The New World Disorder – the 2026 McGill Summer School…

This is the second time I have attended the McGill Summer school, and therein lies the problem: Most of the themes and many of the speakers were the same, and with the same uniformity of view across the board. Rarely was there a disagreement within a panel discussion, and contrarian views weren’t really in evidence. It felt almost impolite to disagree. The mutual back-slapping and self-congratulatory tone became grating after a while, and anyone who has been paying attention will have learned little new. But there were a few highlights:

Kara Owen CMG, the new British ambassador to Ireland was a welcome change from the usual mildly patronising view one tends to get from the British establishment towards Ireland. Her experience in the Far East having given her a taste of what real innovation at pace looks like. Her perspective on how Andy Burnham’s more domestically focused agenda will differ from Keir Starmer’s engagement with global challenges was important from an Irish and European perspective.

Mark Hennessey, writing for the Irish Times, managed to wring a few headlines from the sometimes turgid proceedings. The new Ulster Unionist Party Leader, Jon Burrows came across as a refreshingly normal conservative, law and order specialist focused on the non-controversial issue of eliminating waste in the public service in a softball interview with Sam McBride. Sam mentioned there was good news for him in the forthcoming Belfast Telegraphs poll of party political voting intentions ahead of next year’s Assembly elections. (That poll, out today, shows the UUP gaining 3% of the vote at the expense of the DUP and overtaking them as the largest unionist party in the wake of the Donaldson verdict – N.B. within the margin of error)

Mike Ryan, former senior World Health Organisation (WHO) official, didn’t hold back in describing Reactionary Israeli Ministers fascist bastards for their activities in Gaza which he said would guarantee violence for decades to come. Bombing electricity and desalinisation plants in a region desperately dependent on fresh water was equivalent to mass murder. Climate change induced droughts are already forcing millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa to migrate. While populations in Europe and the USA are declining, 30% of the world’s population will be living in Africa in thirty years’ time without a climatic or economic environment capable of sustaining them. This would create huge migratory pressures in the future.

Robert Watt, formerly Ireland’s highest paid civil servant has had a Damascene conversion since taking over the leadership of the Dublin Regeneration Authority, arguing for a greater devolution of powers to local authorities and the encouragement of a risk taking culture amongst civil servants. A gotscha game blame culture and short news cycles was undermining long-term strategic planning which often took decades to bear fruit.

While long delays in the Irish planning system were mentioned, there was little discussion of the other blockages to rapid infrastructural transformation in the Irish system – perverse incentives to risk taking in the civil service, a legal profession incentivised to string out and delay judicial proceedings as long as possible, and a lack of capacity in the building industry due to the focus on academic rather than manual and craft/technical skills training in our education system.

Prof Bent Flyvbjerg, a global infrastructure expert at Oxford University, said Ireland’s difficulties delivering major projects on time and on budget were no worse than anywhere else. Humans were hard wired to under-estimate risk and some projects will inevitably fail. Risks can be reduced by adopting a more sequential and modular approach – big bang bespoke projects should be avoided wherever possible. Construction sites should become assembly points for building components mass produced elsewhere.

The nearest thing we had to a disagreement at the whole three day school was when Ivana Bacik, Leader of the Labour Party, argued for the retention of the triple lock to the deployment of Irish troops on peace keeping missions  abroad  on the basis that no other body has the legitimacy, the authority and the track record of the UN. Apparently we need Russia to keep an eye on what the Irish government and parliament are up to!

Cathal Berry, ex Irish Army and ex-TD argued that that debate was a deliberate distraction from the shameful record of successive governments to fund the Irish Defence forces properly. Improved body armour, which he had signed off on as an army officer, had yet to be delivered many years later. Ireland lacks ship borne missiles, armed helicopters, and sonar capabilities and couldn’t even protect government buildings during our EU presidency without outside assistance.

Other neutral countries like Austria and Switzerland place a great emphasis on military preparedness to defend their sovereign territory. While there was agreement that defence spending needed to be radically increased, there was little discussion on how that money could be most effectively spent. An active radar system has already been ordered, but for how long would it lie unused in a box until the appropriate resources are trained and proficient in its use?

Generals are often accused of preparing for the next war with the tools and policy doctrines of the last. There was no discussion of how Ukraine is revolutionising how wars will be fought with land, undersea and air drones often deployed in layered AI controlled swarms autonomous enough to be relatively immune from electronic jamming technologies.

Rather than trying to replicate what other countries already have, I would argue that Ireland should specialise in a few niche areas capable of protecting our undersea cables and our maritime, airspace and information systems assets. We have the skills, some relevant companies, and much improved and more cost effective technologies are emerging. Buying outdated second hand equipment and aping traditional militaries elsewhere is not a forward looking strategy.

Ireland has a proud record of contributing to UN peacekeeping missions but that has now reduced from a peak of 850 to 50 personnel deployed overseas. Ireland’s military neutrality will be tested when the UNIFIL mandate in Lebanon expires and is likely to be replaced by an EU force with or without a UN peace keeping mandate, although he noted Article 52 of the UN Charter does provide for regional bodies to deploy missions in keeping with the values of the UN Charter without specific Security Council authorisation.

Dan O’Brien, Chief Economist of the Institute of International and European Affairs, marvelled at the resilience of the European economy in the face of the first global pandemic in 100 years (2019), resurgent inflation (2020), a major European war and energy shock (2022-202?), the second election of Donald Trump (2024) and his imposition of swingeing tariffs, rising interest rates, and now the war with Iran and further energy price spikes. Since 2013, net employment in the EU had increased by 25 million, and unemployment is at its lowest level since 1982. He didn’t mention it is now being greatly outperformed by both the US and China.

This complacency was very much echoed by a very softball interview of Philip Lane, Chief economist of the European Central Bank by Jude Webber, Ireland correspondent of the Financial Times. I asked him when was the EU going to address their failure to create a Single Market for Capital and Services to build on the success of the Single Market for products. That failure has meant that Europe can’t compete with the USA in mega-capital intensive areas like AI or generate the efficiencies of scale in services like insurance which meant Irish consumers are held captive by small oligopolies while prices for services like (say) car insurance are far more competitive in the larger European markets.

His response was that Europe still enjoyed a very good standard of living compared to most other countries. True, but hardly answering the question. The USA is dominating the EU in financial and software services and China is destroying its lead in manufacturing. Meanwhile the European Central bank fiddles around with interest rates while having no interest or mandate to promote innovation in key strategic growth sectors. The Philip Lane interview was so boring, constantly referencing charts on his website, even Mark Hennessey couldn’t wring a headline or story out of it.

A little more urgency and dynamism was shown by Vanessa Hartley, Head of Google Ireland, who urged Ireland to spend some of its tax surpluses on fixing the housing crisis – otherwise our children will be forced to leave – and it is always the brightest and best who have the most opportunities overseas. The Accelerated Infrastructure Taskforce and Irelands track record of public/private sector collaboration were a step in the right direction but it is now all about delivery.

Saying the world was currently characterised by VUCA – Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity – she praised Ireland’s political and policy stability, adoption of new technologies (600,000 trained in AI), and movement up the value chain. 1,400 of Googles 6,000 employees in Ireland were engaged in R&D and Ireland was the second fastest growth market for Google in the world, (after in the USA). R&D now constitutes 25% of new foreign direct investment coming into Ireland.

Democracy is a relatively recent invention in human evolution, and Ireland is one of the oldest democracies in the world. However, Professor Theresa Reidy noted that like our European neighbours, c. 20% of the population is disaffected and alienated from the political process although there has been no coherent far right political movement to date – other than in the fuel protests.

Ciaran Mullooly, MEP for Independent Ireland was hostile to signs of far right and racist tendencies among some independent politicians in Ireland but admitted he was on a steep learning curve about European politics and was shocked at Ursula Van Der Leyen’s blank check support for Israel’s actions in Gaza.  (My own view is that even the virtual eradication of Palestinians from Gaza would struggle to elicit a united European response).

Eastern European political priorities were very different to ours, with security in the face of an invasion threat from Russia the top priority. With all but four small EU members in NATO, defence and security is increasingly going to become an EU priority as well despite the lack of a treaty mandate for such policies. (Remember that prior to COVID, the EU had virtually no competency for drug or vaccine procurement either). This will be challenging for a small militarily neutral state like Ireland.

Professor Luke O’Neill and Robert Watt CEO Dublin Regeneration Authority discussed a number of ideas that could change Ireland, including:

1. Free Shingle Vaccine for older people – also proven to protect from dementia. (O’Neill noted that William Cambell from nearby Ramelton, won the Nobel Price for developing Invermectin, used worldwide for treating parasitic diseases with great success).
2. More widespread adoption of Ozempic class drugs which are beneficial for diabetes and some cancers as well as a lot of obesity related conditions
3. A national children’s science centre, perhaps in the GPO – despite all the problems and delays to date – to promote greater interest and proficiency in science in the next generation.
4. More power and funding for local authorities to deal with housing and dereliction problems
5. Multi-annual budgeting – to promote a more strategic approach to large infrastructural projects which take years to deliver – and a greater focus on performance management rather than cost control

The session on organised crime was devoted mostly to the participants congratulating themselves at length for their role on bringing the Kinahan gang to heel (mostly through hacking their communications system). The participants said nothing about the rampant rise of online scams which have probably affected most of the audience at one time or another and where there is a huge need to improve international cooperation to identify, locate and apprehend the scammers.

The role of the children of prominent paramilitaries in the drug trade was mentioned, but not the need to eliminate paramilitarism itself. Apparently, the former PSNI officer and Garda Commissioner Drew Harris was shocked at the discovery of Semtex in a car travelling north. Really?

Looking forward to US Mid term elections Professor Robert Schmuhl of Notre Dame University noted that the Trump administrations policies were governed by his personal whim, impulse, caprice and peek. He has emasculated the US state department, has ceased to participate in 66 world organisations and cut the staff and budget of the US Overseas Development Aid budget by 80%. The UK medical journal, the Lancet, estimates this will result in 9.4 million lives lost by 2030. 25 out of 36 advanced countries surveyed now have a more favourable view of China rather than the USA. Gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics together with the delegitimization of election results are preparing the ground for fascism.

Belfast man Niall Stanage, White House correspondent for The Hill, noted that the Trump administration’s formal National Security Strategy document issued last year made no mention of Venezuela, Greenland or Cuba and mentioned Ireland and Britain only in the context of wishing to restore them to their former greatness. It noted that the Middle East was no longer a constant irritant and that President Trump had cemented his legacy as THE PRESIDENT OF PEACE.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

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Nothing I heard at the summer school changed my conviction that Ireland and the EU need to learn a few hard lessons:

1. Stop behaving obsequiously towards Trump. He respects only strength and admires dictators. Place swingeing tariffs on all US goods and Services to make tariffs just as painful for the US as the EU. (Whereas the EU has a large surplus in goods trade with the US, the US surplus in services trade almost makes up the difference. A €10 annual tax on all X users would be a good start!)
2. If all else fails, the EU may have to consider a broad alliance with all BRIC countries (including China) despite our human rights concerns. The US makes up only 25% (and declining) of the global economy. If most of the rest of the worlds stands together the US will have no option but to back down on tariffs and adherence to international law.
3. Ukraine and the other applicant states should be fast-tracked to EU membership – to send a message of resolve to the Kremlin – but not before weighted majority voting has been agreed for all but the most restricted list of vital national interests. It is a miracle unanimity is ever achieved with 27 members states. If that number is increased to over 30, including some with little experience of democratic rule, the EU becomes simply unworkable.
4. No more excuses: we need a Single Market for Capital and Services NOW to break up local monopolies and improve the availability of finance for major research and productive projects!
5. Joint development projects to enable African countries to better support their own populations. Giant solar farms in the Sahara linked to sub-Saharan Africa and Europe via undersea electricity cables and would be a start.
6. Prosecute all war criminals much more vigorously and enforce sanctions against all nations engaged in war crimes.
7. An end to internet anonymity to make scamming much more difficult and make pornographers and hate purveyors accountable for their publications.

None of the above were discussed or proposed at the summer school which seemed mired in analysis paralysis and gradualist tinkering around the edges by the usual suspects. The McGill summer school risks becoming an establishment backwater unless it starts encouraging more original or radical contributions and genuine debate between people of differing views.