Ireland’s policy on defence is hypocritical, and to think Ireland will not be attacked because it is neutral “is of course stupid”, a German expert on security policy has said.
Prof Carlo Masala, chair of security and defence studies at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich, a research institution attached to the German armed forces, was speaking at the Institute of International & European Affairs in Dublin about his new book, If Russia Wins.
At the event Prof Masala spoke about the challenge to Europe from a “neo-imperialist” Russia with a United States that was no longer committed to defending the West, and a regime in Beijing that was looking at the war in Ukraine while intent on replacing the liberal world order.
Asked about Irish neutrality, Prof Masala said he found it “very hypocritical, if you use your neutrality to basically save money in terms of defence policy – I know that this is changing now – and relying on others, if push comes to shove, to defend you". The German researcher described this as “bigotry” in his address on Tuesday but he later clarified to The Irish Times he had meant to use the word “hypocrisy”.
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He said: “Neutrality, if you take it seriously, is the assumption that you stay out of everything and then you can’t expect anyone to come to the rescue, which at the end of the day leads to higher defence spending, because you have to take care of every possible scenario, to defend yourself against any possible attack.”
He had no issue with Ireland deciding to stay neutral, but it had to be able to defend itself.
“To think that neutrality means that you won’t be attacked by anyone is of course stupid, because neutrality depends on third parties to accept it, and, as you saw recently, with some little nice drones trying to take down, probably, the plane [Ukrainian President] Zelenskiy was [on], apparently some countries do not accept your neutrality.”
Switzerland, a country with a long history of neutrality, has decided it must invest more in defence and increase its co-operation with other countries, Prof Masala said. “That is what Ireland should do.”
He said he understood that any Irish party that put itself up for election on a policy of ending neutrality would not do well “but be honest with people. Neutrality means that, in the end of the day, you have to invest even more in defence.”
Prof Masala, who is a former deputy director in the Nato Defence College in Rome, said he was confident democracy can survive “and even win this battle for a new world order” if societies could remember “that you should not take democracy for granted, that democracy has to be defended”.
Democracy won the two major battles of the 20th century, against fascism and communism, and democracy could survive in the 21st century, he said. The critical condition was that societies remembered that democracy cannot be taken for granted.
