If being an unaligned country with a large army is no deterrent to Putin's ambitions is it time for ROI to join Nato?
It isn't.
The reds under the beds scaremongering won't change it either.
NAT/US and their allies are not covered in glory in the lead up to this, neither is Putin.
According to NATO.
"The North Atlantic Alliance was founded in the aftermath of the Second World War. Its purpose was to secure peace in Europe, to promote cooperation among its members and to guard their freedom – all of this in the context of countering the threat posed at the time by the Soviet Union. ................"
NATO since Christmas day 1991, replace "Soviet Union" with "anything that may threaten the American petrodollar".
For over 30 years NATO has been all about maintaining the supremacy of the Western central banking system, the petrodollar and the profits of armaments manufacturers. Where do Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran fit in with secure peace in Europe.
You're being silly now.
Playing a blinder now ,
Embarrassing the little man in Moscow on a daily and nightly basis and he cant do a thing about it .
Hundreds of tons of supplies and weapons flowing into ukraine through Nato supply lines ,Nato and the US supplying aerial surveillance and targeting information 24/7 ,
He's lost ukraine forever and he's turned into the Moscow Kim Il in north Korea
No
Have I arrived back in 1100 or 1300 or 1500 or 1600AD My memory is extremely short on irish history
Is that Mick or Clare?
Anyway what has NATO do with any of these places? Sounds more like you have a problem with the UN than NATO.
The left has a serious serious problem on this front. I'm glad Monibot is tackling it somewhat (for all the good it will do), but a good many people on that end of the political spectrum need to have a serious chat with themselves about how they've become either vessels for absolutely gutter-level propaganda, or have let it slide that poltical bedfellows push unreconstructed propaganda.
So many people have been utterly had by what if we're honest about it, is fascist propaganda - and they've gone so far down that road it would be utterly humiliating on a personal level to turn back and recant.
Good point by Brigid Laffin on TV3 there, the debate on 'what is our defence policy' should be had first, then talk about neutrality and alliances.
It is, let me show you some links.
There is tonnes of evidence that shows the Kremlin pushing a narrative that NATO is a threat and is equally to blame for the Ukraine invasion. This is a Putin and Kremlin talking point. It is entirely false, just like the anti-vax stuff, just like the flat earth stuff...
Now that you are now educated on the matter, if you still persist with that narrative one can suspect that you are
a) A willing shill peddling pro-Putin lies
b) Unable due to your intellectual capacity to read and understand the above links.
c) A WUM trying to get a rise
So the defence of criticism of NATO and the US and it's military allies is a document from NATO and the US State dept? 😁
For many of the left, they hate the Capitalist system propagated by 'The West' and America in particular.
What's the phrase used by Malcolm X?
"You cannot have capitalism without racism"
There is a certain utopian romanticism at play when we talk about Russia, workers taking power and all that, so for the good hard lefties, any system or country that gives "The West" a bloody nose is fine by them.
The problem now though, we have all seen what that other side of the coin is. Putin's Russia, Xi's China.... etc.. are not regimes or systems we ever want to back or emulate.
For all its faults "The West" is by far the best we have and your average leftie should recognise that first and foremost instead of siding with people and regimes like usual idiots. We see here in this thread the moral equivalence that NATO is the same as Putin's Russia and both are to blame. This is 100% false. It's flat-earther syndrome.
It's like saying that when the Nazis were trying to exterminate European Jews that there is a moral equivalence there, that the Jews must have done something to warrant their treatment? As if it was a fair fight and the Jews just lost fair and square, and if only we sat down with the SS for a bit and had a chat, we could have all sorted it out and gone home. Such a world view of course is the highest form of idiocy and naivety. We see the usual useful idiots display the same characteristics on this thread.
You didn't read the documents did you?
That says it all.
I'm going with the C) option myself.
I'm going with option a) for you tbh.
Why would I read them when I can see stuff for my own eyes?
Amazing response!
"Why read them, when I have my mind made up"
Amazing. You are just not capable of growing, learning something new, or looking at this objectively.
Sometimes people like that are called Fanatics and Zealots.
Again, you are just on a WUM crusade.
I have heard it before no doubt.
Tell us, if you criticised a political party would you accept their word as a defence? ROFL.
You can't answer the criticisms/questions yourself is the issue here, you breeze right past them scaremongering about Putin bots.
NATO? No. I would like to see a European defence treaty emerge and would like Ireland to be fully integrated into it. Also, being in a European defence pact could only be a good thing in the event of a United Ireland.
Sure Francie... what ever you want to tell yourself.
Have you seen the footage of Ukrainian cities being bombed relentlessly from a distance by Russian artillery?
As it stands right now a fleet of Russian ships could sail up the Shannon estuary( who’d stop them) and bomb the likes of moneypoint power station and Limerick city etc in the very same way as Kiev and Kharkiv are being bombed and the only response would be further sanctions because for anyone capable of stopping them to intervene would be world war 3.
They were only 2-300 miles off our coast a few weeks ago.
What reason would the UK have for sitting around and waiting in that situation? Would need some serious imagination for Russia to invent a new fake history about how Ireland is historically really part of Russia and how they are just rescuing the Irish from their Nazi leadership so that the Irish can be rejoined to the motherland.
Currently there is a foolish hope from the west that Russia will stop after Ukraine. If they were to invade Ireland the only reason would be then take the UK and Europe. Would be a stupid way to do so, but still.
There would be no reason for the UK to hesitate in attacking Russian forces in Ireland the moment Ireland said "can we have a little help please". There is no purpose to invading Ireland other than to then take the UK.
That is a really bad take, they were 2-300 miles of our coast, with a tiny amount of ships, that were no threat to us or anyone else
Russia have no direct access to us without having to go past multiple, unfriendly to them, countries
As long as we don't directly appear hostile to anyone, no one would ever have a reason to attack us, we are too far from anyone to matter
These folk would be shooting like they were in a Hollywood movie if a Russian so much as pointed a boat in a certain direction.
The event off our coast was clearly signaled, never looked like an 'invasion' hence none of the adults were hitting the nuke button thankfully.
They wouldn’t have to invade us. Just a few shots across our bow. Take out our main power plant etc. Russia considers us an unfriendly country and we most definitely are at the moment. Russia is a country that thinks nothing of shelling nuclear power plants and murdering innocent civilians and remember they think nothing of using lethal poisoning to take out people on far flung foreign shores. It’s a borderline terrorist state and is only a few more horrific incidents away from utterly confirming that.
Wouldn't such a treaty just be NATO-lite except the Americans aren't involved? Net effect: Irish neutrality a thing of the past, with the trade-off being into a security alliance weaker than Nato (in effect under the French nuclear deterrent umbrella instead of the American one).
My take: If Irish military neutrality is to be abandoned (and it's a big decision to make), in for a penny, in for a pound, just join Nato and be done with it.
For what purpose would they do that?
Hell of a lot of effort for no gains and big risks of triggering the UK and therefore NATO responding. One stray missile hitting NI and that is article 5 triggered, but if they managed to contain things to Ireland then what have they gained and where do they go next?
Utterly pointless for any country to target Ireland.
A lot of people are asking that about everything Russia does at the moment. What is their purpose?
Neutrality remains immensely popular among the public. No government is touching it.
For instance, It's not ridiculous to think our deepwater ports such as are a tasty prize for any country in conflict with the UK. Conceivably could cut off Britain's blue water capabilities in the North Atlantic.
We're entering a dangerous and prickly phase in international relations. People I personally respect have said this war represents the end of the long-European peace and we're entering a new epoch. It's time to get prepared.
"Yerra it'll be grand" might be the stock phrase for a lot of things in Ireland, but with national security, I don't think it's a particularly clever doctrine.
America's interests are not always the EU's, Europe's or our interests.
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