Why Ireland gets away with low defence spending
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Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. Today with me, Alex Dibble and Tom Noonan. Ireland spends less than a quarter of a percent of GDP on defence. That's one twentieth of what Donald Trump has said he wants from European nations.

Now, Ireland isn't a NATO member, but despite its very low defence spending, its Taoiseach Michal Martin received a warm welcome from the President when he visited the White House on Wednesday.

Of course, some other European nations who are NATO members also spend very little. We'll be looking into this today while also looking at a key European defence summit which went relatively unnoticed as the world's attention was focused on the ceasefire talks between the US, Ukraine and Russia. In fact, we're going to start with that summit in Paris with our guest today. The Times' Michael Binion, who over the last 50 years has written for the paper from Washington DC, Moscow, Brussels...

and the old West Germany. Michael, was there anything new agreed at this meeting? It feels like news from the summit has been lost, as I said, amongst all the developments surrounding the ceasefire talks.

It has rather, yes. They really all just simply agreed that they need to step up defence spending and that Europe really is challenged now by what might or might not happen in Ukraine. And whatever happens then there, in any case, Europe needs to pool its resources more than they do at the moment. It needs to identify a European potential for proper security, independent of the United States, if it ever comes to that. And they were planning for sort of worst case scenarios where perhaps

America decides that it will actually either leave NATO or separate itself from the European element of NATO. It didn't lead to anything concrete. It goes on in parallel with the idea of the coalition of the willing, which Kirstama has put forward as a suggestion that those willing to perhaps form a peacekeeping force in Ukraine should get together and plan it. But at the moment, it's all really up in the air.

It sounds like there's a lot of agreement there about targets and goals and the direction of travel for Europe, but not a great deal then about how Europe actually gets there. Exactly. And of course, one of the key things is common procurement. I mean, this is the big deal.

that Europe all has its own defence industries, which are quite profitable and important, and particularly France has been very unwilling to share its defence procurement needs. In other words, it's not going to buy British material or British fighters or whatever when it can make its own. And...

It's an economy of scale. If you pool your resources, those that do things best make what they make and others make other things. You know, some make missiles, some make ammunition or whatever. It would save a lot of money and it would actually make Europe much more efficient. That, of course, also leads to the idea of unified command. And there again, who's in charge?

Well, when it comes to who's in charge, there is this group that's emerged and seemed to lead the way in Paris this week. It's calling itself the Group of Five or the E5. That's the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Poland. How do you see it? Are these the future leaders of European defence? And also, I suppose, where has this group come from? Personally, I'd never heard of it.

No, nor has anybody, I don't think. I mean, traditionally, Britain and France have been the two countries that provide troops for peacekeeping. I mean, one thinks back to the Bosnian War. It was Britain and France, really, that were most important in trying to police that wretched war that went on and on. Germany at that time was pretty much out of it because the Germans were still saying that their constitution forbade them to send anything in.

to war zones, or certainly that army could only be used for self-defence and not for operational attacks. And Italy, well, yes, they sent troops to Bosnia, but they've never been a particularly strong contingent. And also, of course, Italy doesn't have an independent nuclear deterrent like France and Britain do. But the five, I mean, they are probably those countries with the best defence potential in

Britain is actually going to have a hard job to justify being there because the army is down to less than 70,000. I mean, it really is the smallest army we've had for almost centuries. And France is also, I think, struggling a bit to maintain its troop levels properly.

But put together, they might be a credible force. I mean, one does wonder, A, whether Italy actually really wants to be part of a new military command, particularly as the Prime Minister Meloni isn't particularly enamoured of working with the others. And Spain would feel rather left out. I mean, Spain's a pretty big country. What about them? Well, one of the reasons Spain might not be...

be there is that last year it had NATO's lowest defence spending as a proportion of GDP, 1.28%. Italy, who is in this E5 group, as we said, isn't that far off to be fair, about 1.5%. You compare that to Poland, way ahead on more than 4% of GDP. Donald Trump is, of course, putting pressure on Europe to raise its defence spending compared to the US contribution to NATO. But do you think that imbalance within Europe is

is going to change anytime soon? It should, but I'm not sure that it will. I mean, those that spend most money are those that feel most exposed to threat. So it's obviously Poland, which feels it's right on the border. In fact, literally, it is on the border with that enclave of Russia, just to the north of Poland, and the Baltic countries also. And

by extension, Scandinavia. I mean, Sweden and Finland having joined NATO, Finland, because it has a very long border directly with Russia, they are feeling exposed and therefore they are seeing the urgency of improving their defences. Now, Spain is rather a long way away, both geographically and mentally from the main threat at the moment.

And Spain can't really see that there's going to be an attack on Spain at any moment soon. Same with Portugal. I mean, they are fairly far away. And I think although, of course, they should spend more on defence, they probably won't.

This week we had the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, visiting the White House for St Patrick's Day. Now, as we've said, Ireland is not part of NATO, but analysis of European defence spending more widely suggests the Irish government has the lowest spending, less than a quarter of a percent of GDP, which is about £1.1 billion. Yet

despite all the pressure from the US about European defence spending, that didn't seem to come up when he met Donald Trump. And quite the opposite, there seemed to be a fair bit of bonhomie between the two. No, well, several things here. First of all, the Irish-American contingent is enormous and electorally it would be pretty suicidal to pick a quarrel with Ireland.

No US president has ever done that. Some have gone a bit overboard the other way, such as Joe Biden, you know, who maintains he's a sort of honorary Irishman there. And even Obama said, well, if you put an apostrophe after the O, he could be an Irishman as well. But no, that's domestic reasons. Secondly, frankly, in military terms, Ireland simply doesn't count. I mean, it's a very small population compared with most of Europe. And

Both Ireland and Austria have been getting a bit of a free ride for some time. Neither of them are in NATO. Yet, because they are both next to big neighbours, Ireland next to Britain, Austria next to Germany, they sort of get the protection of their neighbours. Out of interest, Michael, have you sensed any sign of a change in policy from Ireland on their defence spending?

No, I mean, Ireland, their military is small, but it's not to be laughed at. The Irish provided a very important peacekeeping contingent in the Congo years and years ago. And I think the Irish have been involved also in some Middle East peacekeeping operations. They, I mean, just because they're not involved in NATO doesn't mean that their army is negligible. And of course, luckily, one hopes it never needs to be used for defense of the realm.

And just finally, Michael, we've had this shift in the ceasefire talks and U.S. officials now saying the ball is in Russia's court. And it feels it does feel like the pressure has been on Moscow rather than Ukraine or Europe more generally over the last few days. Do you think that's giving Europe a bit of respite and that ultimately European leaders will be quite pleased that the U.S.'s attention is where they want it to be? And that's on Vladimir Putin.

I'm not sure. I mean, the pressure on Putin is strong. It's internal as well as external. I mean, the Russian population is really, really weary, sick and angry about the war, but there's no way they can express that. And they've lost a lot of people. And the economy, although it's done pretty well considering all the sanctions, the long-term outlook is very poor.

And one of Putin's aims is to get Russia out of this pariah status. In fact, he's almost said that a condition for the ceasefire is to stop the ban on all kind of trade arrangements with Russia. So there is pressure there. But pressure externally, I'm not sure. There's not much Trump can do to stop Putin. You know, renewed sanctions won't work automatically.

All the sanctions that are possible have been imposed and there's not much more they can do. If America is really angry, then Putin will just say, well, we told you that NATO is aggressive and just look at what's happening. And of course, Putin's own pride means he's got to show that all this enormous expense and sacrifice of many, many men has been worth it.

Michael Binion, thank you for joining us. And as Michael says, the proposals for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine are currently hanging in the balance because of some fairly non-committal statements from Russia. In yesterday's episode, we looked at why Vladimir Putin might be stalling for time and whether he's caught in a bind where whichever way he moves, he loses out.

It might well explain why there's not yet a firm agreement. So do go back to yesterday and have a listen to that. That is it from us today, though. Thank you for taking 10 minutes to stay on top of the world with the help of The Times. See you tomorrow.

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