Is it time to join Nato

You're not doing history Francie, don't insult the discipline. You're attempting revisionist dross that's because you have a political crank hobby horse to peddle. Revisionist dross that's so close to the Kremlin line that your claims of abhorrence ring hollow.

The notion that the European peace would hold minus the Americans is fanciful.

You may not like it, but the only reason why the European continent wasn't back tearing itself apart for the second half of the 20th century was the US acting as the cornerstone of NATO.

I'll leave you to your hand wringing about US interventions. I know what side Europe has its bread buttered and you'd do well to consider the implications of Europe without an American security presence and concimennt garuntees.

If you want to make it debatable go crazy.

A European security architecture without the US is a suicide pact for the European peace.

How shy do you think Putin and any other sh*tbag autocrat would be about ripping up the post Berlin Wall settlement in Eastern Europe with France as the only army of note in the democratic bloc and Germany refusing to shed itself of its self righteous pacificsm.

Use your brian Francie. I know you've been weaned on reflexive anti American nonsense your adult life, but the current set of circumstances would be a good stopping point to consider if you've lost the plot or not.

Whoopdeedoo. You were always free to criticize the US or NATO and you'll be free to to do so tomorrow. Unlike a certain country due East which you're providing cover for, you won't be pulled out of bed or dissapeared for doing so.

The reason Moscow Mick, George Galloway and fellow travelers get labelled as useful idiots isn't because they offer mealy mouthed condemnations of Putin followed by a giant BUT (sound familiar?), it's because they exist in the grand tradition of certain elements on the Western European left of refusing to show their hand and say what they really mean.

You've spent a few pages on this thread abusing the word history. Here's a little history for you: throughout all the darkest days of the cold war and into the Russian Federation era, Moscow has spent an inordinate amount of time at arms-length cultivating voices on the fringe European left convincing them that NATO is the problem, that they'd turn swords into ploughshares if only NATO would stop being such meanies and they'd be nice boys and girls.

This cultivation has being going on for decades and often political movements in Western Europe don't actually cop they're reading from script.

This is also an unfortunate and hard fact about the political movement you belong to. Throughout the decades, members of Irish republican movements have been found at Kremlin sponsored propaganda conferences in Moscow and even up until a very very recent about face, have been peddling boilerplate anti-NATO nonsense in the European parliament.

They do this because they walk that silly little tightrope between the wink and nod to bad political actors such as the Kremlin, and their supposed independent point of view.

It's in crises like this that it all falls apart, and the years of parroting grumbles about NATO in Western fora pretending it's not paraphrased sh*te from the Russian institutional state becomes unsustainable.

It's not the weasel condemnation that gives you away, it's the inevitable BUT.

NATO is not a luxury for the European peace that can be pulled down and replaced with an erzatz replacement that has no balls. Which is what is being called for by the political fringes.

Putin and his circle of thugs running the show laugh their head off at people like you, Europeans calling to cut their own throat. Wringing their hands and tut tutting about Kosovo (best thing NATO ever did btw) while fastidiously calling for the destruction of a treaty alliance that has vexxed shitbag fascists for three quarters of a century now.

And lastly, the thing that really acts as the cherry on top and the chef's kiss is that in the face of one of the most dangerous wars and acts of aggression against a sovereign state in Europe since a certain Austrian snuffed it, you spend your days mouthing off about the treaty alliance protecting Europe from untold bloodshed.

Francie you've been schooled and paddled up and down main Street here.

I'm not even sure what the point of your question is. And I know a bad faith question were an under-read contributer wants to drag things into the pig pen when I see one.

You've done enough apologism of Russian aggression for today, and you seemed satisfied with Teowhatshisface a-factual answer to your silly question, so why don't you run with that? The first rule of debate is to ignore stupid questions, and this isn't the Oxford Union so why don't you take it to Ask Jeeves if you're so curious?

For a man that protests he's not giving shelter and succor to Putin, you spend an awful lot of time reading to Kremlinite script.

The answer lies in Berlin. And it was a massive miscalculation on other NATO country members part to be browbeaten by a country compromised with a naiive Ostpolitik agenda and Russian money.

You can dance a little jig about that if you want, but it's a tragedy for Ukraine and Europe generally, and if we follow the deutschmarks, the real source of the problem comes from Moscow.

I think we're at a point where we need to call things by their name.

Dislike of fringe politicians who shill for Putinist agendas? Damn right son.

You'll get all the facts you want out of me if you're coming at this conversation with good faith. This may surprise you, but I'm not one of these people that only found Ukrainr and Russia on a map 4 weeks ago.

You are pro-Putin. The man has sand in his vagina about NATO for decades and it's one of his main foreign policy preoccupations along with near-abroad countries joining the EU.

If you're providing shelter for him and this insane war and hammering on at length at the only institution holding the man man back from further destruction of Eastern Europe you are by definition pro-Putin.

You should just own it and be done with it. But you can't do so because the loss of face would be immense - and as Mark Twain said: "It's far easier to fool people than to convince them they've been fooled." That's where you're at Francie, and I don't envy you.

Don't even bother with the last jibe you threw my way btw. I'm not the one providing a back handed defence for the most dangerous act of war since the 1940s in Europe. I actually value the European peace and condemn fully and without BUTs those who try to tear it down for sad-act political fetishism.

Apart from this having nothing to do with anything, it also happens to be wrong.

Take an old stroll in North Strand in Dublin with your eyes open some day and report back what you find.

You'd be an utter fool to think the European security architecture minus the US wouldn't be significantly weakened.

The only point of the US retreating across the Atlantic would to be to appease Putin and anti-democrats.

The US leaving Europe has never looked less likely, and I'll give three cheers to that because I actually like the democratic and peaceful post WW2 settlement.