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Originally Posted by Slava
I don't think that anyone here is upset with the military upgrading, myself included.
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Excellent, then we have some common ground. The fact is that if your going to have a military, and your going to put lives in danger by committing them to peacekeeping, or NATO missions then you have an obligation to provide the best possible equipment to the men and woman who put thier necks on the line. Even with a boost in our military spending we're still lagging behind our nato obligations in terms of spending vs our GNP.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
My thought here though is that while this is important it is not the be all and end all. If Canada is the "little brother tagging along" then its not purely based on our military might, or lack thereof. If you want to be a world leader then you have to provide innovative and effective solutions to the worlds problems. That is not always found at the end of a gun.
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I think it was rosevelt who said "tread softly but carry a big stick". Canada will never be a big stick player no matter how much we've spent. However the Liberal's believed in soft or suggestion diplomacy, and we were rarely taken seriously. And I'm talking about more then nation to nation diplomacy, I'm talking about UN diplomacy. As a nation you won't be taken seriously unless you can apply some level of military strength or resolve. It was nice to say that we were one of the more pre-eminant peace keeping nations in the world, but really, that reputation ended about 15 to 20 years ago as we didn't have the military strength to commit to any of the relevant missions out there. So any weight that we had in the UN was effectively light and fuzzy. It was a suggestion as oppossed to being a force for change.
All of the equipment that Canada has, or is upgrading or is purchasing is relevant to UN missions, where the LAV III is an effective information gathering vehicle, the Halifax frigates helped enforce UN embargos, and they integrated with NATO and U.S. forces. The Coyote and Grizzly armoured personal carriers were extremely relevant to UN peacekeeping. Our CF-18's took part in the first UN war against Iraq. The Lepard tanks were part of the rapid response unit in the Fulda gap during the cold war and have found relevance again in Afghanistan and our soldiers are highly prized by the UN for thier training and diciplice.
Now where the government is doing the smart thing is in providing a better airlift component to support our troops instead of renting planes from russia, and we are extending our abilities to respond to humanitarian crisis both at home and abroad. If Canada ever builds the massive sea lift ships with helicopter carrying abilities we will be in a better position to respond to crisis abroad like New Orlean's or Lebanon.
No, chances are that no nation is going to invade our shores in the next 50 years. But its nice to have the equipment in case of unusual warefare.
Right now, if there was a terrorist attack in Toronto, and a forest fire in B.C, our forces wouldn't be able to address both without a lot of help from the Americans.
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Originally Posted by Slava
I get tired of all of the comments about the pea-shooters and canoes and talk about the weak military. It's funny that it is even called "Defence Spending" to me. What are we defending ourselves against? Who is ready to attack? Seems to me that while our sovereignty is critically important we are being bamboozled into protecting ourselves against enemies who don't really exist.
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Defence strategies no longer simply revolve around domestic defence, because we're trying to build a better global community and have some weight at the negotiating tables around the world, defence has to be a global concern, where our troops can get to trouble spots around the world where they're requested or needed.