Dougie93

Canada couldn't even go it alone against the Mohawks, that's why the Government doesn't mess with them anymore.

The Taliban were never America's enemy anyways, they never attacked America, they don't care, they're not Jihadists, they just want the foreigners out, so they can kill local drug dealers and child rapists which is how the Taliban came about in the first place, the Americans should just turn the place over to them again, it's a vast empty dust bowl of no particular strategic importance, it's not worth defending a position there.

And no, in the event of a non discretionary multilateral war, other countries are not going to be able to equip Canada with any "automated warfighting" capability, because they would need to equip there own forces for that, never mind that "automated warfare" is just fallacious civilian fanboi nonsense, but whatever.

And Canada doesn't have any automated warfighting capability neither, so what's your point?

And in terms of discretionary NATO overseas deployments, Canada did scale up for Afghanistan, that one ill equipped battalion in the field is what Canada scaling up looks like now

Scaling up is an early to mid 20th century paradigm, Canada's mobilzation plans were written in World War Two, in the 21st century, warfare moves so fast, the war would be over before Canada could scale up more than 1 Brigade of actually equipped and logistically deployable combat and support arms. Never mind that you have to have instructors to scale anything up, and since the instructors and the combat troops are the same troops, Canada could not train and fight at the same time.

Again, amateurs talk tactics while professionals talk logistics, the reason being that professionals understand that what is not supported by logistics is only on paper. On paper we have 9 battalions in 3 Brigade groups, in reality we only have the logistics and equipment to deploy one of those battalions and none of the brigades at any given time. There's 37 million Canadians, by your definition you might as well say we have 37 million infantryman, the issue is, how many can you train, equip and deploy to actually fight a modern war? Answer; 1 battalion group.

You mean the Liberal Government run by Gerry Butts who is now the Government in Ottawa? To avoid bankruptcy, live within your means, stop flushing billions down the tube on boondoggles, and if that means a less bloated and dysfunctional social welfare gulag? Sounds great.

And before you go into Trump Derangement Syndrome, this ain't about Trump, all Trump is doing is articulating the realpolitik of the situation, his big NATO faux pas is that he's simply speaking the truth of the matter, which is, no, the Americans are not really going to war with Russia or anybody else to defend Europe anymore, if the Russians cross the Article V line, the Americans will move to contain them by air and sea to defend the CONUS, but they're not actually going to engage the Russians head to head unless and until there is a direct threat to the CONUS itself.

Reality check, since Canada could not support those troops logistically, they were actually a drain on American resources more than anything, NATO is a burden to America not a boon, and the process of the American public's revolt against NATO has already begun, you can fall over yourself to answer the call of an American NATO Article V, but you should know that the American public is not willing to do the same for you, because you are not a real ally, if you are totally incapable of doing anything without them basically having do it for you, no logistics, no units, only the American formations are real units in NATO, everything else relies on the Americans to prop it up, draining resources from them rather than adding.

Never mind that NATO is mostly a paper tiger, the Europeans don't have the logistics to support what they ostensibly have on paper, not even the British and the French, so "NATO" is basically America for all intents and purposes.

Moreover, even if you do invoke Article V, the Washington Treaty doesn't stipulate that any of the NATO members has to go to all out war in your defence, the Americans wrote it so they would maintain total control under the CinC as to what they would do or not do, so the treaty actually gives members the option to decide what they are going to do about an Article V declaration, from all out thermonuclear war at the high end, to nothing more than a strongly worded letter of protest at the other.

I am including militia, it fluctuates, but the regular army hovers around 20,000 and the militia is around 15,000, although none of the militia are really bound to show up, that's basically a pool which volunteers can be deployed as augmentees with the reg force, but those reserve "units" are not real units, it's just on paper. One Canadian soldier alone is dead man walking no matter how well equipped, an army fights as units, with logistics, no logistics, no actual unit, just a gaggle, never mind that we don't have the equipment for all the troops that we supposedly have on paper. In terms of what the army can deploy, with equipment and logistics? What you saw in A-Stan is what you get; a single battalion group. In terms of drones, other the hand held and a couple mini, we don't have any, it's not like we are flying MQ-9's, if you even know what those are. In terms of coalitions, you can't enforce territorial sovereignty on you own territory by coalition. You think if China starts sailing through the Northwest Passage NATO is going to treat that as Article V? I mean, get real.

No we don't, there's no there there, defend means actually able to defend, international law does not accept rhetorical "defence" as a valid assertion of territorial sovereignty, if a foreign military shows up in the arctic and starts to operate up there, not only could we not stop them, but since we couldn't, they actually have a legal case under international law that they have the right to be there, which is what even the Americans say when they roll through.

I mean, newsflash, guy, the entire Canadian Army fully mobilized is only about 35,000 troops, so we never had "40,000" troops in Afghanistan. We only have the equipment and logistics to support one battalion in the field expeditionary, on paper we have "Brigades", but we can't actually deploy them.

Over twelve years, and the vast majority of those troops were service support in the rear with the gear, in terms of what they had on the ground at any given time, actual combat arms soldiers in the fight? 3 rifle company groups.

And again, this is what I'm talking about in terms of de facto armed constabulary, and even then, they couldn't even handle the Taliban at the tactical level, twice they went at the White Schoolhouse, first the Patricia's and then the Royals, in mindless frontal attacks, against a handful of lightly armed insurgents, and they actually got their asses handed to them both times, before finally getting serious and bringing everything they had to bear, and even that attack was a brutal slog through minefields which they were not equipped to clear, welding metal onto civilian bulldozers and driving into mineblasts, next man, stand up, hook up, shuffle to the door. Again, valiant, but criminally negligent on the part of the Canadian government in my opinion.

Indeed, and thankfully the Taliban were a relatively lightweight opponent, can you imagine what the casualties would have been like if they had ATGW's like what the Turks are facing in Syria or the Saudis in Yemen? 152 KIA, much as several of them were my close friends; we got off easy in the end, could have been much worse.

The upside is that each de facto sub nation within Canadian Confederation could and would be governed far far better to the benefit of all, rather than as now with this abomination of a federal government forcing us altogether even though in most cases our interests and desires are contradictory, in terms of remote communities under federal jurisdiction, Nunavut, NWT, and Yukon, I would offer them self determination, to include joining one of the other Dominions as with Labrador, grouping together to form their own Dominion, or go it alone. In terms of the viability of these extremely remote communities, if they are not self sustaining then they are a fool's errand, but if they insist on remaining where they are, I would suggest they seek assistance from either the United Kingdom or the United States, I honestly have absolutely zero interest in governing the arctic, the Americans can have it for all I care, since for all intents and purposes, it is already their responsibility, it's not like we can actually defend it, and what you cannot defend is not actually yours, under international law.

Indeed, but she is also Queen of Ontario, see; office of the Lieutenant Governor, and upon De-Confederation as per my plan, would remain Queen of the Dominion of Ontario, although I would actually free Northern Ontario from Queen's Park and just go back to pre 1867 and be the Dominion of Upper Canada.

Not that I am saying that Canadian pers were not valiant in their execution of their duties in Afghanistan, in what was a no win situation in the end, but to say that Canada's contribution was significant to the overall operation above the tactical level, I would have to disagree, basically sent a single battalion into action, ill equipped, vastly outnumbered and surrounded, and then just left them there to take a beating, with only one significant and very limited win at the White School House on Operation Medusa, after concentrating all their forces to seize a small compound, other than that, easily replaceable by the Americans, to wit, a token force, as all Canadian deployments are since the end of the Cold War.

"Treasonous" would infer that I am in violation of my oath to the sovereign, which is not the case vis a vis De-Confederation, because each province in Canada has a direct relationship to the Crown, nothing in my oath to Her Majesty binds me to defend and uphold Confederation per se, I'm perfectly within my rights to advocate for an Independent Upper Canada as much as the Pequistes are to advocate for an Independent Quebec. Again, as Canada is a monarchy, my fealty is only to the Crown, person not a place, to wit, Liz Windsor is the boss of me, and no other.

It's going to happen regardless, I'm merely advocating a formalization of a process already and in fact long in progress. /shrugs

No argument here, but since the broad consensus of Canadians insist on only buying hardware made in Canada, as really all they care about is pork barreling, while other Gendyne subsidiary countries like Switzerland and the UK are open to buying offshore as it were, GDLS-C is far more significant to the Canadian defence industrial base. Not that I'm arguing that Canada should have a defence industrial base, at this juncture I actually advocate for the complete disbandment of DND and the CAF and simply turning it all over to DPS as constabulary "Giant Iceland" option, en route to eventual devolution of Confederation writ large.

Impasse on legal "similarity" as, again, there is obvious similarity from where I'm sitting. In terms of Fake Country I said "de facto" rather than "de jure" colony of the United States rendering international law moot. On "ally" of the United States I would say "with allies like us, who needs enemies?". On rely on clout of US military security I would submit we are the ultimate free rider as we rely totally on the United States as no other country of our scale does. On didn't participate in Iraq War; not true, we sent air and naval forces inclusive to Operation Iraqi Freedom, simply declining to send ground forces. On not interning Kadr at Gitmo, does not absolve us of complicity once he was there. As far as how else could we have acted; I'm willing to discuss further but would rather not do so by wall of text. On the Americans keeping Kadr from us, as I said earlier, the opposite was the case, they actually wanted rid of him as Gitmo had become politically radioactive, but as I said, my suspicion is that Harper government did conspire with the Americans to keep him there, because even tho they were complicit, they wanted to keep all that offshore to avoid the legal and political ramifications upon his stepping back onto Canadian soil.