I didn’t mean to restrict the term “coerce” to regime change. Sometimes all that is needed is a little nudge this way or that…
as far as the US getting UN permission, you open a sore subject. The UN (and par;ticulrly the security council)was founded essentially to be an arm of the State Department–the growing influence (and size) of the general assembly has undercut that mission.
That US foreign policy aims have diverged from UN sanctioned tracks speaks badly for US foreign policy.
As has been demonstrated, the UN Charter in no way suggests that countries cannot use military power in appropriate circumstances outside of the purview of the Security Council.
The UN as it is structured really doesn’t work as some sort of international police force. It worked fine in Korea and Kuwait, and in 100 other cases of countries stomping their neighbours and massacring civilians it didn’t work at all. Now, I am not some right win anti-UN nut; it does have other purposes and some of them it does extremely well.
But we’re talking about CANADA, not the USA and its foreign adventures. Canada needs some modicum of an armed forces, and we have a responsibility to ensure it’s a good, well equipped and capable armed forces.
By all means go start that thread if you like. We’re talking about Canada here - a separate country that has pursued a separate foreign policy.
to your credit, no doubt.
I wonder if the shift in leadership will produce a realignment of the same. You escaped Iraq–be glad. Yesterday a canadian soldier had his head split open by an ax-wielding teenager, while you danced to the US tune in afghanistan
Danced to the *** US *** tune? Unlike Iraq, the operations in Afghanistan are supported by the United Nations, and it has an active role. Canada is leading a multinational force there.
The International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan has widespread support around the world, and the strong support of the government of Afghanistan.
fair enough (altho I think the actual operational entity in afghanistan is NATO, not the UN.)
sort of an oxymoron–perhaps you mean the mayoralty of kabul…
No, it’s the UN.
People (and in Canada, too) are, unfortunately, starting to conflate Afghanistan with Iraq. I’ll grant some blame for that goes to George, but it’s still wrong. They’re different wars fought for different reasons. I was pleased Canada went to war in Afghanistan and I would be disappointed if we left. I was pleased we stayed out of Iraq and I’d be disappointed if we went in.
I was rather perturbed to hear Alexa McDonough state she’d like to pull our troops out of Afghanistan because she doesn’t want us to be a stooge to the US.
On a postive note, Timmy’s in Kandahar is a go!
I’m GLAD that Canada is going to spend more on their military! The more that nations take care of their own defence, the less dependent they’ll be on U.S. military power.
We’re building up our armed forces for our benefit, not the benefit of the United States. I am unaware of any time Canada has ever relied on U.S. military power to safeguard its borders.
I would point out, though, that recently Canada has put a lot of money and effort and some of our young men’s lives into defending the United States.
unrelated to your newfound muscle, what about Harar? (sp?) your citizen who was kidnapped, ‘rendered’ to syria, torured, releseed.
Is that just alright with y’all?
if nothing else, for cryin out loud, don’t we owe you some sort of special consideration (neighbors, fighting in afghanistan, quaint accents, cute girls, 14 yr old age of consent–all in all a civiilized bunch of folks.)
Now **WAAIIITT ** jus’ a minute…
NORAD?
I am still confused, really, no snark, who other than us would you be likely to be obliged to fight, as opposed to a frolic undertaken in cold deliberation and after weighing the pros and cons?
Son’t we sort of, you know, surround you?
relative to your population, is not the level of militarization set frth in Stone’s inventory a higher per capita committment than ours? I haven’t run out the numbers, but we are what, ten times the population more or less, and we run a standing army (I think,) of 500,000. ( Iam engaging in a moment of “google rebellion” and refusing to conclude the window of ambiguity)
You do realize Canada contributes its fair share to NORAD? It’s not a US-only thing. It was our fighters intercepting the Bears that strayed into our airspace.
As to your point about population… no, not even close. The U.S. armed services is well over a million strong regular force, plus nearly a million reserves. (Not sure where you got the 500,000 figure from.) The Conservative plan would bring the Canadian Forces to just over 100,000 total, including reserves, making it still less than half the size proportionately speaking.
As to who we might be obliged to fight… umm, Afghanistan would be the obvious example.
Defending the United States? Where are we doing that?
Wasn’t going to answer this, but how about the Cold War? Yes, Canada contributed to it and even if we had spent twice as much and had twice the manpower it wouldn’t have been the Canadian military that would have stopped, or prevented, the USSR from coming across the Bering Straight.
Afghanistan. The United States was attacked, as I am sure you will recall, by agents of al-Qaida working out of, and with the permission of the then-government-of, Afghanistan. Canada invoked Article 5 of the NATO treaty and engaged in combat in Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaida and the Taliban. They attacked the USA, so we attacked them. How else could that possibly be interpreted?
For one thing, I somehow doubt it’s a realistic scenario that WWIII would have involved a Soviet invasion across the Bering Strait into Alaska that would have crossed all the way across Alaska into the Yukon. Firstly, WWIII would have gone nuclear in a week, two at most, resulting in the likely destruction of Western civilization. Secondly, even on the miniscule chance it didn’t, the Soviets were not going to put a heck of a lot of effort into invading Alaska because that would have been nuts. The conventional war would have been concentrated in Europe.
For another, it didn’t happen. I am sure we could all construct theoretical scenarios where the U.S. would defend Canada, or might have in the past if history was different. It is certainly true that if the Soviets had secretly launched a cross-Pacific invasion force to land in B.C. and had landed and caused mayhem, the United States would have responded with force. We can play Harry Turtledove all day. But it DIDN’T happen, and until it does we don’t owe anyone any thanks for defending us. I cannot even think of any substantial expenditure of effort or money the U.S. is engaging in to prepare itself against a theoretical threat to Canada.
Uh, if you attack an ally it is as if you attacked us. If someone attacked Canada the US would intervene, too. We are effectively fighting for ourselves. Also, at least 25 Canadians died in the tower on Sept, 11th, too.
CBC News
And whose nukes prevented the attack in Europe? Would that be Canada’s nukes? No, we don’t have nukes, remember.
It didn’t happen because the US would have stopped it, or at least attempted to stop it. Do you think that if the US had somehow become magically impotent that any other country, or group of countries, could have done so? Did the US on its own, without the help of any other country or group of countries, have the ability to prevent USSR expansion?
(Assuming of course that we agree the USSR would have expanded further if it was unoppossed. If you don’t think this is true then you have actually entered the worlds of Harry Turtledove and there is no point in discussing things further unless we move to Cafe Society.)