The biggest international legacy of Donald Trump's presidency, once he's out of office, is likely to be a huge increase in military spending across NATO.
In June, the treaty member's nations agreed to a new standard for spending on their armed forces. The headline number is five per cent of GDP, but of that, only 3.5 per cent actually has to be spent on troops, tanks, bullets, fighter jets, etc. Another 1.5 per cent is to be spent on "defence-related infrastructure" (with a fair bit of leeway as to what counts on that score).
For Canada, which had been lagging well behind the previous NATO target of two per cent of GDP, this will be a big increase during the next few years. Prime Minister Mark Carney has already pledged to get Canada to the two-per-cent threshold this year, and the new targets mean a lot more money.
This year, Canada is expected to spend about $62 billion on our military. By 2035, to meet the new targets, we'll be spending somewhere between $110 billion and $150 billion annually.
Our NATO allies will be seeing similar upward trends in spending.
The usual arguments for this is that we now live in a world with new threats, and that NATO needs new resources to meet those threats. Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its not-terribly-veiled threats against the Baltic states are top of mind. Russia and China both, we are told, have their eye on Canada's Arctic waterways, as global warming melts sea ice and makes new routes navigable.
While I'm not an expert in military strategy or diplomacy, it's possible that we do need a bigger military. We certainly have seen from the Russian invasion of Ukraine that we need new technology and weapons. The importance of drones to the modern battlefield, for example, has been shown pretty decisively.
But I am nervous about a large part of the world massively increasing the size of its armed forces.
Military spending has a logic all its own. A large and well-funded military becomes a constituency with its own cheerleaders and its own interest groups. It makes weapons manufacturers wealthier, and their lobbyists have more sway in national capitals.
It may be hard to build up a small military. But it's also hard to reduce a large and powerful one again, later. And once you have a powerful military, well, are you going to just let them sit around and do nothing?
To a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
To a national government with a big, well-funded army, every problem looks like it has a military solution.
A spending boost isn't going to cause a war next year, or the one after that (probably).
But during the next 10, 20, 30 years, what are NATO's countries going to do with their newly upgraded armies and navies and air forces? Are we always going to be friends and allies, or will time and circumstances change things?
Every military buildup of the last two centuries was intended to deter some rival power. And they tended to end badly, for everyone involved.
