I actually don't disagree with you that our security is tied to what happens in Europe. There's two issues here though.
1) How do you make this easily comprehensible and concrete to a voter who is being asked to pay for it? The 2% of GDP idea is at least somewhat comprehensible as the price to join the club of other peers. That starts getting higher as I fear the backlash.
I don't think we can. Ukraine (and a score of prior Russian interventions) should have been a massive wakeup call but I think that for the most part Canadians are happy to hide behind the Atlantic moat. I don't think it will become real to the average Canadian until the Russians or Chinese start drilling in our part of the Arctic and they fire on the first CCG vessel that comes to stop them. And even then many of our folks will talk of appeasement.
2) How best can we help? Cause while folks like yourself might dream of divisions, there's the question we of what the Europeans want as help and what we can best provide in a mutually beneficial way or leveraging our strengths.
I think brigades and divisions are the easy go-to solution. Like I said - everyone notices the size of the pin on the map. Our open source commitment has been a brigade since forever even though we reached a time after the fall of the CCCP where we couldn't deploy one for love or money. Pre-2004 we could actually have put together a 4 CMBG standard type of one - getting it there and sustaining it - that's another story.
What do Europeans want. IMHO, Latvia needs a division. The current one doesn't impress me much. Based on how much Canada already spends on defence we ought to be able to do much better. Equipment matters as much for the army as the air force and navy. We simply do not have enough.
For example, we build an alternative to Starshield that the rest of NATO can use? That removes leverage the US and Musk have.
That's an idea that I could get behind. Armaments production as well. But neither puts a pin in a map nor gets you a seat at the table where decisions are made by the big boys. NATO wants more armoured forces and also wants you to have skin in the game - that's the whole point behind the eFP. And yes, more air and naval forces for Europe are a part of that.
Or.. divisions are hard to move. Ships and airplanes? Not so much.
That's if you look at the bloated divisions that have become fashionable. One can build a very effective armoured division with around 10,000 people and 2,000 vehicles. The vehicles only need to be shipped once and at 300 folks in a C330 chalk, you can ramp up on prepositioned equipment in a few days. Such a division is very agile as against its peers.
The concept of a rapidly air-deployed, medium-weight forces with its equipment (like a LAV or Stryker brigade) was always a fiction. The USAF, with all its resources, proved that decades ago. The answer has always been-and still is-heavy equipment prepositioned in peacetime.
The point though is that soldiers, ships and air craft operate in different domains with significantly different capabilities. The thing is that spending isn't enough. You have to show up to get credit. Having a well defended moat around your country isn't good enough in an alliance.
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