I want to return to a topic with which I have dealt several times: Taiwan. Further, I want to revisit an article upon which I have already commented: “American Support for Taiwan Must Be Unambiguous: To Keep the Peace, Make Clear to China That Force Won’t Stand,” By Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign …
Category Archives: Nuclear war
It is time (4)
I’m going to the bottom of the list I posted a few days ago to deal with “Foreign and defence policy and the compelling need ~ see What Canada needs from a couple of day ago ~ to face a dangerous world with confidence, including, especially how to deal with China, Iran, North Korea and Russia, but …
Being prepared
Professor Jean-Christophe Boucher a foreign and defence policy expert at the University of Calgary has released some poll results about how Canadians feel about military missions. I do no find the overall results shocking … … because I remain convinced that most Canadians neither know nor care much about either foreign or defence policy. They, …
Those fabulous fifties?
Anyone else remember the 1950s? Norman Spector, a former federal and provincial public servant, who served at the very highest levels of government, diplomat (Ambassador to Israel), corporate “communications” (public relations) guru and author, remembers: And so do I. But I don’t just remember high school dances and young love, because the 1950s were a …
Pushing the boundaries
I see in an article in The Economist that Russia is, once again, pushing the boundaries of internationally acceptable strategic conduct. The issue is that on 25 November 2019 Russia launched a satellite, Kosmos 2542. Then “Eleven days after its launch it disgorged another satellite, labelled Kosmos 2543 … [and, later] … On July 15th, …
I wonder if anyone is listening
Michelle Carbert, writing in the Globe and Mail, says that “Canada’s top general [General Jonathan Vance, ⇐ the Chief of the Defence Staff] says Russia poses the most immediate military threat to this country and the international community today, while China represents a significant risk for cyber attacks … [and, the point was echoed by …
The Trump Peace Plan
On the subject of the Trump Mideast Peace Plan, I agree with both The Economist which says, “as a blueprint for a two-state solution it was dead on arrival,” and with the Globe and Mail’s Mark MacKinnon who writes that “President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan … aims to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict almost …
What next?
Terry Glavin, writing in Maclean’s magazine, says, and I fully agree, that “It may well have been capricious in the extreme for Donald Trump’s White House to order that spectacular hit in Iraq, but lets face it: the airstrike target was the Lord of the Flies. He got nothing less than he visited upon countless …
We need to get Canada up off its knees
Terry Glavin, writing in MacLean’s magazine, says that “With Beijing’s most determined allies decisively crushed by a democratic alliance in Hong Kong’s district elections over the weekend, at least somebody’s putting up some kind of a fight against Xi Jinping’s increasingly savage aggression and belligerence. Because it certainly isn’t Canada.” He reminds us, as I …
Big news
This, from Murray Brewster on CBC News, is big news … maybe. It is big because of the potential costs. I was in and around the procurement world when the current North Warning System was approved and built. I can assure readers that the $1+ Billion price tag was a big deal in the 1980s …