Should Ireland Join NATO? The Case for and Against Ending Neutrality

It is one of the last militarily-neutral countries in Europe. An island version of Switzerland perched on the edges of the Atlantic, far from any hostile neighbors. For its entire time as an independent state, Ireland has remained outside the network of military alliances stretching from Europe to North America.

It is not a member of NATO, nor did it fight with the Allies in WWII. And, while Irish troops have been sent on deployments, the country maintains a ‘triple lock’ — requiring assent from the government, the Dáil, and the UN to send more than 12 soldiers abroad. According to public polling, it is a system most Irish are proud of — an asset that allows Dublin to punch above its weight in diplomatic circles.

Yet all that could soon change. A consultative forum is being held across Ireland, one in which the question of neutrality is being carefully weighed, and one which might — possibly — even nudge the Emerald Isle toward NATO.

Public Divisions Over the Future of Irish Neutrality

For observers of Irish defense policy, it was a true bombshell. A rhetorical blast that echoed across the island. In mid-May of 2023, Foreign Minister Micheál Martin — who also heads the defense brief — stood before the Dáil parliament and confirmed an upcoming debate on the future of Ireland’s military neutrality.

“We will discuss what our current policy of military neutrality means,” he said. “Whether it is fit for purpose in the current global security environment and whether we need to define more clearly what we do, and do not, mean by military neutrality.” Perhaps most shockingly of all, Martin even hinted that the outcome could raise the possibility of one day joining NATO.

The reaction that followed was swift and blunt. At a conference in Dublin, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar firmly declared that Ireland would not be joining NATO. President Michael D.

Higgins, meanwhile, complained that Dublin was “playing with fire.” On the news, interviewees were borderline perplexed. As the chairman of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance, Roger Cole, pointed out to RTÉ: “Ireland is a small country, surrounded by countries that have no intention of invading us and we have no intention of invading them.”

The question of why now traces directly to Vladimir Putin. Like most of Europe, Ireland was shocked by the Kremlin’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine — an invasion that convinced other nonaligned countries like Finland and Sweden to seek NATO protection. But while Helsinki and Stockholm both applied to join the alliance within two months of war breaking out, Ireland has yet to do so.

So far from Russia, Dublin is seen as an unlikely target for Putin’s aggression. Although the nation has taken in Ukrainian refugees and joined EU sanctions against Moscow, it has also tried to maintain its military neutrality. But the Ukraine War has dragged the issue of defense into the public conversation.

Polls in the sixteen months since fighting began showed a swing towards NATO — never enough to reach a majority, but a larger minority than has ever been seen before. Before the invasion, support for joining NATO was at about a third of voters. In the immediate aftermath, this spiked to 48 percent — a number repeated in polls in both May and August of 2022.

These numbers are soft, however, and seem to depend on how the question is asked. The Irish Times ran a headline on Twitter claiming “56 per cent of people surveyed think Ireland should join NATO” — an impressive figure, until one realizes the same survey also reported that 61 percent of voters wanted Ireland to maintain its current model of military neutrality, something that would obviously be impossible in NATO.

The Consultative Forum and Its Critics

Nonetheless, the invasion kicked off enough of a debate that Martin felt comfortable calling the consultative forum. Running from June 22 to June 29, the forum features 1,000 citizens, along with academics and military personnel, as well as guest speakers from neutral countries like Switzerland and formerly-neutral countries like Finland. This is a different beast from the citizens’ assemblies that Ireland has previously called for discussing social issues like abortion — a fact that has brought a whole pile of criticism down onto Martin’s head.

The invited speakers have also drawn criticism. TD Mick Barry called the list a “pro-NATO jamboree.” TD Richard Boyd Barrett went even further, accusing the government of trying to drag Ireland into NATO “by stealth.”

Clearly, this is an issue that elicits strong feelings in Irish society. Yet the NATO question is really only a fraction of what the forum will be discussing. Below the alarmist headlines lurks a far more difficult issue, one Irish military experts have quietly acknowledged for some time: how to ensure Ireland has the capacity to defend herself in an increasingly hostile world.

Whatever answer the consultative forum returns with could have implications for Dublin’s place in the world for decades to come.

A History of Irish Neutrality: From Independence to the Cold War

Considering how central it is to Ireland’s identity, it might be surprising to learn there is nothing in the nation’s constitution about neutrality. Instead, Dublin has its so-called “triple lock,” which requires not just approval of the Irish government and the Dáil, but also a UN mandate to deploy over a dozen troops abroad. That is a high bar to clear, but not an impossible one.

Over the decades, Irish Defense Forces have taken part in UN peacekeeping missions to places like Cyprus and Lebanon. The roots of Irish neutrality lie in a combination of history and diplomatic necessity. Ireland only threw off Britain’s shackles to become independent in the early 1920s.

Even then, London continued to control vital ports. It was only with the 1938 end of the Treaty Ports that Dublin could truly start setting its own defense policy. And that policy was rooted in its own past as a colonial possession — both an anti-imperialist streak, and a desire to never again be under Britain’s boot.

When World War Two broke out just a year later, Taoiseach Éamon de Valera refused London’s desperate entreaties to join the Allies. Famously, he even visited the German embassy in 1945 to offer official condolences over Adolf Hitler’s death. But what seems like a rock-solid commitment to neutrality was, in reality, far more nuanced.

De Valera was not as even-handed as he wanted the Germans to think. Secretly, he allowed Britain to install radar stations in Ireland, and turned a blind eye to the RAF crossing Irish airspace. An officially neutral pose did not mean no Irish served in WWII — 70,000 volunteers fought on the Allied side.

Still, truly neutral or not, Dublin’s stance in WWII set the pattern for the next eight decades. When NATO first formed in the early Cold War, there was talk of Ireland joining. But rather than join a club that included its old imperial overlord, Dublin elected for non-aligned status.

By the 1950s, the policy was paying dividends. As retired Irish army officer Tom Clonan wrote in TheJournal.ie: “Despite our small size, Ireland has functioned as a diplomatic ‘superpower’ in the cause of peace — precisely because of our militarily neutral status.” That status is visible today in the structure of the Irish defense establishment.

As War on the Rocks put it in a 2023 article: Ireland “doesn’t have a national security strategy, a functioning national security council, or a national security agency. The same applies to defense. Put simply, the security and defense architecture widely used in the European Union and transatlantic space does not exist in Ireland.”

Even among Europe’s nonaligned states, this is highly unusual. Both Finland and Sweden have long maintained robust militaries. Switzerland famously has a nationwide armed militia on standby.

PESCO, Russian Incursions, and the Undersea Cable Threat

Ireland does not stand completely outside Euro-Atlantic defense structures. Back in 1999, the Emerald Isle joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace plan. As a member of the EU, it is also committed to a mutual defense treaty with the rest of the bloc — although not one that would override the Triple Lock.

More significantly, Dublin has recently begun to get deeply involved in the EU’s PESCO initiative. A way to build interoperability among European armies, PESCO is somewhere between a grand swap shop for ideas, a training program, and an actual military partnership. Joining also requires a government to make 20 commitments on things like R&D and defense spending.

According to RTÉ, before the Ukraine War, Ireland was involved in only two PESCO projects: one as a participant, and one as an observer. Today, that number stands at 23 — nearly a third of all PESCO initiatives. All things considered, Ireland already seems to be converging with Western allies, certainly far more so than it was thirty, or even five years ago.

But perhaps not close enough for those allies to take comfort. A fundamental issue with being neutral is that one is only truly neutral if everyone else agrees. And Russia has recently been testing the limits of Irish neutrality.

There was the 2021 ransomware attack on Ireland’s health service, linked to a Russian hacker group, which caused untold damage. Far more pressing for other nations have been Russian incursions into Ireland’s waters. In February of 2022, just days before Putin began his assault on Ukraine, the Russian navy announced live-fire exercises off Ireland’s southwest coast — well within Dublin’s exclusive economic zone.

While the Irish government successfully protested the exercises, the relief was short-lived. That summer, three Russian warships entered Irish waters, and were tracked making strange movements. As recently as May 2023, four more were observed in the same rough area, also acting unusually.

For experts in Ireland, the EU, and America, these incursions have triggered serious alarm bells — not just because they are designed to be menacing, but because of where they have taken place. Irish waters are home to one of the greatest concentrations of data cables in the world. According to RTÉ, the oceans are crisscrossed by something in the region of 550 data cables, covering a total of 1.4 million km.

Faster than satellites — and with wider bandwidth — these cables are the highways along which 99 percent of Earth’s internet traffic travels. That means trillions of dollars in financial transactions. Among the most-important concentrations are the cables connecting Europe to North America.

Nearly three quarters pass through Irish waters — one of the main reasons Ireland has been able to reinvent itself as a giant data hub for corporations like Microsoft. In total, nine out of the world’s top ten tech and communications companies base some of their operations in Ireland.

Ireland’s Defense Crisis: A Military Stretched to Breaking Point

Since 2014, Russia has been active near many concentrations of these cables, seemingly mapping them on both sides of the ocean. This has coincided with an increasing ability on Moscow’s part to carry out deep sea sabotage missions. In 2014, cables were severed linking Crimea to mainland Ukraine.

For Europe and America, the destruction of these cables could cause not only massive disruption to communications, but also economic damage, public unrest, or even panic. Unfortunately, there is not much evidence Ireland can defend this vital infrastructure on its own. Despite having a vast maritime area, Dublin commands a mere six patrol vessels, none of which are useful for combatting deep sea sabotage.

The 2020 Defense Forces review bleakly spelled out: “The Irish Naval Service has no anti-submarine capability and its ability to deter or even detect such maritime intelligence gathering is exceptionally limited.” This is the root of the problem facing Ireland in all military domains. Unlike most militarily neutral countries — from Singapore to Switzerland — Ireland is not a military powerhouse.

It does not field top-of-the-range kit. It does not have a massive reserve force ready to fight. It does not spend huge sums to keep its citizens safe.

In March of 2023, War on the Rocks published a deep-dive into the Irish military’s structural problems. Written by Dr. Patrick Bury and Dr.

David Murphy — two Irishmen with inside knowledge of the nation’s defense services — the piece was nothing if not a call to arms. According to Bury and Murphy, the Irish Defense Forces ended 2022 with a total of just 7,987 personnel — 3,000 fewer than the recommended total. In the Reserve Defense Force, the numbers were even worse: from an original size of 4,069, they had shrunk to just 819 members.

The writers noted: “On their current trajectory, they could cease to exist in three years.” The Irish military has a huge retention problem, with three quarters of junior officers who joined after 2013 planning to quit the forces early — part of a wave of talent flowing out to the private sector. In 2021, 591 personnel left, against just 300 new recruits.

The Irish Examiner has reported that “across the forces, there are not enough bomb-disposal experts, medics, communications experts, technicians, marine engineers, and engine room artificers, who are vital for keeping ships at sea.” Navy personnel numbers have been in decline since 2015, to the extent that otherwise-functional vessels are being left in port simply because they lack enough crew. At just 0.2 percent of GDP — the equivalent of 1.1 billion euros — Ireland’s defense budget is the lowest in the entire EU.

War on the Rocks reports that soldiers’ pay is falling far behind inflation, while accommodation is generally substandard. The Irish Examiner has highlighted how low the new pensions introduced in 2013 are — low enough that many junior officers will have to leave at some point, or face old-age poverty.

Airspace, Cyber, and the Gaps That Cannot Be Ignored

The staffing shortages span all domains. Ireland’s geographic position on the edge of Europe gives it a prominent place in aviation — 90 percent of all transatlantic flights cross through Irish airspace. But a lack of enough aircraft, air defenses, and radar means Dublin cannot patrol its own skies.

In an embarrassing twist, Ireland instead relies on the British RAF to protect its airspace. UK pilots have wound up being the ones who escort out Russian fighter jets that enter Irish skies. As TheJournal.ie noted with exasperation: “Ireland is the only country in the EU with no primary radar or meaningful air capabilities by way of aircraft or air defences.”

To this can be added cyber. Nonaligned Sweden recognized early on that cyber was becoming an important military domain, and now fields perhaps Europe’s most-formidable set of capabilities in this area. Ireland has neglected cyber as badly as everything else.

The result: a country that stores over 30 percent of the EU’s data, while also being unusually vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Patrick Bury and David Murphy sum up the current state of Irish defense: “Ireland now only has rudimentary land, air, and naval forces, which lack the personnel and key equipment to fulfill any national defense scenario.” All this is why NATO membership is being floated as a potential plan.

With the alliance’s collective defense policy enshrined in Article Five, Ireland could step back and let other nations — like France or the UK — defend its weak points. Other members of the alliance could send out ships and submarines to guard transatlantic data cables. But joining NATO is not the only way for Dublin to shore up its defenses.

If Ireland truly wants to maintain its neutrality, there is another path: a defense spending bonanza that would turn the Emerald Isle into a well-armed neutral state capable of deterring rogue actors on its own.

Levels of Ambition: Dublin’s Plan to Rebuild Its Defense Forces

The 2022 independent Commission on the Defense Forces report laid bare the scale of the problems. So bad were its conclusions that the then-foreign minister, Simon Coveney, declared it showed the Defense Forces “cannot protect Ireland from potential attack.” But while it was certainly sobering, the report was not all bleak.

In the conclusion, the authors outlined three possible new tiers of defense funding, termed “Levels of Ambition.” The First Level was an injection of cash that would stop the downward slide. The Second Level was more ambitious, involving new capabilities in radar, cyber, and airlift, plus upgraded naval capacity.

The Third Level envisaged an Ireland with full-spectrum defense capabilities — a neutral country so highly-armed that no one would ever dare challenge its neutrality. Each came with obvious trade-offs. Level 1 would be cheap but offer minimal protection.

Level 3 would leave Ireland more than capable of defending its own waters, but require the defense budget to be tripled to slightly over 3 billion euros a year. The Irish government went for the middle option. Chosen in the summer of 2022, Level of Ambition 2 envisages increasing defense spending to 1.5 billion euros a year by 2028 — the biggest boost in Irish history.

According to the BBC, this will lead to 2,000 new recruits in defense roles, as well as the installation of military-grade radar. More importantly, from the perspective of Europe and America, it will lead to a big upgrade in naval capability. The Irish Naval Service currently operates four P60 class ships, plus two inshore patrol vessels recently purchased from New Zealand.

An additional P50 ship is being refitted, while another is held in reserve. Level of Ambition 2 spending should boost this to a bare minimum of nine ships outfitted with modern capabilities such as “enhanced air, surface and sub-surface search capabilities, supported by appropriate modern technology including ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) and unmanned ship-borne RPAS (Remotely Piloted Aircraft System) providing tactical airborne capabilities.” If achieved, the Naval Service will be capable of monitoring undersea cables without help from allies.

Already, all four P60 vessels are being retrofitted with multibeam echo sounders to facilitate this. RTÉ reports that the Air Corps Maritime Patrol Squadron currently has just two CASA 235s to surveil the whole of Ireland’s waters. The plan sees these being replaced with newer C295 aircraft, equipped with “multiple LiDAR shallow subsurface detection systems combining airborne topography, bathymetry surveying and high-resolution imaging.”

At the same time, the government has recommended much deeper cooperation with EU-led PESCO projects — especially those revolving around maritime surveillance. Dublin is already involved in three such initiatives. There is also talk about engaging with a proposed new NATO branch known as the Critical Undersea Infrastructure Coordination Cell — a way to gain much-needed NATO expertise around deep-sea defense without compromising Irish neutrality.

The Road Ahead: Neutrality, NATO, and Ireland’s Difficult Choice

Things are moving. The Irish defense establishment is transforming, hoping to meet the challenges of a world that seems to be slipping back into an era of great power competition. If all goes ahead, it will be a spectacular change.

The only trouble is, not everyone is sure it will be enough — not against a Russia determined to commit deep sea sabotage. This is the conundrum at the heart of the Consultative Forum: how to ensure Ireland has the capacity to defend herself in an increasingly hostile world. Having examined the evidence, it is clear that something needs to be done.

That carrying on as before would be a great disservice to not just Ireland’s American and European allies, but to the Irish people themselves. Whether that “something” comes in the form of NATO membership, or a defense spending boost beyond even Level of Ambition 2, is something the Consultative Forum will have to weigh. Whatever the recommendations, this much is clear: the world is changing, becoming darker, meaner, more violent.

While it is possible to choose neutrality in this tough new world, it has to be an active choice — one in which decisions are carefully made, and steps taken to prepare for a potential attack. If recent events have shown anything, it is that no nation can these days afford to be vulnerable. How to patch those vulnerabilities is a choice only Ireland’s citizens can make.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Ireland’s “triple lock” and how does it shape its neutrality?

Ireland’s triple lock requires assent from three distinct bodies — the Irish government, the Dáil parliament, and the United Nations — before more than 12 soldiers can be deployed abroad. There is no neutrality provision in the Irish constitution; the triple lock is instead the practical mechanism that enforces it. The system means Ireland cannot join an operation without a UN mandate, making full NATO membership operationally incompatible with the triple lock as it currently stands.

Why did Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompt Ireland to reexamine its neutrality?

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked Ireland as it did much of Europe, and the event drove support for NATO membership from roughly one-third of Irish voters to 48 percent in the immediate aftermath — though softer questioning in the same surveys showed 61 percent still wanted to maintain the current model of neutrality. It also triggered the consultative forum announced by Foreign Minister Micheál Martin in mid-May 2023, the first formal public debate over Ireland’s military posture in decades.

What is the state of Ireland’s defense capabilities and why is it considered a vulnerability?

Ireland’s defense budget is just 0.2 percent of GDP — the lowest in the entire EU — and the Defense Forces ended 2022 at only 7,987 personnel, some 3,000 below the recommended total. The Irish Naval Service has no anti-submarine capability and operates just six patrol vessels, leaving it unable to monitor its vast maritime exclusive economic zone. Ireland relies on the British RAF to patrol its own airspace and is the only EU country with no primary radar or meaningful air defense capability.

What makes Irish waters strategically significant and potentially vulnerable?

Nearly three quarters of all transatlantic data cables pass through Irish waters, representing 99 percent of transatlantic internet traffic and trillions of dollars in financial transactions daily. Since 2014, Russia has been observed mapping undersea cable routes on both sides of the Atlantic, and cables were severed linking Crimea to mainland Ukraine that same year. Multiple Russian warship incursions into Ireland’s exclusive economic zone — in 2022 and again in 2023 — have alarmed European and American officials concerned about potential deep-sea sabotage.

What is Ireland’s “Level of Ambition 2” defense plan and what will it deliver?

Ireland’s 2022 Commission on the Defense Forces offered three tiers of spending. The government chose Level of Ambition 2, committing to raise defense spending to 1.5 billion euros a year by 2028 — the largest boost in Irish history. This will fund 2,000 new recruits, military-grade radar, upgraded naval capacity including nine modern ships with sub-surface search capabilities, newer maritime patrol aircraft replacing the two aging CASA 235s, and much deeper participation in EU PESCO projects focused on maritime surveillance.

Sources

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