This popped up in my Youtube recommendations this morning, and it was the first I'd ever heard of such an idea. I knew we shared intelligence among the UK, Australia, NZ and US as part of the Five Eyes, but this is something a great deal more involved.
An economic, political and military union of the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, according to the video below, would immediately become one of the four most powerful economic entities in the world, along with the US, China and European Union.
Unlike the EU, which has 27 different countries and who knows how many languages, the CANZUK countries are all parliamentary democracies that are based upon English common law. Our worldviews are generally in alignment; the video makes the point that the CANZUK voting record at the UN is essentially in lock step.
I like it as a solution to reduce our reliance on China and the United States, I like it as a way to shore up our parliamentary democracies, and I really like the idea of being able to easily move to New Zealand or Australia.
And not to put too fine a point on it, but the sun would literally never set on CANZUK.
From a military standpoint its not great. Add on that there's no possibility of any kind of rapid response capabilities here.
From a geographical standpoint I don't think it makes sense.
From an intelligence standpoint, it would be decent, but without the sharing from the US its second rate.
Even from an economic standpoint, we've seen how quickly China can effect the economies of an alliance like that.
For a true bloc to work and gain advantage it really needs to be anchored by a super power with global reach.
Would we still stay a part of NATO and NORAD. If we went strictly with this the military spending for all of those nations would have to dramatically increase. As would spending on intelligence gathering capabilities.
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Last edited by CaptainCrunch; 09-23-2020 at 04:31 PM.
This is based mostly just on the sentimentality and antiquity of all four of these countries being somewhat similar in values language and governance structure. The clear problem, and why you really can't claim this becomes a "bloc" like the Euro zone or United States, is the vast vast distance. Australia is basically as far away as you can get from Canada, and New Zealand is literally as far as you can get from the UK, directly on the opposite side of the earth. They're not exactly lucrative markets either, New Zealand has about the same population as BC, to sell our goods to either of those countries you have to sail past Indonesia (255 M), Japan (126 M), Philippines (102 M), Vietnam (92 M), and China, to access markets of 25M and 5M. Why? The Australians have even realized this is a problem, recently they've started debating why they put more of an emphasis on trade with New Zealand due to familiarity than the 255 million people just to the north of them in Indonesia.
I don't know, this seems really unnecessary. Canada needs to lessen its pathetic dependence on the US, to be sure, but you do that by expanding infrastructure and ports to take advantage of the close-ish sea routes we have to Asia. We benefitted for decades by having close trade ties by pure luck to the world's dominant economy, now it's time to embrace the future which is Asia, and not even just China. If we would just get out of our own way we have a decently diversified economy, besides banking and finance out of London there's nothing that these other countries bring to the table that we don't already have to a higher degree. Except maybe sheep.
Last edited by DiracSpike; 09-23-2020 at 04:56 PM.
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This is part of the Conservative Party platform, and something O'Toole heavily supports.
I can't find a specific reference to it right now (it was on O'Toole's website previously) but their write-up for it was very commonsense and seemed like a great idea, personally.
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Well if you want to find yourself in 40 years where the EU are today, dealing with a UK that has got the hump and is pissing off with its fairly manky ball because it doesnt get to be in charge than go ahead but make no mistake this whole idea is about the UK being in charge and I emigrated to this great country and have spent the past 35 years eternally grateful that I live in a country that isnt controlled by some posh moron from Eton that cant tie his own shoe laces and am not about to vote to hand control back to the twats I so luckily escaped from
I’m cool with CANZ but I’m not touching the UK with a 50 foot pole right now. The only reason they aren’t the worlds laughing stock is because the good ole U S of A had to one up them yet again.
I’m cool with CANZ but I’m not touching the UK with a 50 foot pole right now. The only reason they aren’t the worlds laughing stock is because the good ole U S of A had to one up them yet again.
That laughingstock is still the 2nd largest economy in all of Europe.
CANZUK: Is this a good idea?
