Defence Reform

Um, ever heard of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic? Ever heard of the Sino-Indian war? Ever heard of a country called Tibet?

2) Russia and China do not invade other countries. (not taking into account countries in their region of the world)

Look at the entire history of Russia/China vs America/Britain, and you tell me, who did the colonization?

North Korea was used as a treat to Canada. So I was responding to that. North Korea does keep to itself, when it comes to invading another country halfway around the world. One day, maybe 100 years from now, North and South Korea will be reunited.

Why would we need that much more military than we have now?

Well... if you fear China, Russia or America will one day invade us, do you really think our 4 rusty British subs could fend them off?

NATO forces are allowed over Canada anyway. Wanna know why?

Could it be because Canada is a NATO country? But guess what! NATO just can't enter Canada without Canada's approval. Now if Russia was to invade, Canadians wouldn't care that NATO entered our waters, land and air space. But in peace time, Canadians do not want to see the US Navy outside their door step. Well.... the nationalists don't.

Canadian defense must begin at home with the expulsion of mossad and all the other forigne security agencys..

I'll check back later to see if anyone has anything else to say. If not, i'll move onto another fun topic for discussing.

Are you talking about the South Korean Airliner that was shot down by the Soviets?

Nice kool-ade yo drinking man. We need a military that doesn't spend so much time in Asia trying to make tribal people modern. You and Mackay must be drinking buddies.

We could use a coast guard too. I saw on CBC recently a boy was lost on Sunday and military chopper came by on Tuesday night to look for him, but it was too late, he was dead. We need to patrol the Arctic a little more, it's a big place.

Perhaps something by Dr Suess? If the man can put a cat in a hat, then dammit, he can make a grown man read!

Since the beginning of our history the only nation to seriously attack us is
the United States. Whether it was in Ontario or at Fort Louisbourg and we
should be mindful of that.
America is not our enemy though keep that in mind as well in terms of modern
history. Any nation the size of Canada without a means to defend itself is a
nation that is doomed. We need the military for other purposes as well, in the
north especially.

I think he was referring to KAL 007

We're a little nicer to potential intruders:

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Even though the Tu95 is a turboprop, its speed rivals or exceeds that of commercial jets.

I voted "yes", though that does not mean we could not share a force with one or more other nations, something I would support.

Let's say we had an international police force of a maximum 100,000 well trained and equipped men, that would be more than enough.

We can withdraw from such treaties while still participating in UN missions abroad.

Wasn't Iraq a UN mission?

Afghanistan was from the beginning, and a few non-NATO countries sent troops there under ISAF. Iraq was illegal at least originally, though if I'm not mistaken the Un did ask for assistance in Iraq later, though I could be wrong on that last point. But at least initially Iraq was illegal.

Essentially if Canada were not a NATO member, I'd likely have supported Canadian troops in Afghanistan under ISAF.

As of now the poll say 95% say we need a military. I agree.

We should split up a beefed up military into a coast guard to patrol and protect our very long coastline. We are not in the north like we should be and we need some permanent bases there to see who is sailing through the Northwest Passage. The bases however need not be only of the military kind.

Lemme guess... you're in High School sociology, and you've been told to write a report.

Instead of dissecting your proposal line-by-line, with references to every occurrence in history similar to that attempted by other sovereign powers, let me just cut to the chase so you can get the basic principals.

There are two things required for a nation on this long-overpopulated planet to exist - and by nation I mean a place with borders, within which the laws are different - and those two things are:

1) Ability to mount a defense of the border, aka wage war. If you can't organize a defense... if you're can't even show you're willing to raise a defense, then you cannot maintain a border within which to have your society.

This goes back to long before we were overpopulated. We reached overpopulation at 1.5 billion, which was when the environmental degradation started - albeit slowly at first, although even then some human thinkers could see where things were going well enough to set aside Banff and Jasper - but even in the days when we were wandering around as hunter-gatherers, not to mention early agriculturalists, the capacity of ourselves to out-breed ourselves in spite of what we tend to think of as a slow reproduction rate compared to rabbits combined with the nutrient-consumption rate of our brains was so vast that when Europeans landed in North America, those who bothered to learn the language and stories of the First North Americans heard only stories about competition over land and resources between Huron and Iroquois etc.

So... cancel the notion that you're going to have a border without forces. If the UN were to negotiate a global treaty for every nation to scrap their arms, then the first nation to break-treaty wins the planet.

In order for a sovereignty to maintain borders, it must be utterly absolute about its willingness to spend blood to hold those borders.

2) This point is a bit off the theme of your post, but it's very connected as in ... let's call it a corollary... and that is what a sovereign jurisdiction must do to pay for the forces required to maintain borders, which is revenue.

The two incontestable forces required to maintain a border are Forces and Revenue, therefore, if you have an issue with Revenue then use some brains to figure out how to couple your personal ability to pay with your nation's absolute requirement for revenue. Be glad for not being in Darfur where they shoot your for not paying soldiers the tax. I don't know what else to say, other than think about an idea for smugglers of Chinese immigrants to get money taking people out of Canada to drop them off in Antarctica for not having paid their taxes, when I know I could peel the whale-meat off those smugglers and fooled them into dropping the evaders into Arctic Canada.

The principal is... the cost of having a civilization must be paid for one-way-or-another. It's sort of like how to be a cell in a body you have to do more than just collect oxygen and protien from the blood-stream. Do you like the Christian way of a tithe?

In any case, getting back to your original thesis.

Obviously Canada does not have the population to spend millions of lives throwing each other against each other in order to see who's got the most bodies left over after every bullet is shot, and given how something always "weak" about Canadian forces was their license from Parliament to do tactical rescues of Canadians in distress overseas coupled with how ironically Canadian forces are among the best trained tactical fighters on the planet, ask this:

I) Say in the report to your social studies teacher that to defend Canada, given how the size of the population plus its surface area is such that pretty-much any nation above the size and population of Somalia is so sick that if they threw all their people against us we'd loose out of sympathy for not wanting to kill that many dumb idiots, if for no other reason than because we don't have the heart to shoot that many people running at us with sticks... therefore... theoretically, it's possible according to and idea initially proposed by the late PM King that we poison-pill ourselves.

That means, we've saved enough plutonium from our Candu reactors to form as an industrial nation into insanely powerful bombs that if you attack us for the purpose of invasion and occupation, then since we know we're all going to die anyway, those go off, and you, all your soldiers, every resource you hoped to dig, and frankly the atmosphere of the northern hemisphere ten-thousand times worse than Chernoble gets contaminated...

... Or you could get back to the bargaining table and tell us what the F-CK you want to buy!


2) Say also to your social sciences teacher how given Canada's population and ... how do I explain this ... the people who settled it ... the most powerful thing offer-able to the UN would be max-trained tactical Canadian fighter-types.

Condition number one-clear would have to be that if Canada needs it for herself first, she gets to use it for herself first... obviously as a natural condition of survival one would expect the children and grandchildren of this nation to hold onto with an idea of the smart ones to set to seriously exploring and digging the north to both learn how hard it was for the ancestors and to make some ground for some kids in case you have any.

In the mean time, if you want to grow up about tactical operations, in case you didn't know it's on youtube... somehow Alberta's Afghanistan fighters found a way to get a *real* embedded reporter...

Really? When was the last time any of these nations threatened to invade Canada?

Do you mean afford or need? Currently Canada spends only 1.1% of its GNP on defence.

It sounds as if you are talking about a self-defence force rather than a military with global reach. In that sense you are probably right. There is no real threat to Canada from anyone so far as an invasion is concerned. Historically, Canada has chosen to fight other nations' wars, but that does not mean it has to do so forever. It is simply a matter of determining what global threats Canada faces and working toward meeting those threats.

Canada spends a bit of time fighting wars for others. Take Libya, we've replaced one tribal leader that tortures with tribal leaders that torture.

To have a military with global reach is simply a waste of money for the country, we can't even properly patrol our borders at present as nuclear subs can sail under the ice caps and we don't know about it.