Could Ireland join NATO?

Russian President Vladimir Putin has done wonders for NATO. He has united the alliance in a manner not seen since the Cold War. Moreover, were it not for his invasion of Ukraine, neither Finland nor Sweden would likely have applied to join the alliance. Finland has become a member; Sweden may join now that Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been reelected president of Turkey.

Erdogan no longer needs to play to the anti-Kurdish impulses of the country’s extreme nationalists, whose party leader threw his support behind him during the second round of elections. Some NATO officials speculate that Erdogan will reverse course on Sweden in time for the alliance’s Vilnius summit. That may be too optimistic, but Stockholm’s accession sometime this summer is more than likely.

Yet Putin’s gifts to NATO may not yet be done. Ireland is actually debating whether to join the alliance. That’s a remarkable development in a country that fiercely defended its neutrality in the war against Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, Dublin no longer feels that pure neutrality is a viable policy. It is deeply concerned that Russia could at some point cut the trans-Atlantic cables that are critical to its information systems and its economy.

Such a fear has been repeatedly voiced by British military leaders, notably when Admiral Tony Radakin, Britain’s chief of the defence staff, asserted shortly before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that the Russian underwater program could “put at risk and potentially exploit” the undersea cables that provide the world’s information system.

Actually, Ireland has already confronted Russia in the very recent past. In mid-January 2022, Moscow announced that the following month its Northern Fleet would conduct a major exercise about 150 miles off the Irish coast. Given the timing of the drill — just weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine — it appeared that it was meant to intimidate Britain, so that London would not take a strong stance against the impending Russian military campaign.

The Russian announcement alarmed the Irish government, which sought and failed to persuade Moscow from going ahead with the exercise. A group of fishermen from County Cork took the matter into their own hands, however. They announced that their boats would maintain a continuous presence in the vicinity of the exercise, thereby interfering with the Russian fleet’s activities. A few days after the fishermen publicized their plan, Moscow backed off and moved the exercise elsewhere.

Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s prime minister, made clear in the past several days that NATO membership is not on the table. Of course, that was the position of Sweden and Finland before they applied for membership. Yet even if Ireland is not about to apply for a seat, it has unambiguously signaled that it wishes to become a more active player in Europe’s efforts to resist Russian aggression.

Ireland’s membership in the European Union already commits it under Article 42.7 of the EU Treaty to come to the aid of any member state that is the victim of an attack. In addition, Ireland is a member of NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP). Although most of its activities as a NATO partner have thus far focused on peacekeeping, under the mantle of the PfP Ireland has also worked closely with NATO in counter-IED (improvised explosive device) training and it has joined NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence, based in Estonia.

Given its concern about Atlantic undersea cables, Ireland will likely participate in NATO’s newly created, Brussels-based Critical Undersea Infrastructure Co-ordination Cell. Indeed, Prime Minister Varadkar just announced that he would give “deep consideration” to any EU or NATO effort to protect the undersea cables, saying “because we are an island nation, our seas are seven times greater than our land area and going through those seas are a lot of really important infrastructure, communications cables that connect Ireland to the world and Europe to North America and also, for example, our gas interconnector with the UK and our electricity interconnectors both with the UK and new one with France.”

Yet PfP provides even more scope for Dublin to deepen its relationship with both NATO and the United States in particular, much as Finland and Sweden have done over the past decade. Any Irish effort to enhance its military ties with America would certainly be welcome in Washington, and not only because President Joe Biden is of Irish descent.

The Irish public currently is nearly evenly split on the question of joining NATO. Yet in light of the sudden shift in both Swedish and Finnish public support for NATO membership, a larger segment of the Irish public may also begin push for entry into the alliance, especially if Russia continues to pursue its murderous campaign in Ukraine. And were Dublin ever to apply for NATO membership, Americans in general and the Senate in particular (which would vote on accession) would welcome Ireland with open arms.

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.