Liberals' increase in defence spending-a budgetary coup

Liberals' increase in defence spending-a budgetary coup

Postby Oscar » Fri Jun 09, 2017 6:10 pm

Liberals' massive increase in defence spending is a budgetary coup

[ http://rabble.ca/columnists/2017/06/lib ... etary-coup ]

Murray Dobbin June 9, 2017

The arrogance of power could scarcely be more dramatically demonstrated than by the tag team of Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan announcing that Canada was going to cave in to Donald Trump's demand that we spend two per cent of GDP on defence. We will be increasing military spending by 70 per cent over 10 years -- an obscenity when so many social needs go unmet. Not only does this make a mockery of Trudeau's election pledge to return to Canada's historic peacekeeping role but surrenders to the absurd one-size-fits-all NATO imperative. Nothing has changed internationally to justify such an increase. There are no existential threats to Canada on any horizon. As Trudeau said in March, Canada more than pulls its weight in NATO: we are the sixth-highest spender in NATO and 16th in the world.

Giving Freeland the opening role on the announcement raises the question of her disproportional position in changing Canada’s defence posture. Her contradiction-filled foreign policy speech in the House of Commons on Tuesday suggested that Canada is going to somehow fill the vacuum left by an allegedly isolationist Trump regime. In her statement Freeland declared: "The fact that our friend and ally has come to question the very worth of its mantle of global leadership puts into sharper focus the need for the rest of us to set our own clear and sovereign course." Really? Just how do we do that by caving in to Trump's demand that all NATO members pony up? In fact, the increase in spending -- $14 billion over 10 years; $62 billion over 20 -- represents a clear loss of sovereignty, abandoning our right to make decisions in our national interest in order to please a rogue U.S. president.

Exactly what kind of global leadership does Freeland think we are now missing? Given that she spoke almost exclusively about defence spending, presumably she thinks that a less military-interventionist Trump requires more intervention from Canada. But intervention where, exactly? Our last enthusiastic intervention -- celebrated by our last prime minister -- was in Libya. That "humanitarian" project resulted not only in a failed state but also in the creation and arming of ISIS, the flood of desperate refugees to Europe and, indirectly, the terror attacks Freeland rightly describes as "monstrous."

U.S. "leadership" is known by another name in scores of countries around the globe: U.S. imperialism. In the last decade that term has gained widespread acceptance by the U.S. political elite where it used to be righteously denied. Does Freeland believe that the illegal war on Iraq is an example of U.S. leadership? Would she, unlike Jean Chrétien, have joined in? What about the slaughter in Yemen? Going back a bit further, would Freeland see the literally dozens of U.S. interventions to overthrow democratic governments and install dictators the epitome of U.S. leadership?

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[ http://rabble.ca/columnists/2017/06/lib ... etary-coup ]
Oscar
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