If being an unaligned country with a large army is no deterrent to Putin's ambitions is it time for ROI to join Nato?
If we had previously joined nato, then a couple of years ago we'd have been part of a military alliance run by Trump, Erdogan and Bojo. Think about that.
Thats just begging for problems. I think if you overlap the Trump, Erdo, and Bojo cicrles as a chart, then the bit you get in the middle is Joe Exotic.
On the run from the Irish Constitution I see.
There is not a thing in the world committing us to additional defence expenditure should we admit ourselves to NATO. It's entirely at the option of our Government how much or how little we spend.
We need to spend more in any case, but that's the hard legal reality.
And nobody knows what you're talking about nuclear reactors for. If you want to be taken seriously, post seriously.
Next item of misinformation plz...
The money and contracts involved in rapidly bringing our forces up to nato standard would no doubt result in a tsunami of self serving gombeenism and influence peddling by our homegrown chancers, as well as those from abroad. Have they not shafted us enough already.
Oooh youll be needing a nuclear reactor for that too, wouldnt you agree Bertie.
- eh eh eh yes Mr Raytheon, in fact I think we'll need 2.
What. Eh eh I mean 3.
How would it be unconstitutional
Read the constitution. No referendum is necessary. It only requires the assent of the Oireachtas. There's not even a legal controversy around that.
"May be argued"
You can argue for that position from a legal standpoint, but it would be arguing from a place of profound legal ignorance, because the wording in Bunreacht na hÉireann is crystal clear.
Joining nato may cause costly legal complications as to join may be argued to be against our constitution. No doubt the legal industry would find issues and milk the tax-payer. A costly and divisive referendum is also a possibility.
Simplicistic nonsense.
No organisation has done more to manage the complex and delicate relationship with Turkey than NATO. And the relationship is utterly unmanageable without the American contribution.
Without Turkey in the NATO fold, there would almost certainly have been a major war with Greece many times over.
Turkey is nobody's idea of a perfect democracy, but it is a lynchpin state for the security of Europe and the Black Sea bordering states in Europe, and the Middle East beyond our immediate concerns. We have to play ball with them.
Your post illustrates perfectly the thoughtless wolly-headed nature of reflective anti-NATO sentiment. You simply don't want a Europe or world with Turkey going-off on a mad one independent of NATO's leash.
It's also increasingly likely that Erogan is on his last legs politically by the way. The looming election could see the opposition candidate take the reigns.
The same would come to our assistance as a member of Nato,
I'm sure you will complains about the British,the Germans in relation to ww2 , France, Spain and Portugal, Italy??
To join nato would mean to form an alliance with an authoritarian, anti-democratic Turkey (Turkiye). A highly corrupt country which disregards human rights and laws. A country whos regime is influenced in its elections and decisions by extreme Islamist political interests.
The same country is still causing territorial disputes with our fellow EU members Greece and Cyprus.
We cant be associated with such a dangerous rogue state.
This may surprise you, but Islamic terrorists don't exactly care if a country is in NATO or not.
Austria, Sweden and Finland have all had fatal Islamic terrorist incidents over the last decade and beyond.
The only reason we haven't had a major incident is down to sheer luck.
No it wouldn't.
Ireland is part of "Five Eyes"?
no.
If/when SF are in power they'd just take Ireland back out anyway, or prevent Ireland from joining in the first place. Joining nato would cause too much division on the island.
Nonsense
"Irish Military Intelligence works closely with the British Security Service (MI5) and Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/MI6), American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Agency (NSA), and is understood to have a relationship with Israeli Mossad.
Ireland is reported to be a member of the ECHELON SIGINT (signals intelligence) network, sharing and receiving information with its members (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States)."
- Wiki.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directorate_of_Military_Intelligence_(Ireland)
So we're very likely to see any major threat long in advance. Especially in these years where Russia's security infrastructure is more infiltrated, pre-occupied, chaotic and divided than ever.
To that you can add co-operation from all fellow EU member states' security services, who have interests in maintaining order within the EU, as well as maintaining their own national interests in Ireland (citizens, investments and diplomatic alliances).
This would equally apply to certain non-EU countries, Ukraine for example, with many Ukrainians in Ireland and given Ukraine's present relationship with Russia, we would almost certainly receive any relevant information from such a strong source engaged in a full on information war with Russia.
Then there are sort of marginal systems of which Ireland is a member which could happen to catch wind of any Russian plans, such as Europol, and frontex. True they don't work in that particular field, but surveillance and intel information flows through them. Anything big can send ripples down those channels. *(Frontex in particular makes use of satellite based signal detection, space and aviation based surveillance, and has access to European space agency resources).
And I would suspect that non-state entities such as Anonymous would side with neutral, peaceful Ireland over the nation which is presently being the worlds biggest A-hole.
tl;dr: solid odds we would easily see anything of any significant scale coming from Russia to harm us well in advance.
Edit for grammatical error, to add wiki link, and to reference to frontex's equipment. No reference to '5 eyes' was made, or inferred.
There's one in Dublin, to the tune of 26bn this year.
Not enough personnel to crew the ships.
The Muscovites are saying that the EU is the same as NATO now.
That's a declaration of hostilities against Ireland and Austria.
Who remembers the bailout,
You know when it was reported the economy crashed because we were all swigging bottles of champagne while eating our dinners,
We will end up paying huge sums to the eu and get little or nothing in return military wise
Isn’t there a magic money tree in Brussels that takes care of all that?
It's 2% we have to spend on our own defense capabilities,
We're not giving NATO 10 billion euro every year,it's us spending on our own defense while then transporting men , equipment and supplies for training and standardization,
Every other country does it except us while the same people saying don't worry someone else will spend money on protecting us ,
It will be exactly the same if the EU army ever gets exists in the next few decades we will still need to spend and spend regularly to increase our capabilities to join said EU military forces
everyone thinks the 2% GDP needs to be a cash handover to NATO from Ireland, like a subscription fee.... it doesn't and can be re-cooped for equivalence in various ways..
The fact Iceland is a full member and they have at most a lightly armed coastguard, with zero air defence capability is an example of what is required (or not) to gain entry.
Absolutely.
people think war and they think tanks rolling up Killiney beach, but there is a lot more to it than that. The Chinese operating a number of offshore “Police stations” as another example.
at the moment, the question would be as much “Would NATO accept Ireland” as it is, should we join. Without serious investment in defence, Ireland is little use to anyone let alone its own citizens when it comes to defence.
Yes and it would certainly be of great value to NATO too.
But consider this. It is suspected by the Garda Special Branch and G2 Military Intelligence that the Russians are using the Embassy in Dublin to host and train agents in espionage, putting them in place in Ireland so that they will develop their english language skills and be further sent on to spy against NATO States that are english speaking.
The problem is, the lack of investment in our own security means we have no resources to be sure of this or to counter it.
So, being in NATO may help this, but our first duty it to invest to stop this sort of clandestine shite for our own purposes.
Ditto the cyber attack on the HSE and the risk of ones that may be worse.
I don't think anyone expects Russia to launch some d-day type assault on Ireland.
Being in NATO might come in handy if/when Ireland decides to delve in to that hugely oversized and over staffed Embassy on Orwell Road though.
Putins political capital within Russia is largely spent, 100's of thousands despise him, and grieve their lost brothers, fathers, sons, friends. There are protests. People are willing to be arrested. Sabotage is increasing from internal resistance movements, fires are occuring with unusual growing frequency. Wagner has shootouts with national troops. The cracks are showing.
Even a dictator cant stop the people, if they wake up.
To launch an attack on militarily neutral Ireland of all places would be so bizarre and out of the box that the people would increasingly question just wtf is going on.
It would be excellent political ammunition for opponents at all levels.
With little if anything to gain, and the potential for disaster, Putin wont be going down that road any time soon.
Your not very good at arguments
Yes and no. When it comes to France and Germany in particular, these attacks of the last two decades are in the main down to small numbers of radical Islamic fundamentalists, who are seeking to set up Islamic rule in those countries and who deny the right of democracy, Christianity and Judaism (especially Judaism) and societies formed by the influence of those faith histories, to exist.
In fact, the shared intelligence structures of NATO have thwarted far more attacks of that nature than its mere existence has ever caused.
Nato countries, such as UK, France, Germany, and US have suffered serious terrorist atracks on their home soil as a consequence of being involved in natos geopolitical games.
@greencap this technology your talking about isn't free it costs billions, which is something you already complained about,
Our average defense budget is around 800 million which half goes on wages and pensions ,so we have 400 million we send more money to Africa for overseas aid
Russias military is firstly focused on land forces. Ever more so the case now that Russia has a border from lapland all the way down to the black sea and caucauses.
As an island, many thousands of kilometers away from Russia we have far less cause for concern than almost anyone.
Especially since the recent depletion of Russias army, which is where Russias focus will primarily be in the future for restoration. Have to cover that long long border.
Russias navy has also lost a flagship to anti-ship missiles, technology is moving faster than russias dated navy can, they are vulnerable to such tech and know it, as such an invasion of an island many thousands of kilometers away becomes too great a risk. Ireland can certainly acquire such technology from a great many allies, or simply for a huge payment. We may even already have it, who knows... why take such a gamble, Ireland presents no threat as a neutral, peaceful country.
