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175. Dr. Scott Sheffield: How to Honour Veterans on Remembrance Day
Aaron Pete and Associate Professor of History Dr. Scott Sheffield as they discuss how to honour veterans this Remembrance Day. They explore the contributions of Indigenous service members in Canada, insights from WWII community efforts, and historical perspectives on current conflicts like the war in Ukraine.
Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger Than Me podcast. Here is your host, aaron.
Aaron Pete:Peete, this is a time of reflection, a time to look back at our past the world wars Canada has been in, how our communities approached them, indigenous people's service in the military and what that looked like. Recognizing our veterans and understanding how to acknowledge them in a good and thoughtful way, and also asking what can we learn from the past? Today I'm speaking with a historian about what we can learn from the past, how we can honor our veterans and what the future looks like in terms of the conflicts we're facing. My guest today is Scott Sheffield. Scott, it is an honor to have you back on. I have been looking forward to this for some time. I find you to be a wealth of knowledge and I really enjoyed our first interview. But we're in the new studio now, so first would you mind briefly introducing yourself?
Dr. Scott Sheffield:Absolutely. Thank you for having me back, aaron. I'm Dr Scott Sheffield. I'm an associate professor of history at the University of the Fraser Valley and most of my career I've specialized in the experience of Indigenous peoples in the Second World War in Canada and elsewhere around the world, as well as Indigenous veterans, and then in the last four or five years I've begun to shift into looking at the role of community on British Columbia's home front during the Second World War and British Columbians' experience of war.
Aaron Pete:We are recording this on Indigenous Peoples Remembrance Day. Would you mind connecting us with that? What are your reflections on the service of Indigenous people in past wars?
Dr. Scott Sheffield:Yeah, it's a really important topic. It's interesting.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:It feels like we're in a very different space than we were 25, 30 years ago when I started my own research into this topic, it was not as widely discussed then.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:First Nations veterans groups were agitating and advocating for recognition of their service, of their sacrifice and also of some of their grievances around inequitable access to veterans' benefits and making some progress in the 1990s and the early 2000s, in that Just today I opened up the CBC News website and there were two stories about Indigenous veterans on the front page and that's a new thing, you know.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:So I think that we're in a space where, in an era where we're trying to walk a path of reconciliation, the stories of Indigenous veterans, their experiences, the challenges they faced when they returned home, are being talked about. They're part now of how we remember the Second World War more broadly, and that memory of the Second World War remains important to Canadians, I think, to our sense of identity. It was a time period of great challenge for the country. It was a time period where the values for which we were fighting were meaningful and, you know, philosophically important democracy, freedom, equality even if those weren't always lived up to on a daily basis inside Canada, and I think the role that thousands of Indigenous men and women played serving in the Second World War helped to highlight some of those inequities after they returned home and began to change the arena in which those rights discussions were held in the post-war period up to the 1970s, where we finally get the federal government kind of abandoning assimilation as its guiding principle in Indian affairs.
Aaron Pete:One piece that I think is really important that we cover because I still continue to hear it since the last time we talked and I've been able to kind of point it out to people is that there's this belief that I think is widely held, that in order to be able to serve, indigenous men and women had to give up their status cards in order to be able to serve. Would you mind clarifying that yet again?
Dr. Scott Sheffield:It's an incredibly widely held belief. Almost any time I've given public talks, if I've spoken in class, especially if I have Indigenous students. This is a widely shared story and I believe there is some kernels of truth to it. And I believe there is some kernels of truth to it, but the underlying reality is the overwhelming majority of the roughly 42 or 4,300 status Indian veterans that came home at the end of the Second World War remain status Indians after the war.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:There were some who enfranchised, and I suspect that the root of this story comes from the efforts of particular Indian agents.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:You know for them, if they had statistics, that they could show to their bosses in Ottawa that they had encouraged more enfranchisement, which was the legal way of unmaking a status Indian right when somebody would surrender status and become a Canadian citizen, no-transcript. They may even have believed they were doing what was in that person's best interest, and so I think that might well be the root of that. I think that might have happened in different parts of the country, with overzealous Indian agents perhaps using that to that purpose. But there is no regulation that required the surrendering of status either to enlist or to gain access to veterans benefits. There was never a policy. There was no discussion. In all of the correspondence I've read over more than two and a half decades researching this, it's literally never discussed in Indian affairs, amongst Indian agents, amongst senior command officials in Ottawa and, as I said, the underlying reality is probably more than 4,000 of the 4,300 status Indian veterans at the end of the war remained status and lived on reserve, which wouldn't be possible if they had to surrender their status.
Aaron Pete:It's one area that I think is really interesting because we are going through this process of reconciliation of history, I would say, and part of that is uncovering the horrible atrocities, but some of it also comes back to First Nations and Indigenous people to start to grapple with the misunderstandings or trying to bring back and understand the actual facts of history. And it's one area where, when we sat down the first time, I was shocked because that's something I had just had in my head for such a long time but never had any research paper or documents or anything to refer to. It was just kind of in the zeitgeist of society that that was the case, and I enjoy clearing those things up because then we can go and focus on other things. But I think that's an important one. We cover the other piece just around Indigenous people and serving in the war.
Aaron Pete:The other piece that I find admirable or deep about it is that right now we're in a time where we're trying to reconcile the past and it feels like things are tense. Things are more polarized than I'd expect them to be when we're trying to resolve these issues, more polarized than I'd expect them to be when we're trying to resolve these issues. And one area we see is that of course, things were difficult during World War I and World War II, that Indigenous people, First Nations people, were not being treated well overall, like the reserve system was not doing any benefits. There was Indian residential schools taking place during that period, Yet despite all of that, Indigenous people chose to serve in the war. And right now I hear Indigenous people and they're allowed to say this that they don't validate Canada or they don't believe in it. Yet we had people during a much more challenging period of our history willing to serve, and I think there's something to learn there. Would you mind reflecting on that as well?
Dr. Scott Sheffield:Yeah, that's often one of the first questions that I get asked, actually, if I mention this topic, is why did Indigenous people serve? Why would they choose to volunteer to serve to defend a society that marginalized and oppressed their communities, their people, their families? And it's a really challenging question to answer because there isn't just a single answer for everybody. People's rationales to enlist were incredibly varied. You know, in some communities there were still strong cultural veneration for people who had the status of being warriors within those societies and they fulfilled important social and cultural roles. And so for a young man to not have a means to gain that status within his own community was something that was a problem for him and for his broader society. And so sometimes military service, even in settler militaries like the Canadian Armed Forces, could be an avenue they could use for their own cultural affirmation and enrichment, which might seem counterintuitive. And so for you know, some Plains First Nations who have warrior societies, iroquois peoples as well, for whom, you know, the role of warrior is and remains important, of warriors and remains important. Volunteering to serve was one means to achieve that place when they returned home to their people. And it's easy to overstate the importance of that, because not all societies, not all indigenous societies, venerated warriors Coast Salish, stalo you know there were warriors within that society but they were not necessarily high-status people and some of the Stalo and other Coast Salish men who did volunteer to serve in the Second World War weren't always embraced for having done that. When they returned home found themselves ostracized and they suffered socially because of that. So it's not a blanket on that regard. A lot of other people would have enlisted, frankly, out of economic need. We're just coming out of the Depression in 1939. It's still tough times and Indigenous people were often the first that were fired and the last to be rehired. And so the option to enlist, to get three square meals a day, clothes on your back, to be able to send some money home to help your family, that was pretty appealing in that time period and so I think economics had a lot to do with it. For others it was a political statement, right, most famous First Nation soldier, the second before Sergeant Tommy, prince OG Cree from Manitoba, and he said he enlisted because he wanted to prove an Indian was as good as any white man and all through his service he had this huge chip on his shoulder as part of what drove him to be the remarkable soldier that he was, and he never let the guys around him forget that he was an indigenous man For him. That was what drove him, that was why he was there.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:It was a political act, but you know, for a lot of others I think it would have been varied. You know they didn't want to be left behind. Some of their buddies were going at peer pressure. You didn't want to be the last guy not going Sometimes you know a lot of the demographic that enlisted are 18, 19, 20-year-old men.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:They are not renowned globally for carefully investing all their decisions with careful consideration of the consequences, and a little bit of impulsiveness might have been also part of the equation.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:So I think it's really varied and every single individual would have had their own distinct reason. But one of the things that we can also say for certainty is that the act of volunteering to serve was not a direct, one-for-one endorsement of the political regime under which their community suffered. In the same way that in the Soviet Union, millions upon millions of Soviet citizens enlisted to defend Russia, the Soviet Union, from German attack. That was not an indication that they were in favor of communism and supported Stalin or like Stalin. Many of them loathed and detested the man and his politics and his brutality to their own societies. But the Germans were worse, and so you know, for a lot of indigenous people they looked at the war and saw that this was something that needed to be done, as a lot of Canadians did, that this was an evil that had to be fought. They wanted to defend not only their own communities but also Canada more broadly from the potential threat of the Axis powers.
Aaron Pete:I want to linger on that thought because and this will transition us into remember and stay more broadly, because and and this will transition us into remember and stay more broadly but the area that I find really important is I'd like to know more about the values that people were trying to uphold in Canada or around the world, fighting an oppressive regime, and where we're at with that now from your perspective, because there's a lot of opinions on the Canadian flag.
Aaron Pete:I hear it from my own community that that's not representative of of indigenous people and ideas like that. But what I found with the trucker protest was at least it's bringing us back to like let's have a conversation about what this flag means to us, which is a conversation I don't feel like we have very often and would have been a huge topic. And we've heard like when you travel, putting on that Canadian flag can often be a good symbol, but it feels like we're not reminiscing on what that means. And there's these moments. Maybe they're not the perfect moments, but moments to reflect on what are Canadian values? What are we trying to uphold? What do we stand for?
Dr. Scott Sheffield:Yeah, and you know, times like the Second World War, times of acute crisis are when societies go through a bit of self-reflection and because if you're going to step forward and take part in a war, you kind of have to clarify in your own mind why you're doing this and especially if you want buy-in from your society and daughters and treasure and emotional energy in the prosecution of a war. And then one of the things that happens during the war is there is a kind of tightening around the flag. You know people kind of socially connect and tighten, kind of socially connect and tighten. It's not to say there aren't divisions in wartime. Sometimes those become aggravated, as Japanese Canadians found out to their, you know, to their- Detriment.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:Detriment. Absolutely. English-french tensions as well were always kind of on the radar, though they didn't become as divisive as they were in the First World War over issues of conscription, but certainly across English Canada. I think the war creates a coming together, a sort of mutual sense that we're fighting for these particular values freedom, democracy, equality. We're fighting against totalitarianism, state-sponsored racism and expansionist societies. The right to self-determination. That was what Canadians told themselves that they were fighting for during the war and I think they believed that and it did. You know, those values then came to shape the post-war years recognition around human rights, recognition that perhaps the dealings that the government and Canadian society had had with First Nations people had not been what people thought they should be in that time period, in this new age, where human rights was important and those values they'd been fighting for mattered. But I think when you move away from those values being under threat, it's easy to become as a society, complacent. You don't have to think about it, you don't have to argue about it, you don't have to have those conversations in a way, and so you don't. It becomes easier to begin invested in the cut and thrust of daily life and you know what's happening on social media or at work or whatever the case might be. You know, managing your finances at home and that day-to-day stuff gets in the way of any kind of broader consideration of who we are and what do we share in common. And you know those conversations have always been difficult in Canada. They've always been fraught because we've always been a diverse society and so it made it complicated to try and frame those discussions around an ethnically defined nationalism. Certainly, british Canadians tried in the early 20th century, french Canadians maintained that and in some realms still do. But it's a hard sell in Canada to do that. We're simply too diverse as a collection of humanity. People have started, I think, to maybe internalize the idea that there is actually strength in diversity, that actually that is a good thing, that Canada benefits by that. I think it's taken us decades to maybe embrace that or internalize that. I think it's still an ongoing process and dialogue and you do still see that challenged.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:You know there are debates around immigration. Debates around immigration and the appropriate levels of immigration, I think are different in Canada than they are, say, in the United States, where it's more fear of diversity and culture change that drives a lot of the anti-immigration arguments there it's been less about whether we should have immigrants or where they should be coming from, and more about how many is the appropriate level given current rates of housing, health care access, that sort of thing. It's more around the pragmatics of it, not if we should have it, and I think that speaks in a lot of ways to who we are as a society. That we've come to grips with in a lot of ways, and you don't see that everywhere in the world.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:You know a lot of European countries have had large scale immigration, refugee crises, people fleeing Afghanistan, syria, economic migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Africa, and these have really challenged countries like France, the Netherlands, sweden, germany, countries like France, the Netherlands, sweden, germany, where for many years it was easier to define your Dutchness by your whiteness and your blonde hair, in a way, and so having to broaden those definitions are difficult dialogues and we still struggle with them here in Canada. But we've had decades more than a century in fact of experience in arguing amongst ourselves about what exactly we are, and that process is never done. You know, it's always an ongoing discussion.
Aaron Pete:It's a constantly renegotiated sense of self Remembrance Day and the time period that we're in right now. How do we best go about honoring veterans for Remembrance Day during this period, whether we have family members or whether it's the specific day and we're going to an event? How do we appreciate and acknowledge their service?
Dr. Scott Sheffield:I think, simply the act of doing so, whether that means taking your family out to a Remembrance Day ceremony even if the weather sucks and let's face it, november, the 11th, is not always our best weather moments but something of that I don't know. It feels when I'm out there shivering and it's raining and windy and I think, wow, I am uncomfortable and how. That is just a tiny fraction of what the men I'm trying to remember in their service and suffering was like in the trenches of the First World War, you know, in a foxhole in Normandy in the Second World War, on a corvette bouncing around in the storm in the winter on the North Atlantic hunting U-boats. I mean, it's such a small thing, small cost to pay in my mind, and we do need to remember that. I think about them every time I go to vote. Actually, you know, I exercise my right to vote because I see it as directly related to their service and their sacrifice. That was what was at stake, particularly in the Second World War, and I do it as an honor to them, a duty to them. Even in years where I've hated all of the various parties' options, I have exercised my right to go and spoil my ballot and tell them they all suck way, to honor them as well, because we, you know our democratic rights, which are so easy to take for granted and which I think so many people feel disconnected from, you know, so many people disillusioned from.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:But Remembrance Day is a time period to remember what it was those gentlemen and women you know put on uniforms for and there were a lot of them 1.1 million in the Second World War, out of 11 and a bit million people.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:It's like one in 10 people here in British Columbia is one in 12, or it was 12%, not 10%.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:So I mean, this was something that involved a huge percentage of the society in the time period. It mattered and in some ways, even though we sometimes try to remember the people, I think it's an opportunity to remember what they fought for, you know, because we may find ourselves facing that at some point in the future, and are we going to be ready? I don't know. You know Whether we watch the National Service on TV, take in a documentary or two, because usually that's the time period where you'll find documentaries about the Second World War and about Canada's military history. Listen to a podcast, read in the paper. It's in November that I usually am contacted by journalists asking for interviews, for stories about First Nations veterans and Aboriginal veterans, remembrance more broadly, and so I think those are important time periods that we, as Canadians, should all be taking a moment. It's a very small sacrifice to make in comparison to the sacrifice of those we honor, and I think that's why the day continues to matter.
Aaron Pete:The other piece that I think is really important. In our cult, in Stolo culture, there's this idea of Tomeok, which is that you look back seven generations to your ancestors, to your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, your great-great-grandparents, and then you also look forward to your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. And when you're looking back, I think it's important to realize that every person in your family lineage would have had to overcome something insurmountable at the time, whether it was famine, war, colonization for indigenous people. Like everybody was facing something, and every person comes from people who survived or you wouldn't be here. And so there's something beautiful that, no matter what, you can start to look back on the past and be connected to admirable people who overcame the challenges of the day, and that's where you come from.
Aaron Pete:And I think one of the challenges we face is we're so individualistic now.
Aaron Pete:We were so in our own worlds that we forget to connect ourselves to people who might not be here anymore and embrace the fact that we can only pull pieces of who they were and see glimpses of what they overcame for us to exist today. And I think there's something humbling about that, because it means you carry their weight with you, you carry their story with you and you should try and do that in a good way, and I just I don't think I hear that from people enough. And one piece that I'd like this to lead into is your research around community, because everybody was involved in the war in the sense that they were impacted by it, whether or not they were a baker trying to get bread, whether or not they were a farmer trying to grow food, like everybody had a stake in it. And I think that also reconnects with us is so often we do, and I think it's important that we do so. Look at the soldiers who are fighting. But it takes a community to do something like that. Would you mind elaborating on your research?
Dr. Scott Sheffield:Yeah, absolutely You're right. We do tend to focus on the people who put on uniforms and went overseas, and with good reason. Obviously, they're the crux of the war. Right, they bore the most burdensome of the duties that went along with it. But we often, I think, also forget those who stayed home, that somehow the war happened elsewhere.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:And as Canadians, for the most part we've been fortunate in our history that war has rarely come to us in our landscapes. Different for Indigenous societies for sure, but certainly since Confederation Canada has had very little direct involvement in conflict, and so for Canadians it's often seen as a distant phenomenon. That happens somewhere else, and you know, as a society Canadians have visited war occasionally, but it's not really us, it's not what we do, we're not militaristic and we don't like warfare. We don't really want to be involved. It's part of the reason why we don't adequately fund our military in times of peace. Maybe we'll circle around to that again later, but in the context of the Second World War, I'm really interested in how people at home live their daily life. What did the war mean to them? In what ways did they engage in the war? Because I think all too often we think that those who remained at home that this was somehow a passive process, that they sat out the war in effect. But all of my research would suggest actually the opposite that people who were here in BC and Canada more broadly, fought the war from their homes and with their neighbors inside their communities. The war in a lot of ways was still a distant phenomenon, but it had a reality, whether you lived in a large urban center like Victoria or Vancouver, or you lived in a remote rural region in the north of the province or on an island, and the war found its way into people's lives. You know they dedicate a lot of their voluntary time to this. So a lot of people in this time period right, we didn't have Netflix and PlayStation and social media, so people, you know, actually were social aggressively. So In fact, a lot of people belong to multiple organizations Red Cross, loyal Order of Elks, the Imperial Order, the Daughters of the Empire and a whole host of others in communities all over the province and new organizations formed during the Second World War for directly war-related stuff, but even all these other collective voluntary spaces where people came together to try and make their communities better.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:A lot of that energy gets poured towards war-related work. They were, you know, raising money for orphans of Britain. You know, bombing the Blitz. They were raising money to buy ambulances for Britain, to send material wealth, well-being and comforts to Canadian soldiers overseas. To buy a Spitfire for Britain including, you know, the Squamish nation had a First Nations Spitfire Fund that raised money throughout BC Indigenous communities.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:So people were invested in this, you know, and you saw it in schools. People, you know, patriotic elements really crept into the schools, into the curriculum. Not all the teachers were comfortable teaching some of that but it certainly was there. Cadet programs proliferated for both boys and girls. I have pictures of cadet programs from the tiniest of communities in BC. You know it's quite amazing how prolific that was. Kids collected scrap metal, bones, rubber, all kinds of things for the war effort as school projects. They raised money at school through war savings certificates. They took part in community fundraising as well for victory bonds and other things. I mean this really was a collective collaborative effort on the part of everybody.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:And so you know, the war was in a lot of ways unavoidable. If you worked well, there's a lot of extra work because of the war, a lot of war-related work. Huge shipbuilding industry in North Van Vancouver, victoria. But the agriculture boomed, the mining sector boomed, the logging sector boomed, and so there were jobs for everybody. And then some and some of it was very much directly related to the war right Cutting down Sitka Spruce in Haida Gwaii because it was light and durable and flexible and it provided the frames for de Havilland Mosquito Bombers, which were the fastest planes in the early part of the war, and you know there's lots of stories like that. There were markets that were created overnight in Britain and the United States are amongst our allied countries but also feeding Canada's own wartime industry for our ore, our coal. We had so much need for food. The salmon industry boomed Massive expansion in salmon fishing, massive expansion in the agricultural sector, apples in the Okanagan and yet there were no people to do the labor because everybody was in uniform.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:So they were trying to bring kids out of schools to help pick apples. Eventually they were trying to bring women from urban centers out to the rural areas to help get the crop in in the fall. But not enough. Bc women were buying into that, in part because they had jobs in the shipbuilding industry and other areas. So they brought prairie women from central and northern Saskatchewan and Alberta to pick BC apples. You get this really broad spectrum of engagement.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:And you know, and sometimes people were fearful too, especially once Japan entered the war. For those along the Pacific coast they felt very threatened. They felt very threatened by those people of Japanese ancestry living amongst them as neighbors and targeted them in part because of that and enduring racism as well. But they were fearful of being attacked. They created air raid protection organizations in communities all over the province Whose job it was to plan for blackouts, to monitor blackouts, so made sure people had appropriate cover of their windows so that light wasn't leaking out, handing out fines if they were. They had air raid sirens. They had practice sessions where they had the fire guys ready to put out fires.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:If you know, a Japanese aircraft carrier got close enough to the coast to drop bombs on Port Alberni or Prince Rupert or Vancouver and that made the war real. You know, you have I've got some really amazing photographs of the war years, pictures of teachers with probably grade two or three students showing them how to put on a gas mask and wear a respirator. That makes war a little more real for a lot of people in that time period and people were fearful in that sense. You know there were posters plastered up all over about, you know, loose lips, sink ships and that sort of thing, that there could be spies everywhere. So now don't say anything because it might lead to ships being sunk or sabotage being conducted, and all of those things tended to make the war much more prevalent every day.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:So I think there is a lot of ways in which the war insinuates itself in people's lives through rationing what they can make for dinner on a given night, really fundamental everyday stuff. But at the same time there was regular life going on. There were still fall fairs. In the places that had fall fairs there might be some military elements or patriotic elements that get woven in, elevated a bit. Those continued. People still had time for recreation. They still fished and hunted and played sports and had competitions and gathered and had dances. You know, often they would use those as occasions to fundraise, but they were still doing social things. So yes, it was communities at war, but it was also still communities living their lives as best they could in that context, both fighting the war but also carrying on as much normal as they could under the circumstances.
Aaron Pete:This leads into one thought that I have. On the one hand, you have people who sound like they're very politically engaged, very informed on what is going on. During that time period, population like TikTok has been a huge place. Twitter has been a huge place for people to discuss politics, discuss what's going on in Gaza or Ukraine, and you start to get these groupings of people, but it doesn't seem like we're informed to the same extent. Perhaps. What are your thoughts on the level of informed individuals from the past to today?
Dr. Scott Sheffield:It's an interesting question. I mean, certainly in the context of the Second World War people were somewhat informed and they all were getting their information from mass media, from primarily newspapers. Still in this time period print media, also from radio CBC, would have been broadcast to those who had radio set in their house and there would have been some variation. You had liberal papers, you had Tory papers, but the diversity of what they were hearing was also being limited by censorship. Canadian government enacted censorship in the Second World War to limit bad news, to limit criticism of the war effort, to build morale. So they were in a constrained information environment.
Aaron Pete:Was that a mistake in retrospect?
Dr. Scott Sheffield:It's a very good question. I don't know that it's a mistake. I think all nations in times of war try to foster a sense of collective. We're in this together to sustain morale, both in the face of, you know, setbacks and defeats, but also to support a stronger war effort, more wartime production, more enlistment, the kinds of things that can help make a nation strong to maybe get successfully through the war. And by and large, canada's war effort in the Second World War was extraordinary by almost any metric, and the degree to which Canadians participated in that, the degree to which they gave money to fund that war effort, suggests that they bought in, at least for the most part.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:Today, I think, the information environment's quite different. It's much more bifurcated and that's a product of a changing media environment, changing technology environment. Social media is hugely important in terms of the ways in which people gain information and the access to what is a blizzard of information through the internet almost limitless, far more than you can ever begin to process in some ways is almost more of a problem than too little, because there's no vetting of what information is out there, it's quality, it's accuracy, its agenda, and I think we're still not very good as a collective society at being cautious consumers of the information. We're drawn to the clickbait, the sensationalized reports, the things that make you say, holy crap, I got to read that. And then you forward it on to all your Facebook friends or whatever, and in a lot of ways that can be quite problematic. One of the things you know. Even though I'm teaching history to my students, what I'm also really teaching them is to be very cautious and careful when they read their sources primary sources or secondary sources.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:Who is this? You know what's going on with it. They learn to analyze the information, the degree to which it's legitimate. How much can I trust it? What else could I learn from this besides what they're trying to say? And those are transferable skills to make you a more cautious consumer of information in this challenging Wild West kind of ecosystem that we live in now, where you know algorithms really determine what you know.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:If you take all your information in through social media networks, they're designed to feed you more of what you looked at before and that creates a kind of echo chamber effect where we get people in different silos who live in alternate realities. You see this really glaringly in the United States. You know Fox News and right-wing media in the States. Republicans' sense of what is the world in reality is fundamentally different from those who read mainstream media in the United States. That's really challenging. How do you run a democratic society? And it's one thing to have debates about the issues, but if you don't even have a clear shared sense of what the reality is or what the issues are, or what the issues are, how can you begin to debate in a meaningful way what those are? So you know. And then all of that gets complicated by misinformation, which is widely prevalent, and also, you know, intentional disinformation and the weaponization of information by a variety of actors, some internal, some external or state actors. I think you know interference by Russia in particular, but other societies in Western democracies.
Aaron Pete:I wanted to ask about that. Do you think that it's more prevalent or that it's more clear today than it may have been in the past? Because when we were talking about censorship, the only thing I think of is like it's incredibly dangerous to give your state control over the information that you receive, and that's something we seem to be dealing with now. And when we look at like you could call the idea that indigenous people were forcibly removed their status cards if they joined misinformation and that's existed, despite the fact that I haven't I've never seen it on social media, and so do you think it's it's increased, or do you think our ability to grapple with it has somewhat changed, because weapons of mass destruction in like that was a.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:That was misinformation perpetuated by the mainstream media yes, yes and so yes, and driven by state organisms Exactly For a particular agenda. It's hard to say whether it's proliferated or not. I think in some ways we are more aware of the possibility of it, but I think it's also become much more commonly and sophisticatedly done, particularly by state actors, but also by political voices and agencies within Canadian society, within US society as well, trying to provoke certain reactions, provoke certain segments of society, to elevate the vitriol and the dysfunction right. Certainly that's been Putin's objective all along has been to undermine Western democracies, the political culture, the levels of dysfunction, to separate and divide and to render us too busy fighting amongst ourselves to deal with and address the challenges that he wants to present, which are in fact, I think, significant. So all we can do, I think, is try our very best today to do, I think, a couple things.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:One, read things that make you uncomfortable, read things that come from different camps, think about and double-check when you read something that makes you shocked or angry, and make sure your sources are good. But also try to have dialogue with people you disagree with. That's something we've actually lost the ability to do, you know, to have civil disagreement, and that's fundamental to a healthy democracy. I think it's one of the things that I feel most happy about in my classrooms is, you know, having seminar discussions right. You bring people together, you give them readings to debate and discuss those readings and learn again that it's okay to not always agree with each other and that if somebody doesn't agree with you, it doesn't make them the enemy. It doesn't make them the enemy of the state, it doesn't make them evil or malevolent, and I think we need that if we're going to find ways to build more common dialogue as an healthy democracy.
Aaron Pete:Do you feel like we're more mature as a society or less mature from the past? Again, correct me if my understanding is incorrect, but is that during the time where we were in a Cold War with Russia, we actually invited over Russian artists, russian creators, russian musicians, like we brought them over to give us an understanding that it wasn't all evil and malevolent, that there were good in the culture, and we hoped that that would reduce the tensions in some ways. So we don't get there Now. My understanding more recently is Canada has banned some Russian musicians and artists from being able to play in Canada.
Aaron Pete:That were reduced and that seems like perhaps the wrong approach, or that we were more mature back then than we are now. Perhaps the wrong approach, or that we were more mature back then than we are now. Anything Russia bad, any person with an ID with that, is not to be listened to, and that somewhat changes the environment of our ability to understand that. There are just people over on that side too. A lot of them are just everyday people going to the grocery store and stuff. So do you think we're more mature or less mature as a society today than we were? Stuff?
Dr. Scott Sheffield:So do you think we're more mature or less mature as a society today than we were? I'm not sure I would use the term mature. I think it's contextually shaped. There would have been time periods during the Cold War where there was a bit of a thawing in the relations between the West and the communist bloc, where the kinds of exchanges that you're talking about could begin to happen again. And there were other eras where that was not possible and where the bans were at least as stringent, where the vitriol was complete, where the cutting off of relations, of trade, of everything was absolutely normalized. But the Cold War also lasted 45 years. There were seasons to it. That makes sense.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:We're still only a few years into the time period since the full-blown Russian invasion of the Ukraine in 2022. Since the full-blown Russian invasion of the Ukraine in 2022. So far the reaction has been you're right to target Russians pretty categorically, even though not necessarily all Russians support or believe in Putin or are even informed. And certainly well and that's undoubtedly the case that, particularly for older Russians, state media is the only media ecosystem and so they're force-fed. A diet of Putin is great. Putin knows all, everything's swell, and yet how do we, as the West put pressure on Russian society, on Putin, to try and change his behavior, to bring an end to that war. He's the only person who can make that decision. Do you think that's true? I do, I think that's true.
Aaron Pete:Even with the information that came out that there was a potential peace deal on the table and that it sounds like Joe Biden may have declined or walked away from that or not wanted to entertain it at the time.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:Not familiar with that particular, but if there was, I mean all the peace overtures that I've seen so far come out of Russia have been disingenuous. Basically, they want everything they want and that's all they're willing to accept, and so I don't think there's actually been any genuine overture or openness on the part of Putin's regime to talk peace yet.
Aaron Pete:Would you mind if we maybe started from the start, because I think that might be useful for some listeners. This is what I've heard. This is the information that I've gathered, so it could be incorrect and I'd, of course, be interested in being corrected. My understanding is that over the years, the United States and NATO countries have been very interested and open to having Ukraine join NATO. My other understanding is that Putin said that that was one of his red lines and that he would not be interested in entertaining that.
Aaron Pete:It's been made akin to like having Mexico join some other alliance and that it's very close to the United States border. We would, of course, never entertain that in North America, that opportunity, and so the fear is that this started to be floated out and that that's what drove this rise in tensions. There were talks of Trump moving in weapons into Ukraine. There were talks of Obama moving weapons into Ukraine, and that flagged Vladimir Putin, and this was, in some ways, a response, a completely inappropriate response, not an okay response, not a level response, but that that is some of the groundwork we don't always hear about, and I'd be interested to hear is that true? Is that false? Am I misunderstanding?
Dr. Scott Sheffield:true? Is that false? Am I misunderstanding? This is a bit of a hazy area and there's a lot of Russian misinformation around this. But I think Putin's perspective. You have to remember who Putin is. Putin is a cold warrior. He was a KGB officer. He was literally a mid-level KGB manager in East Berlin. When the Berlin Wall fell. He saw the collapse of communism, his whole world view. He saw the collapse and disintegration of the Soviet Union, which he has since called the greatest geostrategic calamity of the 20th century. That's the 20th century. That includes First World War, second World War, holocaust. You know the list goes on, but for him those weren't the big problem. The biggest problem was the falling. Weren't the big problem? The biggest problem was the falling apart of the Soviet Union.
Aaron Pete:So could that be because of the mass starvation that took place when the Soviet Union collapsed, there was undoubtedly suffering, no question.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:The transition in the Soviet Union from communism to a more open market economy, its first faltering steps towards democracy that Putin snuffed out, were difficult, and so, yes, I understand some of that perspective. But what's interesting, I think, through the 90s, is the sense of threat from the new aftermath of the Soviet Union. The Russia and a conglomeration of different new republics former Soviet republics that were now independent states meant the West stepped back from this idea of a Cold War, of a rivalry with Russia. Putin never did, and Putin then subsequently has created what is essentially a KGB state. Right, it's an intelligence-run state regime. He surrounds himself with other former KGB cronies who are now often oligarchs with billions of dollars in their pocket, and his worldview is very much that Cold War, that Russia is in a perpetual, forever war with the West.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:The West only just realized this a few years ago. We actually didn't notice that that was actually going on. That you know Russia was conducting things like misinformation, disinformation in the 2016 US election and the Brexit campaign in ways that were, you know, fed the results that happened. That he's been also conducting a variety of invasions, some of which we've taken note of but not really paid much attention to. Portions of Georgia are occupied. Portions of Moldova, south Ossetia are occupied by Russian forces still to this day. Crimea Crimea, of course, in 2014. We talk about the war in Ukraine starting in 2022, but for Ukrainians, it started in 2014 in the wake of their rebellion against a Russia-friendly leader who was Putin's pet. And Ukrainians decided no, we want to be Ukrainians, we do not want to move closer to Russia. We aspire to be a democracy, we want to move closer to the EU, and so that's been the Ukraine's journey. But for Putin, he perceives NATO as explicitly made as an offensive weapon to attack Russia.
Aaron Pete:What was the original purpose?
Dr. Scott Sheffield:of NATO. Nato was a defensive alliance which was meant to defend against the potential of Soviet aggression in the post Second World War period.
Aaron Pete:So, like hypothetically, when the Soviet Union fell, nato could have ended. It could have. Because, its mandate was done.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:A lot of people talked about bringing NATO to an end at that point. It struggled for a sense of legitimacy through much of the decades since.
Aaron Pete:Do you think that could have reduced tensions between us and Russia? Because you're saying he views NATO as a threat and then if NATO didn't exist, then his perceived threat may not exist.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:Perhaps, but I think what we're seeing from him now is a desire to, in a sense, as he's talked about explicitly reassembling the historic Russian territories, basically reconstructing the Russian Empire, which includes a lot of the areas that broke away from the Soviet Union during the 1990s, places like the Ukraine, places like the Baltic states. And so I suspect, if there was no NATO, he would have begun to move more aggressively on that score at an earlier stage. And so NATO is not as it's envisioned in its own documents, as it functions as a defensive alliance. It hasn't seen itself marching towards Russia's borders. I can understand that Putin might see it that differently, and he's made comments and threats going back a long way. But NATO contends within it, you know the clause that says any nation can apply to join if they meet the criteria. They have to be democracies, they have to, you know, remove at least the most egregious of corruption, they have to have adequate military, and then they can be invited. Then they can join NATO.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:And what we've seen since the end of the Cold War is that most of the Eastern European countries who were former parts of the Soviet bloc have requested to join Now. Partly that's because they want to move closer to the West for economic reasons. It also means they still fear Russia. Places like Poland, the Baltic states, live in deep fear of Russia. They are rapidly re-militarizing Poland. Like Poland, the Baltic states live in deep fear of Russia. They are rapidly re-militarizing Poland, I think, instituted its conscription maybe 10 years ago, 12 years ago, because of fear of Russia. So it's not NATO expansion that people in the region are fearing, it's Russian expansionism. And so why they're going to NATO or why they're requesting to belong to NATO is because, if you're, exactly what's happened to Georgia, exactly what's happened to Moldova and exactly what's happening now in the Ukraine.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:And so places like the Baltic states in particular, I think, are a real flashpoint. Because it was one thing when it was Eastern European countries Poland, czechia, hungary, poland, czechia, hungary it was something else again when it was former USSR republics like the Baltics becoming NATO states. Because that is a problem for Putin. He cannot set foot on a NATO state without potentially triggering Article 5, which would bring all the NATO members in against him in a full-on war. And what's become abundantly clear through this war is Russia is militarily nowhere near capable of handling NATO. Yes, they are still a very powerful nuclear country, but their military has proved itself shockingly inept and it's all they can do and, honestly, they are militarily no longer capable of defeating Ukraine on the battlefield right now. They just don't have the ability and the idea of them engaging with the West, I think, is something that is unimaginable now.
Aaron Pete:Do you think it's at all strange that we don't really hear about the Ukraine war right now? In comparison to what we heard the first year, it was pretty regularly being cut to a couple of minutes in the news, and now I'm hearing this and I have no news sources telling me about what's going on there right now.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:Yeah, not really. In part because invariably the news cycle tends to move on. It's harder for journalists to find new angles to talk about what is a long, long war. You know. It's degenerated into an often attritional war, much like the First World War Trenches and very slow moving lines and heavy casualties, huge use of artillery, and so it's hard to make interesting stories about that in the Western media ecosystem kind of becomes inured to it. And then of course Gaza and the war in Gaza blows up and that becomes now the new focus, and so Western media gravitates to that, and so the Ukraine does fall off the media horizon a little bit. You really have to go looking for it now if you want to stay informed. Yeah, then there are podcasts, there are news and think tanks that do cover the war, at least periodically.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:But it's a very, very difficult environment in which to get accurate information. Both sides unnecessarily have censorship. Both sides inflate the other's losses and minimize their own. Both sides try to get their talking points out to win in the information space, and there's a lot of propaganda that is either wildly pro-Ukraine or, more likely, wildly pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine, anti-west, and weeding through that's very, very difficult. I find myself doing this all the time. As somebody who's studied war and military history, it's like watching what I study in real time. And so I've found myself, you know, doomscrolling as a daily exercise for the last two years plus. It's a fascination I can't seem to tear away from.
Aaron Pete:The area that I'd like guidance from you on is how do we balance wanting to promote democracy, to promote healthy communities and that can thrive, based on a capitalistic system that's reliable, based on open markets, with this fear that one? We've gotten it wrong, like a lot in the last 24 years at least, with Afghanistan, iraq now, like going back into Iran, syria. We've had some major errors in judgment and we still tout ourselves as having it all figured out and being the pro-democracy, and I do my best. I think it's important that people try and view it through both lenses, as unbiasedly as you can do that. So if I'm in Putin's shoes, I'm looking at the past 24 years of what the West has done and been like.
Aaron Pete:What are you guys selling? Like you haven't had a war mandate from Congress yet you've been in all these countries doing all these things, overturning regimes to unelected officials, and that's not OK. And then we'll go. Well, we're the good guys, and I think a lot of the western canadians still do have that, and I think that's appropriate, with having that in mind, while also having this military industrial complex. That's not, I don't think, in canada, but that we live right next to a country that has a military industrial complex that has a vested interest in more wars for more money. It's been talked about for 40 plus years of this concern. How do we balance all of this and figure out how we can support or how we think these issues through? Because it feels like I can get lost when I view it through one lens or another and I try and remain unbiased and understand the issue in a meaningful way.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:Yeah, boy, that is a massive question. Let's see how to tackle that. Yes, western adventurism and interventionism has had a very checkered track record. I think there are always severe costs and high risk involved in intervening in a country's problems and you know, the UN kind of discovered this during the 1990s and in part, you know, the world moved away a little bit from UN adventurism after problems in Somalia and Rwanda and former Yugoslavia. But the US has been at least on again, off again, willing to engage in more interventionist activities, and those have not generally planned out. And I agree it doesn't necessarily paint us as having a moral high ground from which to cast stones at other countries when they undertake interventionism. And it's easy to see why. From Putin's vantage point what he's doing doesn't seem all that different from the US invasion of Iraq. Let's say there's a valid point there. I guess.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:The way I look at it now is that I think we're in a somewhat tricky, dangerous time period. The utility, the viability of the United Nations as a venue for fostering peace, collective action seems to be at a low ebb. The inclination of some of the larger powers around the world to use military power to try to achieve its policy outcomes further afield, outside its borders, seems to have grown and the result has been a lot of violent conflict in different parts of the world. And the rule of law seems to be lost to some degree in all of this, and I think that that creates a circumstance where activities like Putin's invasion of Ukraine are potentially more likely. The rule of law has always been a little bit problematic, but in the post-1945 era the development of international law, of UN sanction and that sort of thing created an ecosystem internationally where there was at least a modicum of a rule of law. That's not to say that everybody always abided by it, and especially the great powers of the superpowers, but it was there as a framework. It could provide some genuinely moral, philosophical justification for actions in certain circumstances or inactions in certain circumstances. And we seem to be moving more, I think, now into a time period of might is right, and that's disconcerting. We're seeing a retraction, a retreat of democracy in a lot of countries around the world. Around the world and not just in Putin's Russia, obviously, but in Turkey and Brazil, hungary, the United States, for that matter. I fear for democracy in the United States under the incoming tenure of another Trump presidency. I think those are concerning signs.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:I think one of the reasons why Putin decided it was time to launch his attack in Ukraine is because he perceived Western democracies as crumbling, as fading, as weak Similar kind of rationale to the dictators in the 1930s who thought the Western democracies were weak and decrepit and decaying. Now the reaction of NATO in the West to the invasion of Ukraine actually, for me, has been heartening, because it's pulled NATO together and given it a meaning it's never had. I mean, putin's strategy came to weaken and divide Europe, and NATO has actually spectacularly failed. He's gotten almost everything wrong about the invasion of the Ukraine and having now Sweden and Finland join because again, they're fearful now that their neutrality was no longer enough to guarantee the Russians wouldn't potentially invade. I think some of that's been encouraging, and I think that was honestly for all Biden's flaws in the handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the complaints domestically about American policies, american government, american economy, he handled that and marshalling and bringing together the Western democracies very, very effectively in the wake of the Russian invasion in 2022.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:So that is one thing, though, that I really am concerned about. I think NATO does have a place in that environment as a means to bring Western democracies together. Do we always have the moral high ground? No, but if I can sort of plagiarize shamelessly from Winston Churchill, with a little bit of mutation, democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. And so I think it behooves us to pay attention to democracy, and that's why I worry when I see people so complacent, so indifferent to voting to government, feeling so disillusioned with it, because democracy is not a given right. If you don't exercise it, if you don't defend and cherish it, then you lose it, and sometimes subtly, in ways you don't even recognize right.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:Large portions of the Turkish public basically voted to help make Erdogan President, erdogan in Turkey, what amounts to an authoritarian leader, and I fear a majority of Americans just did the same with Trump. Time will tell. I fear a majority of Americans just did the same with Trump. Time will tell. So it is something we have to look after and we're moving into uncertain times.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:You know, trump is no friend to NATO and without NATO, without some means of galvanizing and drawing together those Western powers to work in concert for the betterment of themselves but you know, well-intentioned sometimes other countries and democracy more broadly, I think the world will be worse off and I don't know that NATO can survive another Trump presidency. It was pretty battered after the first one. The Ukrainian invasion seems to have regalvanized it and it's doing its best in the lead up to this new Trump presidency to try and Trump-proof it. But even if he can't actually withdraw from the alliance, if he can sufficiently undermine the confidence that the Americans will actually follow through on their obligations under Article 5 to defend Europe against an aggressor like Russia, russia might see that, putin might see that as an invitation to start to meddle around in Estonia, you know, to push the boundaries again and see what can be achieved, see if the Americans will just sit it out.
Aaron Pete:This is an area of interest because one of the things I heard leading up to President-elect Trump's campaign was that during his period it was a time of not peace but no new wars. Then Joe Biden comes in and what happens in Ukraine takes place To your point. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I was taking from it, perhaps Putin looked at the US as weak at that time and then chose to proceed with that, and then, obviously, israel-hamas took place. There's discussions. They could be incorrect, but my understanding is potentially Joe Biden released money to Iran through tariffs and then Iran had money to more fund Hamas. I don't know if you know anything about that, but that's what I've read in news articles, which could be mistaken. But there's arguments that like this happened under the Biden administration. It's his responsibility.
Aaron Pete:Trump didn't have that, and so now we're going into a new period where the argument I've heard is there were no new wars.
Aaron Pete:That's going to be the goal Trump has said and I think again, he's a political figure, so it's challenging to absorb it but when he says I just want people to stop dying, I don't think that should be treated with a grain of salt. People to stop dying. I don't think that should be treated with a grain of salt. I think that is something we don't hear enough about, which is the lost people in Ukraine who have passed away as a consequence of the war. Of course, that's Vladimir Putin's fault, but that's a tragedy in and of itself and I do feel like we helped fund that and we funded the loss of people as well. That's something when we give money to people to defend themselves and then they are murdered, like that's something when we give money to people to defend themselves and then they are murdered, then we've been a part of that. Had Ukraine fallen in a day or something like I don't know if the circumstances would have been good, but we wouldn't have been involved in the consequences, perhaps in the same type of way.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you. I think Trump has a genuine distaste for conflict and for death. That drives his desire to try and bring conflicts to an end. I don't think that's disingenuous of him. My concern with Trump and his foreign policy is that it's driven almost entirely from a place of ignorance and also indifference. I actually don't think he has a lot of concern or care for anything outside of the United States. And so if there are negative repercussions to, let's say, giving Putin what he wants and allowing him to freeze the conflict in Ukraine at its current boundary, so he's essentially rewarded for having seized those portions of Ukraine that ends the fighting.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:And yes, Ukrainians are exhausted and fatigued from the war and they don't want more of their people dying. And there are some who are almost ready to try and deal with, you know, to make peace under those circumstances. But a lot of Ukrainians don't want to surrender the Ukrainians that are now behind Russian lines and occupied Ukraine to Russian rule, which has been genocidal in a lot of ways, which has stripped people away, taken orphans and adopted them out across Russia. There's a lot of issues around that where the Ukrainians are determined. For them, this is an existential war. Either they fight, or their identity, their language, their culture is annihilated under Russian rule. So that's how they see it, and forcing them to make peace with their invader, the aggressor, under those circumstances seems to me to be morally abject.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:But more broadly, I think and the concern I have with Trump and partly this feeds into the way in which he reacts to NATO is that he is isolationist.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:He wants the United States to again pull into itself the ideas of America first.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:In his mind, I think he's totally okay with America alone, and I think that actually will be detrimental for the United States. I think he and many Americans don't recognize the degree to which the United States is powerful and influential and wealthy because it has cultivated a strong foreign policy, it has cultivated an international rule of law that has benefited it, open trade networks, and that it has loyal and effective allies, and that America alone might not be as good as Trump perceives it to be. That's one part of it. The other part of it and this is for everybody else outside the United States if it's just the Americans who had to live with the decisions of their election, fine, but the implications of American decisions have ripple effects globally. They're going to affect us here in Canada. They're very much going to affect Europeans and people in all parts of the globe and, although we haven't always liked what they've done with it, the place of Americans in the leadership role of that Western world order has been essential.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:And if they leave that, we get a power vacuum globally, just at a time where we're starting to see a conglomeration of authoritarian states making common cause North Korea, Russia, Iran, China, to a lesser extent, somewhat uncomfortably Just when we need to be making common cause against this potentially rising threat. And it has echoes of the 1930s right. The Americans were isolationist through the 1930s when it came to Europe and arguably that led in no small measure to people like Mussolini and Hitler being able to have free reign to do what they did, and eventually the United States was drawn into that war anyway, as it was in the First World War. So isolationism doesn't necessarily protect you from other people's problems, Agreed.
Aaron Pete:So, just to wrap this up, the only other piece on this topic I want to touch on is this idea of getting to the 2% for Canada's target. And this just ties in because it seems like we're encouraged to do so now because Donald Trump has been elected. There was less pressure over the past four years, but as the months leading up to this election, it seems like whatever Donald Trump's strategy is, it seems to work on us because we're already trying to follow through on things we weren't going to follow through on. But now that his presidency was kind of on the horizon or potential, justin Trudeau committed to the 2% and is working on it. And now everything I've watched on CTV has been like we've got to get there now, we've got to get there quickly, we've got to move on it, and like it seems like his strategy is working, like it seems like his partners are like OK, we've got to step in line now because this guy is in power, and that seems like an ode to NATO and his influence in NATO in like a positive way.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:Potentially, potentially. Yes, I agree that there's no question that Trump's influence has forced the hand of Europeans and Canada who, for a last 25 years, who have applied pressure, who have sought to get more NATO countries to that 2%. That has accelerated somewhat during Trump's first tenure, but also at the cost of some pretty rocky cracks showing up in NATO's relationships. What's really actually elevated it has been the Russian invasion of Ukraine, because European countries now are rapidly escalating their spending. Germany in particular started to rapidly move towards and beyond 2%, britain's beyond 2%. The Poles are up around almost 4% now, as are the Baltic states. They're spending heavily, heavily, and so the number of countries below 2% now is far fewer. It's about a third of the countries in NATO. Used to be more like two thirds. So a lot of countries are moving that way and I think, yes, it's partly shaped by the idea that Trump's idiotic comment that he won't fight to defend people who don't pay up is part of what's motivating people. But I think honestly, there is also the other lying thing that we suddenly have a real threat to NATO. That for Europeans it's real.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:You know, we still feel very isolated and insular here in Canada and Canada in a lot of ways actually has become quite isolationist, as we were in the 1920s and 30s. Again, we've become very complacent about our military spending. Our, you know, our procurement systems are so bureaucratized that it takes 15 years to get a weapons system through and it usually costs two or three times what it should by the time we get it done. And there's never enough and there's too many old weapon systems we're trying to keep functioning to. You know, to keep the Canadian Armed Forces actually operationally viable right now, like they're probably about 50% are ready readiness levels. If we had to go right now, maybe half the armed forces could actually be up and running quickly. The rest would take months, potentially years, to bring up to functional state.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:That's a little terrifying Now, in a time period where there's no threat. You know to borrow a phrase from a Canadian representative at the League of Nations in the 1920s we're a fireproof house, far from inflammable materials. Canadians genuinely feel that and we have through most of our history. So in peacetime we always underspend on our military. But we might have to start spending again and we might have to start ramping up the size of our military again Now, not only because there is a threat in the form of Russia, but also because maybe we can't actually depend on the certainty of American leadership of the Western alliance anymore. We might actually have to do more of this for ourselves, and that's a bit of a terrifying thought, because that's going to change our global reality and it's going to mean we are going to have to build a powerful peacetime military to face up to the potential of genuine strategic threats.
Aaron Pete:Scott, thank you so much for being willing to do this. It is always so enlightening to chat with you, to learn about these issues, to go through. Where we're at today, you have an open invitation to come back on whenever you like because these are so important. We haven't touched on half of the topics I'd love to chat with you about, and it's because all of these deserve time and consideration and to go through thoughtfully. So I appreciate you being willing to come on. Can you tell people how they can keep up with your research and the work you're?
Dr. Scott Sheffield:doing. I do a variety of public talks. I'm actually giving a talk at the BC Archives in Victoria on the 17th of November. I'm actually giving a talk at the BC Archives in Victoria on the 17th of November. But I've given some talks with the Chilliwack Heritage Society and a variety of others where I try and get my research out. All too often academics spend most of our time talking amongst ourselves and we don't actually share what we learn as effectively as we should with the wider public. I'm trying to do more of that, so I hope to be putting out a popular coffee table well-illustrated, lots of great pictures book about British Columbia and Second World War, for instance, in the next few years. So hopefully that will be one way that I can help bring some of the research and the stuff that I've learned to people outside of the ivory tower.
Aaron Pete:That would be amazing. I'd love to have you back on so we can discuss that. Thank you again for coming on.
Dr. Scott Sheffield:My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
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