On the question of Canada’s place in NATO.
A few weeks ago, I was shocked to see anti-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) posters around campus and similar protests being organized in Montreal.
When I read more about the protests on the organizer’s website, I saw that very few sources were provided for their claims — and the ones given led nowhere.
The protest organizer’s main points can be summarized as the following: NATO forces Canada to increase its military budget, NATO leads to destruction in the name of “United-Statesian Imperialism,” and NATO is supporting the Palestinian genocide.
Looking at historical data, being a part of the defensive alliance has allowed Canada to spend increasingly less on defence. Being one of NATO’s founding members since 1949, Canada’s defence spending peaked in 1953 at 5.3 per cent of GDP, only decreasing ever since, comfortably sitting at around one per cent of GDP for the last two decades.
NATO is a defensive alliance by design, with Article 5 implying that an attack against one member is an attack against all members. It does not have any way of forcing its members to cooperate in an offensive war that individual countries are engaged in.
NATO was created to combat the threat of the Soviet Union’s expansionism — a still-standing threat to a lot of Eastern Europeans as only the name of the aggressor has changed, not the state itself, a threat I am familiar with as a Ukrainian. NATO’s main goal is to allow all the European countries, alongside the United States and Canada, to divide financial spending, defence responsibilities, and training to achieve more with less.
Today, the Baltic countries and Finland depend on NATO to ensure their security and independence from their oppressive neighbour to the east.
With Russia’s expansionist ambitions, it has engaged in multiple colonial wars since 1991 — a grim example of the reason why the NATO alliance is still relevant.
Furthermore, multiple points used by the protest’s organizers are taken straight from Russia’s propaganda channels, such as the idea that NATO is expanding eastward and that Russian leaders (are) protecting their Slavic brothers. By arguing that “innocent people on both sides” suffer from the conflict, they are downplaying the daily sacrifices forced upon Ukrainians and trying to excuse the invasion by blaming it on a few people on top while the rest are simply “following orders.” This alone should raise all sorts of red flags and invalidate the arguments presented by the Montreal-based organization.
Lastly, the protest’s organizers claim that NATO has clearly picked a side in the Israel-Palestine conflict and “through military support for Zionist forces that NATO is able to maintain a strategic foothold in the Middle East.” While most of its members have expressed their support for Israel, NATO has so far abstained from direct involvement, unlike with the Balkans during the Bosnian genocide.
It is hard to say that NATO has taken a clear side in this conflict as Turkey, a long-time NATO member, has expressed its support for both Palestine and Hamas for a long time. Multiple joint meetings and military exercises with Israel have been successfully blocked by Turkey, and NATO itself has kept a distance from participating in the conflict.
NATO has been a crucial part in slowing down the Russian invasion of Ukraine and providing the defending country with weapons and military intelligence to protect their freedom. As a Ukrainian, seeing the active opposition towards Canada’s participation in this alliance shows the blatant hypocrisy of the protesters, willing to ignore the ever-growing list of war crimes committed by Russian troops as well as echoing its propaganda channels.
Learning about Russia’s history of colonial wars, even in the 21st century, it is easy to see that it only comes after countries that are not part of any defensive alliance, such as Ichkeria, Georgia, and now Ukraine. It is abundantly clear that a defensive alliance is the only way for states to ensure their independence and freedom against a larger aggressor and to avoid social and economic disasters.
