LOOSE LIPS SINK ships as the old military saying goes, and in Brussels – with a war raging in Ukraine – there is a sense of fear and trepidation in the air among EU and NATO security officials.
The high-ranking officials who spoke to The Journal are already on edge amid an intensifying focus on their actions in the 16 months since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – mention that you are a journalist wanting to speak about the spectre of European national security and conversations become tighter.
In the halls of the giant grey hulk of the NATO Headquarters, the national delegations refuse to speak on the record – either blankly refusing to converse like Denmark, Finland and Sweden – or opting instead to speak in a mix of hushed off-record whispers and big picture on-message talking points.
It is no different in the giant imposing structure of Le Berlaymont – the EU Commission building in the city centre.
As Ireland faces a potential reimagining of its years-old stance of neutrality The Journal decided to hop on a flight and head an hour and a half from Dublin to the city of diplomacy in Brussels.
There are plenty of Irish accents in the meeting rooms, cafés and the bars of the EU quarter. Many of those voices are in positions of substantial influence – not least on security committees and foreign policy think tanks.
Despite our much-vaunted neutral status at home those Irish accents are on major military committees in organisations like the European Defence Agency (EDA).
The EDA, which works on integration between member states in the context of mutual common defence, declined to provide a spokesperson for this piece. There were other organisation who were more welcoming – but just as long as we left off the recorder and kept the names and agencies of the speakers confidential.
The many diplomats we met – both Irish and other European nationals – were clearly pragmatic power brokers and clever strategic operators.
Things are an awful lot more pragmatic in Brussels where all the diplomats and military officers, regardless of their nationality, speak about Ireland as a partner. They care little of whether Ireland is a neutral state or not.
It is clear from all those discussions that the big aim – across the EU and NATO – is to include Ireland in national security discussions.
It is also clear that what these agencies are doing is establishing a club of like-minded countries and that they want Ireland at least to be in the clubhouse.
But everyone – whether they are American, British, French, Belgian, Slovak or Spanish - stresses repeatedly that they have little concern or care for Ireland’s neutral status. It doesn’t matter as long as Ireland is willing to engage.
Some were aware of the Consultative Forum – it is understood NATO sent officials to Ireland in recent weeks to visit the Government and they will also send a speaker to the forum to participate in discussions.
As one senior EU official involved in the defence sector put it:
“Neutrality doesn’t matter – we work around it. Ireland doesn’t have to do anything it doesn’t want to do. It is important that it is in the tent.”
NATO headquarters is located on the outskirts of the city.
The campus is huge, with intense security measures. The building is compartmentalised, with the media kept in the public area away from the meetings.
When we visited, the alliance was in the middle of a meeting of defence ministers ahead of their summit scheduled for Lithuania in July.
They were discussing the Ukraine War – but also organising a move that would ensure that NATO membership can only be realised for states willing to pay a base level of 2% GDP on military spending.
We approached several delegations – but all were wary of speaking on the record, not just about their own involvement with NATO but also Ireland’s existing partnership.
Those we did speak to off-record were interested to hear the perspective on how Ireland was confronting the changing security ecosystem.
Again the theme of engagement with Ireland was peppered with a lack of interest in neutrality – all said it didn’t matter.
That was echoed again in an on-record briefing with General Hans-Werner Wiermann – head of Critical Undersea Infrastructure Co-ordination at NATO who heavily referenced Ireland’s membership of an existing alliance, that of the European Union.
We questioned him about the effectiveness of the Irish military to protect subsea cables. He was keen to stress that NATO was speaking to the EU and that any involvement with protecting cables near Ireland would come from the Union.
NATO would continue to protect its interests in the deep Atlantic. The General said that the alliance was opening a dedicated control centre to monitor the cables in real time and also increase patrols at sea.
At every juncture, all officials we spoke to in that building, were anxious to parse every comment with the fact that they respected Ireland’s sovereign decision-making and that any move to grow closer to NATO was for the Irish people to decide.
There is a team of Irish military officers and diplomats permanently based in NATO’s offices. They are working on the Partnership for Peace (PfP) scheme, which is a mechanism for Ireland to benefit and liaise with certain missions and capabilities.
Ireland has soldiers deployed on a NATO peacekeeping mission in Kosovo as part of the KFOR operation to prevent an escalation back to war between Kosovars and their neighbours the Serbs.
PfP has seen NATO assessors come to Ireland to visit units such as army artillery specialists, the Naval service and special forces operators at the Army Ranger Wing.
Sources in Brussels, both Irish and from other states, have said that the plan is to continue with those connections – but also to move Ireland towards closer cooperation with NATO.
Critical to this is the current issue of undersea cables but there is also a belief among Irish military and civilian sources that by increasing cooperation there is a way to get a greater amount from NATO without involvement in any of their more aggressive operations.
It is that classic Irish solution to an Irish problem – to prevent a dilution of Irish neutrality they are working on an à la carte menu of partnership benefits.
Some NATO sources who speak to The Journal suggest an arrangement similar to what Sweden had before it made a full application to join in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This involved Sweden’s co-operation in peace-support operations, carrying out joint exercises together with NATO, and an exchange of intelligence and analysis.
This was a pragmatic and mutually beneficial arrangement – Sweden got all the benefits of the alliance’s capabilities without the need to join and NATO got Sweden’s consent for closer ties in a critical area of land, sea and air in the Scandinavian region.
The prospect of Ireland actually joining NATO was dismissed. In hushed off-record discussions we spoke to senior officials, one in particular, who rubbished any suggestions that Ireland would be capable of joining the alliance – not just now but over a period of decades.
The obstacle is Ireland’s spend on defence – these officials told us that such is the low level of spending that Ireland cannot come near the accepted standard needed for NATO application.
In the coffee shops and reception area of the Belgian headquarters there are many Swedish military uniforms – they are well and truly inside the tent.
Sweden almost always funded its military to a substantial level – as World Bank figures show, its spend dropped from a massive 4% of GDP at the height of the cold war in 1963, falling over that period to just 1% of GDP in 2017 and 2018.
However it has begun rising again now as its neighbour Russia began to rattle its sabre – it now rests at 1.3% and rising.
While the NATO recommendation is set to 2% – Ireland has committed to 0.7% over the next five years to help the Irish Defence Forces begin to recover, that works out at €1.8bn. The increase was in conjunction of the Commission on the Defence Forces Level of Ambition Two.
The Commission was a landmark document published last year laying out the abject failings of the Irish Defence Forces in resourcing and capability.
While many officials who spoke to The Journal said that they welcomed the acceptance by Ireland that it needs to do more to maintain a defence apparatus, they did also speak to a certain frustration that the level of ambition was seen as lacking an appropriate frame of commitment.
One senior international defence official said: “I think it’s quite telling that Ireland’s own level of of ambition was self-admittedly below what other comparable European countries are spending on on defence.
“I think that it is quite a regrettable position, because you’re already admitting you’re not spending as much as as your peers, whether those are neutral EU states or our NATO states.
“But there’s an implicit recognition there, that actually most other people think it’s necessary to be spending at a certain level and although you perhaps recognise that you’re not prepared to follow that path, yourself.”
NATO’s raison d’etre is for militaries to be able to work together, known in military speak as interoperability.
Officials, including Irish military sources, said that the biggest stumbling block is a lack of willingness to spend because without adequate funding Ireland would simply not be able to keep up with the changing modernisation of equipment.
Back in Brussels city centre at the Commission building we spoke off record to officials who have a knowledge of the broader efforts by the EU to realise a common defence policy.
It is understood that a team of officials is working on a proposal which would bind EU states to only buy weaponry and other military equipment from European member states.
While the sources we spoke to said that they would not be permitted by law to suggest subsidies to fund defence spending they said there were plans to grow the EU arms industry, particularly at small and medium enterprise level, by providing greater incentives.
This arguably will be another flashpoint for Ireland – the Irish State, following the debacle over the first rejection of the Lisbon treaty has an opt-out from involvement in EU military engagements.
This is contained in Article 42.7 of the Treaty of the European Union – which also binds states (Ireland and some other member states aside) to a mutual defence pact. That opt-out hasn’t stopped us getting involved in EU missions such as those in Mali and in the Mediterranean.
The consultative forum taking place in UCC today will discuss all those issues from an Irish perspective.
It is understood that 1,200 people have registered for the four events and upwards of 300 submissions have been received.
Today’s event is packed with panelists from academia, think tanks and an aid agency – it will begin with an examination of the current global security environment.
There will be discussions about the current state of global security, implications for Ireland after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, maritime security and cyber defence.
Regardless of Ireland’s machinations the EU and NATO are moving swiftly to ensure their spheres of influence are protected - the risk for Ireland, according to those officials we spoke to, is that we may take too long to decide and by then that ship will have sailed.
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