Irish Examiner view: 'Strength through unity' must have substance
Europe has demonstrated what collective action can achieve in its sustained support for Ukraine.
When EU foreign ministers gather in Wicklow next week, there will be no shortage of crises demanding their attention.
Ukraine remains locked in a war now well into its fifth year.
Gaza is enduring a humanitarian catastrophe, while conditions in the West Bank continue to deteriorate.
Lebanon remains precarious.
The conflict involving Iran and the US has destabilised the Gulf and threatened freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.
All are explicitly on the agenda for the two-day informal meeting of EU foreign ministers, known as the Gymnich, hosted under Ireland’s presidency of the Council of the European Union.
Yet behind those individual crises sits a larger question, and perhaps the most important one confronting the ministers arriving in Wicklow: What kind of geopolitical actor does Europe actually intend to be?
The EU represents almost 450m people and one of the largest economies on earth.
It possesses enormous diplomatic, commercial, and regulatory power.
Yet its economic weight has not translated into equivalent political influence.
Europe has demonstrated what collective action can achieve in its sustained support for Ukraine.
But elsewhere, most painfully in Gaza, the gap between European declarations and European action has often been glaring.
Even as decisions taken in Washington reverberate through European economies and societies, the continent can appear condemned to reacting to events rather than shaping them.
This is not simply a question of Europe becoming more militarily assertive.
Nor should greater European autonomy mean abandoning the transatlantic relationship.
It is about developing the confidence and cohesion necessary to defend European interests and the international principles Europe repeatedly invokes.
Ireland has an unusual opportunity to help advance that conversation.
The Gymnich will be chaired by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and, as an informal gathering, will produce no formal conclusions.
But its purpose is precisely to allow ministers to speak more strategically and openly than the normal machinery of European diplomacy permits.
Ireland, as holder of the EU presidency, has a role in shaping those discussions.
Our presidency has adopted the phrase “Ní neart go cur le chéile — strength through unity.”
It is an admirable slogan.
Next week’s gathering provides an opportunity to give it substance.
Ireland has long invested heavily in multilateralism, international law, and the idea that smaller countries are safer in a world governed by rules rather than raw power.
But multilateralism cannot survive on declarations alone. Institutions retain relevance only for as long as they demonstrate an ability to influence events.
The world is becoming more transactional, more volatile, and increasingly governed by competing centres of power.
Europe cannot control all of those forces.
But neither should a union of its size and influence be content merely to observe them.
The question in Wicklow should therefore extend beyond what Europe thinks about Ukraine, Gaza, or Iran.
It should be what Europe is prepared to do about them.
Having failed to force Iran’s capitulation through six months of war, the US has turned again to a familiar weapon.
Washington this week announced what treasury secretary Scott Bessent described, with troubling triumphalism, as an “economic onslaught” against Iran.
Almost 60 individuals, companies, and vessels have been targeted, while other countries are being warned that continued business with Tehran could ultimately cost them access to the dollar-based financial system.
The stated target is the Iranian regime.
The inevitable casualties will include ordinary Iranians.
Food inflation reached 128% year-on-year in July.
Families are already cutting fruit and protein from their diets, while unemployment and currency depreciation have made even basic goods increasingly unaffordable.
Further restrictions threaten trade in rice, tea, and pharmaceuticals despite formal humanitarian exemptions.
This is not an argument for absolving Tehran.
Iran’s repression at home, nuclear ambitions, and support for armed groups across the Middle East deserve condemnation and concerted international opposition.
It is an argument for asking what decades of economic punishment have actually achieved.
Iran has lived under varying US sanctions since 1979.
US president Donald Trump’s first “maximum pressure” campaign did not produce Iranian capitulation.
Neither has the latest war.
Iran is badly wounded economically and militarily, yet its government survives and retains considerable capacity to inflict damage beyond its borders.
There is a further danger.
Sanctions can weaken ordinary people while strengthening precisely those forces they are intended to undermine.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards built extensive commercial and sanctions-evasion networks during decades of isolation, increasing their influence over parts of the economy.
Nor has economic pressure historically stopped Tehran supporting Hezbollah and other armed groups.
Isolation can instead reinforce the regime’s argument that Iran is under permanent siege, rewarding hardliners, and making resistance — directly or through regional allies — easier to justify.
And then what? More sanctions provoke greater resistance; greater resistance justifies more sanctions; civilians become poorer and governments become more entrenched.
Economic pressure can have a legitimate place in diplomacy. But punishment without a credible political exit is not diplomacy.
It is simply warfare conducted by other means.
When Spike Jonze released in 2013, the idea seemed melancholy but fantastical: Joaquin Phoenix’s lonely Theodore falls in love with Samantha, an artificial intelligence (AI) operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson.
Now, art looks increasingly like prediction.
In China, relationships with AI companions have become sufficiently commonplace that authorities are restricting them amid concerns over addiction and “emotional dependence”, particularly among young people.
There are obvious benefits to technology capable of providing companionship to people experiencing loneliness or isolation.
But there is a profound difference between technology facilitating human connection and replacing it.
That distinction becomes more urgent as AI grows more convincing, available, and emotionally responsive.
The danger is not some distant science-fiction moment when machines suddenly overwhelm humanity.
It is the quieter possibility that we gradually surrender parts of human life to them.
China has recognised that risk.
Others, including Europe, should pay attention.
AI is evolving too quickly for governments to wait until its social consequences become irreversible before deciding where the boundaries should lie.
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