There is an illusion about Donald Trump, namely that he wants to dissolve NATO. True, he has been sharply critical of the members of the military alliance. He’s lashed out at countries, particularly Canada, for not meeting NATO’s directive that at least 2 percent of GDP be dedicated to military spending. He’s also voiced his willingness to ignore NATO’s “mutual clause” if a member that hasn’t met that threshold is attacked.
But the reason for his venom is not the desire to dissolve the largest military organization in the world, which he now effectively leads. Rather, it is the drive to outsource more of the costs of the US military onto its allies.
Making the 2-percent target – which Justin Trudeau pledged to do by 2032 – will mean more than doubling Canada’s already bloated military budget to over $80 billion in just 7 years. Trudeau is now halfway out the door but the person right behind him – the Conservative Party’s Pierre Poilievre – is even more eager to in- crease the arms budget.
Enter Donald Trump. Under his bellicose Republican administration, the US will ramp up the pressure on Canada to jack its military spending – and will quite likely push a target even higher than 2 percent of GDP. Given that the mere threat of 25 percent tariffs (before Trump was even inaugurated) made federal and provincial leaders across Canada wet their pants and then promise to tighten borders and toss out immigrants, how fast can we expect them to surrender in a knife fight over tens of billions in arms spending?
What Trump is determined to get is an open pipeline of cash from Canada right into the bank accounts of the US military industrial complex. New fighter jets, aircraft carriers and armed drones?
Increased nuclear weapons development? More foreign US military bases? Parliament has loonies to pay for all of that and more, Donald!
The costs will, of course, be borne by working people. There will be reduced social programs and more privatization of health, education and infrastructure. We’ll have fewer sustainable and good paying jobs, and more austerity and poverty. We’ll see more monopolization of industries and business, combined with weakened labour and democratic rights and a soaring cost of living for working people.
And we will certainly have more foreign interventions, more arms races and more wars of aggression, accompanied by more racism and xenophobia, more climate crisis and more Cold War.
Withdrawing from NATO won’t fix all of this. But it will certainly untie this country from an institutional imperative to participate in it. If there was ever a time for Canada to withdraw from NATO, it’s now.
But that decision won’t be taken by the current federal government. Nor by the next one. Nor by any of the parties currently in Parliament. That decision has to be taken by the people of this country, who determine to force it upon the government.
For too long, governments and corporations have had an almost free hand to increase military spending and to pursue aggressive foreign policies. In large part, that’s because the peace movement in this country has been too weak to mobilize masses of people around an alternative vision.
A generation ago, tens of thousands of people in Canada were engaged in campaigns to ban nuclear weapons, to reduce military spending and divert it to socially useful goals, to end the arms trade and to strengthen the international institutions of peace and cooperation. But that movement didn’t fall out of the sky – it was built by the efforts of people in communities across the country. We did it before and we can – and must – do it again. Because now, with Trump 2.0, getting out of NATO is more urgent than ever.
