After decades of neglect, Ireland is finally debating national security. Unfortunately, we don’t just need to catch up with the rest of the world, but understand how our economic growth strategy involved national security choices that are coming back to bite us.
Market-based globalisation is being eaten alive as powerful countries contend for domination. That means that the economic advantages that Ireland strove to build for decades have hidden security vulnerabilities. Semiconductor manufacturing, the online economy, and global financial arrangements are among the most ferociously contested territories in the new landscape of global security.
None of this was expected. As Abraham Newman and I explain in our new book, Underground Empire, international policymakers let markets rip at the end of the cold war, lowering barriers to trade and the movement of money across borders. The internet rapidly expanded, seeming to allow ideas to spread freely too.
Politically influential commentators like Thomas Friedman believed this would create a more peaceful and prosperous world order. Information, financial and manufacturing networks would make war irrational, creating a globalised economy in which Boston, Berlin, Benin City and Ballina could compete fiercely on an equal footing. In an unfortunately titled 2005 column, “Follow the Leapin’ Leprechaun”, Friedman singled out Ireland as a country that would thrive in this new global marketplace, by “playing offense” on tax, regulations and business subsidies.
Actually, Friedman’s networks magnified the power of the powerful, drawing the world economy further under US influence. In the early 2000s, most information on the internet travelled across US territory. The purportedly decentralised global financial system depended on the US dollar. As high-tech manufacturing spread across the globe, US businesses maintained quiet control over many of the commanding heights of intellectual property.
Henry Farrell, “American Influence: Ireland Must Focus on Economic Security as Arena of Vulnerability, Irish Times, September 2, 2023.