On June 24, 2025, members of and supporters of Peace Alliance Winnipeg rallied in Winnipeg to speak out against militarism and Canada’s membership in NATO. The rally was held in the wake of the recent illegal attack on Iran by the United States and Israel, the ongoing slaughter in Gaza by the Israeli military and plans announced by the Canadian government to greatly increase its level of military spending.
Posts Tagged ‘militarism’
Resist NATO and Work for Peace
Posted: June 26, 2025 in Peace, WarTags: anti-war, militarism, NATO, Peace
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Canada Out of NATO!
Posted: April 4, 2024 in Nibbling on The Empire, Peace, War, WinnipegTags: Canada, history, militarism, NATO, news, Peace, Russia, Ukraine, War
Winnipeg, April 4, 2024: Members of Peace Alliance Winnipeg marked the 75th anniversary of the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with an information picket in the Osborne Villlage neighbourhood of Winnipeg. Following is the text of the statement they distributed.
Canada Must Get Out of NATO
It’s High Time and Long Overdue!
The Biden Administration and the heads-of states of other Western powers, including Canada, are preparing to mark the 75th anniversary of the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It will be a gala affair, with much fanfare and chest-thumping among the economic and political elites. But NATO’s continued existence is nothing to celebrate; rather, it is a time for a sober reappraisal of the dangerous role of this political-military alliance, and of Canada’s membership within it.
Neither the parties in the Canadian parliament nor the mainstream corporate media are prepared to seriously examine, much less question, our NATO status. And yet it is precisely our NATO membership – and the ‘obligations’ that entails – which is the mechanism driving increased military spending and preparations for more aggression and war.
Peace activists and organizations in Quebec and across the rest of Canada, together with allies in the labour and people’s movements, need to move this festering issue to the front burner, and intensify grassroots efforts across the country to demand Canada’s withdrawal from NATO and call for the dissolution of this dangerous military pact as a whole.
NATO was formed on April 4, 1949, with Canada as one of its founding members. This aggressive alliance was ostensibly created to preserve peace and stability, and to “safeguard the freedoms of its peoples”, based on the “principles of democracy” and “the rule of law”. Its primary raison-d’être however was to prepare for war against the former Soviet Union, which it considered an existential threat to ‘Western values’, the capitalist order and the maintenance of U.S. hegemony around the world.
Ever since its founding in April 1949, NATO has served as the vehicle to spur the arms race in the name of ‘peace through strength’. In that very same year, the Truman Administration in the United States secretly developed “Operation Dropshot’ to launch a devastating nuclear ‘first-strike’ against the former Soviet Union. Throughout the ‘cold war’ years, the U.S. and its NATO allies always maintained an overwhelming military superiority over the USSR and the Warsaw Pact – a fact that they cynically concealed from public view at the time, but now readily admit.
But NATO did not dissolve when, in the early 1990s, the USSR was dismantled and broken up (along with the Warsaw Treaty). Instead, it seized the opportunity to launch a massive expansion program into Eastern Europe, right up to the borders of the Russian Federation. In February 1990, US Secretary of State James Baker promised that NATO would not expand eastward following the reunification of Germany. His famous phrase “not one inch” was followed by a relentless NATO expansion program.
U.S. imperialist wars, taken under the mantle of NATO, have included the 78-day aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in October 2001, and the toppling of the Kaddafi government in Libya in 2011, to name only a few examples.
At its core, NATO is the muscle enforcing class domination on behalf of Western monopolies and banks, and reflects the colonialist, supremacist policies of its ruling elites. Through its ‘Partnership’ program, NATO is extending its tentacles far beyond the North Atlantic. And it is now openly preparing to launch an Asian variant of NATO, extending its sphere of operations to the Far East to tighten the encirclement of the People’s Republic of China. In today’s world, NATO has become the primary obstacle to peace and stability. Its policies of confrontation are global in scope. Take the war in Ukraine, for example. In the early days of that horrendous conflict, Washington dispatched its NATO puppet, former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to Kyiv on April 9, 2022 to block a potential peace treaty between Ukraine and the Russian Federation. The proposed treaty would have seen the Russian Federation withdraw its troops in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality but NATO insisted on trying to bring Ukraine into the alliance. The results of NATO meddling have been catastrophic for Ukraine with hundreds of thousands killed and injured.
The USA is aggressively pursuing a similar approach in south-east Asia. With support from Canada and other NATO powers, the U.S. empire is trying to provoke a confrontation with China over the province of Taiwan. This provocation includes “academic exchanges” with Taiwanese military personnel being trained at NATO’s Defence College in Rome and training its fighter pilots in the United States, selling weapons to the island province dating from 1979, stationing U.S. troops and regular navy war ships and aircraft passing through the Taiwan Strait. Clearly such actions promote instability in the region and can certainly lead to another war.
NATO promotes instability, aggression and war around the world. On behalf of U.S. imperialism, it threatens, intimidates and uses military might to plunder any country or region in service of its economic and geopolitical interests. It is a monster driving a new round of militarization, bringing humanity to the precipice of nuclear annihilation. It must be dismantled, and Canada must free itselffrom its shackles and move towards a foreign policy of peace and disarmament, based on the UN Charter and international law. Canada’s membership in NATO comes with an incredibly high price-tag. It chains our country to an aggressive, militaristic alliance dominated by the United States, and makes it virtually impossible to deviate from foreign policy decisions made in Washington DC. For instance, NATO’s nuclear “first-use” policy is routinely trotted out as an excuse why Canada (and other NATO countries) must refuse to sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Canada’s NATO commitment also drains massive amounts of budget resources away from desperately needed social programs such as health, education, housing and environmental protection. NATO demands member countries commit 2% of their annual GDP to war and aggression, euphemistically referred to as “defence spending”. Currently Canada wastes $35 billion on war preparations, but with Canada’s $2.9 trillion GDP, that means $58 billion annually must be diverted away from social programs and services like education, healthcare, affordable housing and environmental protection.
The Canadian Peace Congress and the Mouvement Québécois pour la Paix are organizing a country-wide campaign to get Canada out of NATO (as well as NORAD and the ‘Five Eyes’ spy network). This will include organizing public protest actions on Saturday, April 6, 2024 in as many cities and localities as possible. We are also producing leaflets and posters denouncing NATO, educational activities to expose the true nature of this criminal organization, and other initiatives. We appeal to our local Peace Councils and affiliated members, and to other anti-war, labour, women’s and youth organizations to support and join these anti-NATO actions, and to help promote cooperation in building a stronger, more effective peace movement across Canada.
Canada Out of NATO!
No to war, Yes to Peace!
Manufacturing Consent for War in Canada and the United States
Posted: August 26, 2023 in Nibbling on The Empire, WarTags: Canada, militarism, propagande, United States
In this webinar, organized by Peace Alliance Winnipeg, Colleen Bell and Yves Engler explain how governments in Canada and the United States shape public opinion to support their wars. The webinar was moderated by Professor Radhika Desai.
Panelists
Colleen Bell: Professor Bell is an associate professor in the political studies department at the University of Saskatchewan. She is an international relations scholar specializing in theorizations of war and security, and the contested boundary between military and civilian operations in Western counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and stabilizations missions. She is author of The Freedom of Security: Governing Canada in the Age of Counterterrorism (UBC Press) and co-editor of War, Police and Assemblages of Intervention (with Jan Bachmann and Caroline Holmqvist). Her current research projects examine police power in global politics, martial public diplomacy, and the security politics of Canada’s feminist foreign policy. Bell is past president of the International Studies Association-Canada section and current editor of Critical Studies on Security.
Yves Engler: Dubbed “Canada’s version of Noam Chomsky” (Georgia Straight), “one of the most important voices on the Canadian Left” (Briarpatch), “in the mould of I. F. Stone” (Globe and Mail), “part of that rare but growing group of social critics unafraid to confront Canada’s self-satisfied myths” (Quill & Quire), “ever-insightful” (Rabble), “Chomsky-styled iconoclast” (Counterpunch) and a “Leftist gadfly” (Ottawa Citizen), Yves Engler (yvesengler.com) has twelve published books. His latest is Stand on Guard for Whom? — A People’s History of the Canadian Military.
Radhika Desai (moderator) is Professor at the Department of Political Studies, and Director, Geopolitical Economy Research Group, at the University of Manitoba. Her books include Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy (2023), Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (2013), Slouching Towards Ayodhya: From Congress to Hindutva in Indian Politics (2nd rev ed, 2004) and Intellectuals and Socialism: ‘Social Democrats’ and the Labour Party (1994), a New Statesman and Society Book of the Month.
Winnipeggers say “No” to planned new fighter jet purchase
Posted: January 7, 2023 in Peace, War, WinnipegTags: Canadian military spending, militarism, Peace
Winnipeg peace activists joined with their counterparts in several cities in Canada this weekend to reject the federal government’s plan to spend billions on new F-35 fighter jets at a time when citizens are struggling to afford food and shelter.
They distributed the following statement to passers-by.
No Fighter Jets Coalition calls on Trudeau Government to Drop the F35 Deal
While Canadians struggle with rising energy and food costs, extreme weather events, and economic strife this winter, the Trudeau government is trying to push through a $7 billion deal for 16 F-35 stealth fighter jets with American weapons giant Lockheed Martin. On December 22, Global News and La Presse reported that the Canadian government is planning on signing a contract with Lockheed Martin early in the new year. According to a leak by federal government officials, the Department of National Defence has received approval to buy the F-35s despite years of widespread opposition from Canadian citizens, celebrities and parliamentarians. The government is advertising the cost as $7 billion; however, that is only the cost of the initial buy-in for 16 F-35’s. Further, while the government is advertising the cost as $19 billion for the full order of 88 fighter jets, according to the No Fighter Jets campaign 2020 report, From Acquisition to Disposal: Uncovering the true cost of 88 new fighter jets, the lifecycle cost of buying 88 fighter jets is estimated to be at least $76.8 billion over 30 years.
Experts, including former procurement chief at National Defence Alan Williams, have denounced this procurement, because the total cost of this purchase has not been fully disclosed by the federal government. Williams said: “It is distressing to read information being made public regarding billion-dollar procurements that is so opaque and piecemeal rather than being transparent and comprehensive…(It) makes it appear the government is hiding the truth from Canadians.”
Our report Soaring: The Harms and Risks of Fighter Jets and Why Canada Must Not Buy a New Fleet details the many adverse financial, social and environmental impacts of fighter jets. Excessive operational and maintenance costs, air pollution, extreme noise and damaging air weapons training in and around Indigenous communities are some of the many harms of fighter jets. As the U.S. Government Accountability Office explains, the F-35 continues to be plagued with cost overruns and technical flaws. In its April 2022 study, the GAO found that the F-35 has over 900 open deficiencies.
A new fleet of fossil fuel-powered F-35s will lock Canada into decades of carbon intensive militarism and prevent us from decarbonizing. One F-35 releases more carbon emissions in one long-range flight than a car does in a year.
Moreover, the F-35 is a stealth fighter jet designed for first strike attack, meaning it is only effective as an offensive warplane used against other countries. It has also been designed to carry the B61-12 tactical nuclear weapon and will put Canada in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Fighter Jets are weapons of war and exacerbate global warming.
As winter sets in and Canadians struggle to make ends meet, it is irresponsible and unjust for the Trudeau government to spend public money on American warplanes. Instead, the federal government should invest in affordable housing, health care, education, economic assistance, and climate action. Canada’s planned F-35 procurement is unacceptable and immoral and must be canceled.
For more information on the campaign, visit the “No Fighter Jets” website. In Winnipeg, contact Peace Alliance Winnipeg.
Peace Activists in the United States have launched a campaign they hope will result in an international ban on weaponized drones. Their new website will tell you more than you want to know about the deployment and lethal effects of these airborne killing machines. It also has suggestions for action and a petition you can sign that calls on the US government, the United Nations, and all the countries of the world to act on this issue.
There is a tendency among Canadian peace activists to see this as primarily a US problem, given that country’s well publicized drone assassination campaign that has resulted in at least 16,901 people killed and 3,922 wounded in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen in recent years.
However, according to Project Ploughshares, as many as 102 countries use drones for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and 35 have weaponized drones. Drones are not only deployed to spy on or kill “enemies” but are also often used against dissidents within their respective countries.
Canada has two models of drone aircraft that it uses for surveillance and is planning to acquire weaponized drones in the next couple of years.
Having observed Canada’s sorry record as Washington’s poodle and willing participant in US and NATO military campaigns in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, I have no doubt that these new weapons will not be used to defend Canada. Arguably, Canada’s armed forces were last used in the defence of the country in 1945 and barring a couple of peacekeeping missions, our wars since then have been aggressive ones fought to extend the reach of western capital.
So, please join the international campaign in whatever way makes sense to you, but as well, cast a critical gaze on your own country’s military programs and speak out however you can.
Canada’s military: soldiers or psychopaths?
Posted: July 7, 2012 in Afghanistan, Peace, WarTags: antiwar, Canada, Canadian Armed Forces, Gen. Walt Natynczyk, militarism, military suicides, psychopaths, War
Canada’s Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Walt Natynczyk Photo: Jake Wright, The Canadian Press
This interview with Canada’s Chief of Defence Staff says more about the psychopathology of militarism than I would have believed could be found in a daily newspaper. Read along with me and ask yourself what kind of madness are we allowing to develop in this country.
My thoughts are in the right hand column. I’d be interested in hearing yours.
Canada’s top soldier says troops ready and eager for new overseas missions
By Bill Graveland, The Canadian Press
Winnipeg Free Press, July 7, 2012
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CALGARY – When it comes to future missions for the Canadian Forces, Canada’s top soldier has to battle to keep his eager troops satisfied with staying out of major combat zones for now. |
Our military exists, or should exist, to defend this country from aggressors while occasionally helping Torontonians dig out of blizzards and Manitobans fight floods. However, it seems that rather than guardians of national sovereignty and security we have a pack of blood thirsty attack dogs on a leash, restrained only by the herculean efforts of Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Walt Natynczyk. |
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Canada’s military presence in Afghanistan will come to an end once the current training mission concludes in 2014 and Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Walt Natynczyk acknowledges that’s a disappointment for many soldiers, sailors and air personnel. |
If Natynczyk is correct in his assessment, we have allowed our military to become a haven for a large number of homicidal psychopaths. Is this what happens after a decade of war? |
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“We have some men and women who have had two, three and four tours and what they’re telling me is ‘Sir, we’ve got that bumper sticker. Can we go somewhere else now?’” Natynczyk said in an exclusive interview with The Canadian Press in Calgary. |
These men and women need help. Failing that, they should never be allowed to own anything sharper than soup spoons. |
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“You also have the young sailors, soldiers, airmen and women who have just finished basic training and they want to go somewhere and in their minds it was going to be Afghanistan. So if not Afghanistan, where’s it going to be? They all want to serve.” |
I like it when our troops are on hand to fight floods and forest fires. I’d prefer not paying taxes to help them make their bones overseas. If they are really that eager to kill people, our American cousins seem to have an insatiable appetite for cannon fodder. |
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But Natynczyk is unsure about what is in store for the Canadian Forces or even himself for that matter. |
If you believe that, I have some prime muskeg, suitable for agriculture, that you won’t be able to resist. |
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He has been on the job for four years, which is past the normal tenure for someone in his position, and if he knows what is going to happen next, he isn’t providing any details. |
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“I’ll just keep on sprinting in this job until I’m told to get off the playing field and recognizing that I’m living in a pretty good time to be in the military,” he said. |
Ah, so many people to kill, so little time! |
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“I never aspired to this job. I just serve. I serve Canadians and the country and look on every day as an opportunity to make a contribution.” |
If you really want to serve, Walt, there’s a Starbuck’s near you that is always looking for talent. |
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Natynczyk said he is telling Canadian troops to keep their “kit packed up” because the world is an unpredictable place right now. |
Iran? Syria? Northern BC, if the First Nations don’t allow Enbridge to build it’s Northern Gateway Pipeline? |
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“The world is turbulent right now and the fact is our allies want more of Canada, more of the men and women who wear Canadian uniforms,” he said. |
Our allies want us to kill more brown people who have the misfortune to be in some proximity to undeveloped fossil fuels. We happen to be good at it, I guess. |
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“I’ve told them all to catch up on that training that lapsed while we had this high operational tempo between Afghanistan and the Olympics and Haiti and Libya, and let’s make sure we have all qualifications and training up to date so when we’re called upon we’re ready to go.” |
We’re learning new ways to kill people every day. |
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The general said outside of Afghanistan, Canada has a number of other smaller missions underway including in the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean. |
Oh, and guess what! We’re opening up seven new military bases on foreign soil in Senegal, South Korea, Kenya, Singapore, Kuwait, Jamaica and Singapore. |
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Natynczyk said he is satisfied with the success of the Canadian mission to Afghanistan and pointed out that he flew into Kabul on a commercial airliner for the first time when he visited troops in the city last month. |
Let’s see now . . . at great cost to ourselves and and a much greater cost to the Afghan people, we’ve helped a gang of drug lords maintain some control of a couple of urban centres which, when NATO leaves, will undoubtedly revert to Taliban control. The good news is, however, when the dust finally settles, commercial airlines will still fly into Kabul – just like they did before we invaded. |
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He said the departure of Canadian and U.S. troops will give the Afghan forces the little push that they need to succeed. “It has helped the Afghans in a sense, taking ownership of their own security. One of the real challenges was the sense that NATO and our allies were going to stay there forever. (That) actually was not helpful in terms of their own culture and own atmosphere,” he said. |
Natynczyk is a master of understatement. |
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Natynczyk is focusing much of his efforts now in making sure more attention is being paid to injured soldiers and their families, especially those suffering from the psychological effects of war. |
Shattered bodies and broken minds are the inevitable outcomes of war. Why is Natynczyk so eager to get into another one? |
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“It’s almost easier to handle people with physical injuries, with physical wounds. People can see it. They can understand it, whether it be shrapnel, a broken leg, even these horrific amputations,” he said. |
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“It’s much more difficult in the mental injury, whether it be post traumatic stress, operational stress injury, traumatic brain injury because we’re just understanding the beginning of a process of understanding the complex nature of this.” |
According to The Department of National Defence, 19 men and one woman died by suicide in the Canadian Forces in 2011, up from 12 in 2010. Since 1996, 187 soldiers have committed suicide. How many more suicides are we going to tolerate while the military is figuring out the “complex nature of this”? |
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Natynczyk said he talked about mental health on his last visit to Kabul, especially about overcoming the “stigma” of mental issues and making sure people come forward if they have a problem. |
And how’s that workin’ for ya, Walt? |
The absurdities of Empire
Posted: October 16, 2008 in Nibbling on The EmpireTags: militarism, Pentagon, United States
Well, our election’s over folks, so let’s get back to what’s really important – laughing at Americans.
Well, not all Americans. Not even red state Americans. Not even Obama and McCain, tripping over each other to be the most warlike. Not even Sarah Palin.
No, let’s just take a moment to chuckle at the fantasies of one sector of the military industrial complex that met in Washington for a couple of days last month to plan THE NEXT BIG THING – rocketing (literally) squads of fierce Marines wherever they are needed to strike down evil-doers within two hours of whatever evil-doing needs undoing.
Flash Gordon lives on in an idea that dates to the time Popular Mechanics was a popular magazine.
It boggles the mind. Here’s a gang that can’t win a war. Really, they can’t. They are getting their imperial backsides kicked in Afghanistan, even though they have bombed just about everything that can be bombed. They’ve lost Iraq, though it will be years before they admit it publically. All they are good for is pushing around the poorest of the poor, like Haiti, where they overthrew the first honest democratic politician Haitians had had in living memory.
And they are bankrupt. Wall Street is crumbling and the U.S. government can only operate because of the largesse of international lenders. Fidel Castro, bless him, recently found the perfect way to express the enormity of the US public debt, which he estimates to be $10, 266 trillion. (Maybe he meant S10.266 trillion. However, when you roll in all undfunded public liabilities, the number zooms to $59.1 trillion, but who is going to quibble over a few trillion here and there?) Says Castro:
A man working eight hours a day, without missing a second, and counting one hundred one-dollar bills per minute, during 300 days in the year, would need 710 billion years to count that amount of money.
And these space cadets want to build enormously expensive rocket ships to dispatch small squads of Marines through space to strike “terrorists.”
Sigh. Chuckle. Smirk.
Pentagon envisions spaceship troops
By Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY, Oct. 14, 2008
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon wants to rocket troops through space to hot spots anywhere on the globe within two hours, and planners spent two days last month discussing how to do it, military documents show.
Civilian and military officials held a two-day conference at the National Security Space Office to plan development of the Small Unit Space Transport and Insertion (SUSTAIN) program. The invitation to the conference called the notion of space troopers a “potential revolutionary step in getting combat power to any point in the world in a timeframe unachievable today.” Attendees included senior Army, Marine, Navy and Air Force officers.
Paul S. Graham 