Irelands place in the world wrt NATO/UN/Allied Forces

[expat01 BQMS Find all posts View Profile Close expat01]

That changed with the handing back of the Treaty ports.

Historical evidence disagrees with you that Ireland wouldn't seriously resist an allied invasion!


Spend money on things such as Haugheys shirts! :redface:
There was no point in us joining NATO, due to mutual assured destruction we won't survive.

Hence my qualification: we attained de jure control of our waters, but in fact, never secured them. This meant, in fact, that Britain and NATO would continue to plan on how to secure the western approaches in time of war. They had to, because we refused to. What we say is not as important as what we do.

As for serious resistance to an Allied invasion, I disagree - whatever the declared policies. Ireland was incapable of putting up any kind of effective defence before 1942, as thirty seconds of perusing the equipment and ammunition available will show. Add to that the fact that we were dependent on Britain for our small arms and all ammunition - and continued to receive warlike supplies from Britain throughout the Emergency, if never as much as we begged them for.
There was no national defence plan. De Valera had a vague idea that we would all go back to fighting in the hills the moment an invasion took place, whereas the Defence Forces felt that if we did not make at least a token effort at conventional defence it would not be possible to mobilise world opinion that the Irish were serious about having a state.
I maintain that a declared intention to resist British invasion was utterly meaningless. We put ourselves - and kept ourselves - in a position of complete dependence on Britain for our ability to resist. Like the refusal at the time to understand why Ireland had strategic importance, pretending something does not make it so.

We didn't join NATO only because Sean McBride was a disaster in foreign affairs. When the US turned down his request for a bilateral alliance, he in turn refused the offer of NATO membership - ostensibly because it meant recognising partition. Remember that De Valera wanted to rejoin the Commonwealth in 1957 so long as the British issued the invitation first, but the British weren't interested.
And how on earth would neutrality have protected us from nuclear destruction? If Britain - and Belfast - went, so did we.

Still, Haughey did need those shirts........