I was on a hockey high last night and pretty much all of today. That is until I read an article about how much Canada profits from the sale of arms and military equipment to countries that are involved in wars and who we probably should not be doing business with. There is a perception that post-WWII, Canada turned to “peacekeeping” instead of war fighting and over the course of 50 years or so, peacekeeping became our international identity. It’s a fictitious identity that the public believes because few have read about Canadian foreign relations in the post-war era. This is not a condemnation of anyone because, quite frankly, reading about this topic is pretty dry. We aren’t peacekeepers and our military should never have been named as such. That’s a long and frustrating discussion for another time though.
The selling of military technology is something Canada definitely should not promote. Sadly, it’s a dirty part of our history if one looks at how we sold nuclear technology to other countries without restricting their use to non-militarized means. This lapse in international judgement led to more proliferation of nuclear weapons in the India/Pakistan region. According to the latest Economist cover, that border is one of the most dangerous in the world. So our little part in this mess is that they have nuclear weapons thanks to our technology.
The moral of the story? things aren’t as they seem and even though Canada doesn’t fight in a lot of conflicts these days and how we love to say were a demilitarized version of the US, we play our part in making sure other nations, and many bad guys, have the weapons they need to continue their work. There is big money in the arms business and Canada is a willing entrepreneur looking for other streams of income.
