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Should Canada Join AUKUS?

Published by Ryan Flannagan on September 12, 2023

The Quick Answer is No. Let’s start off by answering the question of what is AUKUS? First, AUKUS stands for Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. As best I can understand, AUKUS is a three-country defence pact that proposes the involved countries work together closely on several defence-related issues in the Pacific region, including the transfer of technology that would allow Australia to acquire nuclear submarines (henceforth to called SSN = Submersible Ship Nuclear). It’s this last point…

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Canada in Ukraine

Published by Ryan Flannagan on July 10, 2023

Canada’s Policy Position on the Ukraine War: The Ugly Reasons Canada’s number one foreign policy challenge is Ukraine. To date, Canada has sunk nearly $3 billion into this war and Justin Trudeau and his cabinet have been full-throated in their support for Ukraine and its entry into NATO. To many, Justin Trudeau is an unserious person who cares very little about foreign policy issues. To that, add the fact the man seems a bit of a pacifist, or at the…

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Problems in Canada Special Forces and What to Do About it?

Problems in Canada Special Forces and What to Do About it?

Published by Ryan Flannagan on June 9, 2023

There have been two recent articles here in Canada about Canadian Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM) that identified issues within Canada’s special forces community. The first addresses a number of HR issues within Joint Task Force 2 (JTF-2). These issues range from burnout to the mishandling of sexual violence allegations. The second article outlines what I would call the “poor cousin syndrome” that various units in the CANSOFCOM have toward JTF-2, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) tier-one fighting unit. In…

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What Capabilities Should the CAF Go Without?

What Capabilities Should the CAF Go Without?

Published by Ryan Flannagan on February 9, 2023

I recently listened to a podcast where Canada’s Chief of Defence Staff talked about the future of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). As things tend to go with senior leaders from any large governmental organization, it was a guarded talk. There was however one thing I seized on from the General’s remarks. Specifically, on two occasions, he indicated that the CAF would have to choose capabilities (current or future) that it wouldn’t be able to take on. The comment got…

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Why the Canadian Armed Forces can’t recruit enough soldiers?

Why the Canadian Armed Forces can’t recruit enough soldiers?

Published by Ryan Flannagan on October 13, 2022

In the following article by the Canadian Press, a list of reasons (or excuses) are provided as to why the CAF can’t recruit the number of soldiers it needs. Among other reasons given are the pandemic, the sexual assault controversy involving a small number of the senior brass, or the unstated/implied reason of the CAF “values” not lining up with some unknown percentage of the Canadian population. More on this last reason below. Here are the recruitment numbers listed in…

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Americans: Why do you put up with Canada’s defence spending?

Americans: Why do you put up with Canada’s defence spending?

Published by Ryan Flannagan on June 29, 2022

I’ve now had just over 800 people download my first two novels. To my surprise, the majority of my readers indicate they’re from the United States. This being the case, I thought I would write this blog post as an open letter to my American readership.  And what am I writing to my American readers about? Just this – Why in the name of whatever you believe in do you tolerate countries like Canada spending virtually nothing on its own…

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Top 3 Books To Set You Up For Success

Published by Ryan Flannagan on May 5, 2022

No Matter How Hard Life Gets At any given moment in time, life can suck. We all have bad spells. For some of us, it’s a bad day, for others it’s several years.   I can tell you that for the past two years, my own life has been particularly challenging. Perhaps the toughest two years of my life. Health issues, an extraordinary professional challenge, a new job, the selling and buying of houses, and the moving of a family…

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