The Impact of Trump’s Military Demands on Canada

I wrote recently about persistent demands that Canada hike its military spending dramatically, but now there are new developments. NATO leaders meeting in the Netherlands have agreed to Trump-driven demands that each member of the 32-member alliance spend 5.0% of Gross Domestic Product on the military.

The $150 billion dollar man

Prime Minister Mark Carney is attending the meetings and says that Canada will soon spend an unbelievable $150 billion a year on the military. We now spend $40 billion, equal to 1.4% of our Gross Domestic Product. GDP is the total value of all finished goods and services produced by a country during a specific period. Spending 1.4% may sound like a modest figure, but that $40 billion already represents 7.6% of the government’s overall spending.   

There are some caveats to Carney’s $150 billion estimate. He said that 1.5% of the 5.0% target can be met by spending on infrastructure, and creating access to critical minerals needed for military and other needs. And it may be several years before we reach the $150 billion target.

Nonetheless, Canada is committing to core military spending of an additional $45 to $50 billion a year. That added spending alone is double what we now spend. The numbers are staggering, unbelievable really. 

Trump threatens NATO

It is the Trump administration which has demanded a 5.0% target on military spending. The NATO charter obliges members to consider an attack against one to be an attack against all. But Trump has famously said that he would not come to the aid of allies who are not spending enough. He even appeared to invite Vladimir Putin, who he admires, to attack NATO members who he considers to be laggard in military spending.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said that Trump is committed to protecting alliance members, so long as they boost military spending. “There is total commitment, by the U.S. President and the U.S. senior leadership, to NATO,” he said. That hope is almost certainly misplaced.

Groveling to Trump

Rutte, Carney, and other NATO leaders are groveling to Trump, responding both to his military demands, and to the trade war that he has unleashed. They hope that spending dramatically more on the military will appease him on trade. But he has nothing but contempt for multilateral organizations and international trade agreements. Further, he is an inveterate liar, a narcissist, and a bully who likes nothing so much as breaking things, and appearing in each day’s headlines. He is America’s Trump-first leader and unlikely to show loyalty to anyone, including NATO.  

Precarious social programs  

How will Canada pay for more than doubling military spending, even if phased in? Likely not by raising taxes. Carney’s first act as prime minister was to announce what he called a middle-class tax cut. And it is hard to believe that a man who has been the governor of banks in Canada and Great Britain will want to ring up even more deficit spending than the Liberals have already engaged in. 

That leaves deep cuts to programs and services provided by the federal government, or their being allowed to atrophy over the coming decades. With the Canadian Dental Care Plan, we may have seen the last significant social program for a generation. The plan’s cost is predicted to be $2.6 billion annually beginning in 2024-25, a fraction of what we now spend on the military, and a remote fraction of the $150 billion Carney plans to spend.  

Military hazards

Carney, Rutte, and others say that we must consider growing threats from Russia, China, and Iran. Russia has inflicted a brutal and criminal war on Ukraine. But NATO is already a heavily armed alliance. Its 32 member states collectively spend many times more than Russia can afford on the military.

Meanwhile, the United States maintains 750 military bases in 80 countries. It provides about $20 billion annually in military assistance to the genocidal regime of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. The US has in recent memory invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, and bombed Libya. Those hostile actions forced regime change in each case and left failed states in their wake. Tens of thousands of people were killed or maimed. In the case of Libya, Canadians were among the NATO pilots flying bombing missions.

Civil society must resist

The implications of ever-increasing military spending targets are so mind-numbing that it is difficult to know where to begin in response. Those who question or protest are accused by the “realists” of being naïve.

Do we want our country to feed a new and dangerous arms race? Will it make us safer? Will we silently accept the diverting of precious resources away from dealing with climate change, health care, housing, reconciliation, refugee support, and any number of crying needs?

We are being locked into military spending which will consume, and waste, precious resources for decades to come. We urgently need another lens on this, which combines peace building and diplomacy with modest military spending. Let’s hope that civil society is up to the task of resistance.