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Ireland's Inability to Defend Itself
- jmclnx 10mo agoMy first thought was "defend itself from what ?", but in this new ages of drones, I guess it could be an issue. IIRC, doesn't Ireland pay the UK for some type of defense ?
- _dain_ 10mo agoDrones, and hostile ships fucking around with transatlantic cables and pipelines. >IIRC, doesn't Ireland pay the UK for some type of defense ? No, we do it for free.
- TulliusCicero 10mo ago> defend itself from what ?" 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". 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. 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?
- Animats 10mo ago> 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 That's Spain's current position in NATO.
- TulliusCicero 10mo agoI don't entirely disagree, but at least Spain does have some semblance of a real military, even if it's underfunded.
- Spooky23 10mo agoThe Russians have actively sabotaged undersea cables belonging or connecting to NATO countries. What have they done about it? 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.
- jltsiren 10mo agoKansas would probably spend very little on defense, if it was a sovereign state. 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.
- Ekaros 10mo agoWhat if UK would be one to invade them?
- Animats 10mo agoUm. See Irish history vs. the UK.
- dontlaugh 10mo agoThe UK already occupied the north of Ireland.
- _dain_ 10mo agoCome and take it then.
- PolygonSheep 10mo agoWhat, again??
- osiris970 10mo agoIreland having 0 military capabilities, and being completely dependent on NATO, while being extremely opinionated, on how and what NATO does, always irked me deeply.
- TulliusCicero 10mo agoIreland nobly took a stand against fighting the Nazis in WW2, and they've been similarly brave ever since.
- beezlewax 10mo agoNotably 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.
- whenc 10mo agoAnd when they came back, they were blacklisted by order of the government: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16287211 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16287211
- hexbin010 10mo agoJesus I never knew that. Shocking
- spwa4 10mo agoA lot of governments took the side of the Nazis. Including the EU's founder, Robert Schuman, ex-Nazi collaborator of the French Vichy government. But that is nothing compared to many others. Things get so much worse. The Dutch Child protection agency has in it's historical archives, not just that they collaborated with implementing the holocaust against children, but actually organized it. Jewish (and various other groups, like Romani) children were "invited" to summer camps, that turned out to be death camps (and the "east front", which you also didn't return from). They even set a trap to deport Jewish and mentally and physically disabled children to extermination camps, including a number of their own personnel, and even went so far as to hunt their own personnel that "chose the side of the children". Austrian child protection agency selected children to be sent to death camps. That, Austrian psychiatry before and during the holocaust, is where Autism comes from. The first children diagnosed with Autism were not just sent to death camps, that was the only purpose of the diagnosis of Autism. To mark the child for death to "protect (something about race that I will not repeat)". In case you ever wonder why the child protection agencies of those countries still reserve the right to lie about the death of children, even today, that is why. Because both mass-murdered children out of racism, and if a concrete case, of which there are many, were to come to court even today ... And yet, it gets worse. And extremely confusing. Many things boil down to what everybody actually kind of knows. Ideas, especially implemented on the scale of a state, come from a long history and trials. Everything around WW2 was, justly and correctly, blamed on the Nazis. Nazis did those things. But they got the idea, and in many cases personnel, from somewhere. And a LOT of groups have used that to absolve themselves of what they did before, often long before, WW2. Look up "industrial psychiatry" sometime.
- TulliusCicero 10mo ago100% agreed with this article. The whole idea of Ireland's supposed neutrality is a farce. Does anyone really 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). 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.
- beezlewax 10mo agoExcept 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.
- TulliusCicero 10mo agoThat'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.
- nradov 10mo agoThe Irish were idiots for sending peacekeepers there without adequate air, armor, and artillery support.
- spwa4 10mo agoLike preventing the Hezbollah attack on Israel for example. And yes, an Irish soldier died. Pte Rooney. I hope the other missions went better ... Btw: Lebanon convicted someone to a death sentence over this killing. He wasn't in court however and the conviction remains without any actual consequence for the killer, he hasn't ever been arrested. The Irish government had no reaction, other than hiding that this happened, and that nobody was actually punished is not well known in Ireland.
- tonymet 10mo ago
- sonofhans 10mo agoYou 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.
- _dain_ 10mo ago>Better to stay out of that game 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. They are a protectorate in all but name, it's disgraceful.
- AlexandrB 10mo agoCanada is in a similar situation. A lot of high-minded talk about peacekeeping and neutrality, but constantly benefitting from being implicitly protected by US defence policy. The real test will come if/when Russia decides to challenge Canadian arctic sovereignty.
- TulliusCicero 10mo agoIreland literally has a policy of relying on the UK to defend them.
- culi 10mo agoI assume you're referring to the 1952 agreement that the RAF is allowed to intercept unidentified or hostile aircraft in Irish airspace? That's because the UK does not want 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). Ireland having any sort of military capacities would directly contradict UK military interests.
- cdilld 10mo agoI 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.
- dralley 10mo agoThere 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).
- TulliusCicero 10mo ago[flagged]
- cdilld 10mo agogiven Britain's entire history wrt Ireland, I'd say defending Ireland is the least they could do.
- culi 10mo agoIt's not even about that really. Enemy aircraft in Irish airspace is against British interests. For that matter, Ireland having any sort of military capabilities is probably against British interests. The situation is everything the UK could hope for. I doubt the UK would allow it to change
- osiris970 10mo agoThis 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).
- hexbin010 10mo agoInability 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
- istultus 10mo agoIreland is such a useful tax haven that it's within all of our interests to protect it </kidding not kidding>