A former senior Nato commander and naval expert has told Westminster politicians that a united Ireland would pose a strategic threat.
The loss of the protection afforded by the North would deepen the threat to Britain from Russia and China, Rear Admiral Chris Parry told MPs and members of the House of Lords in a briefing on Wednesday.
Mr Parry, a Falklands War veteran, also said he believed Chinese warships and submarines would soon be active in Irish waters alongside the Russian vessels that had been operating there in recent years.
He told parliamentarians that Nato should counter the threat from Moscow and Beijing by holding naval exercises in Irish-controlled waters, whether Dublin agreed or not. He also urged the Republic of Ireland to back military co-operation with Nato.
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“I would say to the good people of Ireland: you’ve been independent for more than 100 years. Stop blaming the Brits. We have shared interests here,” he said at the meeting in a committee room above the House of Lords on Wednesday evening.
“If anyone attacks Britain, they will attack Ireland. It is as simple as that. Neutrality cannot be seen as conscientious objection any more. If you are part of the free world, you have to be prepared to defend it. The Republic needs to reduce its vulnerabilities.”
Mr Parry told peers and MPs how Irish people should “forget the history” with Britain because their shared future suggested they should co-operate militarily.
“Would I want Ireland on our side in a war with Russia? Yes. There is an immense amount of talent in the Republic that is not being exploited. They fight really well,” he said.
The former military man was speaking at a briefing organised by the pro-union think tank, the Together UK Foundation.
Prominent among the attendees were unionist politicians, including the DUP MP Sammy Wilson and the former MP Nigel Dodds, who is now a member of the Lords.
The event was hosted by Paul Bew, an academic from the North who is also a life peer.
Mr Parry, who has worked as a military consultant since 2008, told the politicians the Republic was “strategically irrelevant as long as the UK maintains Northern Ireland”, giving the United Kingdom a base to police North Sea waters on approach routes to Scotland.
He said the Republic was relevant now only in the sense that it had “vulnerabilities” that could be exploited by Russia and China in any conflict with the West.
Mr Parry mentioned the threat to undersea communication cables in Irish waters, as well as the likelihood, he said, that Russia or China could launch missiles at Britain from off Ireland’s west coast.
“The basic problem is that the Republic is incapable of policing its own economic zone,” he said, referring to the waters extending up to 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres) off the coast in which the State has exclusive rights to manage from an economic perspective, but through which the vessels of other nations can legally transit under international maritime law.
“There are things going on in those waters that they don’t know about,” said Mr Parry, who warned that undersea cables could be “picked apart” by Russian submarines.
“Ireland becomes very important strategically if Northern Ireland is absorbed into the Republic.”
He said the North Channel, the strait between Northern Ireland and Scotland, was critical to Britain’s deployment of its “strategic deterrent” of missile-bearing submarines.
“With a united Ireland, there is no guarantee we could deploy our ballistic missiles.”
He said Russia already possessed some conventional missiles that could “devastate Galway up to 4km inland” and that Ireland “in its current form would not be tolerated” by Russia and China in a war with the West.
“The UK needs to calibrate the threat to itself of a supine Republic of Ireland. My view is that the best way to help Ireland now is to increase Nato and Allied activity in Ireland’s economic zone waters,” he said.
“We’ve got to start fishing in Irish waters for our potential opponents. Whether the Irish government likes it or not, it’s the high seas so we should do it.”
It is understood that Irish and British politicians have already produced a report on potential areas where their military interests overlapped, as part of discussions held through the British and Irish Parliamentary Assembly, which met recently in Surrey, southeast England.
