03.27.2017 04:53 PM

This week’s column: Trudeau, Trump and NATO

What Donald wants, Donald gets.

Well, not really. He wanted a Muslim ban. Didn’t get it. Wanted Obamacare killed, and something else instead. Didn’t get that. Wanted – promised! – ISIS defeated in 30 days. Didn’t get, or do, that.

But getting more money out of Canada for NATO? He’s going to get that.

Now, if you were to poke through the entrails of the 2017 federal budget, released with a minimum of fuss last week, you would not find any statement that read: “Her Majesty’s Government pledges to commit more resources to the North American Treaty Organization (NATO), because we are concerned what the short-fingered vulgarian to the South will do to us if we don’t.” No such statement is in there.

There is, however, this on page 186 in Chapter Three of the budget:

“The Government will soon release a new defence policy for Canada, following substantive public consultation and extensive analysis. It will be more rigorously costed than any previous defence policy. It will commit the level of investment required to restore the Canadian Armed Forces to a sustainable footing with respect to finances, capital and people, and equip the Forces to meet the challenges of the coming decades.”

That paragraph is the Donald Trump paragraph, you might say. It was written just for him. As we speak, Canada’s highly-capable Amabassdor to the U.S., David MacNaughton – probably the best appointment Justin Trudeau has made to date, but that is a column for another day – is shuttling around Official Washington, a photocopy of that paragraph in hand, solemnly assuring the hawks in the Trump regime that Canada will start paying its way in NATO very soon.

Because we don’t pay our way in NATO, and we haven’t for a long time. And we need to.

There are 28 members of NATO. Its budget is north of $900 billion annually. The United States of America contributes an extraordinary $650 billion of that. The United Kingdom, $60 billion; France and Germany, in and around $40 billion each, give or take. Canada?

Canada is in the bottom third of NATO members, alongside military powerhouses like Slovenia and Luxembourg, and others with bankrupt and/or struggling economies. By agreement reached in 2014, NATO members are supposed to be devoting two per cent of their nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) to defence. Canada doesn’t, and consistently hasn’t. We spend less than one per cent.

During the Republican primaries, and during the U.S. presidential race, Donald Trump would be asked often about defence by reporters looking for some new insane Trump statement to report. Trump wouldn’t disappoint.

So: “We are getting ripped off by every country in NATO, where they pay virtually nothing, most of them. And we’re paying the majority of the costs.”

And: “We’re spending a tremendous — billions and billions of dollars on NATO. We’re paying too much! You have countries in NATO, I think it’s 28 countries – you have countries in NATO that are getting a free ride and it’s unfair, it’s very unfair.”

And, this gem, which gave plenty of Western leaders heartburn, and which transformed Donald Trump’s presidency from something that was mildly amusing to something that was deeply terrifying: NATO was “obsolete,” he said. And: “The US must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves.”

That statement about NATO’s obsolesence, uttered during an interview in January with a German newspaper, was a shock. “[NATO is] obsolete, first because it was designed many, many years ago,” Trump said. Secondly, he said, it’s obsolete because “countries aren’t paying what they should.”

His first point, like so much that the Unpresident says, was certifiably insane. With Trump’s pal Vladimir Putin massing troops and guns on the border of assorted Baltic states, NATO is needed more now than perhaps ever before. But on his second assertion, that NATO is compromised because many countries aren’t paying what they should?

Donald Trump is right.

[Your eyes are not deceiving you. Hillary Clinton-loving Warren Kinsella wrote that “Donald Trump is right” about something. Clip and save, folks. – Ed.]

The unofficial word around official Ottawa is that the budget’s Donald Trump Paragraph means that the forthcoming defence review – with the Trudeau government’s amorphous pledge to “equip the Forces to meet the challenges of the coming decades” – will result in Canada finally meeting its NATO commitment. A Conservative government had long been a NATO free rider, but it will be a Liberal government that will finally pay its way in NATO. To this Liberal hawk, that is profoundly ironic – but highly satisfying.

Donald Trump is a traitor to his nation and its constitution. He is a thug and a demagogue. He is an Internet troll, elevated to the Oval Office. But on NATO, and on the requisite contributions to NATO, he is right.

Ask the guy who said this: “NATO needs more Canada.” That guy?

One Barack Obama, in the House of Commons on June 29, 2016.

14 Comments

  1. P. Brenn says:

    got to do it ..our armed forces deserve it ..going to take a generation to get up to speed ..as others have noted maybe we should focus on being awesome in one area instead of worse than middlin in all.

  2. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Warren,

    Stupid me. All these years I thought it was the Canadian Forces???

    • dave constable says:

      I think some of the new money will be to change our shoulder patches. The new patches will say “United States Army,’ and just below, the word (Canada) in parentheses.

  3. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Warren,

    NATO is a European security alliance. The Yanks have no choice but to pay so they can hold sway across Europe. Money makes right and might, etc.

    As for Canada, theoretically, we could be out and it would make absolutely no difference but in the world of realpolitik, we can’t really do that, no matter how appealing it is from a budgetary standpoint.

  4. Gyor says:

    Or well just leave NATO instead of wasting our money.

  5. Bill Templeman says:

    Meanwhile, back in the Pentagon, top military advisors tried to tell Trump to see climate change as a security threat. Ummmm … where is the greatest danger coming from? Silly me. What do a bunch of tin-hat generals know anyway? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/military-leaders-urge-trump-to-see-climate-as-a-security-threat/

  6. dave constable says:

    Sometime around right now, a little over 100 nations at the United Nations General Assembly are addressing the banning of nuclear weapons. Canada, following Washington’s preference, is boycotting the meetings. Two threats to us globally, climate change, and nuclear weapons…and we are not even at the discussion.

    NATO has long been a boon to Washington foreign policy ( lots of bases in Europe, even today), and has been a boon to American weapons manufacturers with the standardization of material for NATO forces. New money from Canada will be a welcome boost to the American industry.

    I am unsure why Russia would put troops on its Western borders. It could be that the expansion of NATO, the coup in Kiev that we engineered, and the build up of NATO missile and troop forces along that Russian Western border giving Russian nightmares about their history with Western aggression against Russia…or .maybe as the Western leaders and their media keep repeating, Russia just wants to conquer everybody.

    A problem I see is answering the question, How can we justify arming NATO against China?

  7. Neil says:

    Yes Trump is right and it is also in our self interest. Trump and Putin are on the same side, the US has always helped keep the Russians at bay in the north as our interests generally aligned. What do we do if Trump supports Putin in the Arctic.

  8. Tiger says:

    Canada should spend 2% on its armed forces.

    This should pay for real capacity, not bureaucrats.

    Let’s hope this government does that.

  9. whyshouldIsellyourwheat says:

    Canada basically has the longest basically undefended frontier with Russia in NATO…i.e. the Arctic. We should spend our defense dollars there. It is silly to put our troops in Latvia.

    Let’s use the National Defense budget to develop the Arctic, particularly Arctic infrastructure, instead of using our budget and soldiers to curry favour with the United States and the UN, so they will ignore our underspending.

  10. PJH says:

    This article was posted on my FB homepage…….I have never heard of the “Canadian Daily” before. so maybe it’s fake news….

    https://thecanadiandaily.com/politics/2017/3/27/the-national-defencebudget-gets-major-cuts#gsc.tab=0

  11. dsd says:

    Not all are true. Everyone has their own way of thinking but I think they have to reconsider. I like to argue for the most accurate results.
    http://fivenightsatfreddysplay.com

  12. Andi Duferense says:

    Not all are true. Everyone has their own way of thinking but I think they have to reconsider. I like to argue for the most accurate results.
    http://fivenightsatfreddysplay.com

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