Quotulatiousness

April 11, 2024

All the ways A few of the ways Canada is broken

In The Line, Andrew Potter outlines some of the major political and economic pressures that prompted the formation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867, then gets into all the ways some of the myriad ways that Canada is failing badly:

It is useful to remember all this, if only to appreciate the extent to which Canada has drifted from its founding ambitions. Today, there are significant interprovincial barriers to trade in goods and services, which add an estimated average of seven per cent to the cost of goods. Not only does Canada not have a free internal market in any meaningful sense, but the problem is getting worse, not better. This is in part thanks to the Supreme Court of Canada which continues its habit of giving preposterously narrow interpretations to the clear and unambiguous language in the constitution regarding trade so as to favour the provinces and their protectionist instincts.

On the defence and security front, what is there to say that hasn’t been said a thousand times before. From the state of the military to our commitments to NATO to the defence and protection of our coasts and the Arctic to shouldering our burden in the defence of North America, our response has been to shrug and assume that it doesn’t matter, that there’s no threat, or if there is, that someone else will take care of it for us. We live in a fireproof house, far from the flames, fa la la la la. Monday’s announcement was interesting, but even if fully enacted — a huge if — we will still be a long way from a military that can meet both domestic and international obligations, and still a long way from the two per cent target.

As for politics, only the most delusional observer would pretend that this is even remotely a properly functioning federation. Quebec has for many purposes effectively seceded, and Alberta has been patiently taking notes. Saskatchewan is openly defying the law in refusing to pay the federal carbon tax. Parliament is a dysfunctional and largely pointless clown show. No one is happy, and the federal government is in some quarters bordering on illegitimacy.

All of this is going on while the conditions that motivated Confederation in the first place are reasserting themselves. Global free trade is starting to go in reverse, as states shrink back from the openness that marked the great period of liberalization from the early 1990s to the mid 2010s. The international order is becoming less stable and more dangerous, as the norms and institutions that dominated the post-war order in the second half of the 20th century collapse into obsolescence. And it is no longer clear that we will be able to rely upon the old failsafe, the goodwill and indulgence of the United States. Donald Trump has made it clear he doesn’t have much time for Canada’s pieties on either trade or defence, and he’s going to be gunning for us when he is returned to the presidency later this year.

Ottawa’s response to all of this has been to largely pretend it isn’t happening. Instead, it insists on trying to impose itself on areas of provincial jurisdiction, resulting in a number of ineffective programs — dentistry, pharmacare, daycare, and now, apparently, school lunches — that are anything but national, and which will do little more than annoy the provinces while creating more bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the real problems in areas of clear federal jurisdiction just keep piling up, but the money’s all been spent, so, shrug emoji.

What to do? We could just keep going along like this, and follow the slow-mo train wreck that is Canada to its inevitable end. That is is the most likely scenario.

March 27, 2024

Civil Defence is a real thing in Finland

Paul Wells reports back on his recent trip to Finland, where he got to tour one of the big civil-defence shelters in Helsinki:

One of the best playgrounds for children in Helsinki is the size of three NFL football fields, dug into bedrock 25 metres below a street-level car park, and built to survive a nuclear bomb.

The air down here is surprisingly fresh. The floor-hockey rinks — there are two, laid end to end — are well maintained. The refreshment stands are stocked with snacks. The steel blast doors are so massive it takes two people to slam one shut.

Finland has been building civil-defence shelters, methodically and without fuss, since the late 1950s. This one under the Merihaka residential district has room for 6,000 people. It’s so impressive that it’s the Finnish capital’s unofficial media shelter, the one visiting reporters are likeliest to be shown. The snack bar and the jungle gym are not for show, however: as a matter of government policy, every shelter must have a second, ordinary-world vocation, to ensure it gets used and, therefore, maintained between crises.

The Merihaka shelter was one of the stops on my visit to Helsinki last week. The first anniversary of Finland’s membership in NATO, the transatlantic defence alliance, is next week, on April 4. Finland’s foreign office invited journalists from several NATO countries to visit Helsinki to update us on Finland’s defence situation. I covered my air travel and hotel. Or rather, paid subscribers to this newsletter did. Your support makes this sort of work possible. I’m always grateful.

The Finnish government used to build most of the shelters. But since 2011, the law has required that new shelters be built at the owners’ expense, by owners of buildings larger than 1,200 square metres and industrial buildings larger than 1,500 square metres.

The city of Helsinki has more shelter space than it has people, including visitors from out of town. Across the country the supply is a little tighter. Altogether today Finland has a total of 50,500 shelters with room for 4.8 million people.

That’s not enough for the 5.5 million people in Finland. But then, if war ever comes, much of the population won’t need shelter, because they’ll be staying groundside to fight.

Conscription is universal for Finnish men between 18 and 60. (Women have been enlisting on a voluntary basis since the 1990s.) The standing armed forces, 24,000, aren’t all that big. But everyone who finishes their compulsory service is in the reserves for decades after, with frequent training to keep up their readiness. In a war the army can surge to 280,000. In a big war, bigger still.

The Soviet Union invaded Finland in 1939, during what was, in most other respects, the “phony war” phase of the Second World War. The Finnish army inflicted perhaps five times as many casualties on the Soviets as they suffered, but the country lost 9% of its territory and has no interest in losing more. Finland’s foreign policy since then has been based on the overriding importance of avoiding a Russian invasion.

March 21, 2024

French NATO Standardization: the MAS 49-56 in 7.62mm

Filed under: France, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published May 27, 2019

In the late 1950s, France was still part of the NATO integrated military structure. When the 7.62x51mm cartridge was adopted as standard for the alliance, France looked to be in a good position to simply convert their MAS 49-56 rifles to use it. After all, the 7.5mm cartridge the rifle was designed for was very similar to the new NATO round. After several years of trials, however, the project was dropped as impractical. It turned out that the much different pressure curve of the 7.62mm round would require significant redesign of the MAS rifles. They suffered from poor extraction, broken parts from high bolt velocity, and other issues (not coincidentally, the exact same problems reported with the 308 MAS 49-56 rifles imported by Century …). The St Etienne factory only made a total of 150 of them in 7.62x51mm before the project ended.
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February 29, 2024

Ukraine asks for mothballed Canadian missiles that should have been destroyed 20 years ago

Filed under: Cancon, Europe, Military, Russia, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Line, Alex McColl makes a case against granting a Ukrainian request for obsolete CRV7 70mm air-to-ground rockets:

An SUU-5003 bomblet dispenser with six CRV7 air-to-ground rockets (left) and six BDU-33 bombs (right).
Photo by Boevaya mashina via Wikimedia Commons.

Canadian parliamentary committees — and even the leader of the official opposition — are endorsing a request by the Ukrainian military to send that beleaguered country thousands of mothballed rockets that have not been adequately stored or maintained. The plan has received nothing but approval from Canadians; however, according to multiple sources I have interviewed, the rockets in question are probably useless. In a worst case scenario, a few could go off and hurt or kill the Ukrainians trying to jury rig them into a short-range rocket artillery weapon.

This is about Canada’s stockpile of expired CRV7 rocket motors, which were slated for environmentally responsible disposal twenty years ago. Despite this, these weapons are being requested by the Ukrainian military, which is desperate for any kind of munitions as the war with Russia drags on.

[…]

During the Cold War, the Canadian-made CRV7 was one of the best 70mm NATO rockets thanks to its powerful motor, high speed, and consistent accuracy. It was carried by NATO fighter jets and attack helicopters. In the early 1970s, it could outrange most Soviet short-range man-portable surface-to-air missiles (MANPADS), giving pilots an advantage in air-to-ground missions. Our pilots could shoot at the bad guys from far enough away that the bad guys couldn’t shoot back.

That was then. Today, surface-to-air weapons have advanced to the point where unguided rocket attacks are rarely worth the risk, which is why these rockets were retired 20 years ago.

One of the CAF officers I interviewed reached out again the next day to get in the final word. Here’s what I was told:

“In general, I’d say that the phase when donating from existing inventory was relevant ended in early 2023. Canada has donated many useful things, but focussed on what Canadian industry can provide, not what Ukraine desperately needs. Unarmed ACSVs and drone cameras are useful, but Ukraine needs predictable and reliable supplies of battle decisive munitions, most of all air defence missiles and artillery ammunition. The conversation Canada should be having isn’t about rotten surplus, but how we support new production of key ammunition, ideally at home but ultimately whoever we can fund to get it to Ukraine fastest.”

I couldn’t agree more.

February 22, 2024

Trump’s crude, threatening rhetoric on NATO’s cheapskates is … right

Filed under: Cancon, Europe, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In The Line, Philippe Lagassé joins all right-thinking people in condemning Donald Trump’s campaign trail threats to not defend NATO’s freeloaders if they’re attacked by, say, Vladimir Putin:

Donald Trump recently called into question the core principle of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). As a collective defence alliance, NATO operates on the principle that an attack against one member is an attack against all. This principle is enshrined in Article 5 of the NATO agreement. Although Article 5 allows each ally to respond as they see fit, there’s an understanding that allies have an obligation to defend each other.

On the campaign trail, Trump declared that, if elected, he wouldn’t defend NATO allies if they’ve failed to spend two per cent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defence. Not only that, he said he’d encourage Russia to attack these allies. As Trump reiterated last week: “Look, if they’re not going to pay, we’re not going to protect, okay?” These comments raised serious concerns within NATO. Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, warned that Trump is striking at the underlying logic of the alliance. The Secretary General stressed that “We should not undermine the credibility of NATO’s deterrent”.

What should we make of Trump’s threat? On the one hand, it’s clearly dangerous and evidence that a second Trump presidency could shake the foundations of the alliance. We should rightly be worried and condemn such reckless rhetoric. On the other hand, this is classic Trump. His approach to international politics can best be understood as “mobster diplomacy”. He demands personal loyalty as the head of the “family” of Western liberal democracies. When it comes to trade deals, he echoes Don Corleone in making offers that partners can’t refuse. As for alliances, he sees them as a protection racket. When it comes to NATO allies, his message is simple and direct: “Nice country you have there … pity if something happened to it”.

Allied leaders and academics can protest that the two per cent target isn’t a payment to the United States; it’s a measure of the relative amount allies spend on their own militaries, not a fee they owe Washington. While true, it’s a waste of breath to point this out. Trump and his supporters don’t care. They see most allies as freeloaders who’ve been coasting on American military power for too long. And you know what? They’re not wrong. That’s the rub for those who are understandably horrified by Trump’s comments. Far too many NATO allies, including Canada, have been content let the United States carry a heavy defence spending burden, while we focus on other priorities. That’s what Trump is ultimately getting at here, however menacingly.

Canada has been particularly unwilling to pay its agreed share, actually cutting the military budget late last year while many of our European allies were increasing theirs. We’re habitually the ones who slip out of the room when it’s our turn to buy a round, militarily speaking.

February 15, 2024

Tune in for the propaganda, stay tuned for the epic meltdowns

Filed under: Europe, Media, Military, Politics, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Are you old enough to remember when “news” in the legacy media was, well, calmly presented factoids (accurate or not) that might get you upset, but the emotional content wasn’t heightened or enacted by the hairspray heads in front of the camera? Those days are long enough past that they might never have happened, as Chris Bray illustrates:

Spend a minute of your life looking at a chart that shows how much countries spend on their militaries as a percentage of GDP. The US spends about 3.5%, while Germany spends about 1.4%. For years, hawks have argued that the US should spend 4% of GDP on defense, in a well-known debate about reasonable funding for security. NATO members commit to a target of 2% or better, and many don’t make that goal. Donald Trump says he told the leaders of NATO countries that they should make or beat their military spending targets to ensure their own security, and as a negotiating ploy he poked at them and said that he wouldn’t bother to defend people who wouldn’t bother to pay for their own defense.

You can agree with his argument or disagree with his argument, and make whatever argument you want about the carefulness or recklessness of Trump’s rhetorical style, but none of this is obscure.

And so now we’re living through an ORANGE MAN LITERALLY HITLER CRISIS, as Orange Satan Drumpf tells the Putin Devil to absolutely MURDER all the Europeans and the world teeters in agony at the very brink of a harvest of slaughter. Here, let Forbes just give you the news, straight and factual and to-the-point:

THE MEAN MAN SAYING FOR THE PUTIN DEVIL TO MURDER ALL THE LITTLE BABIES professional journalists calmly explain, absolutely biting through the rubber nipple on their pacifiers. Sackcloth, ashes, endlessly refillable SSRI prescription: journalist starter kit.

In the car a few minutes ago, I turned on the radio mid-interview to hear a hysterical NPR anchor begging a European pundit to agree that Trump is a vicious monster, and the European — I missed his name — sighed and said that look, this is a debate that we’ve been having for a while, it’s a pretty normal discussion. BUT DON’T YOU THINK HE’S AN ORANGE MURDER DEVIL!?!?!? Then they played an important clip of Slow Joe Biden slurring and fake-shouting about Trump’s un-American cruelty, sounding almost as angry as he was when he talked about how many actual chips they put in the potato chip bags. This is why I listen to NPR in short bursts, like a gun run from an A-10. Brrrrrrrrrt, and off.

But what’s inescapable about this extremely dull moment, yet again, is that an allegedly elite layer of political, academic, and media figures are taking something routine and willfully inflating it into a five-alarm global crisis. It … must be a day ending in -y? Nothing is ever bad, or disagreeable, or arguable; every event is The Absolute Worst. Every development must be discussed in hyperemotional terms; every objectionable act is devastating, terrifying, destructive, ruinous, treasonous, unforgivable. No one disagrees with us; rather, they are ENEMIES OF EVERYTHING WE STAND FOR!!!!!

The Big Picture – NATO: Partners in Peace (1954)

Army University Press
Published Nov 13, 2023

NATO: Partners in Peace follows the creation and impact of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Created in April 1949 with twelve founding members, this organization’s goal was to protect the inherent rights of individual states through collective defense. In this episode from The Big Picture series, General Dwight D. Eisenhower offers a speech before he deploys to Europe to become the first Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). This is followed with footage of the buildup and training of European forces. Once Eisenhower leaves NATO to campaign for the presidency, General Matthew Ridgway replaces him as NATO commander. One significant problem NATO forces faced was the fact that each nation had its own weapon systems and ammunition, an issue the U.S. wanted to address with the standardization of the 7.62mm cartridge. Perhaps as a deterrent to the Soviet Union, NATO: Partners in Peace depicts new weapons that could be used against a large enemy force such as remote-controlled missiles, napalm bombs, and the massive atomic cannon.

January 22, 2024

NATO at 75

Filed under: Cancon, Europe, History, Military, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 04:00

In The Critic, Peter Caddick-Adams considers the role of NATO as the alliance enters its 75th year:

In addition to NATO’s 12 founding countries, four others joined during the Cold War: Greece and Turkey (1952), West Germany (1955) and Spain (1982). Afterwards, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland (1999), Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (2004), Albania and Croatia (2009), Montenegro (2017), and North Macedonia (2020) were all ushered safely into the NATO fold. Prompted by Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, Finland joined last year, while Sweden (currently held up by Hungary and Turkey), Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia, and Ukraine have applications pending. In every case the lure has been one of collective security against precisely what Russia is doing to Ukraine at present, and future procurement collaboration.

NATO standards of training and equipment are the envy of the world. When I was last in Lviv, before the 2022 invasion, I found a sticker affixed to the front door of the apartment block in which I was staying. It was placed there by a dodgy private military company seeking to recruit unemployed Ukrainians for foreign military adventures. Apart from modern kit and high rates of pay, it advertised Стандартная подготовка НАТО (NATO-standard training). Yes, even Russian mercenaries then regarded the alliance as the gold standard of military expertise.

NATO further reinvented itself in 1994 with the still-current Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme, aimed at creating trust and cooperation between members and (currently 19) others, mostly the remaining post-Soviet states, plus nations like Austria, Bosnia, Ireland, Malta, Serbia and Switzerland. It also engages with 7 other countries through its Mediterranean Dialogue initiative. During this era, NATO extended its activities into political and humanitarian situations that had not formerly been its concern, notably intervening during the breakup of Yugoslavia. Its first ever military deployment since establishment was to Bosnia in 1995, for which I was the official historian, headquartered a few hundred metres away from where the Austrian Archduke met his fate 81 years earlier, in Sarajevo.

For a seventy-five-year-old institution, NATO has shown itself remarkably resilient in taking on new roles, reflecting the concerns of the post-Soviet era. Since 1997, it has fostered the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, comprising all 31 NATO members and the 19 PfP countries. The same year saw the establishment of a NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council, though Moscow’s mission to NATO was suspended in October 2021, along with that of the alliance in Moscow. With Finland becoming the 31st member state on 4 April 2023, and the application of Sweden pending, NATO is bigger than ever. Yet it is not cumbersome or ossified; its thinking and doctrine are regarded as world-beatingly agile. However, as Grant Shapps outlined on 15 January, the challenges are bigger than at any period during its life. This was the same day that Steve Rosenberg, the BBC’s Moscow correspondent, spotted an electronic billboard in the Russian capital. Next to Putin’s face, it read “Russia’s borders do not end anywhere”.

Although the “peace dividend” effectively ended with Russia’s annexation of the Donbass and Crimea in March-May 2014, it has taken ten years for a UK government minister to formally acknowledge that the world has changed irrevocably. In this election year there is one elephant in the room which neither party will address in any detail. Defence spending. Currently standing at 2.3 per cent of GDP, the national credit card is already maxed out on the NHS, transport, police, education, local government, justice and the rest. There is no more money in the pot, and although £50 billion may sound a lot, it isn’t. According to the World Bank, in 1960, we spent just over 7 per cent of GDP on defence; by 1970 this had declined to 5.2, and in 1990, to 4 percent. In 2017-18, we hit a low of 1.9 per cent of GDP. The largest chunk is spent on its workforce, military and civil service.

The combined militaries of all NATO members include around 3.5 million personnel, with much standardised equipment and logistics. More than enough to take on any global competitor. Yet, such protection and its main headquarters in Brussels, with various cutting edge command centres around Europe, do not come cheap. NATO’s requirement is that all member states contribute a minimum of 2 per cent of their GDP on defence. Only ten member states do this, including Britain, the USA, Greece, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Romania and France. Of these, America spends vastly far more ($811 billion) than the rest of the alliance put together. This imbalance feeds directly into the Republican narrative that Europe is freeloading on American muscle and goodwill. Not even the prospect of a Trump presidency seems to have shaken the non-compliant member states out of their somnolence. If this eventuality arises in Washington DC, and America starts to renege on its commitments to Europe and Ukraine, it will fall to Britain to lead NATO in Europe.

December 18, 2023

Battle Taxis | Evolution of the Armoured Personnel Carrier

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Military, Russia, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Tank Museum
Published 8 Sept 2023

Tanks and infantry need to operate together. Tanks provide firepower and protection, the infantry support and protect the tanks. In this video, we look at that vital component of the equation, the Armoured Personnel Carrier and its transition into the modern Infantry Fighting Vehicle.
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December 2, 2023

NATO’s Ostfront

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

CDR Salamander doesn’t like the misunderstandings that cause commentators to identify NATO’s primary (but thankfully not militarily active) front as a “flank”:

For those who follow me on twitter/X, you are quite familiar with the meme I’ve been posting since long before the Russo-Ukrainian War, all the way back to at least 2018.

This misuse of the King’s English soon became a bur under my saddle as this error continued to be made. Seeing a trend, the following meme was generated by a friend;

This is not a new problem, and I know exactly where it comes from. In my years as a NATO Staff Officer, it did not take long to notice a twitch in the eye of many, not only Germans, to the mention of an “Eastern Front”. It seems silly, and in the 21st Century is it, but it is a reality.

I refused to play along. Yes, I understand how a very few highly emotional people can’t let go of their grandfather’s nightmares, but it is time for the adults in the room to just go around them. Anyway, this is the English language, and while there were French and Walloon Waffen SS units along with Hungarians, Romanians, Italians, and a few volunteer Spanish and others now on the NATO bench that fought on the Eastern Front in WWII, it doesn’t have the same impact with them as we don’t discuss such things in polite company.

Eastern Front, Front de l’Est, or Ostfront, we should all have moved along. History — and proper military terminology — have been around for centuries. In any event, it doesn’t bother the Russians one way or the other and you are fooling yourself if you think it does.

The use of “Eastern Flank” instead of “Front” where referring to real military threat to NATO, the Russian Federation, is just childish.

October 7, 2023

Rearming West Germany: The G1 FAL

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 19 Jun 2023

Today we are taking a look at a German G1 pattern FAL. The initial purchased of the G1 were actual made by the German Border Guard (the Bundesgrenschutz). In the aftermath of World War Two, the western Allies decided to perpetually disarm Germany, and German security was provided by French, British, and American forces. As the Iron Curtain fell across Europe, that attitude softened — West Germany was on the front lines of the Cold War, and could be a valuable ally against Communism in the East. Thus in 1951, the West German Bundesgrenzschutz (Border Guards) were formed and armed — basically with all WW2 Wehrmacht equipment. Looking to improve its small arms in 1955/56, the BGS tested a number of modern rifles and decided to adopt the FAL.

The BGS initially ordered 2,000 FAL rifles from FN, with wooden hand guards and a fixed flash hider (essentially a standard Belgian FAL) — these are known as the “A” pattern. A second BGS order for 4,800 more rifles followed, this time of the “B” pattern with a metal handguard and folding bipod. This was the first use of an integral bipod on the FAL, and would go on to be a popular option for other buyers.

In 1955, the German Army was reinstated as the Bundeswehr. Looking over the BGS rifle testing, the Bundeswehr also decided to adopt the FAL, and placed and order for 100,000 rifles — the “C” pattern. These include sights lowered 3mm by specific German request, as well as a set of swappable muzzle devices (flash hider and blank-firing adapter).

Ultimately, FN was unwilling to license FAL production to West Germany, and this drove the Germans to adopt the Spanish CETME as the G3 rifle, which it was able to license. The Bundeswehr G1 rifles were eventually transferred to the BGS and later sold to other allies as surplus.

Special thanks to Bear Arms in Scottsdale, AZ for providing access to this rifle for video!
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September 18, 2023

BM59: The Italian M14

Filed under: History, Italy, Military, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 25 Oct 2017

After World War Two, both the Beretta and Breda companies in Italy began manufacturing M1 Garand rifles. When Italy decided that they wanted a more modern selective-fire, magazine-fed rifle, they chose to adapt the M1 Garand to that end rather than develop a brand new rifle. Two Beretta engineers, Vittorio Valle and Domenico Salza, began work in 1957 on what would become the BM-59. Prototypes were ready in 1959, trials were run in 1960, and by 1962 the new weapon was in Italian military hands.

The BM59 is basically an M1 Garand action and fire control system, but modernized. The caliber was changed to 7.62mm NATO, and the barrel shortened to 19.3 inches. A simple but effective selective fire system was added to the fire control mechanism, and the en bloc clips replaced with a 20-round box magazine (and stripper clip loading guide to match). A folding integral bipod was added to allow the rifle to be used for supporting fire on full auto, and a long muzzle device was added along with a gas cutoff and grenade launching sight to allow the use of NATO standard 22mm rifle grenades.

In this form, the BM59 was a relative quickly developed and quite successful and well-liked rifle. In addition to the Italian military, it was purchased by Argentina, Algeria, Nigeria, and Indonesia. A semiautomatic version was made for the US commercial market and designated the BM62, and a small number of fully automatic BM-59 rifles — like the one in this video — were imported into the US before the 1968 Gun Control Act cut off importation of foreign machine guns.
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August 5, 2023

Tempting Armageddon: Soviet vs. NATO Nuclear Strategy

Real Time History
Published 4 Aug 2023

Since the inception of the nuclear bomb, military strategists have tried to figure out how to use them best. During the Cold War, this led to two very different doctrines but on both sides of the Iron Curtain the military wasn’t sure if you could actually win Nuclear War.
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July 17, 2023

Canada has been one of the biggest freeloaders in NATO for more than 40 years

From the weekend Dispatch from the editors of The Line, some indication that even the American legacy media are tired of Canada’s generations-long peace dividend freeloading at the expense of our allies:

American media doesn’t often notice Canada, and as much as Canadians like to whinge about being ignored, the lack of interest in our affairs from south of the border is usually a good thing. If you’re looking for a rule of thumb here, it’s this: attention from the Americans is almost always negative.

A case in point this week was an editorial published by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, headlined “Canada is a military free-rider in NATO”. The subhed was “Ottawa still spends only a pathetic 1.38% of GDP on defense”. The editorial makes a number of points almost all of which will be familiar to readers of the Line, which are all variations of: Canada shirks its NATO commitment to spend two per cent of GDP on defence, while engaging in relentless virtue signalling and moral preening, both domestically and to its allies. It treats national defence as social project, while doing little to nothing in the way of actually projecting the power that is needed to defend the values it purports to advance.

There are some absolutely killer lines in the editorial, beginning with the lede: “Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in Lithuania this week for the annual NATO summit, but it’s too bad there wasn’t a junior table where he could sit.” A few paragraphs later: “Last week Ottawa put in its two cents against cluster munitions. But asking its citizens to meet their actual obligations to the cause of freedom is apparently too much to ask.” And then: “Nowadays Ottawa can be counted on to ‘fight’ for human rights, which is to say that it talks a lot about them.”

Again, for anyone paying attention here in Canada, these are not new arguments. But the editorial does add one twist at the end, suggesting that if Canada can’t be bothered keeping its NATO commitments, then perhaps it should be kicked out of the G7 and replaced by a country willing to play a leadership role. They suggest Poland as a possibility.

Reaction in Canada has been surprisingly muted. On our own social media feeds, we noted a lot of rather sad attempts at dismissing the editorial — the paper is a Rupert Murdoch owned rag; this is Trumpist nonsense; Europeans juice their defence spending through useless mandatory service requirements. But curiously, we didn’t see anyone try to pull a Julie Dzerowicz and argue that, despite all evidence to the contrary, Canada is actually punching above its weight in NATO.

Look, some of us here at The Line have been reading harsh editorials on Canada’s defence spending for decades. (We’ve written a few, too!) And we’ve never seen anything remotely this harsh from an American outlet. This is absolutely devastating stuff, and it can’t be simply shrugged off because of the source.

A bit of history: In 1995, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial calling Canada “an honorary member of the Third World” in an editorial that also referred to the Canadian dollar as the “northern peso”. This was in response to Canada’s national debt and tax rates hitting unsustainable levels. We were an economic basket case, and the Americans were starting to notice.

Lots of Canadian commentators dismissed the editorial on the grounds that the WSJ was just pushing the supposedly-discredited Reagan/Thatcher/Mulroney “neoliberal” agenda. But later that year the Chrétien government, with Paul Martin as finance minister, introduced one of the most significant budgets in Canadian history. They slashed federal spending in ways not seen since the end of the Second World War, slashed the public service, gutted the department of defence. But three years later they had balanced the budget, inaugurating an extended period of federal fiscal responsibility that lasted until the election of the Trudeau Liberals in 2015.

The point is not that there’s a cause and effect here — Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin didn’t sit down and go “oh shit, the Journal has weighed in, we have to do something”. It’s that when serious American media get around to noticing stuff about Canada, it is usually because the stuff they are noticing has become such a problem for other countries that our national Emperor’s New Clothes routine is no longer tenable. It is a sign that things have to change, and quickly.

Remember, the Liberal government doesn’t deny that Canada is a NATO laggard and a free rider on defence. Justin Trudeau has admitted as much, both publicly and privately. But up till now, his attitude has been to sort of smirk at the Americans, give his usually smarmy shrug, and say “what are you going to do about it?”

What the Wall Street Journal editorial does is suggest that there could be real consequences for our professed indigence. It is one thing to be left out of AUKUS, which the Liberals continue to falsely characterize as a submarine procurement deal. Getting kicked out of the G7 would something else entirely — it’s the sort of thing the sorts of people who vote Liberal tend to care about.

Canada’s current attitude to collective defence is not sustainable. Our allies have noticed. Either we change, or our allies will change things for us.

July 14, 2023

MG-3: Germany Modernizes the Classic MG-42

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 7 Apr 2023

When the Bundeswehr was formed, it chose to simply continue using the MG42 as its standard GPMG. This was initially done by converting older MG42s to 7.62x51mm NATO as the MG1 (adopted in 1958), but progressed to production of a brand new version of the gun by Rheinmetall (adopted in 1968). The MG3 included improvements to the belt feed system, added integral antiaircraft sights, and allowed a rate of fire between 700 and 1300 rpm depending on the choice in bolt, buffer and booster. It was the standard German MG until finally being replaced by the MG5 in 2012 — and it is/was in use by nearly 4 dozen other countries as well. Today we are going to compare this transferrable, C&R MG3 to an original MG42 to see the improvements that were made.
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