La spinta a minare la neutralità dell’Irlanda deve affrontare l’opposizione pubblica
https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-41570671.html
di Fit-Breath-4345
La spinta a minare la neutralità dell’Irlanda deve affrontare l’opposizione pubblica
https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-41570671.html
di Fit-Breath-4345
22 commenti
Lads I don’t see the issue with upping our commitment to an EU defence organisation, if an EU country is invaded, then yes of course we should help anyway we can.
There is nothing wrong with defending the EU and our partners within it.
Christ, not another fucking neutrality post.
Can we please just declare war on someone and get it over with
How can you undermine something thats not the law, not in our constitution and originated as a condition of our independence from the British?
It’s a policy set by each elected government. And why is our neutrality consistently being confused as a policy of pacifism?
We can be neutral and still have the ability to patrol and protect our countries cables. Otherwise new EU cables and other infrastructure will be routed around skipping Ireland and going to France or the UK.
Can we even be described as genuinely neutral when our status quo is to rely on the Brits patrolling for us?
The number one actor undermining Irish neutrality is Vladimir Putin, and a considerable number of the people complaining about the supposed undermining of our neutrality are at best ambivalent towards and at worst paid directly by Russia.
We’re not neutral.
If Britain or France got invaded by a coalition of Russia, Iran and North Korea tomorrow, we wouldn’t be sitting back going “grand, we don’t care who wins, let them at it”. If we did, that would be neutrality. We’re very clearly on the side of the EU, Europe in general and modern liberal democracy.
I get it that we wouldn’t get involved militarily – but that’s only because we don’t have a military that could get involved. Our population is small, and we’re never going to have a military that can fully defend the island, let alone anyone else. So we depend on others – mainly the UK, but by extension NATO. That’s the reality, but it’s not neutrality. Our policy is military absence.
I don’t think we are really neutral at the moment, we are utterly defenceless. Neutrality isn’t a option for us, we’re just not capable of putting up any kind of fight.
I get that we’re sitting pretty due to our location. The two major competitors to the west, China and Russia simply can’t get to us without going through the EU, or the US. There’s no way the EU or the US would allow Russia or China to get anywhere close to invading Ireland. So we can just sit here doing nothing.
The problem is we don’t know what the world will be like in 20 years time. Maybe Trump is the start of a trend in the Us and 20 years from now the US won’t be an ally of Europe. Meaning we’re a wide open door for the rest of Europe, maybe the next Trump wants to start throwing it’s weight around more and suddenly US is hostile to Europe.
It will take us a decade or more to build up a military that could make Ireland a costly island to invade.
I’m all for staying out of conflicts that can be traced back to the empirical age of Europe, but at the same time, if Europe does get attacked are we just going to sit here at the edge waiting for our turn to get invaded? At that point are we expecting our descendants to go out with shotguns and burning sods of turf?
I didn’t read this article but why did it take 3 men to write it? Why they trying to make sure that it’s really neutral?
Ireland is militarily neutral. We have been for living memory. I ain’t changing that
We should have a well equipped defense force of our own even if it’s just to play toy soldiers with ourselves. The defence force could be pivotal to a lot of things in society between training trades/nurses/dentists/doctors to providing relief in times of storm’s etc it’s better to pump a billion into the defence forces than a billion into housing randomers who skipped twenty countries to land here.
We aren’t neutral…
Article’s headline is a bit disingenuous from the position it’s stating.
It’s possible to both support Ireland’s neutral position, while also supporting increased funding for defence forces and the removal of the triple-lock system.
Ireland’s neutrality is a policy position, not a legally mandated one. Neither of these changes “undermine” it at all.
The fact is that we have relied mostly on goodwill and geography to defend our neutral position up until now. With critical global supply lines becoming increasingly digital and therefore non-geographic in nature, our geographic defence advantage is rapidly eroding.
With the US (and to a lesser extent UK) descending into fascist madness, our goodwill advantage is also eroding.
If we want neutrality, we have to be prepared to defend it. Per capita, Switzerland has five times the defensive capabilities of Ireland and spends triple what we do on defence.
Unfortunately we have almost twice the landmass they do. And they have no water.
So realistically we need to be fronting up serious money here. Between 1 and 2% of GDP minimum. At the moment we spend 0.2%. I’m not saying we need mandatory military service or to be rolling out ICBMs along our coastline. But we have one of the largest territorial waters (compared to our landmass) in the world, and 5 active navy vessels.
Ireland can become neutral since its clearly on the side of Europe. We dont put boots on the ground or donate weapons because we dont have anything to give.
People in this thread are actually _joking_ about the – very obvious – likelihood that Ireland will be hit with nukes if we join a war against Russia.
100% serious when it comes to the question of _joining_ that war – and 100% jokes about the consequences of it.
yea sure give up our neutrality to keep keep Britain happy & us at a heightened risk of nuclear attack!
We`re not that thick!
The problem is Irelands’ understanding of what neutrality is and people’s desire to have their cake and eat it.
As it stands, we are a “Neutral” country that cannot protect its own interest, are free loading off the umbrella of UK air defence, EU countries patrolling our waters and are not willing to spend the money required to be a “Neutral” country.
If you wanna be Neutral you either have to spend the funds to protect yourself or form an alliance with another state or group of states, forgoing the expense but in return give some concessions (like the US having air bases spread across the globe).
In its current form (the triple lock), we cannot deploy more than 10 troops without UNSC sanctioning us to do so. There hasn’t been a new UN mission in a decade because Russia and China will veto anything that is proposed. Ireland being unable to freely use its military and Russia/China/US deciding for us is the most un-Neutral thing there is.
Its this childish approach of pretending to be Neutral and expecting others to respect it. You wouldn’t go out on a Saturday night, talk crap to everybody and not expect to get punched in the face?
While NATO membership is a non-starter and even EU commitments can be put on the long finger, we need to invest more in defence anyway. We don’t need a large standing army, but a capable navy, counterintelligence and cyber security are all important. Investing in these doesn’t have to run counter to our neutrality, in fact it bolsters it.
As it should, we’re to small to matter militarily or to ever have the capability to act unilaterally so the options are neutrality or willingly make ourselves a support act of a larger power
Given our history with the UK we didn’t join NATO for obvious reasons, and given our geography we’re not going to be joining anyone else, so just from a self interest point of view neutrality is the best option
That’s leaving aside the political argument that a world with some sort of global system (flawed as it is) is better than a world of competing grand alliances (a la pre ww1)
With the US becoming a completely unreliable ally, now is the time to start building towards a stronger, more united EU. A big part of that is going to be strengthening European armies to protect Europe’s interests and that has to include us in some capacity.
We can’t pretend we don’t exist in a world that isn’t getting more unstable everyday by being dogmatically neutral. I wish it wasn’t the case but the EU seems like the only nation-state(s) that has any interest in protecting democracy and protecting its citizens. We can’t allow ourselves to be bullied by the fuckwads in the US or Russia.
> Rather than willingly embrace a future of escalating insecurity and conflict as inevitable, Ireland’s political leaders should be asking more pertinent questions: Why are Russian submarines interested in cables on Ireland’s seafloor in the first place? What is Ireland’s economic dependence on US tech exposing us to?
I prefer to have economic growth and if Russia is interfering in this then I do not think we should surrender to them
Damn right it does, this is one of the very few things I’d get animated for.