With America in decline at home and its influence waning abroad, the question of which nation might be the next global superpower has gained urgency. While the world arguably needs a dominant power to protect global order and prevent regional conflicts from spiralling, this can’t just be any country with sufficient arms and ambition. America’s replacement should be a moral superpower, one that safeguards freedom and enables prosperity for every nation, as the U.S. has done for the last 80 years. In the first installment of this two-part series, Lynne Cohen proposed that India could fulfill that role. She put forth 10 characteristics that together make a moral superpower, and dug into the first five, examining India’s economic and demographic strengths. In this second part, Cohen focusses on politics and power, assessing India’s performance on the final five criteria, starting with perhaps the most important – military might.
Outside of the people who’ve lived it, no one can ever know the true nature of war, or the reasons why some men willingly put their lives on the line for a cause bigger than themselves. One who does is Wali, a retired Canadian Armed Forces sniper who volunteered to fight for Ukraine almost as soon as the Russian invasion began. In an interview with C2C Journal’s Fin DePencier from central Ukraine just before he returned home from the front, Wali offers a veteran’s take on the challenges faced by Ukraine and its International Legion of volunteers, his own horrific experiences on the battlefield and the surprising historical precedents that may shape the outcome of the 21st century’s most dangerous conflict.
Since the late Roman Empire, when legions could not move until distant functionaries approved budgets for food and other essentials, bureaucrats pursuing selfish agendas have sometimes done more damage than enemy action. Canada’s politicized national defence administration is a modern example of this phenomenon, and the concerted attempt to destroy the Canadian Forces Reserves as a meaningful organization surely ranks among the more damaging cases. Mathew Preston, through his review of C.P. Champion’s Relentless Struggle, illuminates the stirring campaign of those who fought to keep our Reserves alive.
Wonder why China and Saudi Arabia are publicly berating Canada with seeming impunity these days? Well, who respects a country that is so blatantly unserious about defending itself, especially in a world where tensions are clearly rising among the major powers and their allies? As Ottawa prepares to take possession of some worn-out Australian F-18 fighters bought on the cheap, Mathew Preston undertakes a detailed comparison of Aussie and Canuck military capabilities and defence policy and comes up with mortifying answers to these questions.
