If being an unaligned country with a large army is no deterrent to Putin's ambitions is it time for ROI to join Nato?
There was nothing to gain invading Ukraine apart from NATO borders expanding according the the lads in Russia. Now there trying to Increase their border with NATO.
No they would have nothing to gain from it. It's just hysterics to suggest they would.
The only ones to gain from us joining NATO are those selling weapons!
Wait an off his nut guy in Russia would not think of invading Ireland. few that's sorted. forgot about Ireland being sunk with the UK in there vids on the news.
They wouldn't, stop scaremongering
It's in plain English. How would we stop 5k Russian troops moving from Shannon to Dublin. Unless your eluding to some UK pact that they Immediately mobilise and land on Irelands sovereign soil. Please let the rest of us know how we would fight them off.
What?
Are you suggesting there is a pact with the UK to just land on Ireland if we get invaded. Few hours drive from shannon to Dub they could burn the whole place down. And to boot the MNC's we rely on. 5k men to Russia is nothing.
Russia is going to attack us for the lols and craic?
Fantasy island stuff tbh
Judging by Russia's current behaviour if Ireland was to be attacked by a foreign threat, that threat would not care much for Shannon, and would just hit a city [any city] and that would be that. Strategy no longer seems to be a key point in invading countries, but targeting citizens certainly seems to be. Point to note, I feel in 10 years' time the biggest threats will be from nefarious commando-type units with dirty bombs/cyber hacks/bio threats. Not necessarily in that order. NATO would need I think to include international intelligence units in order to be prepared for what threats come about in the future. WAr is changing and anyone can see that.
An F16 can do little against a crazy goon and a dirty bomb. I am not saying James Bond-type agents are the answer but they could be a templet.
Well because they could ? Imagine 5k orcs arrive today in the shannon what are we going to do about it ? They could burn half the place down. People here are very wary of the Brits. Can you Imagine them landing 10k troops to stop the orcs.. Without being Invited. Could take 2-3 days for the Brits to get here and kick the orcs out. Few hours to get to Dub burn the place down then what ?
What would be the purpose of attacking Shannon if not to then launch an attack on a NATO country from this hypothetical Kaliningrad on Shannon?
Or would their aim just be to create a new statelet for the fun of trying to supply it entirely by exceedingly long sea routes through Turkey, Denmark or the Arctic ocean?
What NATO country would Russia have to attack if it attacked Shannon?
It just assumes that Russia invading Ireland is not their end goal and that nobody else would expect it to be happening in isolation.
Ireland is at risk after other countries have already been attacked, but at that point it really makes no difference if Ireland is in NATO or not. NATO would already be fully engaged with Russia anyway.
Remaining neutral isn't, same moral pressure.
I'd agree with Dev. To soon after WOI to join with Britain.
Just different times today.
I think remaining neutral requires more bravery tbh.
The pressure Dev was under required cahonas of steel to resist.
Probably. Sometimes you have to take a stand. Moral cowardice involved in neutrality in many instances.
If "the West" is involved in Norway or the Baltics then do we really think that Russia has anything close to the capability to conduct a massive marine invasion when they will be unable to use the North Sea and will have to get past the Straits of Gibraltar?
Also, would it ever make sense for them? There are reasons that ultimately the Nazis, the French, the Spanish all either failed or decided not to use Ireland as a springboard to Britain.
How does this argument apply to countries such as Portugal? Is it possible that they see a national interest in a secure Europe and are willing to do their part to ensure it, even though they are not under any direct military threat themselves?
The problem with that line of thinking is that it assumes an either/or event. "Russia invades Ireland, the UK will counter-invade, we'll be fine", and not that the UK might perhaps be distracted in Norway, Lithuania or Poland at the time. If such a thing were to occur, then it would be a priority for the Russians to cut the line of supply from North America to Europe. The best way of doing that is by use of a launching point in the North Atlantic, Iceland and Ireland being the two prime contenders. France and UK, for example, would be presented with a choice. Do they send troops to the Eastern Front, or do they send them to Ireland?
Of course, the reality is that this is not likely to be a threat for a decade or two, now that the Russian inventory and military machine has been proven something of a paper tiger, but there is absolutely no getting around the fact that the sea lines of communication across the Atlantic have been critical in every European war in the last century, even this current one. Ukraine isn't getting all that American stuff from European stocks.
Ireland strategic usefulness is either for UK/ European forces to retreat to whilst waiting to be collected by US forces, or for US forces to use as a staging point in retaking Europe.
It's of absolutely no use to Russia for invading Europe from, unless they have already taken out the US or the US has for some reason fallen asleep, and they have already taken out the vast majority or Europe and Norway/ Iceland and Spain. I'm assuming that they aren't expected to just pop up in the North Sea and take out the UK without going anywhere near the rest of Europe first.
Maybe if Atlantis emerged from the middle of the Atlantic and aligned with Russia there would be a bigger risk, but otherwise the risks to Ireland are more sabotage type operations or cyber attacks, and joining NATO isn't going to make a lot of difference with preparing for those kind of attacks, or in reacting to them after the event.
To dismiss the attack on our health service which caused upwards of 100m euro worth of damage on top of the damage it caused to people's lives as a gang of teenage phisers would be risible if it was not so dangerous to our country. The Russian dictatorship uses these hacking groups as an extension of their military apparatus just as the Americans use various groups such as US Aid for their own purposes.
Russia is indeed a clear and present threat to the security of Ireland as they are to all of us in the EU. No idea why your replying to me and talking about us not joining NATO. At no time on this thread have I advocated Ireland join NATO at the present time. What I have said is we need to develop a legitimate and capable defense and security force. Something we do not possess at the present time. This has meant we are effectively acting as freeloaders and acting in an utterly selfish manner when it comes to defense and security capabilities as a member of the collective that is the EU due to our refusal to play our part in protecting that collective.
None of these things are strategically significant unless Russia are already engaged in a war with Western Europe and even then most of them are pretty questionable. Russia has zero need for gas storage on the west coast of Ireland and I have no idea what on earth you think they'll be doing with a runway in the west of Ireland which will be completely disconnected from any other airspace they can access. If they are already engaging with Western Europe they will be fighting "on two fronts" for all of about 5 minutes - Russia would be completely and utterly incapable of maintaining that kind of a beachhead while at war with NATO.
Ireland is not a strategic anything, which is why only our near neighbours ever bothered invading us.
For that fantasy to be even 10% accurate they would have to attack NATO anyway and it wouldn't matter if we were in it or not. It would actually be more likely if we were in NATO as it would be an imperative to take us out.
The Shannon area is strategically significant for a number of reasons
Russia won't want to take over the whole country, but in the event of real war being a threat, simple enough to take over those strategic facilities over a relatively small geographical area and force Europe to fight on two fronts. It is a low risk improbable scenario, but it isn't a zero risk scenario.
Sure, but NATO seems fairly irrelevant in the context of cyber warfare and espionage. Ultimately NATO is only ever going to be relevant in that scenario
We are concerned, we are upping the investment in our hollowed out defence or at least that is what the government are saying they need to do.
The government are unconvinced by the need to join NATO it seems though as they are not prepared to do it.
To my knowledge, very few to zero people in the thread have posited 'the Bantry Bay scenario' as probable or realistic. Just those that are trying to insert a line of arguement that isn't there.
What people have been positing is that there are very credible threats from Russia across other threat domains short of Russian landing craft in Cork that should be of concern to us.
Will they only be attacking the 26 counties if they arrive? Bombs and stuff that don't cause damage over the border
I'm not particularly resistant to NATO membership, I am ambivalent about it. I just think the risk assessment people are doing is way out of kilter.
If you don't mean Russian troops then what in the name of god do you mean by "We are now the only European country that Russia can reach without violating NATOs borders." What numerous ways could they **** with Europe via us?
Who mentioned Russian troops?
We're so defenceless that Russia can **** with Europe via us in innumerable ways
Speaking of fantasyland stuff, It is really interesting to see the resistance to NATO membership though, all fuelled by the irrationality that the Irish media has peddleld since the 60s.
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