Andrew Chaplin wrote in
:

The Canadian public, if asked whether to spend money on guns or
butter, will ask for K-Y Jelly because they don't understand the
question.

When formulating a Canadian defense policy, there is the slight practical
problem that the only threat to Canadian soverignty is posed by the
fascist minions to the south of our border, against whom no defense save
for nuclear weapons is economically practical. Further, the development
of a nucelar deterrant would prompt an American first strike--scuse me,
'liberation'. This is obviously a catch 22.

Similiarly, protecting Canadian interests abroad would require a far
greater funding committment than is economically practical. Force
projection is not cheap and reconstructing a capability to deliver much
more than a single flagbearer into areas where _our_ interests[1] are
challenged costs much more than we can afford without gutting Canadian
society to the point that we become an American or DPRK-style weapon state
that concentrates all economic output into the defense of values and
ideologies that do not exist at home.

On the one hand, there's nothing to be gained by spending so much on guns
that there's no butter left to protect. On the other hand, there's no
point in spending so little on guns that the capabilities provided are
essentially useless. Unfortunately for Canadian defense policy, the size
of the Canadian economy is such that there is no happy medium between
these points: providing a meaningful military capability would mean
slashing civil spending to the extent that there would be no meaningful
Canada left to defend.



[1] Our interests are not the same as supporting the American domestic
need to conduct expansionary wars on a regular basis.

--
Coridon Henshaw - http://www3.telus.net/csbh - "I have sadly come to the
conclusion that the Bush administration will go to any lengths to deny
reality." -- Charley Reese