‘No Good Answer’: Who Would Defend a United Ireland?

15 Sep 2026 02:00 PM

Northern Ireland is NATO territory. Irish unification would remove it from the Alliance – and neither London nor Dublin has planned for the defence consequences.

Asked in Dublin on 12 September whether he favoured Irish unification, the US President Donald Trump replied that it would be ‘a very cool thing, to be honest with you’, and that ‘no matter what you say, no matter how well you say it, there's no good answer’. He was more right than he can have intended. On the constitutional question there are several answers, all of them contested. On the defence question there is no answer at all, because nobody has done the work.

Formally, nothing has changed. Washington's position remains anchored in the Good Friday Agreement, and the statutory test in Schedule 1 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 – that it appear likely to the secretary of state that a majority would vote to leave – is not met and not close: the most recent Northern Irish polling shows 35.8% for leaving the Union against 49.7% for remaining. The prime minister will say no to any poll, and for the moment he has the better of it.

Trump had earlier met President Connolly, whom he pronounced ‘terrific’. The presidency is ceremonial and Connolly sets no defence policy; but she was elected in October on 63.4% of first preferences, the largest mandate the office has recorded, having campaigned for unification while calling NATO's role ‘warmongering’ and opposing European militarisation. On Irish unity the two presidents are agreed. It is very nearly the only thing they agree about, and it is the one that would remove territory from the Alliance's treaty area.

None of which is an argument for the absence of British staff work on what a transfer of sovereignty would involve. Planning assumptions are made years before the events they anticipate, and on the Irish question there appear to be none.

Click here for the full press release