“Un mucchio di scrocconi” – Aumenta la pressione del Regno Unito sull’Irlanda affinché investa nella difesa

This is how we’re seen across Europe to be fair

Interesting article. I know defence spending is very unpalatable to the Irish general public, but reading between the lines they’re going to have to do something, otherwise they’re leaving themselves open to more drastic action from the UK, EU and NATO (in the future).

Edit: Just seeing the comments below, we can see how divisive the subject is. A hard thing for a government to get over the line with public support! I can see them having been backed into a corner somewhat though via neighbours and political partners.

I’m all for Ireland investing more in defence capabilities, but why should we give a shite what the UK or any other country thinks of our policies. It’s such a weird narrative that keeps getting pushed – “Oh no! The only country in the world that has ever been a threat to our national security doesn’t think much of our defence forces.”

People trying to promote more military spending / militarisation need to get the people onside by telling us how we would actually benefit from it, not by telling us “you’re embarrassing us in front of the neighbours”

Fuck the lot of them.

This whole debate is quite tiresome tbh.

The governing parties and broadly pro-govt sympathetic media outlets are constantly churning out articles about how we need to invest more in defence, how we need to “grow up” as a country, how we should be more militarised.

They get posted here and elsewhere on the internet. People recycle the same arguments for or against.

The issue I have is, the parties pushing this agenda are in government. They won the election last year. They have been in government for 104 years and counting.

If they feel so strongly about the issue, why don’t they just do something about it?

Those people that are suggesting because of our history we should be neutral, don’t actually realise that in order for us to maintain an effective independence we need to be able to defend ourselves with our allies. What they don’t realise is that currently our skies are defended by our former ‘colonial oppressors’. That’s some independence right there. There really are many who play up to the toxic ancient stereotype of the ignorant thick Paddy. Its pure pull the ladder up jack ignorance, that really has no place in a world where our way of life is actually controlled by a set of cables off our west coast. We don’t have to arm, but we do have to pay for our protection if we’re not going to do it ourselves.

Why don’t we hear similar criticisms of Iceland? A country with a similarly strategic geographic position that [doesn’t even have an army at all](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_of_Iceland)?

Could it be that these stories have very little to do with “freeloading”, and more to do with pressuring a small country to do what bigger countries tell them?

Counterpoint: Ireland is a country of 5ish-million people; what exactly does “doing our part” look like compared to a country where its largest *city* is 2x the population of Ireland?

How much did the UK enrich themselves from exploiting Ireland since our stories became entwined with theirs? Happy to piggyback from them in this chapter of the saga.

https://preview.redd.it/zse545pdc1kg1.jpeg?width=608&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4d32bd80af52372f5645ad40f1ec754822206063

They’re always beating us with that stick. During WWII as well. They’d the underground to hide his in from the bombers. It’s all well and good when you’ve former empire money and infrastructure in the chamber. Irelands been barely not poor since the mid 90’s.

What’s so ridiculous is the focus on military when the need is investment in cybersecurity defence. These people who are foaming at the mouth about international threats never seem to focus on that, when that is the new frontier

So the Europeans who have been defense freeloading off the USA are calling us freeloaders? 😱

Brits owe us for all the hassle up north so they can take care of the bill here.

To be fair, the UK always had a problem with us being natural.
I’m still unsure who would attack us from the east for the EU to be worried. If it’s from the west the attacking army needs to go through all the EU.

Id say this is a call to buy arms to keep the war machine running, it’s one of the most profitable industries after all.

It’s ironic that Britain is criticising the lack of defence infrastructure and capabilities of the island when they themselves have dropped their own defense capabilities in Northern Ireland since the 90’s and post-GFA. In terms of ‘pulling their weight’, they’ve militarily withdrawn from NI which they have argued for so long is their own territory. I don’t even mean troops on the border or patrolling streets, the article tells you they’d pulled down radar installations in NI which would be specifically for Air Defences.

Furthermore, the UK claims Rockall Island as theirs, which extends their controlling territorial range quite a fair bit North West;

https://preview.redd.it/agwqw92d32kg1.jpeg?width=3308&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6e5b62552a4e0ca911f9e337e0ae1a3fbe506a55

See that thin band of light blue around Ireland? That’s what the UK is moaning about that Ireland leaves undefended, since you can’t realistically restrict transit access in the larger EEZ areas. For those Russian Hypersonic Missile Submarines coming from the Arctic Circle (which btw [Canada, the US, Norway, and Iceland have controlling access apart from the Russians](https://arcticportal.org/images/education/quick_facts/government_policies/EEZ/1_Map.jpg), hence Trump’s overt Greenland acquisition attempts), they’d have to go through Norwegian, Danish, and the UK’s controlled waters and EEZ’s (the blue/black lines) to take advantage. If the range of these hypersonics is to be believed, the Russians wouldn’t even need to be in Irish Waters – the Faroe (Danish) or Shetland (UK) Isles would do. Or y’know, Murmansk or Vyborg – [Ireland and the UK are already in range from Russian Ballistics](https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/images/full-reports/2023/58255-fig2-2_russia-coverage.png) without leaving port.

So why pressure Ireland? Because the US suddenly lost interest in the North Atlantic part of NATO (and arguably the TO as well…), and [the UK is a massive weapons exporter](https://worldostats.com/country-stats/arms-exports-by-country/). The EU is larger (between France and Germany), but Ireland doesn’t have any independent defence manufacturing (a standout amongst neutral countries) so Ireland would *have* to procure lucrative contracts with someone external, and the UK would prefer it would be from them. Ireland already has a history of buying British military surplus, particulary in the Irish Navy.

This isn’t even covering the economic policy that usually follows from increased defence spending; reduced social welfare and government services spending. Ireland can’t even handle that without going horrendously overbudget even with a budget surplus, so how d’you reckon it would go with a sudden investment in defence too?

I think it’s important to read behind the paper and the messages from former UK admirals who also happen to be members of the UUP (Aiken) and Reform UK (Parry, the ‘freeloader’ quote source). UK (and the EU) see massive increases in their defence budget and can’t imagine the mounds of pounds and euro coming from their growing defence export industry if Ireland had to commit to some defence expenditure. It’s not so much ‘sharing the load’ of national defence, but more ‘we stand to make a lot of cash from this situation’.

TLDR; Nuance. Ireland *is* defenceless and probably do *something* about it, but from Russian Hypersonics and other fearmongering that pushes the responsibility soley on Ireland to ‘step up’ by buying lots of surplus British equipment? Nah. If Ireland span up a native defence industry with all the Apple Tax rebate or dumped it into French/German defence procurements, I think we’d hear a new complaint from these UK admirals, given their party allegiances.