Ireland having 0 military capabilities, and being completely dependent on NATO, while being extremely opinionated, on how and what NATO does, always irked me deeply.
Ireland doesn't have exactly zero military capabilities. For example they have a military base in Lebanon. They have a decades long solidarity with Hezbollah and solidarity demonstrations are commonplace<p><a href="https://rebelbreeze.com/2024/09/21/dublin-demonstration-in-solidarity-with-hezbollah-and-the-lebanese-people/" rel="nofollow">https://rebelbreeze.com/2024/09/21/dublin-demonstration-in-s...</a>
Ireland doesn't have 0 military capabilities, they have enough of a military to conduct peacekeeping missions elsewhere, which they don't need to do. They just don't have the ability to defend an invasion, but they do certainly have a military that does good in the world.
Ireland have an army with no tanks and an air force with no jets.<p>How would they maintain peace in another country without the help of others
OK so their capability isn't precisely 0, but it rounds to 0.
Their "peacekeeping" missions are somewhere between utterly impotent / useless and actively counterproductive. Playing dumb and doing nothing while Hezbollah uses you as cover to launch missiles over the border from a couple hundred meters away is not keeping the peace.
The implication that having military strength is a prerequisite for having <i>opinions</i> about international policy is horrifying.
Ireland nobly took a stand against fighting the Nazis in WW2, and they've been similarly brave ever since.
Well, one can look at this as at least a step in the right direction, compared to the active collaboration with Germany during WW1 by the people who became Irish government by the time of WW2 arrived.
Assuming you’re not just some Russian bot, which countries embrace the return of deserters?<p>Ireland chose to take a position against colonialism, after having experienced the warm embrace of the British Empire, ethnic cleansing and oppression for centuries.
> Ireland chose to take a position against colonialism<p>By refusing to fight the Nazis? What?<p>Are you implying that the Allies were the colonizers in WW2? (The
Allied countries were also colonizers obviously, but within WW2 it's pretty obvious which countries were doing more of that, and more aggressively)
Ireland's position at the time (before they got images of concentration and elimination camps) was that what the Nazi did was no different than what colonial powers did during 200 years.<p>And since the Nazis invented the concentration camps in Mozambique and Namibie (taking example from Belgium) around 1909, i'd say they weren't that wrong.
Britain was still literally an empire at this point, currently colonising India and many other places.<p>You can say they should fight the nazis anyway but making the argument that they should do this because Britain weren’t colonisers doesn’t make sense.
What was a tiny, broke, agrarian country just out of a civil war that was still simmering going to do about the Nazis?<p>They had a well-justified disdain for being pulled into the British orbit. They chose neutrality.<p>Do you hold Switzerland and Sweden to the same standard?<p>If Britain were to join in a conflict with Russia over Ukraine, would you expect Indian soldiers to rally to the cause of their former King and Country?<p>If you’re an American, would you be in favor of providing VA benefits to US Army soldiers who deserted and joined the Ukrainian army?
Notably thousands of Irish soldiers did fight the Germans in WW2 but via joining the British Army... an act that was frowned upon at the times. Many were killed.
And when they came back, they were blacklisted by order of the government:<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16287211" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16287211</a>
I don't dispute that there are many brave individual Irish people of course, but in terms of the country as a whole in matters of policy...
100% agreed with this article. The whole idea of Ireland's supposed neutrality is a farce. Does anyone <i>really</i> think that if a country like Russia decided to full-on invade Ireland, other European nations would just shrug it off? Of course not, and the Irish are well aware of that and rely on it (already they explicitly rely on the UK to help defend their country as a matter of policy).<p>So really it's a simple hypocrisy, a one-way street. You help us, but we don't help you. We're too principled to help others, you see.
Nearly Everything consequential in history was unexpected, and for the most part we have a record of someone important saying "that will never happen"
Except the Irish army has conducted large numbers of peacekeeping missions as part of the United Nations. Irish soldiers have died in said operations. The Siege at Jadotville is one example - there is a pretty great film about this.
The Irish were idiots for sending peacekeepers there without adequate air, armor, and artillery support.
That's laudable, but it doesn't change the fact that they rely on their European neighbors to defend them while feigning "neutrality" and wouldn't return the favor if another, say, EU country were seriously attacked.
If Russia decided to full-on invade Ireland, a country of 4.5 million (as completely absurd as this idea is, being Ireland where it is) having its own military would not help Ireland- it should better capitulate quickly to limit damage.
There's a similar population ratio between the PRC and Taiwan I believe, so I guess Taiwan should just give up on having a military entirely then?<p>Not possible for them to stop China, so why bother? Just lie back and think of Ireland.
If Taiwan weren't defended by the US (for purely strategic interests, certainly not because of idealism or democracy) then yes, sure. Better than a destructive war with the same identical outcome.<p>Btw, do you also happen to think that Ireland should arm itself against a possible invasion from the US?
Russia invading Ireland would be like China invading Cuba.. there's a geo in geopolitics for a reason..
What? The very distance involved and difficulty of such an invasion is precisely why resistance is extremely plausible and not being able to do so is indefensible. Even a "token" amount of resistance makes it exponentially more difficult.<p>You would certainly have been the type of person whining about how Ukraine was doomed to fall in a matter of hours under the incredible size and capability of the Russian military. Like, these guys are just not that competent. You can make the job nearly impossible for them by just giving a single solitary fuck.<p>To say nothing of the fact that "full invasion" isn't even really the target. They just need to be able to defend their own airspace and sea lanes against errant Russian planes and ships.
> The very distance involved and difficulty of such an invasion is precisely why resistance is extremely plausible<p>Not to mention the possibility of an invasion from Australia. They should prepare against that, too! See, the whole premise of this discussion is completely absurd: there is no threat whatsoever by Russia to Ireland. There's a narrative that gets pushed more every day that Europe is under threat from Russia and should gear up for a war, and even (say some) attack first. Notice that all the drones spotted above airports and military installations are only <i>alleged</i> to belong to Russia, but not a single one has been reasonably attributed to them. And the party that has most to gain from an increase in the tension between Europe and Russia is Ukraine, not Russia.<p>> You would certainly have been the type of person whining about how Ukraine was doomed to fall<p>And I was right, as it seems, hundreds of thousands of deaths later, cities razed to the ground, a country in ruins. Those who didn't want peace talks share in part the responsibility of those deaths, do you ever think about it?
No, they need to be able to defend their elections and social media from Russian interference.
You know, there’s something to be said for Ireland’s attitude. The other islands (ha!) and the continent have treated them as second-class chattel for centuries, while competing amongst themselves for global hegemony. Better to stay out of that game and sort their own business, many of them think.
Ireland literally has a policy of relying on the UK to defend them.
I assume you're referring to the 1952 agreement that the RAF is allowed to intercept unidentified or hostile aircraft in Irish airspace?<p>That's because the UK <i>does not want</i> Ireland to have an army. Ireland has a long history of standing with Native Americans, Palestinians, and other groups facing colonization. They even have a military base in Lebanon and a very long standing partnership with Hezbollah (Hezbollah was born out of the struggle to take back the bottom third of their country that was occupied by the US and Israel so they are often seen as an anti-colonial movement).<p>Ireland having any sort of military capacities would directly contradict UK military interests.
<i>>Better to stay out of that game</i><p>The Russians are making incursions into Irish waters and airspace, it's just a brute fact. So either they play the game, or Britain plays it for them. They don't get to sit aloof above it all, that's not how reality works.<p>They are a protectorate in all but name, it's disgraceful.
Ireland is such a useful tax haven that it's within all of our interests to protect it </kidding not kidding>
Inability through choice, it should be clarified, given the title the poster or mods decided upon. Perhaps "unwillingness" is more accurate - they are a rich country after all, what with all that GDP
My first thought was "defend itself from what ?", but in this new ages of drones, I guess it could be an issue.<p>IIRC, doesn't Ireland pay the UK for some type of defense ?
> defend itself from what ?"<p>The article addresses this unfortunate attitude: the whole premise of your question is, "well they'd have to go through these other countries first, so not our problem".<p>It's a bit like if Kansas refused to pay anything towards the defense budget because any hostile powers would have to go through all those other states first.<p>But, as the article also notes, air and sea power are things. If a hostile power decides to fuck with one of the many undersea Internet cables that make their way to and through Ireland, what's Ireland going to do about it?
> It's a bit like if Kansas refused to pay anything towards the defense budget because any hostile powers would have to go through all those other states first<p>That's Spain's current position in NATO.
The Russians have actively sabotaged undersea cables belonging or connecting to NATO countries. What have they done about it?<p>In general, states like Kansas are dependent on Federal money anyway, so they they don’t really contribute much. 10 states basically support the Federal government from a tax perspective.
Kansas would probably spend very little on defense, if it was a sovereign state.<p>Defense spending is not virtue signaling. It's money countries may have to waste if they feel threatened. But if there are no credible threats, it's better to lower the taxes or to spend the money on something that actually benefits the citizens.
What if UK would be one to invade them?
Drones, and hostile ships fucking around with transatlantic cables and pipelines.<p><i>>IIRC, doesn't Ireland pay the UK for some type of defense ?</i><p>No, we do it for free.
I think Ireland's commitment to pacifism and neutrality is laudable. Too few people live here to be able to defend against attacks from a larger power, and Ireland's strong suit has always been diplomacy, anyway. That obviously annoys people who either (for some unfathomable reason) like war or stand to gain personally from increased defence spending. Fortunately, there is little appetite for the kind of militarisation that the author of this article is hoping for. I'll add, too, that societies organised around the sort of violence, hostility, aggression, and cynicism that go hand in hand with powerful militaries don't seem to be very nice places to live.
Ireland literally relies on the UK to defend them.<p>It's hypocritical mooching, plain and simple.
There are legitimate practical issues with Ireland not being capable of policing its airspace or marine borders that don't go away just because Ireland is good at diplomacy (an assertion which I question in the first place).
This assumes that all nation and political actors will be happy to engage in democracy, which isn't the case. Not every country is a rational liberal democracy (and even those are having a rough time).