If being an unaligned country with a large army is no deterrent to Putin's ambitions is it time for ROI to join Nato?
No.
The amount of investment needed for military spending to make any contribution worthwhile would cut far too much into Ireland's revenue for very dubious returns.
Anyway, Ireland is not going to be invaded by anyone. There's no value for anyone to attack us. It makes no sense to join NATO.
They probably don’t care too much about us, they do care about an enemy being a couple of hundred miles from London. So I’m pretty sure they’ve got our back.
i expect NATO will have to be completely rethought after the ukraine invasion by Russia
an EU army would may be a better option
No it's not it's bad enough all the UN stuff in the past couple years yet the country hasn't ratified the un rights for people with disabilities, putting the nation at risk just to glorify the cretins that think they represent Ireland to add a new beaver scout badge on their sash is disgusting.
Because NATO needs another dependant state that offers them nothing....
Still no as I think we are covered by the EU collective defence policy, without being bound to any required levels of expenditure or American interference. Happy to be corrected on this.
Yes.
Its time to get off the fence and expecting others to watch our backs.
There are smaller nations than us joined up and playing their part.
We were spending about 1.5% of GDP on defence during the Troubles, we spend about .5% now.
was unaware of state investments during the trouble - have you any specific example of that?
not questioning your accuracy, just interested in learning more.
thanks
I thought they'd be signing up in their legions to fight against imperialism in Ukraine.
I'll take that as a yes
The brits didn't pony up 5bn to help us, they have us a loan which we pay interest on, they're more like the village money lender.
Are you one of the dissident RA lads waving Russian puppet state flags up in Derry yesterday?
I don't see where that is analogous to our situation. Germany occupied some countries for a few years and were soundly beaten to a pulp for their troubles.
If other countries had come to our rescue and beaten the brits to a pulp, occupied their country and installed a puppet government, perhaps you'd have an analogous situation 😉
When has the UK defended us...in Cromwell's day?
During the plantations?
During the 1798 rebellion?
During the 1845 genocide?
In 1916?
1919-23?
You're naive if you imagine they give a toss about us.
if every country used your logic either there would be no Nato or Germany wouldn't be allowed to be a member, pretty much invaded every other country in Europe (Spain, Italy & Turkey being exceptions), I hope you didn't feel too upset or loose too much sleep when the Brits ponied up 5Bn to help us during the recession - takin' the queens shillin' and all that
Do you mean the UK, the country we'd expect to defend us if anything happened? The country that has to scramble their jets when Russians come into our airspace?
Why not, it's very accurate.
We need to have a conversation about defence generally. If we are to remain neutral, we're going to have to spend some money to credibly insure ourselves and make ourselves a complete f*cking nuisance if there ever is a worst-case scenario and make sure we're not a soft target day-to-day anyway. That's probably not as expensive as a lot of people think, and we were spending a lot more on defence (in a poorer economy) as a percentage of GDP during the troubles.
If this war is illustrative of anything, it's that we never quite know what is coming around the corner (actually this was pretty well signposted, but too many people in Europe were content to ignore the flashing red lights).
We need (IMO) the following things:
-Investment in our navy
-Expanded special forces capacity against terror threats
-Some leased interceptors for our airspace
-Significant cyber defence investment
-A civilian intelligence agency
If we don't do those things, well, Nato looks like a pretty good option, because we need credible defence if we want to spend money on it or not.
чорний Ноель probably posted something similar
Don't be ridiculous, Russia never invaded us or acted in an unfriendly way towards us. Why would we join an alliance with the country that occupies us and has always done us harm?
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