If being an unaligned country with a large army is no deterrent to Putin's ambitions is it time for ROI to join Nato?
Only because if Russia wasn't stopped in Ukraine the war would have spread into other countries....
Ukraine had an army that allowed them to hold off the Russians,we have,8000 soldiers and not a lot else
Ukraine is non-nato, yet received hundreds of billions of euros worth of aid of all varieties, from countries all around the world.
The world is there to help us too.
But Austria spend close to 4 Billion per year on defense ,23,000 soldiers active and another 120,000 reservists, and a modern airforce and armor
We don't have the numbers or the budget to protect our skies or waters and borders
Yes we can.
And frankly, NOT joining NATO is more of an impetus to spend higher, as we must look after all the territorial sovereignty of our land, airspace, seas, EEZ and cyber domain, which at the moment is a joke.
If we have any ambition at all of developing large offshore energy generation and exporting it, then nobody is going to protect that multi-billion Euro asset but ourselves.
Besides the 2% figure is arbitrary. Ireland's GDP is skewed with FDI so the CSO uses mGNI, of which (€400 Billion) 2% per annum would be €8 Billion, so in fact, we'd only need to spend 0.75% or €3 Billion to do the job adequately.
I mean for Christ's sake, we're going to have nearly €30 Billion Euro in surplus taxes over the next two years, how can we NOT assign a small amount of that to fix our yawning defence gap.
And, by the way, I do think we should do all this ourselves rather than join NATO. Imagine too, if we had a state of the art Defence Force, the opportunities for our young people to join for a few years and develop - for free - skills in leadership, resilience, self-reliance, creativity, engineering, computer science, outdoor survival, physical training and fitness, flying, seamanship, negotiation, languages, project management and anything else you can think of. We could put a modern Defence Force at the heart of industry and University cooperation and develop beneficial links and lifelong reservist specialists.
Not joining NATO, but getting serious about doing it ourselves is a massive opportunity if the naysayers could extract their head from their ass.
Austria and Malta (an even smaller island) remain neutral, hasnt harmed either of them.
We are not really neutral, and no one sees us as neutral. I also doubt anyone sees Iceland as warmongering because they are in NATO.
To join nato is to ally militarily with the US which ignores many UN resolutions, sponsors illegal Israeli colonial settlements, and launched an illegal war in Iraq due to poor intelligence about non-existent WMD's.
We would soon find ourselves with blood on our hands, our diplomatuc position as a neutral and peaceful country would be lost.
But what about the housing crisis and Heath system
Rather than using a foreign alliance controlled by others as a means to acquire defense equipment, it would be smarter to first acquire defense equipment ourselves, and then consider an alliance with such an organization (one with serious enemies) from a more independent standpoint.
So who's going to nuke then?????
Our location makes any major foreign threat highly unlikely.
But you expect others to send their soldiers to defend us ,
There's no obligation from Nato to deploy overseas
Tell that to the Icelandic coastguard
Nato may oblige us to become involved in mid east conflicts. Risking our soldiers lives.
So the north could get nuked now ???
Poor Mary Lou would be disappointed
We should stand together with our Russian and Chinese comrades to stop NATO expansion
-Claire Daly/Mick Wallace
We have a nato member occupying 6 of our counties.
The defense forces are only looking for 1.5 bn per year,in a ten year period we will spend 200 billion + on social welfare alone,
Spending money on defense doesn't take away from housing or the health service.
Nuclear attack lol
We cant spend natos 2% of our budget on military toys anyway. Housing crisis to fix. Health service to fix.
As opposed to just hanging around and waiting for the slow drift of nuclear fallout and the loss of the ozone layer to slowly poison / scorch / starve us?
Fcuk it, in for a penny, in for Euro. Better to burn out than to fade away.
"I am quite certain that the Irish people do not wish Ireland to be made a prime target for a nuclear attack, which would be inevitable if we joined a military alliance with any of the nuclear powers.”
A fair point.
Just as well we're never ever ever joining.
Ah, its so nice being content with the current state of affairs.
Nato is a terrible idea for Ireland, change my view.🪑🙂🍵
Chinese diplomats openly calling into question the sovereignty of post-Soviet states like the Baltics.
But yes, press releases and pleasant strategy white papers from Macron will deter threats to the integrity and sovereignity of Europe. The same Macron that was doling out handjobs in Beijing in exchange for Airbus contracts.
Yes, the Eastern flank has all the confidence in the world in a woolly "strategic autonomy" concept.
Today's Irish Times has a letter from a retired Sociology professor arguing against NATO membership. He quotes Sean McBride's anti-NATO stance dating from 1982. He omits to mention one of McBride's credentials - the award of a Lenin Peace Prize in the 1970s. The letter is worth reading if only as an insight into the academic left, still stuck in the 1960s and 70s.
Yes, that is true. As you imply, such a "hegemonic power" in Europe itself would never be wanted driving this forward and a somewhat more detatched friendly party like the US is going to be trusted more. You would expect more political integration (i.e. increased mutual trust between Europeans) has to come first. That has been the reason for failures so far. Pressure of external events (like invasion of Ukraine by Russia, possible increased "flakiness" in the US on one side of their politics + realisation hitting that without them, Europe collectively is quite militarily weak in an unfriendly world) is forcing the issue somewhat now.
I think the bigger thing to destabilise Turkish/US relations would be if they made a major move on the Kurds while the US are still in Syria.
Or tried to purchase more Russian military kit (although, they'd be waiting a looong time for it to be delivered)
No I don't constantly chuck out how awesome Nato and the USA are ,
Hardly ever they do have the best toys though,
With Nato we don't get a skirt,or diplomatic solutions,we get a shield backed up with a large sword,
Stop making silly excuses your not convincing anyone
Calls for the EU navy to set sail to patrol the Taiwan straight.
But you keenly want us behind natos skirt.
It doesnt make sense. You constantly cuck out for the awesome nato and the awesomer usa.
And then you say 'dont look to others, but do join nato'.
I would like to know if youd still be interested in joining nato if the option we were given was purely diplomatic, there would be absolutely no change beyond paperwork. Just a guarantee, a signature. Thats it.
I think much of what France/Macron are trying to do is to be applauded. He is correct that Europe is too reliant on the US.
The problem arises because there just is no hegemonic power in Europe, and while European countries are willing to defer to the US, they are less willing to collaborate and occasionally be subservient to other "equal" powers. It is something the EU has solved politically, but has not really tried militarily, and where it has tried has not met massive success.
@greencap We're never joining nato.
And yet we were previously invited to join Nato,
This idea of sure the eu will save us the eu has military co-operation,the Battlegroups yadda yadda,
Maybe in the next 60 years it might happen but until then NATO is the only game in town ,
Come out from behind that skirt
