The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Ireland Needs a New Game Plan || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

Today we're talking about Ireland's raw deal. It's on the far northwestern extreme of Europe, has a crummy climate and limited cultural development - hence the need for Guinness and Jameson. Donate to MedShare HERE: https://www.medshare.org/zukraine/ Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/ireland-needs-a-new-game-plan

Hello, everybody from the foot of Mount Huron where I'm doing the tour to Huron today. We are going to use today to talk about Ireland. Ireland is a country that historically speaking has had kind of a raw deal. So at the far northwestern extremes of Europe has a relatively crappy climate and the inability to support a large population. So cultural development has been somewhat stunted. That's part of why the food is so bad. Also, the climate has hurt that because you can't grow too many things. but the biggest problem is it's on the wrong side of Great Britain from the rest of Europe.

So its future has always been determined by its relationship with London and London's relationship with the wider world. Now, since 1973, when the Brits decide to be good Europeans, that changed dramatically because all of a sudden Ireland could join the EU at the same time and become a bridge of sorts between the United States and the European Union, between the United Kingdom and the European Union, between the United States and the UK direct. And being the broker and benefiting from access to the greater European market as well as development funds,

Ireland was able to go through the most rapid economic transformation of any country in the European space. And in a very short period of time, roughly 40, 45 years, it went from the poorest country in Western Europe to the richest in per capita terms, unless you include like the divorce capital of the world, Luxembourg, among the real countries. this was this was amazing and Ireland became a biotech a financial and an infotech center however all of the same problems and evolutions that are causing countries and states and provinces the world over to kind of reassess have come for Ireland too number one when you go through very very rapid economic development the country moves from the country I'm sorry the population moves from the countryside to the cities very very rapidly it's the China story. It's the Taiwan story. It's the Korea story. It's the Ireland story.

And so Ireland basically had this period of 40 years where everyone was becoming a yuppie, and no one was having kids. And all of the money that would normally be spent on child rearing was instead spent on education and infrastructure development. It's a great story, but you can only do it once. And because the birth rate has been so low for so long, Ireland is in danger of flaming out over the next 30 years. Not as fast as to say the Chinese or the Koreans will, but in the same kind of scope of problem. Second, Ireland is a bridge,

and when the UK left the EU, that was a big flashing red siren. Because if the UK is going to negotiate its own deals, then it's going to have independent access to all of these places. And all of a sudden, the bridge that is Ireland doesn't matter so much. Now, the Brits have been uniquely incompetent and wallowing in narcissistic irrelevance ever since the Brexit vote. They've refused to admit that the only path forward for them is a crippling deal with the United States that will give them access to the

NAFTA system, but at the cost of any sort of economic sovereignty. Until they accept that, Ireland is still the bridge. And so we're kind of in bonus time. We're kind of at a great period right now. But sooner or later, the Brits are going to bite the bullet, do what they need to do, and then everything that has made Ireland special from a geopolitical point of view goes away almost overnight. And then they are left with a relatively childless society that has access to the EU but no longer qualifies for development funds and no longer serves as a bridge to anywhere and is simply physically too far removed to matter economically unless they can find a way to go the value-added scale very, very quickly.

Now, the Koreans have shown that that is possible. The question is whether it's sustainable when you don't have a replacement generation. And then finally, there's the capital issue. As everyone ages into mass retirement, the volume of capital that we've become used to seen for the last 30 years goes away. And for a country that's small like Ireland

that has to import most of its capital anyway, that really is the kiss of death. So Ireland, like many other places, needs to reinvent itself. It needs to find a fundamentally new model because the one that they followed very successfully for the last half century is gone. The question is whether they can do that in an environment of demographic degradation and breaking trade links. Oh, I talked about the economic. I forgot the strategic. Oh, that's one of Colorado's six grizzly peaks behind me.

Ireland only has strategic options as London allows. And in the post-1973 era, when the Brits have been European and, for the most part, part of the EU, that's been wonderful. That's not the case anymore. Sooner or later, the Brits are going to start acting like Brits again. And when that happens, the strategic options that Ireland have are going to shrivel to two. Number one, they can attempt to exist in direct hostile opposition, in which case the Brits will treat them like they have through most of history. or number two, they can seek some sort of partnership or de facto Susannity relationship where the London calls most of the big strategic moves.

We're not there yet, and even if the Brits decided that they had a master plan today, it's not like it's going to happen soon. But Britain does have the world's third most powerful Navy. What you're looking for for us to get to a point where this might actually be an issue is the Brits able to operate their Navy independently of the United States. States. Because of budget cuts and austerity and economic crises, military spending in Britain has been redirected towards land operations as part of the war and terror, and yet they never gave up on the two supercarriers that they're now operating in the Queen Elizabeth class, but they lack

enough supporting naval vessels to provide independent carrier groups. So the Americans are providing that, which means that the Americans have a, not a veto capability over the British Navy, but the ability to direct it completely. And as long as that is the case, the Americans think fondly enough of the Irish that London won't be able to act like it normally does towards Dublin. This is not for forever. Eventually the Brits are going to come back into their own, and this will be the strategic question for the Irish. Not today, not tomorrow, but relatively soon, strategically speaking. Now, the Americans aren't going to just do nothing.

I would argue that the Irish lobby in Washington is actually more powerful, especially in Congress, than say the Israeli lobby. But Ireland is just not a top-tier issue for us so long as the Brits are allies, and they are. And that's not going to change. So over the course of the next generation, the Irish need to come up with a fundamentally new economic model and make their peace with the Brits one way or the other. And now that I've pissed off half of my genetic forebearers, I'm going to go climb a mountain. Take care.