Irish Examiner view: The next Dáil may face unprecedented questions about defence
As then US president Dwight D Eisenhower made clear in the mid-1950s, the US had never intended to become a permanent bodyguard for Europe. Picture: Ed Clark/Time Life/Getty
With the conflict between Russia and Ukraine reaching new levels following drone attacks on Moscow, and the attempts to bring peace to Gaza at an impasse despite a flicker of hope, the future of Western defence has not been a big ticket item at the Democrat Convention in Chicago.
While that has largely been a coronation for Kamala Harris, a teary valediction for the Biden years, and a reminder of the star quality of Michelle Obama, little time has been spent on one of the major questions facing the next administration.
The last transition between presidents saw a scuttle away from Afghanistan by the Americans and their allies in Britain which did democracies scant credit. The next is likely to be faced with renewed pressures to broker deals in these two major troublespots and hold European countries to account over promises to defend their own borders.
When leaders gathered in Washington last month to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of Nato, newspapers and columnists in the US were quick to remind everyone of the words of its first supreme commander, Dwight D Eisenhower, who was later to become, like Ulysses S Grant before him, a two-term Republican president.
Eisenhower felt that his responsibility was to get Europeans “back on their military feet”. In 1951, he wrote:
Some 90,000 US troops comprise some 20% of the Nato forces stationed in Europe in a high state of readiness. The US contributes nearly two-thirds of allied military spending overall.
The Pax Americana, if it can any longer be called that, comes at a high price. Countries which do not pull their weight, while simultaneously providing social security nets for their citizens which are unknown in the United States, are a source of resentment in domestic politics on the other side of the Atlantic.
Strategists argue that challenges are growing from China, North Korea, and Iran and will need greater scrutiny than Europe. News emerged this week that US president Biden had approved a highly classified plan to focus deterrent strategy on China’s rapid expansion of its nuclear arsenal.
Most European leaders understand that they need to contribute more and, as one of the richest nations in the EU, the gaze is going to fall upon Ireland to pay more of its way in some form, even if that takes a different shape to contributing militarily.
Although it was never foreseen that America would become a permanent bodyguard for the likes of Berlin and Brussels, extricating themselves from this relationship in an era of threat unknown since the height of the Cold War will become more difficult than its citizens envisage.
Nato currently consists of 32 allies. Only four members of the EU, of which Ireland is one, are not in membership.
We, like our friends in the US, have an election within 12 months. With our ever-increasing participation in foreign affairs, the next government and the Dáil may have unprecedented questions to answer about how we assist in the future.
Keen primatologists will have noticed that orangutans, among the most beloved of the great apes, have been having a moment.
The story that breastfeeding mothers had been enlisted by Dublin Zoo to show a female named Mujur how it is done has, to use the common parlance, gone viral.
Mujur, a 19-year-old female, had failed to bond with either of her previous infants, who died in 2019 and 2022, so help was called in from the National Maternity Hospital’s breastfeeding team, who organised a roster of 30 nursing mothers as role models.
The orangutan house was closed while the mothers breastfed their own infants, with Mujur watching through the glass and “mirroring some of their actions”, said the zoo.
Mujur did not hold the infant correctly, the zoo said, and it intervened to commence bottle feeding.
Dublin has some previous form in gaining headlines for its orangutan programme, using touchscreen images — dubbed a Tinder app for apes — to gauge the potential attraction of possible breeding partners. The model in this prototype was Sibu, a 45-year-old male, who died this year. He was the father of Mujur’s new baby.
Meanwhile, a plan to use orangutans in an ambassadorial role to help establish Malaysia’s bona fides as a producer of sustainable palm-oil exports has been dropped after criticism from conservation groups.
The idea was to send the apes to countries that purchased Malaysian palm oil, so as to allay concerns about the product’s environmental footprint. Of the country’s GDP, 5% is based on the product, but critics say the industry has contributed to species loss. That is something David Attenborough will, no doubt, comment on in his new Netflix series on “the people of the forest”.
What will the world be like for our children?
It’s something we have all wondered with differing results, depending on the half measures of the proverbial glass in front of us.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Review has been playing this game to celebrate its 125th anniversary.
And given that MIT lists some of the biggest brains on the planet among its alumni — Richard Feynman of the Manhattan Project, Ivan Getting, the man who invented the GPS system, the international diplomat Kofi Annan, spacewalker Buzz Aldrin — then perhaps we should pay attention.
In a letter to the future, MIT tells children born this week: “You have been born into an era of intelligent machines.
“They have watched over you almost since your conception. They let your parents listen in on your tiny heartbeat, track your gestation on an app, and post your sonogram on social media.
“Well before you were born, you were known to the algorithm.”
Shakespeare’s melancholic ‘Seven Ages’ monologue in the play As You Like It begins with the famous words: “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.”
But the scientists and experts gathered for an update make it clear that they think we will be playing a subsidiary role in the future.
Lifespans will extend. “With a bit of luck and the right genes, you might see the next 125 years”, say the forecasters.
And humankind might benefit from personal computers being implanted into our bodies, becoming more responsive, more intimate, “less like a tool and more like a companion”.
What you do when you fall out with your companion, who also happens to be your teacher, your social guide, your vehicle driver, your therapist, your doctor, your home designer, is a matter unexplained. Breaking up with a friend is sad; falling out with your AI may mean the loss of your identity and your memories.
Amidst these insights in to the future, which are both amusing and chilling, is one which suggests that technological advances will allow us all to become walking, talking advertisements.
Renting out live digital display space on our bodies may sound far-fetched, but given the ubiquity of the Instagram generation and the increasing role of “influencers”, who would bet against it?
And with that comes a caveat. Social-media influencers were one of the biggest sources of complaints to Ireland’s Advertising Standards Authority last year, featuring in 20% of the submissions made to the regulatory watchdog. This compares to 7% in 2022 and 5% in 2021.
Being bombarded by advertising messages on your phone, television screen, or newspaper can be irritating, but at least they can be turned off or aside.
Having them hold a conversation with you on the train, or as you walk along the street, is a different, and grisly, order of magnitude. To which the only appropriate response is that digital putdown of the 1970s: “Beam me up, Scotty.”
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