Its different now though, first Trump and now Biden even the British are worried about the US commitment. The problem is a common European approach may not be achievable without the US. Currently the biggest European intervention abroad is Mali and that is French led. Europe is most affected by rogue states in the ME and North Africa I just think the time is approaching for european involvement because they simply won't be able to accept many more refugees from these troubled spots. Big changes are coming, NATO is a product of WW2 and the cold war , the US is the only country to have triggered article 5 in Afghanistan even though NATO was established to essentially protect Europe
Saigon All Over Again
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How so?
Duke of Marmalade
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From those leftie and right wing nutters who are now celebrating what they hail as the beginning of the end for liberal democracy.
Yea, that's true, but that's a political and educational problem, not a military one. It's hard to fix cossetted, entitled, spoiled and sanctimonious in one go.
Just judging on past form. The 20th century is good place to start.
That's the problem though , that thinking is the reason why Europe doesn't have a proper independent defence capability, it's so 1950s frame of mind. The fact that Europe could not stay in Afghanistan without the US is deeply concerning. The French were always in favour of an independent capability independent of the U.S. , the British always dragged their heels on this because they couldn't countenance a European defence without the U.S.
I think NATO as it stands is only applicable to big threats from China and Russia that involves nuclear weapons, every other conflict on Europe's borders will become Europe's problem to solve that's the change that's coming.
It's all a bit of musical chairs unless the European countries spend more on defence, whatever alliance umbrella they are under.
And smaller States, like us, spend far more and actually have proper Armed Forces.
As a British officer said to me once, the Irish soldiers are good and the Rangers are excellent but there are far too few of them and they have no deployment capability. The fact that we have one jet, the Lear Jet or Government Jet as it is known, in our entire Air Wing is embarrassing.
There is little to be gained by expending on military deployment capability. The world has plenty of large scale military sectors, US, UK, Russia, China etc....
A little country like us deciding soon to expand our airforce by 5 or even 10 jets will be as consequential to global military affairs as Greenland investing in firehoses to extinguish their summer forest fires.
Unless it's pooled within the EU.
We'd need 16 fighter jets in order to secure our own airspace. Unless your lot are happy to keep the current arrangement in place when they get into power where our former colonial masters do it for us...
The fighters would cost a fortune as we'd need specialist service crews and all the armaments that Fighters require and a safe place to store it all. Each plane would require 3 crews and we'd also need the Radar systems to tell us if the Russians are coming. So maybe we should continue to hide behind the apron strings of Mother England. After all there are pay rises to be given to impoverished public servants and the HSE can't waste money it doesn't have.
What we should purchase is a couple of second hand transport planes. They can be picked up for around €20 million each. They can remain in service for decades and are relatively cheap to run. Turbo-prop's would be best as they can take off and land on shorter runways or any 'auld field.
But that would assume the interests of the EU are the interests of Ireland. I don't think that is always the case at all.
Why? What's insecure about it now? Who are you afraid of?
The Russians are not coming. This would only be a complete waste of money.
If mother England wants to pump up its defences let her do it. We should not be under any obligation to follow suit with token gestures of futile military expansion.
That would be a complete waste of public money.
Because that's what would be required militarily to provide the ability to intercept fast aircraft who enter our airspace. I'm not saying we should do it, I'm just pointing out what's involved. It would cost around a billion (using second hand aircraft) with significant running costs. In my opinion if we were spending that sort of money we'd get a better return directing it into the army.
When the Russians entered our airspace the most we could do was make a phone call and ask them to stop.
The guy in No Country for Old Men. He terrifies me. The Vampire in Salem's Lot also scared the be-jasus out of me when I was a kid. Why do you ask?
I agree. I do think we should buy a couple of troop and cargo planes though.
I also agree. I have no problem with Mother England protecting us. The military expansion would not be futile but it would be very bad value for money.
Duke of Marmalade
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I see the external defence thing a bit like the green thing. There is nothing we can do that can make an iota of difference. But we should do our bit. We should accept the carbon targets set by the EU/UN. We should join NATO and pay our fair share. But we should not aspire to be best in class just to give Eamon Ryan and pals a feel good factor.
I said external defence. It is absolutely essential that we have a capacity to quell instantly any attempted internal subversive takeover, and we should have contingency plans for that becoming a real threat. I won't go so far as to suggest that we need an army just in case through some perverse twist in our electoral democracy the looneys gain democratic control.
I said external defence. It is absolutely essential that we have a capacity to quell instantly any attempted internal subversive takeover, and we should have contingency plans for that becoming a real threat. I won't go so far as to suggest that we need an army just in case through some perverse twist in our electoral democracy the looneys gain democratic control.
Nooo... way!!! What sort of business dealing is this?
Didn't you hear The Donald? NATO members don't even pay their fair share.
If we were to sign up I'd expect us to be firmly in the camp of the other spongers.
just thinking about Yugoslavia now, and what would happen today, in the 90s Russia was very weak and under Yeltsin, Russia was Serbia's ally but while they were vehemantly against the NATO airstrikes on Serbia they were not in a position to do anything about them.
Today we now have a non interventionist US under a very weak president, we also have a non interventionist Europe but a very interventionist Russia under Putin. NATO only operates if the US says so that is why it is no longer fit for purpose in the 21 century
There are skirmishes going on now between Belarus Poland and Lithuania over migrants that Belarus is smuggling in from Iraq and then pushing into Europe through Poland and Lithuania. Its also going on between Greece and Turkey with Erdogen using migrants as a political weapon. This is where border skirmishes could turn into something far more serious
I don't think we should join NATO but we should certainly be part of a wider European defence strategy and increases we make in spending should be in the context of that overall plan.