NATO says it wants its members to develop national plans to bolster the capacity of their individual defence industry sectors, a concept Canada has struggled with — or avoided outright — for decades.

At the NATO leaders summit in Washington in July, alliance members agreed to come up with strategies to boost their domestic defence materiel sectors, and to share those strategies with each other. Almost entirely overshadowed at the time by debates about members’ defence spending and support for Ukraine, the new policy got little attention.

Federal officials are just beginning to wrap their heads around the ramifications of the new policy, and the burden it could place on the government and Canada’s defence sector.

  • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    It’s important to remember that while this is escalation it isn’t necessarily the prelude to a war - mobilization is often used to avert combat and entice parties back to the negotiating table.

    • girlfreddy@lemmy.caOP
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      2 months ago

      Because the next war will likely be WW3.

      But I’m not confident this is just to avert something larger, as it would seem we passed that point a while back.

      • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        I’m not certain, since war is never a logical escalation it’s hard to predict when it will happen.

        Putin may drag his countrymen into a war simply out of political self preservation but Russia cannot win against Nato. Russia can bomb the shit out of western countries and launch nukes but in a purely math sense it’s like Germany in WW2 it would be doomed to failure.

        I hope we don’t get WW3 anytime soon and cooler heads prevail - I hope Putin is just bluffing and remains sane… but we’ll see.

        China absolutely has far too much to lose, I think war with China (even with Xi being a fucking hot head) is highly unlikely.

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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          2 months ago

          Yup. China might go for Taiwan if they’re sure they can get away with it, but that’s all. I don’t really expect them to dick around with MAD; they’re rational actors, at least at this point in history. Russia’s goose is already cooked, and I doubt an order to attack NATO out of the blue would even be obeyed.

          Edit: The article talks about a cluster of unspecified regional wars, which seems much more likely, though.

        • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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          2 months ago

          I honestly never thought of Xi as a hothead. This could be my bias or lack of awareness. I’d say he has a fragile ego, sure. Do you have any examples to show why you believe that?

  • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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    2 months ago

    I’m not that surprised. Supplying the Ukraine War has shown that most NATO countries do not have the ability to contribute with any meaningful industrial capacity. Fixing this would require a lot of supply chain building.

    • Sunshine (she/her)@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      It was extremely embarrassing seeing the free world failing to out-supply Russia enough as the war has dragged on too much with too many Ukrainian civilians being murdered by russian war criminals.

      Ukraine needs to be given more tanks, air defence systems, armoured vehicles, jets, ammo, drones, frigates, missiles and artillery than they can do with.

  • Nik282000@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    Go ahead, draft me. Thanks to the lack of availability of family doctors I have a number of chronic health issues! At best you pile 300 other guys like me up to block a road.

  • Octospider@lemmy.one
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    2 months ago

    Our armed forces has difficulty recruiting people who WANT to join, let alone recruiting people who don’t want to join a war.

  • AnotherDirtyAnglo@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    If Article 5 is invoked, Russia ceases to exist overnight.

    The evening of the first day Russia fucks up, the US demonstrates why Americans don’t have healthcare. It swoops in with a couple dozen stealth fighters, eliminates air-defence, decapitates the entire chain of command, then levels every military and military-adjacent structure from west to east and east to west and south to north at the same time. I sincerely doubt a single American life would be lost.

    By morning, there’s nothing of consequence left, and regular NATO fighters have control of the skies, taking out leftover smaller targets and industrial infrastructure… and that’s it, game over.

    • Nik282000@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      It only takes one ICBM reaching it’s target to fuck up a lot of people in Europe or America.