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BY CHRIS HOUSTON

The U.S. is the only NATO member to ever activate the defense alliance. Yet the U.S. has the audacity to lecture Canada on our domestic spending priorities while simultaneously needing support from Canadian and Mexican firefighters. Even while receiving international firefighting support, the U.S. has halted almost all aid to others.

Canada doesn’t need lessons from our southern neighbor’s president, a man already convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records who currently threatens illegal annexations of Greenland and Canada.

For months, Donald Trump has been critical of Canada for spending less than 2 percent of GDP on our military. Canada is a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a military alliance of 32 nations that commit to mutual self-defense. In 2014, NATO members agreed to a guideline of spending 2 percent of GDP on militaries. Canada spent an estimated $41 billion (1.37 percent of GDP) on our military in 2024. By dollar value, Canada is one of the top spenders. Trump doesn’t mention that. Regardless, the logic that military spending should be linked to economic success instead of needs is flawed. Such a rubric discounts efficient peace-building and incentivizes expensive solutions.

Canada is one of nine NATO members that spend less than 2 percent. Five nations spend less than US$1 billion. Yet Trump appears to have no beef with them and a hyperfixation on critiquing Canada.

NATO was founded in 1949. Initially 12 members, the military bloc has expanded almost threefold to include most of Europe. In his recent book The Peace, former Canadian Senator and retired Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire criticized the failing tactic of increasing militarization as a way to advance peace. Dallaire calls for more emphasis on “respect for the individual human being, instead of the nation-state.” Rather than continuing to amass more and more arms, Dallaire calls for a “shared understanding” of the global vulnerability to climate change and disease outbreaks and cooperation between nations for a better and more peaceful world.

Nonetheless, global leaders continue to spend on armies and expand military blocs, claiming it is the path to peace. That tactic is failing. As global arms spending reaches record levels, our world is becoming less peaceful. In November, risk analysts Verisk Maplecroft reported that “conflict-affected areas across the world have grown 65 percent since 2021” and described conflict deaths as “on course to breach 200,000 by the end of the year,” 29 percent more than in 2021.

The U.S. is the world’s top military spender. NATO estimates that the U.S. spent US$967 billion on its military in 2024—3.4 percent of its GDP. NATO members spent a combined US$1.47 trillion on militaries in 2024, and 66 percent of that was spent by the U.S. The U.S. has such a massive military that it sends fighter jets to fly over football games.

The NATO pact is governed by a legal agreement with 14 parts, the most important one being Article 5, the commitment to treat an attack on a NATO member as an attack on all. Since 1949, the U.S. remains the only nation to have benefited from NATO activation, in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. If you thought the sole beneficiary of a 76-year pact might adopt a stance of gratitude or humility, brace for disappointment.

On the same day that Trump ranted at a Florida news conference, “Don’t forget: We basically protect Canada,” the inverse was occurring. On Jan. 7, Québec dispatched two Canadair CL-415 Super Scooper firefighting aircraft to support the response to the deadly Pacific Palisades fire in Los Angeles. Québec’s wildfire management agency has sent firefighting aircraft to the U.S. since 1994. As the fires grew, Québec responded to a U.S. request by sending two more aircraft, bolstering the Canadian aid to four Super Scoopers, 12 pilots and six technicians.

As the U.S. uses prisoners as slave labor to fight fires, as it relies on Canadian support, and as we just experienced the hottest year on record, Trump’s rebuke of Canadian spending priorities is tone-deaf.

Although the U.S. relies on international support from Mexico and Canada to fight fires, the U.S. State Department recently issued a memo to its embassies to halt nearly all of the nation’s foreign aid. Military aid to Israel and Egypt, plus emergency food aid, was spared. In recent years, the U.S. has been the world’s largest aid funder, and now support for health, water, sanitation, and shelter is at risk. The irony of halting aid while receiving aid appears to have been missed by Trump’s administration.

Most disturbing of all, and in stark contrast to international law and norms, Trump continues to threaten to annex both Canada and Greenland. The U.S. therefore currently occupies multiple juxtaposed positions. It is the only nation to ever invoke the NATO commitment to shared defense, yet it critiques Canadian military spending. It does so while relying on Canadian assistance, as it halts its own aid spending. Trump demands Canada contribute more to a mutual defense alliance while threatening us with annexation. I’ve seen sitcoms with more credible storylines.

Yet this is no joke. Pauses to aid programs for disease eradication threaten lives, including American lives; diseases don’t care about borders.

None of this makes sense for the safety of Americans or anyone else. The massive upticks in global military spending have not created a safer world. The likelihood of using weapons increases with their existence. The consequences of abruptly halting funding for disease eradication, climate change adaptation, and recovery from disaster could save the U.S. a tiny fraction of its budget. Still, the additional suffering, instability, and consequences for the world will be massively more. All of it leaves the world more volatile.

The audacity of America isn’t just tone-deaf—it’s an active threat to global peace.

(Chris Houston is the president of the Canadian Peace Museum nonprofit organization.)