Is it time to join Nato

greencap

"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.🪑🙂🍵

Larbre34

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.

greencap

We cant spend natos 2% of our budget on military toys anyway. Housing crisis to fix. Health service to fix.

Gatling

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120521533#Comment_120521533

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

greencap

We have a nato member occupying 6 of our counties.

AerLingus747

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120522231#Comment_120522231

We should stand together with our Russian and Chinese comrades to stop NATO expansion

-Claire Daly/Mick Wallace

Gatling

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120522231#Comment_120522231

So the north could get nuked now ???

Poor Mary Lou would be disappointed

greencap

Nato may oblige us to become involved in mid east conflicts. Risking our soldiers lives.

AerLingus747

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120522344#Comment_120522344

Tell that to the Icelandic coastguard

Gatling

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120522344#Comment_120522344

But you expect others to send their soldiers to defend us ,

There's no obligation from Nato to deploy overseas

greencap

Our location makes any major foreign threat highly unlikely.

Gatling

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120522443#Comment_120522443

So who's going to nuke then?????

greencap

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.

Gatling

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120522632#Comment_120522632

But what about the housing crisis and Heath system

greencap

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.

Podge_irl

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.

greencap

Austria and Malta (an even smaller island) remain neutral, hasnt harmed either of them.

Larbre34

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120521533#Comment_120521533

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.

Gatling

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120522865#Comment_120522865

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

greencap

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.

Gatling

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120523394#Comment_120523394

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

greencap

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.

Gatling

@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

greencap

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.

Larbre34

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120523667#Comment_120523667

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.

Gatling

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120523667#Comment_120523667

Your not very good at arguments

greencap

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.

FrattonFred

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120524070#Comment_120524070

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.

Larbre34

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120524085#Comment_120524085

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.

FrattonFred

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120524741#Comment_120524741

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.