Professor Ben Tonra:

I thank the committee for the invitation to present today. I provided a more detailed written submission and will speak to it for three or four minutes to give the committee an overview.

The first point I want to get across is that sometimes it is difficult for Irish policymakers and the Irish public to get a sense of the psychological shock of what has happened in terms of Europe. Two revolutions have occurred in the past couple of years. The first revolution is that Russia's behaviour has upended decades of assumptions about European security and defence, in terms of treaties, norms and the UN. That can be seen in the fact that the German Chancellor and the French President, for example, were totally shocked and turned around by what happened. They really did not expect it. That is the first revolution.

The second revolution is with respect to NATO. We look at a situation with a second Trump Administration in which NATO, as traditionally understood, simply will not be there. The evidence is blindingly clear. During his first Administration, Trump was restrained, largely by his advisers, senior cabinet ministers and some of his military advisers. Those so-called adults in the room are not going to be there. He is going to be unleashed. It is clear what his agenda is, not only in respect of NATO, but most of the security alliances of the US. There has been legislation passed in the US Congress that makes it illegal for him to formally withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty without congressional approval. That does not matter, however, because the North Atlantic Treaty itself is so permissive that it allows a US President simply to sit on his hands in the event of a NATO crisis. That is now well understood in most European capitals.

Those two revolutions in thinking have upended all of our assumptions about European security. I genuinely do not know that that is well understood. That leads to European governments being left to desperately search for solutions and responses. We have seen the scale of those changes in recent years, not just Finland and Sweden going from neutrality to NATO, but the fact that Germany, for example, now posts its own troops in Lithuania to defend Lithuania. That is the first time in Germany's post-war history that it has stationed troops overseas in that kind of capacity. European member states are desperately in search of solutions.

The European Union has come into the frame on this. Traditionally the European Union presented itself as a new kind of global actor that did not have defence or a military and did not pursue that kind of international agenda. It could use money, diplomacy or influence. Post the Rwandan genocide and the wars in the former Balkans, the EU began very slowly and with huge difficulty to engage in the potential use of military forces overseas in support of peacekeeping, etc. What has happened in the past two years has totally supercharged that agenda. The European Union is now applying the kinds of innovative legal and financial practices it did for Covid. This is seen as that level of existential crisis as far as the European Union is concerned. Dr. McDonagh has already mentioned some of those institutions and processes and he is right to say that the resources devoted to those are not of a scale that will make a decisive difference. The principle of what the European Union is doing, however, is unprecedented. It is unwelcome because of the situation, but it is also unprecedented.

In that context, this is where I come to the Irish policy responses and what we need to be thinking about. Ireland has traditionally participated in all of those EU defence security and military operations at the lowest possible level, with the greatest degree of reluctance and just enough to stay in the room. In other words, we have not formally opted out of anything. We have participated in everything but only to the barest degree necessary. That now is being reflected similarly in all of these new institutions and programmes. We are aware of the reservation, for example, that the Government exercises with respect to the European Peace Facility and the European Defence Fund. I will make two points to the committee in that regard. First, there is a cost to that. Irish industries, universities and researchers are not competing on the same level as their European counterparts in these new European programmes and for this new European money. There may be a very good policy reason behind that but it has not been discussed or publicised and it is something we need to think about because there are costs. They may be costs the State wishes to pay in terms of not participating fully in all of these programmes and putting Irish participants on an equal basis, but we should have the conversation and make that decision formally, rather than letting it happen by default.

The second issue for Irish policymakers is perhaps more serious and relates to Ireland's position in Europe. I do not think anyone in the European Union questions Ireland's traditional policy of military neutrality. There is an issue coming down the road, however, and that is what Ireland will do if what Russia is attempting to do in Ukraine is successful. What will Ireland do if that success is translated to Lithuania, Estonia or Latvia, for example? We should bear in mind that the language Putin has used to justify his invasion of Ukraine, saying that it is not a proper country, its sovereignty is illegitimate, it is full of Nazis and it was oppressing Russian-speaking minorities, is precisely the argument he has been making about several Baltic states. If Russia is successful or seen to be successful with regard to Ukraine, what will Russia's policy be towards the Baltic states? What will its question to us be with respect to that? We have a clear red line with respect to Ukraine, which is that we do not supply lethal military equipment. Not only do we not supply it, but we will not fund it alongside other EU member states, which is absolutely fine. Does that red line also apply to our European partners, however? That is a question that, unfortunately, we might face sooner rather than later.