MilEME09
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almost as if the arrows are starting to point to a foreign hand in AB separatists
Trump administration 2024-2028
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OldSolduer
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In his own ego driven pea brain
QV
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Actions and words.
From Kirkhill in the 2% thread
The North Atlantic Treaty
The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments. They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on...
www.nato.int
In order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.
Self-help
Individual capacity to resist armed attack
Continuous
Effective
Maintain
Develop
Other NATO partners have not lived up to their agreements - actions.
Other NATO partners disparage the US while the US carries the burden - words.
This can be interpreted as ungrateful.
By my guess, even though they don't carry the heavy burden other NATO countries might get more leniency if they at least carried the water for the US. They do neither well.
QV
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Sure.
I'm making a suggestion how the US might see it.
It should be revealing that some of this might be accurate with NATO scrambling to increase defence capability only at the behest of an annoyed and increasingly punitive US. Status quo is no longer optional.
... I guess a potential response from you will be: NATO is increasing defence because the US has become unreliable. That is really just avoiding accountability for deferring the original responsibility.
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Imagine you were having a cottage weekend with a large group of your friends, and everyone agreed to bring alcohol of different types that would be shareed amongst everyone. Everyone brings a bottle of booze or a case of beer each, but one of your friends is rich, and he says he'll bring a keg because it's no big expense for him. After a few years of this, the rich guy, who's gotten even richer, starts bringing more than just a keg; he starts bringing a selection of high priced whiskeys and tequilas, spirits of every variety, craft beer sampler packs, cases of wine, and yes, still the keg. He always insists on everyone drinking what he brings (he's proud of it and genuinely just wants you to enjoy what he's bringing) and so people eventually stop bringing their own booze unless there's some really niche drink that they know he probably won't bring.
That's NATO and the US over the past 75 years.
Except now the rich dude suddenly, out of nowhere, looks around and goes "You fucking mooches, why don't you bring your own share!".
Dafuq?
QV
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That is a terrible analogy. A couple things are missing; the rich guy's finance folks telling him if he keeps doing that he'll go broke and the other guests drinking his booze are constantly bad mouthing him.
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Rich guy, after hearing he will go broke...spends even more because he's old and senile and makes zero sense.
Trump calls for $1.5 trillion military budget in 2027, up from $901 bln in 2026
Any such increase would require congressional authorization, which could pose a challenge.
www.reuters.com
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Norman Spector wrote the same thing. The US will be doing what they can to stimulate separatist movements in Quebec or Alberta. He (Spector) also says Carney is desperate for a snap election on this very issue. He opines Trump will recognize immediately a universal declaration of independence by either province with or without a referendum, offer military and economic assistance etc.
MilEME09
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Carney wants a snap election? There is nothing to indicate that
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Where is he writing? Haven’t heard from him in a while.
Carney will want a snap election when it seems likely to give him a decisive majority, and when he can frame it as necessary to allow him to more effectively advance his economic and policy objectives. That’s the conventional calculus on such things and there’s no reason to think it’ll be any different under the Carney ministry.
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He’s on X. He pretty much blocks everybody, so Lisa just retweets the good stuff.
On the subject of U.S. complaints about NATO spending- indeed, the U.S. has of course been a disproportionately large contributor to NATO. However their complaints ring somewhat hollow when you also look at who wants and is getting what from this defence spending. Forgive me for getting kinda economical here.
A simplistic view of NATO just looks at each country’s defense spending and treats it all like a public good that contributes interchangeably to the collective defence. Hugely flawed premise.
The defence needs of the allies are different. The allies who border Russia/Belarus: pretty clear their defence needs are very simple and straightforward. They will bear the brunt of any conventional Russian attack. They benefit the most fully from NATO deterrence. Disproportionately the benefit, though also they arguably contribute most ‘fully’ to NATO in the sense that a Polish or Latvian or Finnish defence dollar (or I guess Euro) is pretty entirely and directly benefiting NATO.
Pull back from that border and it gets less clear. You look at what I’ll call ‘non-Colonial’ Euro zone partners, those whose security interests are less directly territorial- they benefit from a collective safety of the Euro zone and the economic boon that comes from that, but there’s less fear of Russian tanks in Paris, Madrid, or Rome. Still, their threat, though less direct, is still Russia. Their military spending by and large defends their interests in some way shape or form against Russia. Most cents on the dollar are still within scope for NATO.
It gets murky when you get to countries with a real presence outside of Europe and the North Atlantic. Britain and even moreso France have interests and military deployments overseas independent of anything covered by NATO mutual defence. So each Pound or Euro is less fully contributing to NATO collective defence and NATO’s other chosen ventures. Though- if the balloon goes up, presumably most if not all of their military capacity would redirect to that threat.
Then you get the U.S., which while being NATO’s most powerful and wealthiest member, is also heavily motivated by its own global hegemony. The U.S. has interest in the security of Europe for the economic stability; it has interest in the Arctic both for its sphere of influence and of course to cover against missiles and bombers coming over the top. But then the U.S. also has a lot of forces in the Middle East, some, clearly, focused on central and South America, and a very substantial posture in the Indo-Pacific. China and Iran are not likely to pose threats that fall under the NATO treaty. And again, yes, the U.S. can repurpose, at any point in time, much of their forces to a war in Europe… But it still means much of their spending isn’t for NATO purposes.
Canada’s unique as a non-European, non-hegemonic NATO member. Our physical security in a NATO context is mostly a simple matter of us bordering the U.S. and being physically between them and Russia. We’ve got a pretty good moat. We do of course benefit from U.S. strategic deterrence, although we probably would be at no realistic risk of nuclear attack but for our alliance with them. Still, it’s reasonable contribute to the ‘over the pole’ defence, and the defence of the moat. But Canada also has pacific security interests outside of NATO, and we play ball with coalition expeditionary ops outside of NATO collective defence. So our defence dollars are certainly ‘impure’ from a NATO standpoint… Though from a U.S. point of view, it could also be be argued that a Canadian defence dollar does a lot more to contribute to defence of the U.S. than that Germans, Spanish, Italian, or Dutch Euro.
So, all that long ramble to say- defence expenditures as a percent of GDP have become a convenient shortcut to try to weigh NATO contributions, but it’s very limited in its use. It focuses on cash inputs and not capability outputs; it treats every Dollar, Pound, or Euro as if it were fully and interchangeably contributing just to NATO collective defence and not a nation’s non-NATO military interests. It struggles to properly value geographic access, whether to physical forces or radar/SIGINT/ELINT. And it also tends to treat it as if each country’s security interests and what they ‘get out of’ NATO are equivalent. While the U.S. is unquestionably the top NATO contributor, they get overweighted by lumping in an entire military notwithstanding that much less than the entirety is in support of NATO. And, to be clear, I strongly believe Canada needs to step it up considerably. I’m not trying to make apologetics here.
None of this makes for good TV news spots or non-nerd articles of course. I think we’ll continue to see a very simplistic focus just on %GDP rather than more meaningful assessment of capability outputs and the ability to project them.
A simplistic view of NATO just looks at each country’s defense spending and treats it all like a public good that contributes interchangeably to the collective defence. Hugely flawed premise.
The defence needs of the allies are different. The allies who border Russia/Belarus: pretty clear their defence needs are very simple and straightforward. They will bear the brunt of any conventional Russian attack. They benefit the most fully from NATO deterrence. Disproportionately the benefit, though also they arguably contribute most ‘fully’ to NATO in the sense that a Polish or Latvian or Finnish defence dollar (or I guess Euro) is pretty entirely and directly benefiting NATO.
Pull back from that border and it gets less clear. You look at what I’ll call ‘non-Colonial’ Euro zone partners, those whose security interests are less directly territorial- they benefit from a collective safety of the Euro zone and the economic boon that comes from that, but there’s less fear of Russian tanks in Paris, Madrid, or Rome. Still, their threat, though less direct, is still Russia. Their military spending by and large defends their interests in some way shape or form against Russia. Most cents on the dollar are still within scope for NATO.
It gets murky when you get to countries with a real presence outside of Europe and the North Atlantic. Britain and even moreso France have interests and military deployments overseas independent of anything covered by NATO mutual defence. So each Pound or Euro is less fully contributing to NATO collective defence and NATO’s other chosen ventures. Though- if the balloon goes up, presumably most if not all of their military capacity would redirect to that threat.
Then you get the U.S., which while being NATO’s most powerful and wealthiest member, is also heavily motivated by its own global hegemony. The U.S. has interest in the security of Europe for the economic stability; it has interest in the Arctic both for its sphere of influence and of course to cover against missiles and bombers coming over the top. But then the U.S. also has a lot of forces in the Middle East, some, clearly, focused on central and South America, and a very substantial posture in the Indo-Pacific. China and Iran are not likely to pose threats that fall under the NATO treaty. And again, yes, the U.S. can repurpose, at any point in time, much of their forces to a war in Europe… But it still means much of their spending isn’t for NATO purposes.
Canada’s unique as a non-European, non-hegemonic NATO member. Our physical security in a NATO context is mostly a simple matter of us bordering the U.S. and being physically between them and Russia. We’ve got a pretty good moat. We do of course benefit from U.S. strategic deterrence, although we probably would be at no realistic risk of nuclear attack but for our alliance with them. Still, it’s reasonable contribute to the ‘over the pole’ defence, and the defence of the moat. But Canada also has pacific security interests outside of NATO, and we play ball with coalition expeditionary ops outside of NATO collective defence. So our defence dollars are certainly ‘impure’ from a NATO standpoint… Though from a U.S. point of view, it could also be be argued that a Canadian defence dollar does a lot more to contribute to defence of the U.S. than that Germans, Spanish, Italian, or Dutch Euro.
So, all that long ramble to say- defence expenditures as a percent of GDP have become a convenient shortcut to try to weigh NATO contributions, but it’s very limited in its use. It focuses on cash inputs and not capability outputs; it treats every Dollar, Pound, or Euro as if it were fully and interchangeably contributing just to NATO collective defence and not a nation’s non-NATO military interests. It struggles to properly value geographic access, whether to physical forces or radar/SIGINT/ELINT. And it also tends to treat it as if each country’s security interests and what they ‘get out of’ NATO are equivalent. While the U.S. is unquestionably the top NATO contributor, they get overweighted by lumping in an entire military notwithstanding that much less than the entirety is in support of NATO. And, to be clear, I strongly believe Canada needs to step it up considerably. I’m not trying to make apologetics here.
None of this makes for good TV news spots or non-nerd articles of course. I think we’ll continue to see a very simplistic focus just on %GDP rather than more meaningful assessment of capability outputs and the ability to project them.
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Separation sentiment is low in Quebec and lower in Alberta. If Carney uses this issue, I'll be happy to be among those to lambaste him for spending unnecessary money on an unnecessary election on an unnecessary issue.
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this a somewhat dated image i saw on twitter of the actual NATO budget
MilEME09
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What i meant is none if the tea leaves show a decisive majority for him
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