@Omega1759:
@Young:
I don’t understand where this is all coming from, you guys understand that there are Canadians on these forums reading your insulting comments right… Ok, just checking.
I’m a Canadian citizen but US taxpayer, and I think the Canadians, Germans and some others deserve some heat for not taking their share of responsibility for defense of the western world. The US spends 3.5% of GDP on defense, Canada is at 0.9%. It’s free riding, at the minimum Canada should spend 1.5%-2.0% of GDP but it hasn’t been the case for nearly 30 years.
Any serious country would have a serious foreign policy and military, but instead Canada is the lalaland, preferring to criticize and supposedly take the higher moral ground.
I partially agree and partially disagree, but none of us really knows what gets said in the corridors of NATO.
Winning World Wars and having the dominant military force on Earth definitely has huge economic advantages, like having the world reserve currency, being able to oversee/defend/dictate trade routes, and have “bases” in countries that possess economically vital resources, just to name a few. The West, and I’m including Japan and S Korea for convenience, has shared mightily in that prosperity since 1945 (Japan, for example, hasn’t had to worry about access to cheap oil for decades), so much so that the post-WWII generations are largely ignorant of how important the military balance of power is for their own prosperity, particularly those in countries that have benefited economically from living under the US umbrella.
That said, the US didn’t assume the role of lone global superpower reluctantly, whilst kicking and screaming. It wants it for all the reasons just mentioned, and many others. I’m just guessing, but they may even be secretly OK with other nations not spending comparable amounts on their armed forces. It keeps them from evolving into competitors down the road. The Western countries have shown at least as much propensity for fighting among themselves as against others. But who really knows for sure?