Irish Examiner View: Power struggle for the final frontier will put pressure on Irish neutrality

Astropolitics will be an important topic in the second half of this century

Arianespace's Ariane 5 rocket lifts off at Europe's Spaceport, the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. Commercial companies are believed to be looking at remote locations along the south and west coast of Ireland as possible sites for a launchpad. Picture: NASA via AP

Much attention has been given to the threat to Ireland in its position as the jumping-off point for transatlantic digital connectivity between Europe and the US. 

It is estimated that about three-quarters of all cables in the northern hemisphere pass through or near Irish waters, carrying 97% of global communications, including financial transactions, business operations, and everyday internet access.

Given Russia’s naval manoeuvres on the edge of Irish-controlled waters and the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, it is understandable that Nato would consider us a legitimate sphere of interest even though we are not part of that organisation and are unlikely ever to be so without contentious constitutional reform.

Surprisingly there has been, so far, little debate about suggestions that the Republic could be an “ideal launching site” for a spaceport and that it is of “paramount importance” that the State support such an investment.

Retired Brigadier General Peter O’Halloran said commercial companies are looking at remote locations along the south and west coast as possible sites for a launchpad, and pointed to enhanced European strategies for space security and defence.

Retired Brigadier General Peter O’Halloran. Picture: Shane O'Neill, SON Photographic

Europe is years behind the big geopolitical players — China, the US, Russia, and to a lesser extent India — who are targeting space as a final frontier for colonisation and exploitation. And in a century when nation states and corporations will take their earthly conflicts and competition into the skies, there is the potential for immense repercussions here on Earth.

In a new book, How Power and Politics in Space Will Change Our World, geographer and journalist Tim Marshall recounts how the militaries of each of the superpowers have a “space force” that provides war-fighting capabilities on land, sea, and air. All are increasing their abilities to attack and defend the satellites that enable those functions.

For the rest of us, and that includes Europe, there is the option of realigning into “space blocs”, says Marshall. Whatever Ireland’s future, it seems that any involvement will put a target on the Republic for bad actors and, at the very least, add further pressures to the debate on how to preserve neutrality in an increasingly fractured world.

Astropolitics will be as much of a topic in the second half of this century as climate change has become in the first. 

Ireland has had a long connection with astronomy and once housed the most powerful telescope on Earth, the Leviathan of Parsonstown, at Birr Castle. 

We will need to be very clear-sighted about our policies for the 21st century. And much sooner than we might imagine.