If Russia invaded us in the morning, who would come to our aid?

Our main 'advantage' would be knowledge of the terrain and a supportive population also a nucleus of weapons and those willing to fight. No Ally will give aid if the local population is not fighting.

Yes absolutely true, a lot of the NATO support for Ukraine wouldn't have happened unless there was a clear willingness to resist from the Ukrainian populace

Images from early in the war of people lining up at volunteer centers, elderly women being trained to fire assault rifles and crowds of civilians welding vehicle barricades and preparing the old Molotov cocktail welcoming gifts were very powerful. I think without those then NATO countries would have been far more hesitant to send support

The same would have to apply here. I'm a bit council if the Irish population's willingness to risk their lives against a superior for, however history has shown that when people's homes and way of life is under threat they suddenly become very enthusiastic about dishing out some violence in response. So that's something we'd have to find out if it ever happened, which is hopefully never

I'm not sure lack of knowledge about the terrain is going to slow down an invading Russian army much. Slightly bizarre bit of trivia is that the best maps of Europe were made by the Soviets and often had a lot more detail than maps available in those countries

Apparently they had cartographers undercover in many European states taking a lot of picnics near military bases and critical infrastructure

I'll leave it to your imagination as to the reason for this 😉

I don't know if they included Ireland in that exercise but I can't imagine why they'd skip us. As I said, there's some strategic value in this little island on the edge of Europe and the Atlantic

The Russian federation inherited all that effort and I'm not sure our geography has changed so dramatically in 30 years as to make those maps useless

The Russian army should also be capable of dealing with pretty challenging terrain and unless they drove the 1st Guards Tank Army directly into a bog they should be fine

Although in fairness, I would not be at all surprised if Russian military command ordered an entire tank division into an Irish bog.

Historically the biggest threat to the Russian military has been it's own command, and the war in Ukraine has demonstrated this is still very much the case

Some people would come.

Because ye want to be irish.

No.

Pretty much the Irish defence strategy in a nutshell.

'because no-one else was nearby and bothered fighting the English for Ireland. Yeah we got invaded by the Spanish, but that didn't exactly end well for them. And the French tried it once or twice before giving up'

I think what you said shows that Spain and France were bothered fighting them on our side?

Anyway neutrality is not a defence in itself.

True but he might be accused of bullying someone smaller than himself.

They just announced a 130 bn euro defense bump.

And have sent mlrs, gepards, iris t, pzh2000's and billions in small arms and anti tank weapons.

Thats what.

They launched a massive campaign of destruction and death across Europe causing the most devastating war in history. Not to mention the almost total annihilation of their own country in the process

Afterwards they were a tad fed up of war so the German military has only aimed to be a defensive force since then

It was only with the intervention of Western governments and the threat of attack from the Soviet Union that West Germany even bothered forming a military, and spread BS like the clean Wehrmacht theory in the process to improve public opinion of the new army

If you're looking for more recent developments, the German military has suffered from deep procurement issues since the end of the cold war. They spend a significant amount of money on sustaining older equipment

Plans for replacement often get cancelled or delayed and defence budget spending is often for a single year, making it difficult and expensive to sign long term supply contracts. There's a lot of questions about whether the announced spending will be guaranteed for years to come or whether it'll be a short lived sugar hit

Consider that the French military manages to field an aircraft carrier with expeditionary capacity, a nuclear submarine fleet and it's own nuclear arsenal for less than the German defence budget. There's clearly a difference in value for money between both nations

There's also the fact that German public opinion is very anti war. People supported Merkel being soft on Putin because they didn't want to start WW3. In the end they were wrong, but hindsight is always 20/20 isn't it

It's worth noting that in school, Germans aren't really taught about their military victories during WW2. The school system doesn't want to glorify German military accomplishments, instead focusing on the horrors unleashed by the Nazi's, their incompetent management of the government and economy. This contributes to a generally very anti war mindset and consequently a relaxed attitude towards defence