Prime Minister Robert Abela delivered his regular Sunday sermon yesterday, sharing his views on the war in Ukraine. His remarks largely echoed Russian talking points, including the idea that Europe should not prioritise defence spending to avoid wars. Around ten days ago, a military base was raided by a group of criminals who stole up to 200KG of cannabis. They spent up to two hours inside the base loading their haul.
As a Prime Minister, or any Prime Minister, for that matter, you can’t claim the authority to speak about other people’s wars and European defense if you can’t even protect your own military bases from a group of criminal kids. I suppose this should be obvious.
However, for the sake of divulging the correct information, neutrality has got nothing to do with defence. The Prime Minister doesn’t seem to get this.
Increasing your security, augmenting your military and defenses and securing your national interest by military means is not an infringement of your neutrality. An infringement of neutrality would be if the government supports a particular side in a war not of its own. So, for the sake of argument, Malta would not be infringing on its neutrality if it attacks or defends itself against another nation-state in matters concerning its national security interests.
On the state of Europe and Russia’s hybrid war against Europe, the Prime Minister is oblivious, similar to how he was oblivious to the serious ramifications of the Covid pandemic when it first began. He needs to be brought to his sense just when he was compelled to order a lockdown during the pandemic. The Prime Minister does not seem to be concerned with national security and is instead using defence issues as a political toy that can be played with for local political theatre and propaganda. No wonder our military bases are getting raided.
By being neutral, Malta is not immune to security risks and this is why it needs to ramp up its defences, secure its borders and ensure that the state has a very well equipped and resourceful military, security and intelligence services. This shouldn’t be political-partisan issue and politicians shouldn’t play stupid games with this stuff.
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