Russia - threadbanned users in OP

It's almost as if people are forgetting why Germany's not a military powerhouse in the aftermath of WWII, its disarmament and being split in two. It was quite deliberately made dependent on US, UK, French and NATO defences.

Can you imagine anyone thinking that Germany rearming and becoming a significant military power say in the 1960s would have been in anyway acceptable? Not to mention the Cold War implications and the fact that Germany was split in two.

Building up as a military power is also just something that is probably an anathema to most modern Germans. They have, quite understandably, a fairly serious national revolution to war and a sense of trying to solve things non militarily. It's probably wildly over optimistic in this situation, but there's very little point in haranguing present day Germany for not being a military superpower when it's just not one by design and due to its history.

As for Ireland, it effectively has no military. Our neutrality stance was quite obviously a post independence issue with the UK. We were only 17 years independent, and in the middle of the 'Economic War' when WWII broke out, and there was probably a significant concern that we could lose independence. Also, there was an entirely understandable animosity towards and lack of trust in the UK and British Empire as it then was. So, a pragmatic neutrality, which in reality was not very neutral, when you look at how allied pilots etc were just quietly returned while German POWs were interned for the duration of the war. Also when you look at how intelligence sharing and various supports happened, just without much publicity.

That pragmatic neutrality morphed into something more of a philosophical position by the 1950s and became very much baked in by the 1960s when you start to see Ireland taking part in UN peace keeping missions and so on.

I think though, we do have an issue with not really knowing what we mean by neutrality. We aren't neutral in the Ukraine conflict. There's nothing ambiguous about that. We've been extremely condemnatory of Russia while on the UN security council, we've taken severe sanctions against Russia economically and diplomatically and so on and Russia lists us as a hostile country from their point of view. All you could really describe Ireland's position as is a form of military passivism. Again, it's a bit optimistic to put it mildly in the current situation as there's no way that this is going to be solved diplomatically. While there's no choice but to fight back hard, I also don't really see this being resolved militarily either. It's turning into some kind of War of Attrition. Realistically, it will probably end when Putin's regime implodes, and that's probably going to happen at some point.

As for what military aid we could supply, it seems extremely limited given we've probably one of the least resourced militaries in Europe.

I don't agree with our stance on this. I think we could do more militarily and I think we need to have a proper debate about what exactly our neutrality means, because I really don't think it adds up anymore and we clearly are not neutral.

Our aid contribution, most of which is refugee support could probably be valued at about €3 billion at this stage, which is not insignificant. We're hosting over 70,000 people at the moment.

As for the conspiracy theory that the Russians have some dirt on the HSE and that's preventing the Irish Government moving. That's utter la la land stuff. If they release the patient info, they release it. It was assumed they would anyway. The HSE itself also had utterly abysmal IT and we know that and it's where the focus has mainly gone. There's a massive budget now for upgrading their systems, something that should have happened all along anyway. However, I think the notion we're being blackmailed is really pie in the sky stuff and also assume that the Irish Government is some kind of super-leak proof, all powerful executive presidency - it's a multiparty coalition that leaks like a sieve. It would struggle to even begin to contemplate engaging in a conspiracy that complex!

It also assumes that you could embarrass the public health systems here by showing them to be incompetent at managing things. It would be like a shocking revelation that liquid water is wet.

They'd massive largely totally useless militaries that were basically glorified civil defence. A slight breeze could have taken them out, never mind an actual army.

Yeah, they deserve criticism, but it needs to be realistic criticism.

There's a whole lot of short sighted NIMBYism type stuff behind many of those decisions.

In general I think Europe is full of fair weather friends. We saw that in the financial crisis and we're seeing it again now. Some of it is just lack of structures and resources, but some of it is genuinely just still an 'every one for themselves' mentality when there's a crisis.

It really annoyed me to see the initial scramble for resources when COVID-19 hit and we'd stories of countries trying to hoard supplies and so on. I don't think that bodes well for Europe tbh. It came together in the end, but the initial response from quite a few countries was domestic states of emergency and to hell with the neighbours.