The future of the Canadian Military?

[White Doors]

Budget bolsters defence spending

By JOHN WARD

2006-05-02 18:25:00



OTTAWA (CP) - After a decade of complaining that the Liberals were short-changing the military, the Tories upped the defence ante on Tuesday, promising billions more for people and gear.
But while Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's budget promised $5.3 billion in extra defence spending over five years, on top of billions pledged in the last Liberal budget, he was short on details of what the money will buy.


Thoughts?

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[Cheese]

War is bad.

Give Peace a chance.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Cheese

War is bad.

Give Peace a chance.

To maintain the peace you must first prepare for war.

[octothorp]

More money for the military is fine, but even more important is establishing a role for the military. Obviously peace-keeping is a good role for Canada, but I'd like to see the military given more responsibility regarding northern sovereignty. At one point, the conservatives had talked about developing armed icebreakers; is that still on the radar? I actually don't care much about the 'armed' part, I'd just like the military to have regular icebreakers and establish a presence in the arctic.

[Lanny_MacDonald]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

To maintain the peace you must first prepare for war.

Disagree. To maintain the peace you must first have common goals, many of which being tied to common economic objectives. Once economies are tied together, war becomes counterproductive to the goals of nations.

[CaptainCrunch]

Pretty noble and textbook Lanny, unfortunately, those things all tie into having the ability to defend yourself, and project power, until you can do the first two your going to have a great deal of difficulty with the other ones.

On the UN peacekeeping, I'm all for it, however until we can provide our own logistical support (airlift and sealift capability) properly equipt out men, and the UN has to agree to a proper mandate as far as rules of engagment and a stronger command structure, until we do this there's no way that we should commit to peacekeeping en mass.

[White Doors]

I think the whole peace keeping thing is dead. Peace making is the new reality. Chapter 5 will not happen again in my opinion - nor should it.