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Prepare yourself!
June 29, 2011
Contra The Atlantic, I don’t mind the Chinese threat ads.
That said, with my American hat on, I’m reminded of Britain looking at Germany, 1890-1910…
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With my Canadian hat on, I say we should prepare ourselves for the contingency of having a neighbour that is no longer able to defend us and our interests. That means, yes, more spending on military assets and training personnel, and — this may surprise somewhat — participating in fewer missions overseas.
We need to prepare ourselves to be Switzerland.
It’s an unstable world, and we may not have anyone to look after us but ourselves, soon enough. We need to be ready for that contingency.
I agree, so long as everything doesn’t become as expensive as it is in Zurich.
It’s all relative — if all Canadians’ incomes rise along with the prices, it won’t affect us.
But I’m worried about the Americans. Not so worried about Canada — we’re in good shape vis-a-vis the challenges of the 21st century, as long as we make sure we can defend ourselves.
The Swiss have mountain gorges with landmines set to explode to cut them off. Every adult is in the militia and has a machine gun at home. We can’t be Switzerland.
We don’t have the mountains. Well, we have tonnes of mountains, but not in the strategic chokepoints.
We can do the militia — tho’ that might be overkill — and we can build weapons such that people won’t want to attack us.
The point isn’t to make Canada impregnable. The point is to make attacking us physically cost more than would be worthwhile.
I can’t foresee America ever allowing a hostile power to invade Canada, if only because that power would be at America’s doorstep. The only way this could happen would be if America was colluding with them, in which case Canada would be screwed, citizens’ militia or no.
As for protecting Canada’s “interests”, how would Canada protect these “interests” without engaging in missions overseas with our allies? Soft diplomacy, I suppose, but you have never struck me as a “soft diplomacy” sort. Or are you arguing that Canada should lose interest in things, and therefore have fewer interests to protect?
I’m suggesting that Canada prepare for a world without a United States that is able to project _any_ power.
As America’s in trouble now.
Maybe she’ll pull out of her funk — fine. But it’s best to be prepared for the worst.
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There aren’t too many states with over, say, 100 million people that are unable to project _any_ power, especially not nuclear armed ones. Britain and France have been able to project some power despite their much reduced role in the world. I hope you don’t mean that the United States will become like China circa 1930 (in which case, yes, Canada should double its military budget and give everybody a rifle).
Canada is not defensible, though. We have a continent-spanning country protected by a military force that might be adequate to defend two provinces, possibly three at best.
Trying to keep people out of places like the Arctic is impossible; the CF-18 force will not have the legs to perform combat and combat patrolling from their current bases. If they forward-deploy to more remote airfields, they’ll run of out weapon supplies in a couple of days and fuel supplies within a couple of weeks. Most northern fields are not served by railroad, so fuel and other goodies have to be brought in by air, too. And it’s a relatively easy affair to conduct air combat manoeuvres against transport aircraft.
Similarly, the lack of railheads in the north means the the army will have a difficult time getting anywhere north of Edmonton. There are lines up to Yellowknife and Whitehorse, but an agile adversary could land virtually anywhere in the Arctic archipelago and be unopposed by ground forces for several weeks if not months. A smart adversary would just seize the islands and then wait for us to do the heavy lifting of trying to assault them. We aren’t well-equipped for Arctic warfare. The Arctic archipelago is the new Caribbean, and we’re the old, creaky Spanish Empire. Looks good on paper, but any determined privateer who wants to stake a claim up there in spite of our own will probably be successful.
Given that we have such a tiny military force the most sensible thing to do is decide which two or three provinces we want to defend, and concentrate efforts there. But if you try to defend everything you’re going to lose it all.
I think if it came right down to it, Canada would have to try the Russia strategy and see if we can recruit Generals January and February into our armed forces.