Ambushing an Taoiseach

Writing in the Irish Times, former Tánaiste Michael McDowell makes no bones about it.

“To call Volodymyr Zelenskiy‘s meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office a “shouting match”, as many commentators managed to whitewash it, is a lie. It was a unilateral, vicious, premeditated political ambush – a mugging aimed at the political destruction of Zelenskiy in the eyes of the world – and in the eyes of his own people. It was as disgusting as it was shameful.

Trump is publicly showing himself to possess characteristics many of us have for years discerned in him: sociopathic, bullying, ruthless, selfish and destructive traits. These were identified in the perceptive pen portrait of him written by his own niece Mary Trump.

While his first term in office fizzled out electorally in a clownish orgy of sackings of nearly all those whom he had appointed to hold high office, he has now surrounded himself with a circus of super-wealthy, unqualified sycophants whose full-time activity is competitive adulation of their ringmaster’s folly.”

He goes on to describe the Trump Putin rapprochement as a modern day Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (aka The Stalin Hitler Pact) under which Europe was divided into spheres of influence with Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia given to the Soviet Union and Poland shared between them. A week later, Germany invaded Poland and two weeks later Russia did likewise, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Only this time it is all of Europe that is in the jaws of the pincer movement. Russia, with an economy smaller than Italy’s is no economic threat to the USA, while the EU most certainly is, and it is the EU that Trump has declared to be the enemy.

Make no mistake, Trump wants to divide, destroy and subjugate the EU into a continent of economic vassal states dominated by the US and the Russian Federation. Everything he says and does, and has said and has done, points to that strategic purpose. The words of his acolytes – JD Vance, Elon Musk and Marco Rubio – all point in that direction.

Under the guise of demanding that Europe pays for its own defence (in which case it would need its own power and deterrence equal to that of the US and Russia), he is pursuing an entirely different aim – that Europe should be weak and vulnerable, and accessible to bullying pressure from the US and Russia.

The next foreign leader slated to visit the White House is an Taoiseach, Micheál Martin who would be in the cross-hairs of the Trump regime in any case because of Ireland’s massive €50 Billion trade surplus with the USA, Ireland’s €18 Billion corporate tax take from US multinational corporations, Ireland’s lead role for regulating the US tech sector within the EU, and Ireland’s opposition to the US and Israeli policy of ethnically cleansing Gaza of Palestinians. To put those figures in perspective, the USA’s much exaggerated military aid to Ukraine has been less than €40 Billion per annum over the past three years (while Europe’s aid has been well over double that).

Can we expect a similar ambush and public humiliation of Micheál Martin? The traditional defence that Ireland is a small open economy, no threat to anyone, and thus flies below the radar of world leaders no longer applies. We are in the front line now. How can we manage this unprecedented situation?

In a paper delivered yesterday as the Annual Public Lecture of IACES (Irish Association for Contemporary European Studies) entitled “Ireland, Brexit and the US: Small State, Big Influence” Professor Mary C. Murphy of the Irish Institute & Faculty of Political Science, Boston College (and late of UCC) outlined the factors which had enabled Ireland to have an outsized influence in Washington during the Brexit negotiations and against the advice of John Bolton, President Trump’s former National Security advisor and foreign policy hawk who had advocated military action and regime change by the U.S. in Iran, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba, Yemen, and North Korea.

Bolton notes that the US President and key Democrats ‘unreservedly accept both the EU’s claim that the NIP is essentially inviolable, and Ireland’s posture that unilateral British changes to the NIP could mortally wound the GFA’. He argues that the US should be siding with the UK – because that is in the US’ best national interests. Daily Telegraph, 16 June 2022

Professor Murphy noted that Ireland had adopted three strategies to maximise its influence in Washington: Bargaining, lobbying (direct, indirect and diasporic), and bonding with key decision makers and institutions and that this had been achieved with a relatively small embassy staff of 40 people supported by key organisations such as the Friends of Ireland Caucus, the Ad Hoc Committee for the Protection of the Good Friday Agreement, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and Sinn Fein in the US. The aim was to “become part of the furniture” in the decision-making process in Washington.

In contrast pro-Brexit unionism had almost no presence or influence in Washington despite the fact than many US Presidents and political heavyweights have had protestant Ulster Scots backgrounds. This meant that countervailing influences were not strong. A diverse set of diaspora groups were largely on the same page as the Irish government and Irish diplomats seemed to particularly good at the lobbying and bonding process. Senior US politicians such as House Speaker, Nanci Pelosi and Richard Neale, Chair of the House Ways and Means committee, were pivotal to the cause.

The results were mixed and split on party lines: President Obama spoke openly against Brexit and said that the UK would be at the back of the queue when it came to securing a trade deal with the US. President Trump (1.0) supported a hard Brexit and showed no interest in the effect of Brexit on Northern Ireland. President Biden made numerous and regular reference to the importance of protecting the Good Friday Agreement in the context of Brexit. However, Trump’s (and Bolton’s) opposition notwithstanding, the consensus achieved on Brexit and the Northern Ireland Protocol was largely bi-partisan, and reflected in the increasingly Republican leaning of many Irish American voters.

Of course, it helped that Ireland has the support of a large trading block like the European Union and that despite having 27 member states, Michel Barnier was able to achieve a far more united negotiating position and team than successive UK governments could. Having 26 other supportive embassies in Washington helped to counteract the UK’s diplomatic efforts.

Unfortunately, all these advantages are no longer present, or at least not to the same degree. The EU is now President Trump’s primary foe, ahead of China and Russia. There is an even more powerful countervailing force in the shape of the Israeli lobby in Washington, and Ireland’s position on Palestine is not popular among Republican supporters, including many of the Irish diaspora. Nanci Pelosi is no longer in power, and influence of the Irish diaspora is dissipating as Irish immigration to the USA has stalled. Trump has always been very focused on trade deficits and others profiting an America’s expense, be it the US security umbrella or their multinational corporations abroad. Ireland, as a non-NATO member is particularly exposed.

So it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that President Trump and JD Vance will meet Micheál Martin in even more hostile terms than they met President Zelenskyy as the embodiment of everything they hate about the outside world – a security free-loader, a representative of their second largest economic competitor, the beneficiary of intellectual capital developed in the USA, a leading tax competitor, and a (relatively) left wing critic of US foreign policy on Gaza and the Ukraine to boot. What’s not to dislike? Intensely.

Micheál Martin might do well to hand over the bowl of shamrock and scarper as fast as he can. I suspect he will not emerge unscathed. He can smile and talk all he wants about Ireland’s ties to the US, our substantial investments there, and our plans to increase defense expenditure. It will cut no ice. President Trump may use the occasion to formally announce the beginning of 25% tariffs against Ireland and the EU and to bring back US intellectual capital and manufacturing capabilities to the USA.

There is little An Taoiseach will be able to do about it except endure his ritual humiliation and smile for the cameras. It is, apparently, disrespectful to argue with a US Emperor or even to push back on false facts. The offer of a state visit to Ireland is unlikely to have the same appeal to Trump as a ride in a golden carriage to Parliament and dinner with royalty in the UK. The tables have been comprehensively turned. Ireland has flown too high and like Icarus, its waxen wings will be melted by the rising sun of Trump backed by the Star of David. Be ready for some rough times ahead.