Quotulatiousness

December 6, 2019

“‘The world needs more Canada’, some of us love to boast. Just not if it costs money”

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In hindsight, President Trump let Justin Trudeau off rather lightly for his blatant disrespect on the world stage. Trump has all the cards in our bilateral trade relationship, and the Canadian economy isn’t in a healthy state at the moment. It’s not a risk any Canadian PM should be running when we are so “delinquent” on our NATO commitments, as Chris Selley points out:

Canadian soldiers set a perimeter position after disembarking a U.S. Navy landing craft during a simulated amphibious landing, 24 April 2009. The training exercise was part of the 50th iteration of UNITAS, a multi-national exercise intended to increase interoperability among participating navies. Other participating nations include Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Germany, Ecuador, Argentina and Chile.
U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer Seth Johnson via Wikimedia Commons.

The unfortunate thing is that the precipitating event for this little spat could have been useful: An American president publicly calling out Canada, in effect, as a deadbeat brother. At their media availability-cum-fireside chat, Trump accused Canada — again in remarkably diplomatic language, by his standards — of being “slightly delinquent” when it comes to military spending, particularly as it relates to our NATO obligations. The unofficial target for NATO countries is two per cent of GDP. In 2018, the World Bank pegged Canada at 1.25.

This is far from a unique state of affairs. “The world needs more Canada,” some of us love to boast. Just not if it costs money. As a percentage of gross national income, Canada’s foreign aid spending is 0.26 per cent — below the OECD average of 0.31 and a pale shadow of countries like Sweden and Norway, which spend quadruple that. During the last election campaign, no doubt having extensively focus grouped the idea, the Conservatives promised to cut aid spending by 25 per cent.

Canada routinely lobbies for a seat on the UN Security Council for reasons no one can quite articulate — I suspect because it’s a relatively inexpensive thing that we can then boast about. Trudeau’s Liberals orated furiously about Canada’s alleged peacekeeping imperative during the 2015 election, dithered for an eon about how to fulfil it, sent 200 soldiers and eight helicopters to Mali for a year, and then brought them home. Peace kept! Conservatives spent the previous decade talking up Canada’s hard-power credentials even as military spending fell, as a percentage of GDP, for five out of the nine years Stephen Harper was prime minister.

No Canadian government of any stripe can procure a new fighter jet, icebreaker or frigate to save its life — because at the end of the day, we can’t use them to save our lives. If things really go pear-shaped we’re basically begging at Uncle Sam’s feet anyway, so military procurement has become about buying votes and very little else. Military spending has risen under Trudeau’s Liberals, but it’s still less than the 2009 high point under Harper — 1.4 per cent of GDP, in 2009. It was above two per cent as recently as 1987.

Justin Trudeau meets with President Donald Trump at the White House, 13 February, 2017.
Photo from the Office of the President of the United States via Wikimedia Commons.

October 13, 2019

QotD: The modern British army is custom-tailored to resist reform of any meaningful type

Filed under: Britain, Military, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

This then leaves the army in a bit of a quandary. It has focused on delivery of a global division as its benchmark at a time when the politicians simply do not want to do this. It has focused on keeping 82,000 troops when it can’t afford to keep them all equipped, and to meet the political priority of protecting certain regimental capbadges, it has been forced to sacrifice its far more valuable logistics, communications and other enablers that keep it as a genuinely effective force.

Talking to friends in the army, there is a real sense of anger and frustration among many mid-level officers. The veterans of [Operation] HERRICK feel that the army hasn’t learned lessons and remains bound by tradition and an inability to really learn. Candidly, many feel that the UK “lost” in Afghanistan and hasn’t yet accepted this fact. They feel the army is overly top heavy and rigid and unable to really adapt to 21st century warfare. Suggestions that much of the army exists as a structure to support rapid expansion in the future is met with a hollow snort of derision – we could never do a WW1-style rapid expansion again for the legacy reserve stocks of weapons and equipment have long since been disposed of as part of the move to RAB accounting in the early 2000s.

The operations that the army is likely to be involved in are either low level defence engagement, or as part of NATO reassurance in Eastern Europe. The chances of needing BAOR established again are slim – if we get to the stage where the UK is trading shots with the Russians, then things will be quickly escalating beyond the point where conventional weapons are of value. Home defence remains an issue, although the days of Exercise “Brave Defender” will never be repeated — the threat is completely different. There is simply no credible home threat that needs the army to deploy against invasion or insurrection. It is telling that there has been a move to get back into the Aid to the Civil Power role again, if only because having troops able to do flood relief helps generate positive headlines.

Whenever brave efforts are made to try and look again at how things can be done differently to free up funding (such as closing RHQs or making sense of the archaic HQ and regimental structure) leaks to the press ensure a media and Parliamentary furore that prevents real change being put into play. This stops the army from being able to genuinely restructure itself because the moment it tries to do so, some tired old headline such as “we don’t have an army anymore, only a militia” (an utter fallacy) appears and men of a certain generation with angry moustaches and blazers with badges and purchased medals write to their MPs. In a Parliament without a majority, it only takes a minor backbench rebellion to threaten chaos, meaning no minister will risk reform if it angers the backbenches.

The army today faces a structural and existential crisis. Too large to be properly funded, and politically barred from restructuring itself (although the recent 2017 manifesto pledge is merely to preserve the headline strength of the forces, not the individual services, so there is still hope). Denied a credible enemy that it can prepare to fight against, it has no clear rationale for why it needs to operate at a large scale when the political decision makers are increasingly set against boots on the ground for long term commitment.

Sir Humphrey, “How Do You Solve a Problem Like a Deployable Division?”, Thin Pinstriped Line, 2017-08-06.

July 18, 2019

Andrew Coyne interviews NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg

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

In the National Post, Andrew Coyne discusses NATO, Donald Trump, and Russia with the current Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg:

General Hastings “Pug” Ismay, later the first Secretary General of NATO during his military service as Winston Churchill’s chief military assistant in 1941.
Official British government photograph via Wikimedia Commons.

Throughout their term in government — and especially since Donald Trump’s victory in America’s 2016 election — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have taken every opportunity to pay tribute to the “rules-based international order,” the consensus among countries that everyone’s interests are best served by following a set of rules and guiding principles that have evolved through the decades, expressed through things such as trade agreements and international alliances like the United Nations. If this consensus has a face it may be that of Jens Stoltenberg. The urbane former prime minister of Norway has been Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since 2014, and through tough times for the international consensus he’s been one of the loudest voices defending it. This week he was in Canada to meet with Trudeau, to tour the Canadian Forces’ Garrison Petawawa and to discuss Canada’s NATO deployments in Latvia and Iraq. He sat down for an interview with the National Post‘s Andrew Coyne.

Q. Lord Ismay, NATO’s first secretary-general, famously defined the alliance’s mission as “keeping the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” When you hear some of the things Donald Trump says about NATO, about Article 5 (the collective defence provision) — are the Americans still in?

A. Yes. And they are more in now than they have been for a long time — meaning that they are actually increasing their NATO presence in Europe. After the end of the Cold War, Canada and the United States, for natural reasons, reduced their military presence in Europe. Because tensions went down, there was less need… Now tensions are increasing again, and both Canada and the United States are now increasing their military presence in Europe: Canada with a Canadian-led battle group in Latvia, and the United States with a battle group in Poland and also with a new armoured brigade. So what we see is that the United States is actually investing more in NATO, more military presence in Europe, more U.S. investments in infrastructure, in pre-positioned equipment, more exercises. So the message from the United States is that they are committed to NATO and we see that not only in words but also in deeds.

Q. But when you see Trump questioning the value of multilateral institutions, asserting “America First,” his chumminess with Putin, does it risk sending a signal that, if push came to shove — if Russia got up to no good in the Baltics or what have you — that America’s resolution to resist that would be less than certain?

A. For me the strongest possible signal to send is the presence of U.S. forces in Europe. The fact that we now, for the first time in the history of NATO, have U.S. troops in the eastern part of the alliance, in Poland and the Baltic countries. There is no way to send a clearer signal than that. And the Canadian troops because they are part of the picture. To have American troops in the Baltic countries sends a very clear signal that if a Baltic country is attacked it will trigger a response from the whole alliance… It’s not possible to imagine a stronger and clearer signal than that.

February 22, 2019

Germany’s armed forces – from world class to laughing stock

Filed under: Germany, Government, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Germany’s military has fallen on very hard times, and there’s so much wrong that it will be very difficult to fix even with all the goodwill in the world:

The German Navy training ship Gorch Fock (launched in 1958) under full sail (less the spanker topsail) in Kiel Fjord near the Laboe Naval Memorial in July 2006.
Photo by Felix Koenig via Wikimedia Commons.

Most Germans’ eyes glaze over at the mention of the Bundeswehr’s perpetual troubles, but an affair surrounding the Gorch Fock, the navy’s three-masted naval training ship, has caught their attention.

Launched in 1958 to school a new generation of West German naval recruits, the imposing 81-meter ship, which takes its name from a popular seafaring German author’s pseudonym, is more than just a training vessel; to many, the Gorch Fock — whose likeness was etched onto some Deutsche Mark bills — is a symbol of Germany’s postwar revival.

The ship’s iconic status is one reason why few objected when the Bundeswehr announced in 2015 that it needed a major overhaul. Until, that is, the price tag exploded from an initial projection of €10 million to €135 million, according to the latest estimate.

Bundeswehr officials claimed the depth of the ship’s troubles only became clear when it was in dry dock, but few are buying such explanations. “When the repairs cost more than a new ship, something is obviously amiss,” Bartels, the Bundeswehr’s parliamentary overseer, said in an interview.

The Gorch Fock “is a symptom of the Bundeswehr’s broader problems,” Bartels said. “Everything takes too long and costs too much money. It’s as if time and money were endless resources, and in the end no one takes responsibility.”

Almost overnight, the ship has gone from pride and joy to running gag. Last week, German weekly Der Spiegel pictured the Gorch Fock on its cover under the headline, “Ship of Fools.”

It’s an apt metaphor for Germany’s body politic as well. Given Germany’s size and economic might, Berlin’s attention to security is surprisingly shallow; citizens and politicians alike often seem oblivious to the challenges the country faces. Though Germany faces growing security threats from both Russia and China, one wouldn’t know it hanging around the German capital.

Much of the media now portrays the U.S. as a security threat on par with Russia. Public attitudes have moved in a similar direction. Security discussions are driven by a handful of like-minded think tank analysts who seem to spend most their time on Twitter, fretting about whether Trump will pull the plug on NATO.

More Germans believe China is a better partner for their country than the U.S., according to a survey published last week by Atlantik Brücke, a Berlin-based transatlantic lobbying group. About 80 percent of those surveyed consider U.S.-German relations to be “negative” or “very negative.”

H/T to Instapundit for the link.

February 17, 2019

When Trump gets serious with Canada about defence spending

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

Ted Campbell notes that, despite all the nay-saying, President Trump appears to be getting results with US allies on defence issues. That being the case, he’s wondering when Prime Minister Trudeau will get the message:

A right rear view of a Canadian army Cougar wheeled fire support vehicle being used as an observation post by soldiers standing watch during the combined U.S./Canadian NATO Exercise Rendezvous ’83. Location: Camp Wainright, AB

I was commenting on this before president Trump was elected; and shortly after his 2016 election victory I said that

    “Prime Minister Trudeau and most European presidents and prime ministers will have to face a newly elected US president who wants them to pay for a bigger and bigger slice of their own defence. Real leaders would do well to recognize that the Americans have a valid point … some, probably many of them, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, may try to pretend that it doesn’t matter; they will be wrong.”

I was impressed, then, with how deeply many, many Americans felt about Donald Trump’s campaign message which said that allies were “freeloading,” and taking unfair advantage of America’s innate generosity … I was very, very conscious of the fact that, when I was a young man, a junior officer in Canada’s tough, superbly disciplined, well trained, trained, nuclear armed “vest pocket army” (as more than one allied general called us) brigade group in Germany, Canada used to pay its full and fair share … but we stopped, in the late summer of 1969, when Pierre Trudeau tried to totally withdraw from NATO and, indeed, from the world.

I wonder when President Trump will send someone like Timothy Betts, the Deputy Assistant Secretary and Senior Advisor for Security negotiations and Armaments in the US State Department, to Ottawa to demand that Canada should pay up after a half century of “freeloading” on the US taxpayers’ goodwill. That will come as a nasty shock to Team Trudeau and, indeed, to a majority of Canadians who have gotten used to the notion that the Americans will defend us out of the kindness of their hearts. I’m not sure that Canada is next in line, but I suspect we’re on his short list.

January 26, 2019

The Cold War – OverSimplified (Part 1)

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

OverSimplified
Published on 24 Jan 2019

October 27, 2018

HMS Queen Elizabeth to depend on Shock! Horror! Dutch escort!

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

At the Thin Pinstriped Line, Sir Humphrey explains to “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells” and all the other would-be Admirals of the Fleet why having a non-RN escort for Britain’s newest aircraft carrier is hardly a bad thing:

Aerial view of HMS Queen Elizabeth with Type 23 frigates HMS Iron Duke (centre) and HMS Sutherland (right) in June 2017 off the coast of Scotland.
Photo by MOD via Wikimedia Commons.

The United Kingdom has few allies closer than the Netherlands. Both nations are modern, outward looking and instinctively maritime in their view of the world. Long standing NATO partners and with significant experience of working together across the globe, the Netherlands Armed Forces are highly respected as being capable, well equipped and staffed with first rate personnel.

The relationship between the RN and the Royal Netherlands Navy is extremely close, particularly between the Marine Corps and the Submarine Services. It is therefore extremely pleasing to hear that the Netherlands will be deploying a warship to form part of the inaugural ‘Carrier Strike Group’ (CSG) deployments for HMS Queen Elizabeth in 2021 HERE. This is a significant announcement and it has several ramifications that are good news for the Royal Navy.

[…]

There seems to be an exceptionally British trait of moaning at good news. Some people felt that it wasn’t good enough for the RN to be ‘reliant’ on a foreign warship operating as part of the CSG, and that the UK should be going it alone. What utter rot.

It does not mean, despite what some naysayers were desperate to bleat about on social media without any evidence to the contrary, that defence cuts mean the UK is reliant on the Dutch to protect the carrier. The RN has spent a lot of time working out what escorts are needed and ensuring they will be available when necessary as part of the CSG to properly protect the carrier. Any foreign participation is a nice bonus capability to have, not a tacit hint that the RN is short of ships.

The reality of future operations is that the UK is going to operate as part of an international coalition with our friends and allies. Despite the fantasies of some, desperate to see a huge purely British task force sailing around the world looking for a fight and a free trade deal, the fact is that any future military operation is going to be international by design.

Working with allies is critically important but isn’t something you can just do at the drop of a hat. One of the reasons why NATO works so well is because it has spent 70 years investing in common processes, tactics and procedures and exercising them regularly to ensure everyone can work together coherently.

Integrating a Dutch vessel now is vital because it helps build and cement an understanding at operational level of how to work with each other, to learn the capabilities of each other’s ships and how to work them to best effect together. It can also spot unintended issues or problems and help work out how to fix them quickly. This takes time to do, so it is likely that any Dutch vessel assigned in 2021 will have spent a considerable period working up in advance before beginning the deployment proper.

For those who complain that the Royal Navy hasn’t got enough ships to escort the carrier, it is worth reflecting that the Netherlands have a total of 6 frigates. Assuming the normal serviceability rates for escorts apply, then two are likely to be in refit and another in maintenance or training. This leaves just three active vessels at any one time – so in reality, the Netherlands commitment to support the Carrier Strike Group represents them committing a third of their available escort force for a significant amount of time.

September 25, 2018

Is the UK military situation really as dire as this new book portrays?

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the Daily Mail, there’s an excerpt from a new book on the British military by Michael Ashcroft and Isabel Oakeshott, White Flag? An Examination Of The UK’s Defence Capability:

HMS Astute (S119), lead ship of her class, sails up the Clyde estuary into her home port of Faslane, Scotland.
MOD photo, via Wikimedia Commons.

Bluntly, at a time of international crisis, when the prime minister wanted to take a stand against the illegal use of chemical weapons, our Armed Forces did not have what was needed for a full-throttle response.

Naturally, ministers preferred voters to imagine that submarines were on their way to the action. The truth about our limited capability might have fuelled creeping fears that the UK has run up the white flag.

This was one of the many shocks we had during our wide-ranging investigation into the state of this country’s defence capabilities. Thanks to remorseless cuts imposed by successive governments, the Army, Navy and RAF all struggle to meet day-to-day commitments to protect this country and play their part in collective security through Nato and other defence alliances — let alone prepare for serious potential new threats.

The particular problem this time was probably down to maintenance issues.

Hulls need cleaning to stop them rusting, engines need overhauling and nuclear reactors need to be flushed.

When you don’t have very many ships, taking one or two out of circulation leaves quite a gap — in this case, one that could not be filled.

And the fact is that we don’t have enough ships any more. Or aircraft. Or tanks. Or military personnel. Not since Defence became a soft target for governments looking to cut spending.

A British army Challenger 2 Main Battle Tank, of 1 Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (1RRF), is shown returning to base after completing a firing mission as part of Exercise MedMan.
1RRF Battle group were based at the British Army Training Unit Suffield (BATUS) in Canada.
MOD photo by Mike Weston via Wikimedia Commons.

What this means on the front line is illustrated by the small but fierce battalion of 800 UK troops stationed at a remote base in the Baltic state of Estonia as a crucial part of Nato’s defences against a Russian attack. They are on their guard at all times, scouring the bleak horizon for anything suspicious.

Inside a vast metal hangar is a fleet of Challenger tanks. The Army wanted to send 18 but the MoD cut this back to ten, of which only eight can be operational because two will always be in for repairs.

Asked if this would be enough if the Russians came over the border, the men we met there shrugged and laughed. They know full well that the Russians could throw as many as 22 tank battalions — that’s more than 650 tanks — at them.

A war-gaming exercise concluded that Nato forces would be ‘woefully inadequate’ in the event of an invasion: the Russians would be in Tallinn, the Estonian capital, within 60 hours.

No wonder the men themselves refer to their assignment as ‘Operation Tethered Goat’. Hopelessly outnumbered, they would be brushed aside, sacrificed to the predatory Putin, like the goat swallowed by the T. rex in Jurassic Park.

September 21, 2018

Declassified: The Old RAF Base Bringing Hollywood To Upper Heyford | Forces TV

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

Forces TV
Published on 30 Aug 2018

Upper Heyford was one of the largest US Air Force bases in Europe, housing bombers that carried NATO’s intermediate-range nuclear weapons… now it’s attracting Hollywood A-listers…

Read more: https://www.forces.net/news/declassif…

August 11, 2018

Post-coup Turkey – every move has served to increase Erdoğan’s hold on power

Filed under: Europe, Middle East — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Austin Bay‘s recent essay for Strategika on the post-coup Turkish political situation and its NATO membership:

Ataturk bequeathed Turkey what his greatest biographer, Andrew Mango, called “the structure of a democracy, not of a dictatorship.” He authored an orientation, not an ideology, creating a political, social, and cultural process that he believed would eventually make Turkey capable of perpetual self‐modernization. Ataturk was a political giant and a superb military commander. Eighty years after his death he remains a cult historical and political figure.

President Erdogan is a canny politician and, to be fair, Turkey’s most significant political figure since Ataturk. The green-eyed monster feeds his inner fire; Recep knows he disappears in Kemal’s giant shadow. Not capable of displacing Ataturk the man, he has chosen to replace Ataturk’s state, first under the guise of extending democracy, now behind the façade of maintaining stability. Erdogan also intends to remain in office over twice as long as Ataturk. Turkey 2034 will be an Erdoganist political construct, not Kemalist.

That last paragraph sketches a novelistic interpretation of Erdoğan’s motives. It expands on the answer I gave at Hoover’s October 2017 Military History and Contemporary Conflict symposium after Barry Strauss asked me what I thought drove Erdoğan — the deep drive that might shed light on his long-term vision for Turkey and help us craft policy responses to his challenge.

Novelistic speculations have numerous weaknesses. However, over the decades Erdoğan has supplied plot points and psychologically-indicative dialog. We are able to assess action through time. Early in his career Erdoğan routinely employed Islamist poetry: “Democracy is merely a train that we ride until we reach our destination. Mosques are our military barracks. Minarets are our spears.” That poetry led to his arrest for sedition. After his release he renounced his piously seditious poetry, claiming his fundamentalist views had fundamentally altered. His sudden commitment to Turkish democracy energized his “moderate Islamist” Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) 2002 victory over a tired and corrupted Republican Peoples Party (CHP). In 2003 the AKP became Turkey’s governing party with Erdoğan serving as prime minister.

First he tested Kemal’s structure, then he began to dismantle it. Erdoğan purged the military of suspected political opponents. A cunning narrative camouflaged his operation. He claimed European Union accession rules demanded he strip the military of its political powers and make certain Kemalist military coups entered history’s dustbin. Sometime in 2008, as Erdoğan began pursuing the Ergenekon conspiracy of “secular fundamentalists” and other secret nationalist vigilante organizations, I finally realized whatever explanation du jour Erdoğan offered for his actions, the dismantling scheme always expanded his personal power and influence.

The bizarre July 2016 coup follows the same pattern. The Turkish people defeated the coup. Ironically, Erdoğan remains in office today because Turkish citizens (across Turkey’s complex political and ethnic spectrum) courageously defended their hard-won democracy — a democracy nine challenging decades in the making. In its aftermath, however, Erdogan used emergency powers to purge Gulenist Islamists and his political opponents. He dismantled elements of the democratic system that saved him and his government.

July 30, 2018

Auditor General to look at the RCAF’s “capability gap” claim

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ted Campbell reports on the news that the Auditor General will investigate the Trudeau government’s claim that the RCAF would be unable to meet its obligations due to a newly discovered lack of airframes:

I see in a Canadian Press report published in the Globe and Mail that “Canada’s auditor general has started to dig into one of the Trudeau government’s most contentious claims, upon which rests the fate of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars: that the country is facing an urgent shortage of fighter jets … [and] … The claim was first made in November, 2016, when the Liberals announced that Canada didn’t have enough fighter jets to defend North America and simultaneously meet the country’s NATO commitments, and that a stopgap was urgently needed until the entire CF-18 fleet could be replaced.“

You’ll remember, I hope, that back in 1997 Canada’s government (Jean Chrétien was our Liberal prime minister) decided to join the US (but soon multi-national) F-35 Lightening II programme with the implicit intention of buying the aircraft and the explicit goal of sharing in the work, profits and jobs that the project might create. In 2010 the Government of Canada (Stephen Harper was the Conservative prime minister) committed to buying the aircraft for the Royal Canadian Air Force. There ensued an almighty public row over costs ~ partially because some generals and some DND officials tried to ‘low ball‘ the actual costs, partially because almost no one in government can agree on how to define ‘life cycle costs,‘ partially because most Canadian journalists are nearly innumerate and partially because the Liberal ‘war room‘ launched a disinformation campaign ~ and that rocked the Harper government back on its heels and made it a campaign issue. In 2015 the Liberal Party promised that Canada would not buy the F-35 but would, instead, hold “an open and transparent competition to replace the CF-18 fighter aircraft.”

Then, when in power the Liberal “government originally planned to buy 18 interim Super Hornets from Boeing for $6.4-billion before the deal was scuttled late last year in favour of buying 25 used jets from Australia for $500-million … [but] … critics, including opposition parties and former air force commanders, accuse the government of fabricating an urgent “capability gap” – as the shortfall is known – by changing the military’s requirements to avoid having to buy the F-35 stealth fighter.” The rumour ~ and that’s all it ever amounted to, as far as i know ~ floating around Ottawa was that the Liberals saw the Boeing Super Hornet fighter as a “cheap and dirty,” readily available solution and they felt confident that they could, easily back away from the promise to hold a competition, thus avoiding the dilemma of having an “open and transparent competition” while already having decided that the F-35 could not win.

July 22, 2018

Trump and Putin … with all this smoke, there has to be a smoking gun, right?

Filed under: Media, Politics, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Colby Cosh pours cold water on the still-smouldering hopes of the “smoking gun” enthusiasts:

If the president can be found guilty of “Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors” that is another thing, but that would require courtroom-worthy evidence of action, as opposed to indications of presidential doctrine or feeling or even strong hints of compromised personal interest. Trump did behave in Helsinki like someone who is beholden to Russia, or who is anxious for a rapprochement with Putin’s state. Yet he was, and this could not have come as a surprise, quick to try reversing himself later — emphasizing how tough he has been with Russia and how tough he is prepared to continue to be. Grrr!

Since I’m not on a diet of television news, I tend to interpret this as Trumpian “leadership” technique. They are the actions of someone who is convinced that anything can be accomplished by means of erratic emotional style and business-literature verbal tactics. These include cheap personal praise for negotiating opponents, which has become a perfectly foreseeable theme of Trump as a diplomat. (The tactical corollary is that very popular or highly esteemed people are especially vulnerable to outbursts of surprise criticism, and that has been a feature of Trump, too.)

It does not really cost the United States anything for Trump to praise Putin as skilled and strong (as a tyrant, he has been effective at maintaining domestic moral legitimacy, even if judged by the cost in shed blood) or to portray Kim Jong Un as a young man coping with terrible responsibilities. (Trump’s distaste for NATO is more dangerous as rhetoric, but did the other member nations forget for a while that political legitimacy within the United States is a prerequisite for the organization’s existence? If in the long run we devote a little more attention to the necessary housekeeping, Trump may have done the world a service.)

[…] The midterm congressional elections will be held with a long-forgotten fact re-emerging in the American popular consciousness: that much of the president’s power to set foreign policy and foul up trade is actually the property of Congress, and could be reclaimed after a century of careless delegation.

Perhaps some Americans are beginning to consider that it does not matter most whether you are with the good guys in the Trump/anti-Trump drama. Which is not to say you do not want to be one of the good guys. But the opportunity for American millennials, considered as a generation on the cusp of electoral dominance, is not just to kick Trump out, but to renovate the presidency so that the republic can survive having an unsuitable or even compromised person as president. Everybody got that? Are we good? Eyes on the ball, people.

January 29, 2018

How the U.S. got shafted out of the FN FAL

Filed under: Europe, History, Technology, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Legally Armed America
Published on 31 Dec 2017

The FN FAL is one of the greatest battle rifles ever made. Politics caused the U.S. to pass on it while nearly every other NATO country in the world recognized its superiority. And the 7.62 NATO is one of the greatest battle rounds ever made. But we needed an intermediate round. Here’s the story.

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August 4, 2017

Experimental Lightweight Browning High Power

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

Published on 3 May 2017

One of the handguns that resulted from the post-WW2 interest in standardizing arms among the future members of NATO was a lightweight version of the Canadian produced Browning High Power. Experiments began in 1947 to create first a lightened slide by milling out unnecessary material, and then additionally with the use of machined and cast aluminum alloy frames. The first major batch of guns consisted of six with milled alloy frames, with two each going to the Canadian, American, and British militaries for testing.

This would reveal that the guns were in general quite serviceable, except that the locking blocks tended to distort their mounting holes in the alloy frames under extended firing. The cast frames were generally unsuccessful, suffering from substantial durability problems. The program was cancelled in 1951 by the Canadian military, and the last United States interest was in 1952. The example in today’s video is one of the two milled frame guns sent to the US for testing.

June 20, 2017

The Guardian turns on Justin

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Last week, Martin Lukacs savaged Justin Trudeau by way of contrast with British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in the pages of The Guardian, which must count as one of the most unexpected sources of criticism for our mediagenic PM:

Their depiction in the international media couldn’t be more different.

You know Justin Trudeau from the Buzzfeed photo-spread or the BBC viral video: the feminist prime minister of Canada who hugs refugees, pandas, and his yoga-mat. He looks like he canoed straight from the lake to the stage of the nearest TED Talk – an inclusive, nature-loving do-gooder who must assuredly be loved by his people.

Then there’s what the columns of trans-Atlantic punditry told you about Jeremy Corbyn: the rumpled, charmless leader of UK’s Labour party whose supporters are fringe lunatics and his stances out-of-date utopianism. If he dared run an election with his political program, he would just as assuredly be rejected by the electorate.

So far, so conventional … and then the gloves come off:

Trudeau’s coronation as a champion of everything fair and decent, after all, has much to do with shrewd and calculated public relations. I call it the Trudeau two-step.

First, he makes a sweeping proclamation pitched abroad – a bold pledge to tackle austerity or climate change, or to ensure the rights of refugees or Indigenous peoples. The fawning international coverage bolsters his domestic credibility.

What follows next are not policies to ambitiously fulfill these pledges: it is ploys to quietly evacuate them of any meaning. The success of this maneuver – as well as its sheer cynicism – has been astonishing.

In this manner, Trudeau has basically continued, and in some cases exceeded, the economic agenda of Conservative Stephen Harper: approved mega fossil fuel projects, sought parliamentary power grabs, cut-back healthcare funding and attacked public pensions, kept up the dispossession of Indigenous peoples, undermined the prospect of universal childcare, maintained tax loopholes for the richest, and detained and deported thousands of migrants.

Out of breath? He has also broken an electoral reform promise, initiated a privatization scheme that is a massive corporate handout, left un-repealed a Tory political spy bill, launched air strikes in Iraq and Syria despite pledging a withdrawal, and inked the largest-ever weapons deal with the brutal, misogynistic Saudi Arabian regime.

Not exactly what those who voted for “real change” were expecting? Before you answer, here’s something titillating to distract and disarm you: Justin and Barack Obama rekindling their progressive bromance at an uber-cool Montreal diner. Jeremy Corbyn has shown us the meaning of a politics of genuine hope: what Trudeau has deployed has only ever been a politics of hype.

Trudeau’s latest progressive posturing is over foreign policy. Last week his government announced, to wide-spread acclaim, a brave course for their military that is independent of the reviled US administration. Except they will boost wasteful military spending by more than $60bn, a shocking seventy percent budgetary increase, and are already entertaining new Nato missions — exactly as Donald Trump has demanded. The doublespeak seems to have escaped the navel-gazing pundits: this is utter deference masquerading as defiance.

I don’t think Justin’s fans on the left need to be too worried about all that mucho-macho military posturing … until the promised spending is actually in the budget, it’s just politico-military theatre for our American allies than anything that will make a material difference to the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces. Once Trump is satisfied that Justin is doing his bidding, it can all be allowed to quietly go away (like the last government’s promises to beef up the armed forces and live up to our NATO commitments).

H/T to Ted Campbell for the link.

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