Sir Michael Fallon KCB was Defence Secretary 2014-17. He is the co-author of the Foreword to Policy Exchange’s paper ‘Closing the Back Door: Rediscovering Northern Ireland’s Role in British National Security’.
This has been a successful week for Unionism. Northern Ireland’s political crisis has been solved, overwhelmingly through careful British diplomacy and good political sense.
Rishi Sunak’s personal control of negotiations – first patiently renegotiating the Northern Ireland Protocol with the EU a year ago, and then conducting months of back-channel talks with Northern Ireland’s political parties to construct a coherent power-sharing agreement – have combined with the Windsor Framework and the Government’s recently published command paper, Safeguarding the Union, to cement Northern Ireland’s role in the Union.
By providing Northern Ireland with a coherent long-term link to the Union, the Government has laid the foundation both to stabilise the Province’s economy and to leverage its world-class defence industry to revitalise British military power.
Sunak’s next step, however, is equally crucial. He must translate this success for unionism into a broader strategic success for the United Kingdom, securing British strategic interests in and around the whole island of Ireland.
Policy Exchange’s recent paper ‘Closing the Back Door: Rediscovering Northern Ireland’s Role in British National Security’, with a foreword by myself and Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, makes a crucial start towards strategic coherence. It was striking that this paper found its way into the exchange between Sunak and Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the Democratic Unionist leader, during Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, and at the Taoiseach’s press conference in Belfast.
Russia’s threat to British interests and territorial integrity has increased with its invasion of Ukraine. So has Russian harassment of Irish territorial waters and the Western Approaches, the crucial maritime corridor through which so much of our trade passes, and under which lie the data cables that connect our economy to North America.
Moscow’s intent, in deploying warships and spy ships off Ireland’s west coast, is to map European-bound transatlantic cables for disruption, threaten British, Irish, and European trade in wartime, and even put pressure on the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent.
There is also ample evidence of growing Russian, Chinese and Iranian intelligence activity in Ireland, from Moscow’s grossly oversized Dublin embassy to China’s overseas police stations and Hezbollah’s connections with Irish organised crime. Considering the ease of access between Ireland and the UK, this poses a direct threat to the Union as much as to Dublin.
As Policy Exchange’s paper recommends, Britain must act immediately to address the clear and present threat posed by Russian, Chinese, and Iranian pressure, harassment, and subversion.
The obvious way to do so is by returning British air and naval forces to Northern Ireland to police the Western Approaches. The current rethink about defence and security in the Republic, while welcome, will not be enough to secure Briain’s strategic interests.
By ceding the Treaty Ports to Dublin in 1938, and later drawing down its aerial and naval bases in Northern Ireland, the whole island of Ireland has been left more vulnerable. The Irish Defence Forces are too small to secure Ireland’s territorial waters or the Western Approaches; the Irish security services are not strong enough to counter hostile intelligence activity.
The UK should now press the Republic on the strategic necessity of a more coherent defence system. There is some cause for optimism: Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin have both supported greater Irish cooperation within PESCO and questioned the Triple Lock, which prevents the deployment of Irish army personnel outside Irish borders without approval from the Dáil, the Irish Government, and authorisation from the UN Security Council (thus giving Russia and China an effective veto over Irish defence policy).
But reform and a sufficiently enlarged defence budget have yet to materialise. A more immediate threat is the coming Irish election: Sinn Féin remains hostile to Western security and has had recent links with Russian and Chinese interests.
This country has an absolute strategic interest in Ireland by virtue of the Union and wider geopolitics. Rishi Sunak should build on the momentum he has established to help protect the whole island of Ireland – and the Union, too.
Sir Michael Fallon KCB was Defence Secretary 2014-17. He is the co-author of the Foreword to Policy Exchange’s paper ‘Closing the Back Door: Rediscovering Northern Ireland’s Role in British National Security’.
This has been a successful week for Unionism. Northern Ireland’s political crisis has been solved, overwhelmingly through careful British diplomacy and good political sense.
Rishi Sunak’s personal control of negotiations – first patiently renegotiating the Northern Ireland Protocol with the EU a year ago, and then conducting months of back-channel talks with Northern Ireland’s political parties to construct a coherent power-sharing agreement – have combined with the Windsor Framework and the Government’s recently published command paper, Safeguarding the Union, to cement Northern Ireland’s role in the Union.
By providing Northern Ireland with a coherent long-term link to the Union, the Government has laid the foundation both to stabilise the Province’s economy and to leverage its world-class defence industry to revitalise British military power.
Sunak’s next step, however, is equally crucial. He must translate this success for unionism into a broader strategic success for the United Kingdom, securing British strategic interests in and around the whole island of Ireland.
Policy Exchange’s recent paper ‘Closing the Back Door: Rediscovering Northern Ireland’s Role in British National Security’, with a foreword by myself and Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, makes a crucial start towards strategic coherence. It was striking that this paper found its way into the exchange between Sunak and Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the Democratic Unionist leader, during Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, and at the Taoiseach’s press conference in Belfast.
Russia’s threat to British interests and territorial integrity has increased with its invasion of Ukraine. So has Russian harassment of Irish territorial waters and the Western Approaches, the crucial maritime corridor through which so much of our trade passes, and under which lie the data cables that connect our economy to North America.
Moscow’s intent, in deploying warships and spy ships off Ireland’s west coast, is to map European-bound transatlantic cables for disruption, threaten British, Irish, and European trade in wartime, and even put pressure on the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent.
There is also ample evidence of growing Russian, Chinese and Iranian intelligence activity in Ireland, from Moscow’s grossly oversized Dublin embassy to China’s overseas police stations and Hezbollah’s connections with Irish organised crime. Considering the ease of access between Ireland and the UK, this poses a direct threat to the Union as much as to Dublin.
As Policy Exchange’s paper recommends, Britain must act immediately to address the clear and present threat posed by Russian, Chinese, and Iranian pressure, harassment, and subversion.
The obvious way to do so is by returning British air and naval forces to Northern Ireland to police the Western Approaches. The current rethink about defence and security in the Republic, while welcome, will not be enough to secure Briain’s strategic interests.
By ceding the Treaty Ports to Dublin in 1938, and later drawing down its aerial and naval bases in Northern Ireland, the whole island of Ireland has been left more vulnerable. The Irish Defence Forces are too small to secure Ireland’s territorial waters or the Western Approaches; the Irish security services are not strong enough to counter hostile intelligence activity.
The UK should now press the Republic on the strategic necessity of a more coherent defence system. There is some cause for optimism: Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin have both supported greater Irish cooperation within PESCO and questioned the Triple Lock, which prevents the deployment of Irish army personnel outside Irish borders without approval from the Dáil, the Irish Government, and authorisation from the UN Security Council (thus giving Russia and China an effective veto over Irish defence policy).
But reform and a sufficiently enlarged defence budget have yet to materialise. A more immediate threat is the coming Irish election: Sinn Féin remains hostile to Western security and has had recent links with Russian and Chinese interests.
This country has an absolute strategic interest in Ireland by virtue of the Union and wider geopolitics. Rishi Sunak should build on the momentum he has established to help protect the whole island of Ireland – and the Union, too.