comment: >
  
  If NZ as part of the 5 eyes joins in would it be CANNZUKUS
context: Canada was the meat in the old Cold War sandwich, Australia gets that lucky designation in the new one. >
  
  Yeah, well focus on not being compromised by China and then maybe you get to go to the party. >
  
  It's not even that. It's that Canada criminally underfunds military R&D. If Canada was a member of AUKUS, they'd effectively offer nothing to the group. Canadian and Australian militaries are roughly the same size; 68K vs 60K. Yet, Australia's military budget is almost 50% greater, with much of that going into R&D.
  
  Australia is a world leader in loyal wingman UAVs. MQ-28 is probably the single most advanced loyal wingman UAV in the world that we know of, and it's entirely Australian.
  Australia is pumping billions into hypersonic weapons research, and is combining efforts with the US' programs. 
  
  Canada brings nothing to that hyper advanced R&D table, and doesn't even have money to simply sit on the sidelines and fund projects. Inviting them does nothing to really assist in any of the projects that fall under it unfortunately, which is why no one talks about inviting Canada, but Australia and the US have both discussed inviting Japan to join. That's because Japan will fund projects, and Japan will bring engineers. 
  That, and Canada's refusal to accept the rest of the world's consensus that the NW Passage is in fact, an international strait (still Canadian territorial waters where all resources within it are the rights of Canada, but it means it's a body of water that links to bodies of international water together, and that would allow ships of any nation to be able to sail through it under the right of transit passage). It's akin to if Turkey tried to say "well the Bosphorous Strait is within our territorial bounds, so no one can traverse it at all", which is very much illegal per Article 37 of UNCLOS. That's why the US vetoed the plan for the UK to build Canada nuclear attack submarines in the 1980s. That refusal to accept the NW Passage for what it is, and subsequently fucking the US east coast and Europe with tanker and cargo ship sailing times (going through the Panama Canal vs the NW Passage triples the trip duration), is another huge reason Canada got left out. >
  
  It’s true. We don’t fund our military. We just don’t take it seriously. >
  
  CANUKUS just doesn't have the same ring to it.