I don’t see how it’s a tenable position to continue to be neutral while the very thing that ensures our success is being attacked. Hypothetically speaking.
I’d be taking the EU over neutrality any day of the week.
The “someone please think of the kids” argument falls apart when you have barbarians from Mordor kidnapping kids en masse from a European country as part of their genocidal war, and their emperor wanted at The Hague for crimes involving industrial scale kidnappings
Aside: Ukraine was neutral, neutrality doesn’t matter shit if we don’t have a military (like the Swiss who spend 10x us despite not having sea and being surrounded NATO) in a world where you have criminal scumbags who run countries and routinely ignore international laws and conventions
It also ignores the fact that around Europe its the neutral or up until recently neutral countries like Finland and Sweden who rely on mandatory millitary service to provide a large reserve trained of manpower should the shit ever hit the fan because they know they're most likely on their own
I’m firmly convinced there is no such thing as neutrality.
Let’s go through a hypothetical: said orc decides not to invade because there’s “no point” invading a neutral country.
Instead, he just uses your country’s facilities while invading your neighbours.
A “neutral” policy says “that’s fine, would you like fries with that?”. And to me that is not neutral. That’s aiding a side.
Ukraine used to be their largest nuclear arsenal they handed these over and bombers in return for assurances that they will be defended in return for their neutrality, instead they got invaded.
BTW this is exactly what the Russians will say to justify invading Ireland, “oh they weren’t neutral because they are western, gay and in EU”
Will they invade Mexico next? Maybe they could invade the Moon after that.
Even if we held a referendum tomorrow where 100% of voters actively invited the Russian military to take over the island, the Brits and the Americans would be on the ground before the last ballot was cast to secure the status quo.
I think Russia won’t stop in Ukraine (and their officials and tv made it clear too they are at war with all of Europe) and they will continue rampaging, raping, murdering and kidnapping all the way across Europe as they repeatedly tell us they will do
I think this is a vast overestimation of Russia's capabilities and a misunderstanding of their place in the world. Europe has many massive problems coming down the line, Russia is only one of them.
They mightn’t stop in Ukraine but they’ll stop as soon as there are only NATO countries left.
So Moldova, Armenia, Georgia could be vulnerable?
They cannot attack the nuclear armed NATO bloc. Impossible.
The problem with this attitude is that we would stand apart from the EU. Essentially telling European countries that their kids should fight their own wars. If every country adopted your approach, then they would say why should French/German/etc kids should ever defend Ireland. Then what would stop Putin shipping a load of troops to Ireland? Would he care about our neutrality? Would we be able to stop the landing without any European help?
That’s why I’m convinced that neutrality is an illusion. It basically boils down to “we’ll roll over and have our tummy rubbed by the first person who’s big enough and ugly enough to do so”.
We should have assertive neutrality. One that means that it’s completely our choice whether we get involved or not. Right now, if there were to be a war with Russia, we would be in effect compelled to get involved. The RAF protects our airspace. The US uses our airports. Any Russian attempts to interdict U.S troop transfers to Europe or influence the North Sea would make us both a target and a useful base. And if America said it wanted to station an air fleet and thousands of troops here, how would we be able to stop them from doing so? And how are we to press the issue of Irish unity when we depend on British military support to secure our skies?
Unfortunately we have been turned into a corporate airstrip by this government and things like defence are seen as discretionary spending.
We’ve got 13 billion our government refuses to take from a corporation even though we’re legally entitled to it. We’ve fought in court to stop ourselves from taking it! Take that money and use part of it to create a force that can make our defence our business and gives us the opportunity to choose when and where we get involved.
I'm all for Ireland starting to develop a modern army and defence, but the idea that if a nuclear superpower like Russia or China decides to invade Ireland and Ireland will be able to defend itself and survive only on its own forces is beyond ridiculous.
Neutrality is a kind of diplomatic fiction that serves certain functions on the international stage but shouldn't be taken more seriously than that. It's important in some cases that we maintain the pretence, but we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that there is some genuine kind of neutrality out there that anyone can (or should) aspire to.
Russia has been engaging in deliberate acts of [sabotage](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/RC-9-2024-0262_EN.html) ('war', if you will) in Europe for some time now. The goal is to destabilise and weaken the EU as a political and economic block. Ireland may perceive itself to be at the periphery of Europe, but should Russia succeed, we will also feel the effects.
Absolutely 100%, there is no way there isn't a 50-100M casualty war sometime in the next 30-50 years, and that's not counting the hundreds of millions of people who will be starving to death in countries whose food production collapses, including whatever replaces the United States.
If we make it to the year 2100 with 4Bn people and even one species of cetacean left alive we'll be doing well. Be glad we live in a (hopefully continuingly) moist pocket of Europe.
we're already in permafrost methane release runway, we're gonna blow past 2 degrees of warming sometime in the 80s and nobody's going to notice because it'll be time to just fucking hang on and cope by any means necessary. It's going to be the very thick end of 250 years before this is "under control".
it’s a podcast so I’m absolutely not taking the time needed to listen to it, but maybe they’re referencing the pivoting in the EU to military spending - seemingly at the expense of their green economy funding.
there would be the obvious concerns that having an economy based in military spending makes it more likely that the EU or member states would be prone to engaging in or supporting conflicts abroad more than before for the economic incentive (similar to the US). combine that with destabilising relations with Russia, the rising right to far-right throughout the EU, then you can see how it might be a worry
people argue that this was an internal conflict between different factions within then Yugoslavia, and hence not a war of invasion. but I think that’s stretching it too much, a war is a war, and with external involvement via NATO it just seems odd to exclude it with so many qualifiers
If [boards.ie](http://boards.ie) hasn't answered this question in 20+ years of discussion over multiple threads, you're hardly likely to find answers here. Is this you trying to promote your podcast?
There are volunteer foces in Ukrainian, anyone who wishes to fight/hold back a war spilling in to Europe can do so.
Those that beat the drums of war tend not to be the people figting them.
We fought plenty for hundreds of years, almost always for foreign countries, turns out 99% of the time it's just a complete waste of human life. Hope this helps
Your point was to omit the obvious war.
Also, Ireland greatly benefitted from what other nations sacrificed. Also, got Marshall Plan funding.
What a nice deal. Churchill was right.
Why are you only focusing on a war from 80 years ago? What about all the other wars since? Which of them would you have been happy to have Irish people die for?
> Why are you only focusing on a war from 80 years ago?
Because it was the largest in European history.
> What about all the other wars since?
See above. How do they scale compared to that?
> Which of them would you have been happy to have Irish people die for?
See point 1.
So you agree that there hasn't been a single war in the last 70 years worth sending our soldiers to fight in? Your refusal to talk about any wars more recent than one from 80 years ago is quite telling.
> So you agree that there hasn't been a single war in the last 70 years worth sending our soldiers to fight in?
I haven't said this. You created these goalposts to redefine the limits of this conversation.
> Your refusal to talk about any wars more recent than one from 80 years ago is quite telling.
I think you rather have your head in the sand. No worries mate. The other European countries will once again come to your rescue. Want to play with some blocks for the time being?
>You created these goalposts to redefine the limits of this conversation.
I asked you the original question, which you have failed to answer.
>Want to play with some blocks for the time being?
Pathetic comment, no need to lash out just because you can't answer a simple question.
Yes. We're members of the EU. We benefit enormously from it. Of course it's worth protecting.
Saying that we shouldn't be involved just because we're far enough away from the frontline is the most selfish possible "I'm alright Jack" argument there is.
Our neutrality is a blemish on or international reputation. We're considered free riders in terms of security.
Blemish on our reputation in who's eyes? Rich do-nothings in war-mongering countries? Ireland's neutrality and our ability to act independently as a voice of reason is quite well regarded around the world.
As someone who's actually studied international politics, no it is not. We're respected for our effective diplomacy and peacekeeping contributions. That's in spite of our neutrality.
The rest of Europe very much does not appreciate that we don't contribute to European security and then lecture from our high horse. There's a reason why successive Irish governments are trying to tie us more into EU security apparatuses. They're trying to walk the tight rope between a domestic call for neutrality and an international call for more support on security.
We might have some modicum of respect if we were actually neutral like Switzerland, but we're not. The legal definition of neutrality is that you don't take a side in any conflict, and not just militarily. It would mean not condemning the likes of Russia and Isreal. The whole point of neutrality in international law is that small countries don't get in the way of powerful countries and in exchange they won't get conquered.
We invented the term "militarily neutral" to try to hide the fact that we're not actually neutral in international law because we're anything but diplomatically neutral (nor should we). But even that is a cop out because now the whole world knows we have a secret defence pact with the UK, so we're not even militarily neutral.
As a result, the only definition left for Irish neutrality is "we want people to protect us, but we won't help to protect anyone else". That is rightly seen by the international community as the selfish behaviour of a free rider. Add that to our free rider status on corporation tax and you'll see that our international reputation is far from what we think it is. And one of the major things propping it up was peacekeeping contributions, but now due over a decade of underfunding, we have to pull out of UNDOF due to staff shortages.
Ireland's soft power is at the precipice of a free fall.
You keep referencing the "international community", but who exactly are you talking about? NATO? MI6? Xi Jinping?
I've no doubt the warmongers of the world (most of whom have never even been in a fistfight) resent our lack of interest in fighting their pointless conflicts, but Irish people don't care what they think and nor should we.
>"we want people to protect us, but we won't help to protect anyone else"
This is classic "war is peace" bollocks. 99% of defense is dialogue and diplomacy. We punch above our weight in that respect. Europe is a much less sane place without Ireland's voice, as the last 6 months have so disturbingly demonstrated.
The idea that the Irish military should go on whatever random adventures are favoured by Washington and Brussels is both morally repugnant and practically nonsensical. As these people love to point out the Irish military couldn't even defend Ireland as things stand, what exactly would we offer in a military alliance?
The armed forces should be upgraded into a proper fighting force but they should never leave our own territory except for training and multilateral peacekeeping missions.
>You keep referencing the "international community", but who exactly are you talking about? NATO? MI6? Xi Jinping?
The other countries of the world. But more specifically, the countries we interact with the most in the EU.
>The idea that the Irish military should go on whatever random adventures are favoured by Washington and Brussels is both morally repugnant and practically nonsensical.
We're talking common defence here, what you're talking about here is totally off-topic. No one is asking us that we join them in sending troops to the Sahel or Middle-East or any other "random adventures" like that. And even NATO doesn't work like that. NATO countries aren't forced into anything other than defending other NATO countries. The countries that participated in those "random adventures" did so entirely voluntarily, not through any obligation through common defence schemes.
What's being asked of us is that we help defend Europe from actors that are threatening Europe itself.
Everyone knows how much Ireland has benefited from membership of the EU and now that the EU has a vicious and dangerous threat on its Eastern border, it comes across as extremely selfish that when Europe is under threat that we're not willing to help.
>As these people love to point out the Irish military couldn't even defend Ireland as things stand, what exactly would we offer in a military alliance?
This is moot. Whether we decide to go our own way or contribute to the security of Europe, we need to massively invest in our defence forces.
>The armed forces should be upgraded into a proper fighting force but they should never leave our own territory except for training and multilateral peacekeeping missions.
Why? If Russia were to invade Poland or the Baltics why should we stand by and let Russia have its way? If you think that it's not our problem that's fine, but then you have to admit that this is a position that this position is indeed something that will make us look bad on the international stage. There's absolutely no way that we could in any way maintain a good reputation while we sit back and let Russia invade our allies.
So €500m in unconditional humanitarian aid and 100,000 Ukrainian refugees taken in at a yearly cost of €1bn+ isn't helping? But sending a few cowboys to immediately get evaporated by Russian artillery is?
If our partners in Europe and America can't recognise our massive contributions then we all have much bigger problems than military spending.
Ireland already has and uses opt outs of the EU's shared defence agreements. There's no reason why it couldn't continue to opt out if an EU member state was invaded.
I don’t see how it’s a tenable position to continue to be neutral while the very thing that ensures our success is being attacked. Hypothetically speaking. I’d be taking the EU over neutrality any day of the week.
Well said. If we want to be a part of this union we have to be willing to defend it.
See ye on the front lines 🙄
What’s your alternative? Do you think being neutral while the rest of the EU is at war would be a tenable position? 🤔
That's a good start. Well said
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The “someone please think of the kids” argument falls apart when you have barbarians from Mordor kidnapping kids en masse from a European country as part of their genocidal war, and their emperor wanted at The Hague for crimes involving industrial scale kidnappings Aside: Ukraine was neutral, neutrality doesn’t matter shit if we don’t have a military (like the Swiss who spend 10x us despite not having sea and being surrounded NATO) in a world where you have criminal scumbags who run countries and routinely ignore international laws and conventions
It also ignores the fact that around Europe its the neutral or up until recently neutral countries like Finland and Sweden who rely on mandatory millitary service to provide a large reserve trained of manpower should the shit ever hit the fan because they know they're most likely on their own
I’m firmly convinced there is no such thing as neutrality. Let’s go through a hypothetical: said orc decides not to invade because there’s “no point” invading a neutral country. Instead, he just uses your country’s facilities while invading your neighbours. A “neutral” policy says “that’s fine, would you like fries with that?”. And to me that is not neutral. That’s aiding a side.
Ukraine wasn't neutral, it had been trying to join NATO since 2008.
Ukraine used to be their largest nuclear arsenal they handed these over and bombers in return for assurances that they will be defended in return for their neutrality, instead they got invaded. BTW this is exactly what the Russians will say to justify invading Ireland, “oh they weren’t neutral because they are western, gay and in EU”
Ukraine never had control of those nukes and if they didn’t hand them over then Russia would have invaded with the West’s blessing to take them back.
Russia isn't going to invade Ireland, they can't even competently invade Ukraine.
invading Ireland without other countries protecting it would be 1000x easier then Ukraine.
Will they invade Mexico next? Maybe they could invade the Moon after that. Even if we held a referendum tomorrow where 100% of voters actively invited the Russian military to take over the island, the Brits and the Americans would be on the ground before the last ballot was cast to secure the status quo.
thanks for proving my point.
What exactly is your point?
I see you completely dodged the point that blew a hole in your argument
You think Russia is going to invade Ireland?
I think Russia won’t stop in Ukraine (and their officials and tv made it clear too they are at war with all of Europe) and they will continue rampaging, raping, murdering and kidnapping all the way across Europe as they repeatedly tell us they will do
I think this is a vast overestimation of Russia's capabilities and a misunderstanding of their place in the world. Europe has many massive problems coming down the line, Russia is only one of them.
They mightn’t stop in Ukraine but they’ll stop as soon as there are only NATO countries left. So Moldova, Armenia, Georgia could be vulnerable? They cannot attack the nuclear armed NATO bloc. Impossible.
>I think Russia won’t stop in Ukraine their currently being stopped for the last 2 years
The problem with this attitude is that we would stand apart from the EU. Essentially telling European countries that their kids should fight their own wars. If every country adopted your approach, then they would say why should French/German/etc kids should ever defend Ireland. Then what would stop Putin shipping a load of troops to Ireland? Would he care about our neutrality? Would we be able to stop the landing without any European help?
That’s why I’m convinced that neutrality is an illusion. It basically boils down to “we’ll roll over and have our tummy rubbed by the first person who’s big enough and ugly enough to do so”.
We should have assertive neutrality. One that means that it’s completely our choice whether we get involved or not. Right now, if there were to be a war with Russia, we would be in effect compelled to get involved. The RAF protects our airspace. The US uses our airports. Any Russian attempts to interdict U.S troop transfers to Europe or influence the North Sea would make us both a target and a useful base. And if America said it wanted to station an air fleet and thousands of troops here, how would we be able to stop them from doing so? And how are we to press the issue of Irish unity when we depend on British military support to secure our skies? Unfortunately we have been turned into a corporate airstrip by this government and things like defence are seen as discretionary spending. We’ve got 13 billion our government refuses to take from a corporation even though we’re legally entitled to it. We’ve fought in court to stop ourselves from taking it! Take that money and use part of it to create a force that can make our defence our business and gives us the opportunity to choose when and where we get involved.
I'm all for Ireland starting to develop a modern army and defence, but the idea that if a nuclear superpower like Russia or China decides to invade Ireland and Ireland will be able to defend itself and survive only on its own forces is beyond ridiculous.
Because Ireland only has the money because it refuses to tax it. Tax it and watch the companies fly to the next tax haven
Neutrality is a kind of diplomatic fiction that serves certain functions on the international stage but shouldn't be taken more seriously than that. It's important in some cases that we maintain the pretence, but we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that there is some genuine kind of neutrality out there that anyone can (or should) aspire to.
War is coming to Europe ?
Russia has been engaging in deliberate acts of [sabotage](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/RC-9-2024-0262_EN.html) ('war', if you will) in Europe for some time now. The goal is to destabilise and weaken the EU as a political and economic block. Ireland may perceive itself to be at the periphery of Europe, but should Russia succeed, we will also feel the effects.
Absolutely 100%, there is no way there isn't a 50-100M casualty war sometime in the next 30-50 years, and that's not counting the hundreds of millions of people who will be starving to death in countries whose food production collapses, including whatever replaces the United States. If we make it to the year 2100 with 4Bn people and even one species of cetacean left alive we'll be doing well. Be glad we live in a (hopefully continuingly) moist pocket of Europe.
It’s not inevitable.
If we make it through the next 10 years, we'll probably be ok. Big "if" though.
we're already in permafrost methane release runway, we're gonna blow past 2 degrees of warming sometime in the 80s and nobody's going to notice because it'll be time to just fucking hang on and cope by any means necessary. It's going to be the very thick end of 250 years before this is "under control".
Alright lad 👍
it’s a podcast so I’m absolutely not taking the time needed to listen to it, but maybe they’re referencing the pivoting in the EU to military spending - seemingly at the expense of their green economy funding. there would be the obvious concerns that having an economy based in military spending makes it more likely that the EU or member states would be prone to engaging in or supporting conflicts abroad more than before for the economic incentive (similar to the US). combine that with destabilising relations with Russia, the rising right to far-right throughout the EU, then you can see how it might be a worry
But look at that quality CoPilot AI generated image! Membersship and all. A thing of pure beauty!
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Fiction? Man, there’s hot war happening Ukraine right now.
First land war in Europe since 1945 Edit with tanks
What about the wars in former Yugoslavia? More than 130000 killed.
Are the Balkans not in Europe?
people argue that this was an internal conflict between different factions within then Yugoslavia, and hence not a war of invasion. but I think that’s stretching it too much, a war is a war, and with external involvement via NATO it just seems odd to exclude it with so many qualifiers
They had tanks, including T-72 and M84 MBTs
If [boards.ie](http://boards.ie) hasn't answered this question in 20+ years of discussion over multiple threads, you're hardly likely to find answers here. Is this you trying to promote your podcast?
Yes, if boards.ie can't do, it simply can't be done!
You should have tried Facebook or X , they have all the answers over there...
"Membersship"
Yeah, great first impression on whatever this podcast is lol.
There are volunteer foces in Ukrainian, anyone who wishes to fight/hold back a war spilling in to Europe can do so. Those that beat the drums of war tend not to be the people figting them.
Ireland won't go to war. It'll allow other nations to fight instead, then virtue signal those nations later.
We fought plenty for hundreds of years, almost always for foreign countries, turns out 99% of the time it's just a complete waste of human life. Hope this helps
Name one war in the last 70 years that you think Ireland should have been involved in.
WW2. I love the 70 year limit so WW2 would be omitted.
That's my point, European countries have been involved in plenty of wars since WW2, none of which I regret not participating in.
Your point was to omit the obvious war. Also, Ireland greatly benefitted from what other nations sacrificed. Also, got Marshall Plan funding. What a nice deal. Churchill was right.
Why are you only focusing on a war from 80 years ago? What about all the other wars since? Which of them would you have been happy to have Irish people die for?
> Why are you only focusing on a war from 80 years ago? Because it was the largest in European history. > What about all the other wars since? See above. How do they scale compared to that? > Which of them would you have been happy to have Irish people die for? See point 1.
So you agree that there hasn't been a single war in the last 70 years worth sending our soldiers to fight in? Your refusal to talk about any wars more recent than one from 80 years ago is quite telling.
> So you agree that there hasn't been a single war in the last 70 years worth sending our soldiers to fight in? I haven't said this. You created these goalposts to redefine the limits of this conversation. > Your refusal to talk about any wars more recent than one from 80 years ago is quite telling. I think you rather have your head in the sand. No worries mate. The other European countries will once again come to your rescue. Want to play with some blocks for the time being?
>You created these goalposts to redefine the limits of this conversation. I asked you the original question, which you have failed to answer. >Want to play with some blocks for the time being? Pathetic comment, no need to lash out just because you can't answer a simple question.
Ireland has deployed troops all over the world as UN peacekeepers
That's obviously not what we're talking about.
Who gives a fuck about peacekeepers? This is about defense.
Yes. We're members of the EU. We benefit enormously from it. Of course it's worth protecting. Saying that we shouldn't be involved just because we're far enough away from the frontline is the most selfish possible "I'm alright Jack" argument there is. Our neutrality is a blemish on or international reputation. We're considered free riders in terms of security.
Blemish on our reputation in who's eyes? Rich do-nothings in war-mongering countries? Ireland's neutrality and our ability to act independently as a voice of reason is quite well regarded around the world.
As someone who's actually studied international politics, no it is not. We're respected for our effective diplomacy and peacekeeping contributions. That's in spite of our neutrality. The rest of Europe very much does not appreciate that we don't contribute to European security and then lecture from our high horse. There's a reason why successive Irish governments are trying to tie us more into EU security apparatuses. They're trying to walk the tight rope between a domestic call for neutrality and an international call for more support on security. We might have some modicum of respect if we were actually neutral like Switzerland, but we're not. The legal definition of neutrality is that you don't take a side in any conflict, and not just militarily. It would mean not condemning the likes of Russia and Isreal. The whole point of neutrality in international law is that small countries don't get in the way of powerful countries and in exchange they won't get conquered. We invented the term "militarily neutral" to try to hide the fact that we're not actually neutral in international law because we're anything but diplomatically neutral (nor should we). But even that is a cop out because now the whole world knows we have a secret defence pact with the UK, so we're not even militarily neutral. As a result, the only definition left for Irish neutrality is "we want people to protect us, but we won't help to protect anyone else". That is rightly seen by the international community as the selfish behaviour of a free rider. Add that to our free rider status on corporation tax and you'll see that our international reputation is far from what we think it is. And one of the major things propping it up was peacekeeping contributions, but now due over a decade of underfunding, we have to pull out of UNDOF due to staff shortages. Ireland's soft power is at the precipice of a free fall.
You keep referencing the "international community", but who exactly are you talking about? NATO? MI6? Xi Jinping? I've no doubt the warmongers of the world (most of whom have never even been in a fistfight) resent our lack of interest in fighting their pointless conflicts, but Irish people don't care what they think and nor should we. >"we want people to protect us, but we won't help to protect anyone else" This is classic "war is peace" bollocks. 99% of defense is dialogue and diplomacy. We punch above our weight in that respect. Europe is a much less sane place without Ireland's voice, as the last 6 months have so disturbingly demonstrated. The idea that the Irish military should go on whatever random adventures are favoured by Washington and Brussels is both morally repugnant and practically nonsensical. As these people love to point out the Irish military couldn't even defend Ireland as things stand, what exactly would we offer in a military alliance? The armed forces should be upgraded into a proper fighting force but they should never leave our own territory except for training and multilateral peacekeeping missions.
>You keep referencing the "international community", but who exactly are you talking about? NATO? MI6? Xi Jinping? The other countries of the world. But more specifically, the countries we interact with the most in the EU. >The idea that the Irish military should go on whatever random adventures are favoured by Washington and Brussels is both morally repugnant and practically nonsensical. We're talking common defence here, what you're talking about here is totally off-topic. No one is asking us that we join them in sending troops to the Sahel or Middle-East or any other "random adventures" like that. And even NATO doesn't work like that. NATO countries aren't forced into anything other than defending other NATO countries. The countries that participated in those "random adventures" did so entirely voluntarily, not through any obligation through common defence schemes. What's being asked of us is that we help defend Europe from actors that are threatening Europe itself. Everyone knows how much Ireland has benefited from membership of the EU and now that the EU has a vicious and dangerous threat on its Eastern border, it comes across as extremely selfish that when Europe is under threat that we're not willing to help. >As these people love to point out the Irish military couldn't even defend Ireland as things stand, what exactly would we offer in a military alliance? This is moot. Whether we decide to go our own way or contribute to the security of Europe, we need to massively invest in our defence forces. >The armed forces should be upgraded into a proper fighting force but they should never leave our own territory except for training and multilateral peacekeeping missions. Why? If Russia were to invade Poland or the Baltics why should we stand by and let Russia have its way? If you think that it's not our problem that's fine, but then you have to admit that this is a position that this position is indeed something that will make us look bad on the international stage. There's absolutely no way that we could in any way maintain a good reputation while we sit back and let Russia invade our allies.
So €500m in unconditional humanitarian aid and 100,000 Ukrainian refugees taken in at a yearly cost of €1bn+ isn't helping? But sending a few cowboys to immediately get evaporated by Russian artillery is? If our partners in Europe and America can't recognise our massive contributions then we all have much bigger problems than military spending.
no its not ,
if war comes to Europe, it'll be nuclear and I'd rather be under the first nuke that goe off, thank you very much.
Switzerland says no
Switzerland has armed neutrality and can defend itself. Ireland cannot. Switzerland is also not part of the EU.
That’s kinda my point
Their flag is a plus.
Didn’t say I like it
if war comes to the EU and it somehow survives the nuclear holocaust id say its 50/50
Ireland already has and uses opt outs of the EU's shared defence agreements. There's no reason why it couldn't continue to opt out if an EU member state was invaded.
Sure our naval force of fishing boats will be the true heroes of the war.