[FlamesAddiction]

Even if we spend 2% of the nation's GDP on defense, Russia is still a force that we couldn't match. As someone else mentioned, some of our own allies do not even recognize our arctic sovereignty. If this is the driving force for extra spending, then it is pointless. Sovereignty isn't something that can be asserted militarily in this case. It has to be established through development and infrastructure investment. Why should anyone recognize our sovereignty in areas that we barely even have a presence (if at all)? If you can't move civilian people and assets to those areas faster than your rivals, then the sovereignty simply isn't there to defend in the first place. That's the real issue IMO. We should be recruiting people either domestically or through immigration that will invest time building communities in the arctic. Russia has 3 cities in their arctic with populations greater than 100,000, and Norway and Finland have cities over 50,000; as such, there is no question over their sovereignty. When Canada's western sovereignty was an issue, we built a railway from coast to coast. Something similar needs to be done concerning our arctic (not a railway per se).

Sorry, that is a little OT. I am not necessarily against raising defense spending for other issues though.