NATO is losing patience with one of its own members — and it’s not who you think
NATO is losing patience with one of its own members — and it’s not who you think
Why the clickbait? Just write who it is in the title and save us a click
I personally prefer the headlines remain non-editorialized, and the info added to the body text instead.
For anyone wondering why Canada is not eager for military spending, it's because very little goes into our own Canadian economy. We don't have much military industry (and we're not big enough to ever get much) so most of the money spent goes to buying foreign equipment. It's like a permanent export of cash. Planes, rifles, even ship building - we can build the ship, but then we buy all the electronics and weapons systems from someone else.
And not to sound too crass, but for what reason? No one is going to invade Canada because of geography. The US? We have no chance anyway. We could leave NATO and pretty much disband our military entirely. The only reason we're in NATO and have a military is to help others. Again, at extraordinary expense because we don't have our own domestic military industry.
TBF, being a member of a military alliance does give us certain economic advantages since it keeps us friendly with the other members, many of whom we trade with. But you're right that the military industrial complex doesn't pay back into Canada very much. And I say that as someone who grew up in London and so knew lots of people employed by General Dynamics. But one of Canada's biggest exports after our natural resources has long been STEM graduates, many of whom go to work in private industry in Europe or the US. It would be great if we could entice them to stay more often. But that's more a conversation about free trade agreements than military alliances.
We definitely build small arms here (though not the handguns anymore I suspect), there's no reason we couldn't have local industry doing the manufacturing with licensed designs.
I think as well what should the 2% spending be used for? Size of the forces? Equal split between army/navy/air force? Tech development? Tech manufacturing? Until those are answered that 2% spending would do nothing for the CF.
P.S. the F35 procurement shows even the best intentions can have the worst cock ups.
You know, defence spending wouldn't be all that bad, if we could say use our Forces to build new rail, renewable energy, affordable "barracks/military grade" housing in walkable cities. Energy and infrastructure resiliency, owned by the people are important goals that would make us stronger against potential threats, invasions and the ability to ramp up production when needed to support our allies.
Doesn't count as military spending then.
I know... civilian infrastrucutre spending doesn't count toward it which is unfortunate, but training and salaries to military personnel to accomplish civilian aims do count, and anything that can be accounted separately as specifically for military uses does count.
It's just that we know from Ukraine and the Black Sea (and nearly every war since WW2) that it's not necessarily who spends the most on shooty-shooty-boom-boom equipment who wins. We have to support our allies, but at home we also have many problems within our nation to deal with. With some creative thinking we could try and hit two birds with one stone, strengthen our military capability by tasking our military personnel to assist in major civilian infrastructure projects, that would help us respond to threats from both nature and our adversaries.
No, that's exactly who I thought it was.
We're not spending too much on weapons? Good.
As a Canadian, the article is correct.
Why do I care about increased defence spending? There is no situation in which we get invaded.
This is essentially just a pledge to help others, and we do plenty of that already.
We agreEd to spend a certain percentage and we are not. Everything else is irrelevant, and NATO has every right to not be happy with us, we are not doing our part.
It was who I thought.
The best way Canada can adequately support Ukraine is by hitting 2% on defence