Below is a 15/10/26 letter to Jeyan Jeganathan of TVO’s The Rundown. May it inspire more such letters!

Hello Jeyan,

Last evening we watched the topic “Is Canada’s Military Ready for a More Dangerous World?” 
I was concerned with your interview of Ann Fitz-Gerald from the Balsillie School of International Affairs. I was troubled by her use of the term “deter” as in we need to have this “Defence, Security and Resilience Bank” to invest in deterrence. I was expecting you to ask her what she meant by deterrence but it never happened. I find this to be a problem on other news programs where it is just assumed that Canada needs to spend $ billions on “deterrence” as is being planned by the Federal Liberal government under PM Mark Carney – actually up to 5% of GDP or $150 billion every single year by the 2030’s. 

I believe the present Russian invasion of Ukraine could have been avoided had we understood the Russian people’s psyche as represented by V. Putin. This could have been accomplished if all nations had well trained diplomats, perhaps under the aegis of the United Nations. They could have met with the Russian government and determined what was bothering them – the encroachment of NATO on their border. U.S. presidents in the 90’s had promised Russian leaders that NATO would not move one metre east of Germany. 

Another question about “deterrence” is who profits from it. It is the war profiteering arms manufacturers. Canada purchases most of its military materials from U.S. companies like Lockheed Martin. One purpose of this new bank is to create a homegrown military industrial strategy to create our own arms using Canadian business and employees. The intent is also to sell these arms abroad to the highest bidders. Other nations are already filling this market. But President and General Dwight Eisenhower warned of the “military industrial complex” in his departure speech from the White House. He said this complex stole food from the hungry and homes from the poor. Canada should not go down that path. 

A fully armed world as we are approaching now is a 100% recipe for war as it was in 1914, when the insignificant assassin of Arch Duke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary could be likened to a man with a match standing in a pool of gasoline and striking the match. But now we have the nuclear weapons option for a national leader with his/her back to the wall – a potential end of civilization!

I suggest we spend a fraction of what is planned on arms and train diplomats to put out conflict fires before they result in war. Besides, our greatest threat is not other peoples, but the climate crisis. We should be spending our resources on mitigation and adaptation to that, not weapons of war. 

Sincerely,
Murray Lumley