As far as bad omens for a new chaotic world of politics the sight of Romanian and Danish planes flying into Dublin Airport to provide emergency power generators should be scarred into our memory.
An above average Atlantic storm Éowyn tore strips out of the Irish electrical and water grid following touchdown late January with 25,000 plus Midlands residents still without power at the time of writing.
Ireland was forced to petition both the European Commission and NATO militaries to fly in a total of 12 power generators with just shy of three-quarters of a million homes in the dark in the aftermath of the storm.
As EU leaders meet to prepare to put the bloc on an effective war footing over the next year and Ireland’s economy lies sandwiched between Trumpist protectionist and a moribund Europe/UK Éowyn was a stage rehearsal for the inability of the Irish state to manage its own house.
While the Oireachtas remains transfixed on gombeen infighting over speaking time nevermind the Occupied Territories Bill global politics is moving on. Trump is actively dismantling the multilateral order by which an open small economy like Ireland relies on and very little thought is being given to what happens next in Dublin as the post-liberal world beckons.
Storm Éowyn was a D minus for our emergency response to civil disasters where despite decades now of climate change posturing we were not able to withstand a tough but relatively common winter storm system.
Similar to the HSE cyberattack of 2021 which left the Defence Forces calling foreign cybersecurity services of the lamentable state of Ireland’s air and sea defences the Republic is not even at the races for preparing for the state of things to come.
What if instead of an Atlantic storm the state is left to fend off undersea sabotage off the Irish Sea?
Is the Irish state ready to explain away EU, US and NATO troops occupying Irish strategic infrastructure out of our inability to protect our own turf?
How will an Irish electorate entirely allergic to any discussion on military affairs deal with the return of predatory geopolitics where small nations can and will be gobbled up by the strong.
Irish sovereignty in so far as it still exists is buttressed by a rules based global order that is evaporating faster than snow on a summer’s day. Small states are limited by economies of scale but the risk of the Republic becoming a space of chaos for the Western Alliance could be enough to force the erosion of our national sovereignty to even more pathetic levels.
“Ní hé lá na gaoithe lá na scolb” and neither is the moments before geopolitical disaster a good time to scramble for a nation’s strategic defence.
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