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Canada’s military has numerous needs that cry out for funding. To meet the NATO involvements Canada is now considering — these include deployments in Iraq, Ukraine, Africa and the Baltic, some to discourage moves by Russia, some to achieve NATO’s heightened anti-terrorism focus — Canada needs more men and women in uniform and decent pay for its personnel, as well as modern equipment.

Our annual $20-billion military budget needs to rise rapidly, doubling in the years ahead to adequately prepare for whatever the future might deliver, as well as to demonstrate that we’ve matured enough to fully pull our weight, earn international respect, and avoid, as Hillier fears, being “marginalized.”

Without a robust military our views count for little with friend and foe alike, no matter how much we might want to pat ourselves on the back for being influential. The virtue in melding diplomacy with military might, to avoid negotiating from a position of weakness, can be seen by looking at the EU’s feckless response to Russian advances in Ukraine and before that in Georgia. As the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace put it, “the EU no longer commands military authority. And as long as the EU is unwilling to project such authority, it will remain weak in relation to Russian leaders who are prepared to spill blood on the altar of territorial control, buffer zones, and power balances.”

Fortunately for Europeans and Canadians who want to their nations’ views to count, the Trump administration will be forcing NATO’s laggards to do what they and we should have all been doing unprompted. This month, U.S. Secretary of Defence James Mattis issued an ultimatum to NATO members, telling them to live up to their word or see the U.S. withdraw its support, a warning emphatically repeated afterward by Vice President Mike Pence at the Munich security conference.

President Barack Obama tried to get us to man up on NATO, so did president George W. Bush. They failed because they were perceived as too weak to press their point. President Trump does not suffer from the same perception. Watch all of NATO’s laggards — Canada not excepted — fall into line for our own benefit and for the benefit of world peace.