The world is gearing up for more wars. Ukraine and Gaza have shown the tragedy and genocide that war brings. Peoples across the world have mobilised to demand that peace must prevail.
Trumps’s regime-change assault on Venezuela and the threat to take over Greenland have alarmingly intensified the war agenda. The west’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza has normalised military aggression against any state which is perceived to be against American interests. Trump has revived the Monroe doctrine and, with the EU’s tacit acceptance, is asserting he US’s right to defend its sphere of influence by any means possible. This has made even more urgent Ireland’s need to stand out against war.
Western states appear to have only one response to this war-ridden world: a further ramping up spending on arms and militarisation – which inevitably means more wars. The Irish Government, too, is offering to further compromise its neutrality, ramping up ‘the security threat’ and is joining the clamour for greater militarisation.
Ireland is in a unique position, along with other neutral nations in Europe, to push for demilitarisation and against a new arms race. It can offer an alternative to the military aggression of NATO and the EU. It can give expression to Europe’s populations who stand against war and genocide and be a leading voice for peace.
We in the Irish Neutrality League seek to give a stronger voice for the majority in Ireland who have expressed their clear support for our neutrality.
- We will mobilise against the government’s manoeuvres to undo the Triple Lock which will allow Irish troops to join more military operations in Europe and elsewhere.
- We will reassert Irish neutrality and stand against our government’s complicity with Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
- We seek to bring pressure on our government to stand firm on Ireland’s neutrality, a position which has been forged through our anti-colonial history, and which is source of pride for people in Ireland.
It is crucial that now we assert Irish neutrality to advocate for an end to the war in Ukraine, instead of joining the EU-led drive for endless war against Russia. The terms of a settlement to this war must include Ukrainian neutrality (something which was already accepted by the 73% of the Ukrainian electorate who voted for Zelensky in 2019, and by the international participants in the Minsk II process in 2015), and Ireland should be campaigning for this on the international stage.
We must also bring pressure on the government to impose a boycott of all trade with Israel to express our complete rejection of the western-backed genocide and occupation. This includes ending the US military use of Shannon Airport – the most egregious breach of Irish neutrality.
* EU surge in spending on militarisation
Member states’ defence spending has already grown by more than 31% since 2021, topping an unprecedented €102bn in 2024, almost double the amount spent in 2021. The US, Russia and, increasingly, China are the big military spenders: but the EU wants to catch up.
The EU’s Rearm Europe plan demands massive public and private investment in defence and military capabilities. It is putting the EU on a war footing.
Its ‘White Paper for EU Defence Readiness 2030’ spells it out. €150bn will be made available for member states’ investment in military capabilities. These loans, via the Security and Action for Europe (SAFE) programme, will also be offered to European Economic Area members and to Ukraine. This money will be spent on munitions, enhancing military mobility, and on high-tech and AI systems for air defence.
The plan proposes to mobilise private capital by backing new defence players and, through the European Central Bank, to provide more funds to back private equity and venture capital funds for European defence technology companies.
* Debt limits lifted for military spending
Member states will no longer have to keep within the spending limits of the ‘Stability and Growth Pact’. During the 2008 banking crisis, these constraints forced many states, including Ireland, to impose strict austerity measures to contain public debt, at great cost to their populations.
All debt limits are off. Rearm Europe allows member states to borrow up to 1.5% of GDP for defence spending. This represents a sum of more than €800bn over the next four years. Further EU financial instruments will be made available to sustain Europe’s ‘technological sovereignty’ – new Euro speak for EU based technologies to use against ‘hostile’ states.
As it is, European arms companies have seen record profits over the last year. Their aggregate arms revenues grew by 13 per cent to $151 billion. Italian arms manufacturer, Leonardo, has seen big increases in earnings, revenue and orders for the first nine months of the year, as Europe continues to rearm. Profitability for this company has risen to €945 million for this period, a 19 per cent increase.
The four German companies in the top 100 arms companies saw their combined arms revenues go up by 36 per cent in 2024.
No wonder EC President Ursula von der Leyen confidently declares that the EU is on a war footing. President Catherine Connolly was indeed right to point out, during her campaign, that Europe is militarising in a way not seen since the 1930’s.
Yet apparently Taoiseach Micheal Martin apparently has no problem with Europe militarising the economy. He sees no conflict with Ireland’s neutrality and Ireland supporting joint borrowing at EU level to support the defence industry. He has declared that it is important for EU member States to see Ireland’s increasing its defence capability.
* From welfare to warfare
In Sweden, after ditching its neutrality and joining NATO in March 2024, military expenditure has increased by a whopping 34%, to $12 billion, reaching the 2% of GDP sought by NATO. Its military budget has more than doubled over the last decade. Funds that once went to social spending – pensions, healthcare, unemployment benefits, social services – will finance tanks drones and ammunition.
The world’s biggest military spender by far, in absolute terms, is the US. The proportion of GDP it spends on defence is 3.4%; second and third come China and Russia.
But the same report notes that Germany- the powerhouse of the EU – is now committing its military spending to reach the NATO target of 2%. By 2029, Germany is expected to spend €153 billion a year on defence. That’s about 3.5 percent of GDP, the country’s most ambitious military expansion since reunification. France, by comparison, plans to reach about €80 billion by 2030.
A new German fiscal package will see Germany going to the world’s fourth largest military spender. This exceeds substantially the spending boom of the postwar Marshall Plan and that which accompanied German reunification in the early 1990s. Prioritisation of defence spending across the EU means the so called ‘peace dividend’ is truly over. Security is now a central pillar of government budgets.
The Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has passed a law to end the ‘fiscal brake’ that made it illegal for German governments to raise debt to pay for public spending. Now military deficit spending has priority above everything else and is the only budget with no limit. This will dwarf the deficit spending available for climate control and for badly needed infrastructure.
Meanwhile, German real wages are falling. The country has experienced the biggest collapse in living standards since the second world war.
Furthermore, in November 2025, the German Bundestag, cleared the way for introducing conscription. Young men will have to have a medical examination to see if they are fit for service. From January 2026, all young men born after the beginning of 2008 will be sent a form to register for military service on their 18th birthday. The government plans to increase the German army to over 400,000 in the next few years. While a media campaign stressing that Russia could invade Europe at any time has influenced many and allowed the vote to get through, amongst young Germans the prevailing mood is that they have no desire to die in others’ wars. School strikes and demonstrations against conscription have happened in Berlin and other towns.
Ireland is a small player in the EU militarisation drive but, nevertheless, its trajectory is clear. In 2025, Irish spending on defence represents a record – €1.35 billion – up 30%. Budget 2026 includes the highest ever level of capital funding for Defence: €215 million. Over €805 million has been set aside for the recruitment of a net 400 additional Defence Forces members. Further increases are planned for next year. Like everywhere else, increased public spending on militarisation will take from social spending – and Ireland is already in a deep housing and public services crisis.
* Closer EU-NATO partnership – where does that leave neutrality?
23 out of the 27 EU states are already members of NATO. The Rearm White Paper declares NATO to be ‘the cornerstone of collective defence of its members in Europe’. It calls for greater involvement in existing EU-NATO defence projects like PESCO.
NATO members will play a key part in the EU defence plans. The United Kingdom – a nuclear power – is recognised (despite Brexit) as an essential European ally and greater security and defence cooperation is proposed via a potential EU Security and Defence partnership with the UK.
France has offered to deploy for the first time its nuclear weapons across Europe. Marcon proposed, in March 2025, holding talks with European allies about how French nuclear weapons could help protect Europe. Where does this leave Ireland’s strong support of the 2020 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and 2021 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons ?
The EU plans to work closer with another non-EU NATO country, Norway . The recent Security and Defence Partnership with Norway will be strengthened. NATO members Canada and Turkey are both included in the EU Common Security and Defence Policy, ‘to boost mutually beneficial defence industry production’.
Trump has forced the agenda of the EU to pivot to greater defence spending, and the EU has meekly gone along with this. What has the Irish government to say about this deeper collaboration with NATO? Precious little.
*Ukraine
We are repeatedly told that it the Russian threat that warrants the rise in military spending.
The Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the bloody war that followed has brought thousands of deaths, bombed out towns and much hardship and suffering. Ukraine has endured very high losses, with between 60,000 and 100,000 personnel killed with total casualties reaching approximately 400,000. Russian military deaths may also be as much as 250,000. The INL absolutely accepts that Ukraine has the right to defend itself and Russian troops should withdraw.
But the Western powers have not supported Ukraine and sanctioned Russia because they defend the right to self-determination. If that were the case, they would have applied the same logic to Palestine, instead of steadfastly supporting Israel in funds, arms, trade and on the world stage.
The truth is that European leaders see the outcome for Ukraine as critical for their own position in the world’s pecking order. To this end they have escalated military support for Ukraine.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and his regime represent a particular project in fighting for Ukraine’s independence, one which involves aligning Ukraine closely with the EU economically, and with NATO militarily. Ukraine could have defended its status as an independent, recognised nation -independent from the EU and from Russia – which would have lessened the military threat. But Zelensky’s tight alignment with Western interests – including support for Israel – takes the conflict beyond a national struggle between Ukraine and Russia.
The EU’s military support for Ukraine – which has already cost €66 billion (not counting other forms of assistance) represents the remorseless logic of geopolitical conflict and imperialist rivalry, in which the EU is playing a major role.
The recent Trump-Russia proposed ‘peace’ deal for Ukraine in October 2025 has created further pressures for the EU to step up with cash and arms to Ukraine. The possibility that the US and Russia should between them control the disposal of Russia’s frozen assets worries the EU. These assets amounted to over€250 billion, a sum invested by the Russian central bank and seized by the western capitalist states after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
* Russia, authoritarianism and the EU
The EU justifies its militarisation in terms of the need to fight against ‘hostile state actors’. Russia has become the bogeyman to justify large scale militarisation. The EU White Paper describes Russia as ‘exploiting a network of systemic instability, including through close cooperation with other authoritarian powers’ such as China. It claims that Russia represents ‘an entirely different – authoritarian and non-democratic – system of government to that of the EU’.
This is disingenuous. Within the EU itself authoritarianism is alive and well. Viktor Orbán’s regime in Hungary has eroded democracy, monopolised the media, holds no respect for the EU court of Justice and, incidentally, allies itself more with Russia than the EU. Poland, too, has seen democracy faltering with key judicial and media institutions becoming propaganda tools for the state. Fundamental rights and freedoms have been taken away and ever greater funding given to the police. The EU is selective as to which authoritarian states it wants to take on.
Furthermore, within the EU itself, it cannot be ignored that there has been a rise of far right and neofascist parties. Such parties now head the governments of four member states – Belgium, Italy, the Czech Republic and Hungary. In six – Bulgaria, Finland, Italy, Croatia and Slovakia and Sweden – they are holding up minority governments. Support for far right parties within the EU has doubled over recent years. They now hold just over a quarter (26 %) of the seats in the European Parliament and are able to influence the balance of power within the EU’s political system.
The EU may condemn the denial of human rights in Russia, but it is not exactly exemplary on this either. The EU’s ever tougher policies for those seeking asylum in Fortress Europe have weakened the rights of those seeking international protection and led to more than 32,000 people dying in the Mediterranean. In addition, in supposedly liberal bastions like Germany -and the UK -we have seen more-or-less authoritarian crackdowns on pro-Palestine protests, with laws being passed and enforced which criminalise rights supposedly protected by the European Convention on Human Rights.
* Ireland and the Russian Threat?
Micheál Martin has followed the EU narrative on Russia. Ireland needs to up its game on cyber and maritime security, including subsea cables, and strengthen the navy and military. He claims that “Ireland will not stand in the way of European countries’ defence and security needs when it comes to the existential Russian threat”.
The Irish government’s claim that the Irish population stands defenceless against Russian aggression amounts to scaremongering. They maintain, without precise evidence, that the Russians are involved in sabotaging critical undersea cables. What is not mentioned is that none of this seabed infrastructure is owned by Ireland, but by multinational companies that operate in Europe and the United States. One significant act of sabotage against seabed infrastructure, that of the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic in 2022, appears not to have been perpetrated by Russia but by the CIA, under the Biden administration.
The Irish government has also made much of Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” vessels which have entered Ireland’s maritime Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). These ships help Russia to export oil and circumvent oil price caps imposed as part of the sanctions regime. This made to seem sinister but in fact several countries under international sanctions operate similar ‘shadow fleets’. For these reasons, The Irish Defence Forces’ claim that “an awful lot of this activity is intended to provoke and possibly to call into question the State’s authority” is somewhat overblown. Furthermore, it should be remembered that the sanctions on these ships are not universal but imposed unilaterally by the EU and the United States, sanctions which are not recognised by many other states which continue to import Russian oil products.
*Complicity with Israel’s genocide undermines neutrality
Ireland’s economic ties to Israel enmesh the state into complicity with Israel’s unlawful genocide in Gaza. Since the so-called ‘ceasefire’ in Gaza, under which Palestinians continue to be killed, the Irish Government has raised no objection to the US’s neocolonial ‘Board of Peace’ plan for Gaza – despite it being led by the main warmongers in the Middle East, representing outrageous profiteering on stolen, ravaged land and it making no reference to Palestinians.
Meanwhile, Ireland is the second largest trading partner in Israeli goods imports. Of the exported goods some €3.02 bn is electronic and integrated circuits and micros assemblies, mostly used in tech and pharmaceutical manufacturing. By far the largest exporter of these products is Intel. The sister facility of Intel’s plant in Leixlip is located only a few miles north of Gaza in Kiryat Gat. Furthermore, Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft, whose presence here make Ireland a critical tech base, provide cloud services for the military and other Israel state functions. These projects and the wider operations of US tech companies in Israel show how these companies are deeply implicated in the occupation of Palestine and the genocide in Gaza, that they provide services to the state of Israel, and that the Irish government so values their presence in Ireland that it will avoid highlighting their dealings with Israel. This is one reason that the government did not want to include services in the Occupied Territories Bill.
As Doyle, Bresnihan and Brodie point out in The Neutrality Files, the government has been intensely lobbied by these companies to dilute the OTB. The same study highlights how Ireland’s reliance on Foreign Direct Investment from the US strongly influences Ireland’s foreign policy including eroding both our neutrality and its responsibility to adhere to international law in relation to Gaza.
The use of Shannon Airport by the US military for the transfer of weapons and troops to Israel is one such example. The Irish government has issued an increasing number of exemptions for such flights through Irish territory and airspace, while refusing even basic inspection of the aircraft. Since January 2024, over 1000 US Military and CRAF flights–more than 30 of which were to or from Israel– have been recorded within 60km of Shannon Airport. Ireland is a state party to the 1948 Genocide Convention. US military use of Shannon Airport is directly at odds with this.
* Defend neutrality: no tampering with the Triple Lock
The Irish government has been set on weakening Irish neutrality for some time. In 2023, the government held Ireland’s Consultative Forum on International Security, chaired by a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Louise Richardson. This set the tone, backed up by forum speakers mainly from defence think tanks, EU foreign policy and security bodies, NATO’s Security Policy directorate. The move was another attempt on the part of the government to manufacture consent for militarisation and to strengthen links with US and military interests.
The chair unambiguously called for dismantling the Triple Lock, the legislative guarantee that ensures the deployment of more than 12 Irish troops on a peacekeeping mission requires a UN mandate. The Irish government wishes to lift this restriction so that Irish Defence Forces can take part in military missions under the authority of the EU and even NATO.
The Triple Lock, it should be remembered, was introduced to reassure the Irish electorate that the Nice and Lisbon Treaties which advocated greater EU integration (both of which were voted down first time around) would not undermine Irish neutrality. Proposing to amend the Triple Lock therefore flies in the face of the assurances given then and what people voted for. This casual disregard of the popular mandate shows the need for a more robust commitment to the principles of neutrality, and that neutrality should be enshrined in the constitution.
The Consultative Forum proceedings did not alter the Irish population’s commitment to neutrality as numerous polls have shown. However the media drive to warn of Ireland’s lack of defence have left people less sure over the Triple Lock . The government is determined to introduce the Triple-Lock Bill (Defence Amendment Bill), now likely to come before the Dáil in 2026. The INL calls for mobilisation against this. It is vital that the argument is made that weakening the Triple Lock is being proposed to bring Ireland in line with the militarisation of the EU and its drive to war. It represents a crucial step in weakening Irish neutrality must be roundly defeated.