taken note of the changing environment and adjusted the triple lock to restore Irish primacy in the deployment of our troops.

The short answer emerging from the forums so far is that there are a variety of means and mechanisms already in play that mean we can continue to take independent courses of action, but we can also develop and pursue security partnerships and sharing arrangements without the need to have referendums or join military alliances such as Nato.

From the grave, Haughey reminds us we need to keep things flexible and agile to keep in line with the “ever changing international environment”. That means, we don’t make the mistake, as we’ve done so many times before, of tinkering around with the Constitution.

During the week, we have heard a variety of discussions that tell us no matter how much we fund our Defence Forces, we’ll never be able to provide for our own security unilaterally. However, we’ve also learned that the other neutrals in the EU, Austria and Malta, face similar challenges. 

Austria, while remaining neutral, is involved at the higher levels of three separate Nato initiatives and schemes. Malta has boosted its meagre defence assets through a significant injection of EU money.

Even Switzerland, a formidable military entity in its own right, has entered partnerships with both Nato and the EU relating to air security and sanctions on Russia.

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We need to work with what we have. We are members of Partnership for Peace and so can access the Nato system to benefit from knowledge, equipment, and training without having to join it.

The EU’s Permanent Structured Cooperation (Pesco) system allows us to engage in “min-lateralism” with clusters of smaller EU states to share security tasks or defence assets. We can do all of this without having to change our policies or give up our neutrality.

We just need to recognise the threats that pertain to us and then start using the organisations of which we are already part.

• Declan Power is an independent security and defence analyst, author of ‘Siege at Jadotville’, and has served with the UN in Africa and the Middle East.