Hike spending or curb U.S. folly?

In the wake of the Halifax security conference last weekend, the U.S. reportedly sent a “blunt” message, said to be “frustrated” and “critical” in tone, demanding that Canada increase its military spending.

Meanwhile, at the conference, U.S. national security adviser Robert O'Brien demanded the same of all NATO members because of “very serious threats to our freedom and security.”

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan mumbled diplomatically, but if the Canadian government had any nerve, it would say, “OK, but first we need to have some questions answered — like, who's the enemy?”

If it's the usual culprit, Russia, then why is the president of the United States acting like Vladimir Putin's dancing monkey? And why are his minions and his entire propaganda machine trying to pin Russian meddling in the 2016 election — which may have tipped it in favour of Donald Trump, the difference being only a few thousand votes in a few key states — on the Ukrainians, who are being assaulted by those same Russians?

So who or what, specifically, is the “very serious threat to our freedom and security”?

And those are just the superficial questions. Up front, the U.S. military budget is some $650 billion as of last year —more than the next six countries combined, with China next at $250 billion, Saudi Arabia after with $68 billion, then India, France, Russia, the U.K. and Germany following in declining order in the $66-billion to $50 billion range. (Canada: $21 billion.)

However, U.S. total doesn't include its nuclear program, payments to veterans for past wars and State Department militaryrelated spending, which bumps up the amount to at least $1 trillion a year, or pretty much equal to all the rest of the world's military spending combined—with critics continuously saying that much of it is misspent and lands in the hands of politically connected defence contractors.

And every year, whether it's a Republican or Democratic administration, it keeps going up — usually with hawks howling that the military is being shortchanged — and no serious questions are asked, because military spending virtually amounts to a state religion.

And so the deeper question is, apart from theoretically keeping the peace in our Americanized world, what does the U.S. specifically get for all this that we're being asked to contribute more to? After the spectacular victory that was the Second World War, not much in military terms.

Of the seven key engagements since 1945, only one — the first Gulf war where Saddam Hussein's forces were cleared out of Kuwait — could be called a victory. The Korean war was a draw, the Vietnam war a clear defeat, major engagements in Somalia and Lebanon ended in retreats in the face of terrorist counterattacks, Afghanistan is an endless morass, and then there was the special catastrophe which was the Iraq war. Ironically, the one great victory, the collapse of the Soviet Union, occurred without a shot being fired.

If wisdom prevailed, it would be seen that these setbacks were preordained. Every great empire, after the heady victory that consolidates its authority, has undone itself trying to extend its dominance over presumed barbarians on the edge. An instructive one is the once great civilization now in pieces at our feet — the Ottoman Empire. After its creation in 1453 with the conquest of the Byzantine world, it proceeded to try to take both Russia and Europe, presuming these to be barbarian outbacks and easy pickings. After this folly of imperial hubris (their Waterloo came in 1683 when defeated at the gates of Vienna), it was all downhill until the empire's dissolution during the First World War, leaving Turkey as its dark and shrunken heart.

As for our presumed enemies and what we should do about them, we should talk about that, too. Both Russia and China are inherently unstable, the political orders of both of them having collapsed completely twice in little over a century (the Westernizing Kuomintang finished off the Chinese ancien régime in 1911, then was itself over-thown by the Communists in 1949; in Russia, the tsarist order went under in 1917, then Soviet Union itself in 1991). It's only a matter of time before it happens again for both of them. They're not about to take over the West.

Canada refused to participate in two of America's worst imperial adventures in the last 50 years —Vietnam and Iraq. It was two of this country's finest hours since the Second World War. For Canada, as well as for other NATO members, restraining American military folly should be at least as important as countering any external enemy. Certainly, bowing to Donald Trump by increasing military spending while he's undermining the Western alliance at every turn would be especially misguided.

BRUCE MacKINNON