If being an unaligned country with a large army is no deterrent to Putin's ambitions is it time for ROI to join Nato?
.
We are of course talking about legitimate democratically elected directly accountable government controlled defence forces
Not anything else here
Because the government introducing such laws is elected
The way things are going in the UK poll wise,it could be turfed out
What you're describing is something disagreeable,which it is
Its not Moscow style unaccountability though,youth get a mug of polonium tea with it
"The western flank"
"Nail colours to the mast"
"Cowardly"
"Cheap"
"Grow up"
"Neutrality is over"
Here you go, Rambo's bollocks - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Legion_of_Territorial_Defense_of_Ukraine
Send us a selfie from Mariupol and we might take you seriously.
Back in the real world, convincing Irish people to abandon neutrality is the greatest battle you'll partake in.
The British don't elect their Prime Minister or any other government ministers, and we don't elect our PM or ministers to the Dail, both form their own governments which are rarely held accountable. We elect our President but he has very little practical power.
Nobody was held accountable for the Guildford 4, Maguire 7 & Birmingham 6, the senior Judge said it would have been better to let them rot instead of dragging "the good name of British justice" through the mud.
A prime mover in NATO that we are asked to trust.
Like all opinion polling, health warnings apply, but I'm satisfied this poll reveals you're overegging the pudding on Irish people's doctrinaire adherence to our current woolly neutrality.
49% of respondents believe Irish neutrality is out of date, 44% believe it isn't.
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/poll-sands-beginning-to-shift-on-irish-neutrality-41416077.html
I wouldn't trust any NATO members, especially after they reneged on their agreement with Gorbachev not to move NATO an inch past the East German border.
So basically you have the CND loving lefties who will just take an anti war stance, they won't drift from that idealogical position while the shinners and fellow nationalist carriers, it's a no if the UK are involved. This is of course NATO we're talking about.
If there's another war do we get to call it the Emergency again? Perhaps, the Emergency - the Sequel.
Your first seven words said it all.
I did you the courtesy of reading the rest of your post and, surprise-surprise, nothing else to back it up.
"Like all opinion polling, health warnings applys, but I'm going to ignore all health warnings."
Compelling.
Its a difficult one,if any countries want to join they should be allowed (russia included)
Just i dont feel its a good fit for eire
The desire not to engage militarily is also far stronger among younger people: 80pc of those aged 18-24 do not want to engage militarily
I don't think a referendum would have a chance to be honest. Am I (In my 50's) gonna vote to send young people to war, who patently don't want to? Not a hope, whatever I think of neutrality.
Also - why did they ask the question that way? 'Out of Date' could mean anything.
I think NATO are little more than the armed wing of American imperialism but the whole Gorbachev/NATO 'agreement' is far more nuanced than made out.
We could have armed neutrality like switzerland👌
Having a million plus people armed and trained in arms fire and explosives,will do alot more to protext eire,than any amount of entangling oursevles in forgien wars,which have nothing to do with us
Also gives bonus of basic training for anyone who wants to join volunteer legions to play war aboard
The War Against the Microbes was Emergency II.
The joys of opinion polling, Francie.
Get the answer you want, not the answer you need.
Maybe the Indo knew they wouldn't get the answer they wanted if they asked - 'Do you want to end neutrality'.
What about the 'Glorious Emergency' or the 'Great Emergency'? 😁
Exactly.
The key to any opinion poll is in the framing of the question.
Well, yeah, it's the American imperialist's armed wing plus their puppet armies of Europe, Canada & basically Israel.
Yes, the same countries that never fall over themselves wanting sanctions on Washington.
(Western) Belligerents in Afghanistan:
USA
UK
Canada
Germany
Australia
New Zealand
(Western Belligerents in Iraq)
Poland
Netherlands
Italy
Spain
Same crowd that have a particular fondness of Saudi Aria that literally tick every anti-Western box, aside from $$$$$.
Where was all the condemnation of this?
I'll leave you with this...
This is why a proper reading of history is important, and not just listening to microwaved re-heated propaganda from states justifying bellicose actions in the present.
First off, the "not one inch east" [Gorbachev's words he has subsequently gone opaque on] and "not past the river Elbe" was always understood at the time as USSR seeking assurances that upon the reunification of Germany, that NATO troops would not move onto the territory of the former DDR as the enlarged FDR would be in NATO. Not because this was detrimental to the security of territory of the of the Soviet Union - but because the negotiations for the withdrawal of Soviet troops was not concluded, would take many years to execute and it would have been a major humiliation for the Soviets to see Americans marching into former-East Germany and the Soviets scuttling away. That and the obvious danger of NATO-USSR direct contact.
It was always the case that the USSR would be unhappy with NATO expansion into the East would not please the USSR (and laterally Russia), but no assurances by the US, verbal or otherwise (and certainly not an accord or a treaty) were offered to limit NATOs expansion. In fact, the Russians never pushed hard for such assurances, though they made their feelings known in a circular manner at various junctures. The conversation at that time (post-Berlin Wall falling) was always in the context of NATO and the DDR while USSR troops were still present. This is evidenced by Helmut Kohl's conversation with Gorbachev (now declassified) where they spoke at length about NATO and the DDR question. Kohl stated "We know what the future of NATO will be" to Gorbachev, and Gorbachev acknowledged in the same conversation the value of the US presence in Europe as a stabilizing factor.
Gorbachev in the 90s was an extremely unpopular figure, thought to have sold out Russia, and made much of these series of events claiming he was "tricked" by the West.
In subsequent statements, he walked that back (when he was earning coin in the US and UK) and said that NATO expansion was never on his agenda with Baker, Kohl or Bush and that the conversations were in reference to arrangements when the DDR became part of NATO upon unification (primary source documents from the time give explicit weight to that interpretation). He has gone silent in recent years on the matter.
In any case, we can all agree there was no accord or treaty offered to the USSR on NATO expansion (never mind Russia), but what we do have is the Helsinki II Accords, which the Soviet Union signed, and which is the foundation stone of the OSCE, of which Russia is a member. These are explicit: every sovereign nation has the unbridled right to choose its security alliances as it sees fit.
Putin is basing is mistrust and rage at the West off the basis of an unrecorded anecdote that has been wildly and purposefully misinterpreted for his own present political ends. I'm not sure he even believes it, but he's pleased as punch to hear other people repeat it.
Read history and primary source documents, not Twitter. Steer clear of state-sponsored propaganda.
Unless you've got better opinion polling on Irish people's attitude to neutrality you may want to suck this one up. You proffered a post that Irish people would be outraged at abandoning neutrality - that's simply not the case.
All opinion polling is an unexact science, but to think that all Irish people hold the same woolly dogmatic stance on neutrality as you is space cadet stuff, and the poll is firm evidence of that.
Haha, no, Ireland has a tradition of neutrality.
It's up to you to prove otherwise.
The best evidence you've offered is evidence in which you prefaced as bollocks.
I mean,fair play for trying to ram it through,while people rightly outraged as regards russian war crimes in ukraine
But one swallow deosnt make a summer
The opinion poll, though inconvenient to you, stands. A majority of respondents believe Irish neutrality is out of date. That should make you want to sit up and take notice that opinions are a lot more diverse than you would ever wish to concede. But alas, this is boards, I know when a poster has thrown his anchor down and won't accept evidence contrary to what you wish to be true.
Well and good. But you'd surely wish to note one poll was conducted prior to the Russian invasion (the one above), and the other (the one I linked) after.
It's not often world events give Irish people pause for thought about neutrality, the invasion in Ukraine is one of them.
Fine Gael were in like Flynn trying to take advantage of Putin's excesses. I don't think it has worked Yurt. All these pronouncements that EU members will demand this and that when they are actually demanding nothing(Irish media on what would be demanded at today's meeting/summit) are just the fantasies of warmongers and those in need of a pat on the head from their 'betters'.
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