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 won't be invaded, we'll be nuked. Or tsunamid.
Eh the Ukraine (on Russia's border) and Israel (surrounded by hostile nations) is not an accurate comparison in fairness.
There is no need for us to join NATO. If an invasion ever happened (it won't) forget Europe the US with almost 80m people claiming Irish heritage would be stepping up to help us. It's never going to happen anyway the Russian navy is a joke and NATO would see them coming days before they got within a mile of our shores. The idea is ridiculous.
That reads as if you think being part of NATO is a paid membership club.
There is nothing that Ireland would need to do to be eligible to join NATO, other than promising to try really hard to put 2% of their budget into "defence" spending. That defence spending doesn't have to be on anything in particular, or even bullets. Could just be on a new uniform, or to paint the barracks in gold leaf. Even then, it doesn't really make any difference if they do reach that spending target.
At the moment Ireland is hanging out and friendly with the NATO gang, just not wearing their gang colours. Putting on the gang colours just makes Ireland a soft target for a probing attack on NATOs response. If Luxembourg wasn't landlocked then they would be that soft target.
Joining NATO won't mean that Ireland gets a bunch of fast jets, or big boats patrolling the coast. And it also doesn't mean that Ireland has to buy them itself.
There isn't anything to be gained by joining NATO for Ireland, already will be defended by the UK if they ask and if a NATO member would still be the UK fulfilling that role. Ireland is likely more useful to NATO in it's current status as a nominally neutral country, rather than anything to be gained for NATO in merely painting a new bit of blue on their map.
It's only worth joining NATO if we make military tech that we can sell to finance our membership. It's a zero-sum game for us otherwise.
Having said that, the Russian and Russian aligned embassies here should be reduced to bare bones staff.
You're either neutral or you're not. If you're neutral, you need to defend yourself with your own defence forces (ie, the Swiss).
If you're not neutral, you join something like NATO for combined strength.
What we do as a nation is profess to be neutral so we can keep our 'moral superiority', but actually can't defend ourselves so rely on under the table pacts with NATO nations to defend us.
It's hypocritical and embarrassing.
If you're responding to me, I am not referring to expecting help from anyone. I mean we need to be able to survive independently in the event that we have a repeat of the WWII Emergency - where we are neutral, but Britain and France etc. are at war or crippled for years after being nuked.
Right now I do not know if there is any real capacity for resilience in Ireland. Can we make our own fertilizer? How many seeds, and how much machines, spare parts, and fuel do we have to ensure effective sowing, growing, harvesting, and distribution of grain and other crops? Where do we stand with respect to medical supplies - can we manufacture things like penicillin, syringes, and anti-septics? How much electricity do we need to run essential services, and do we have enough fuel for this? If yes for how long? None of these things are clear.
I mean, Ireland runs out of bread in a few hours when there's a bit of snow. By the time the EU or the mythical "someone" sends military help in time of crisis, it will be too late. Some basic resilience would be expected first.
This seems a bad analogy to me. The only thing NATO membership ensures for Ireland is that we would be drawn into fighting when hostilities occur, which we could easily stay out of if we remained neutral. Defence policy is one area where we need to have a very insular and narrow focus on our own self-interests.
We need to build up our defensive capabilities principally in the areas of air, sea, and cyber defence.
And we need to build up our resilience -- this means preparedness to ramp up fuel, food and medical supplies and essential materials in the event of a prolonged continental or global war and the ensuing disruption, up to and including the nuking of several nearby countries and the prolonged chaos that would ensue from that.
We need to take advantage of our geography and keep out of wars that need not concern us, rather than stick our beaks in unnecessarily and fruitlessly. It was military alliance obligations and gung-ho attitudes that dragged Europe into war in 1914. We managed to keep our people from being forced into that one even though we were in the UK at the time; the next one should be no different.
So are you saying that because the probability of Ireland being attacked is slim to nil there is no reason to join NATO. Therefor by the same logic if you are of the opinion that you are such a safe driver the chances of you ever having a car crash are also slim to nil therefor what’s the point in taking out a car insurance. If you have a crash it will be the other drivers fault and you can claim on that drivers insurance
as an aside , if Ireland is attacked and ics not a NATO member we are by ourselves - have no car insurance equivalent to fall back on like we have in the car crash situation
What benefit of membership is there that Ireland doesn't already get? UK would leap to military defence as it would be a direct attack on them, other EU states and the US would be 5 minutes behind.
Maybe Luxembourg don't send their navy in Irelands defence if Ireland isn't a NATO member, but I don't think that will have any impact either way.
True. But joining NATO doesn't magically make an effective defensive military appear on the borders. That is still Irelands problem, not NATOs.
I do not believe Ireland should join NATO. I see no reason why the security of Estonia or Ukraine for that matter should have any relevance for Ireland.
This is one reason why NATO is over-wieldy as is. Too many members, with two many different different red lines. A security red line for Lithuania would not necessarily be a security red line for Portugal and is highly unlikely to be in fact.
Ireland can offer NATO nothing, and NATO can offer Ireland only increased entanglement and risk for no obvious gain.
All that said I believe Ireland should invest in boosting its own security very considerably, particularly the navy and air force.
Da, comrade.
Shannon Airport gets shag all civil use but would be a valuable military asset.
We are already a target for hostile states, ask anyone impacted by the Russian state-sponsored HSE hack.
Russkies regard us as NATO-aligned anyway so we might as well sign up and get the benefits of actual membership.
The Russian embassy here is incredibly large for the size of our country, it's clearly a spy base to attack the UK and the common travel area makes it exremely easy to infiltrate illegals into the UK.
But we're not an ally, we're neutral, remember 🙄
That's the effing point!
We would no longer be a neutral country. We would stop being the biggest cowards in Europe.
Each and every country being coerced into the arms dealers' game .... we need to break that cycle .... NATO are far from being the 'good guys' .... what is going on in Gaza is supported by NATO aka the West .... the Iraq war was enforced by NATO's main 2 countries .... they have no right to think they are any better than Russia ....
Ireland should not join NATO or the Russian equivalent either .... stay out of this .... stay neutral .... we avoided WW2 and so far spent near 70 years outside of the US v Russia cold war and we will keep it that way ....
No. EU will help us if need be.
10s of EU billions and countless EU members hardware went to Ukraine. Theyre not even in the EU.
We're part of the EU and its economy. Its in EUs own interests to help us.
Lets see if France will send troops to non-member Ukraine.
If they do then all debate is over. France or another EU member will certainly send personnel to an EU member if theyll go to a non-members land.
And we have 8000 personnel. So can we stop this exaggeration of no defense whatsoever.
(Ok, Naval aside, its more understandable in that case).
Also we dont have to rely on the UK, but even if we are invaded or whatever, and subsequently defeated despite EU efforts, then no doubt the UK isnt staying uninvolved at that point. Since at that point we're novo-Irlanski and a threat vector to them.
We're really not that good prospect for successful invasion, except maybe by US or UK.
It could be just as easily argued that Ireland does have the target right now as we have basically no military and or intelligence capability that is any way remotely effective so we are the weak link in the west to target to test western resolve in general.
Honestly I was all for neutrality and all . But the truth is that we are a western democracy with no means of defending our waters , so yes I think we should join NATO , like Iceland did . No nukes or army but safe in the knowledge that other countries will be willing to help us out
The UK would defend Ireland if asked as for them not to would be leaving themselves wide open. Nobody is militarily attacking Ireland unless they plan to subsequently attack the UK, so the UK would be responding as if they were directly under attack.
There isn't any major requirements of what Ireland needs to have militarily hardware wise to be able to join NATO, just spend about 2% on "something" which could include a nice shiny new lead for the regimental dog, increasing pension for existing military, or hiring a new gardener for an army base. You don't have to spend money on jets, or boats or nukes.
Ireland doesn't have much to offer NATO though these days. In the 50s it would have been a valuable asset to join the club and give locations for US radar stations and maybe another runway, now there isn't much additional use for an extra bit of land on the edge of Europe as NATO has it covered already. But any additional country joining the club would be good for the club, just not really a lot to be gained for Ireland or NATO these days from Irelands membership.
Ireland joining would then make it a target for a hostile state to poke a soft NATO country in order to test their response and resolve. At the moment Ireland doesn't have that target painted on them, and it's probably best to stay that way.
There certainly is a debate to be had about should we or should we not join NATO. But what IMHO there should be no debate about is that we need to get serious about resourcing our military and intelligence capabilities to an effective level.
Threads merged
We can do that without being in NATO as it is.
I'd love to see us having a properly equipped military, I spent 14 years in it so it's something I care about.
But the reality is the government can say what it wants but it's not matching it by spending the money needed.
Personally I'm on the fence about joining NATO but if it was a vote I'd probably go yes, purely because it guarantees us a level of protection rather than the current "sure the US/UK will defend us" view that seems to be the case.
That's why you never hear any criticizing them or the level of their military spending.
Yeah that’s what Ukraine and Israel both thought. Then they each eventually learn what partisanship is without article V to invoke.
Basically a school kid running to his bigger brother in the schoolyard to deal with the bully. As a nation it's embarrassing.
This is shocking. Unbelievable I find. The Irish defence forces could be easily overwhelmed with no certain recourse to military assistance.
Signing on with NATO means access to purchase NATO hardware.
