The democracies, led by the G7, can once more prevail if they stay laser-focused on facilitating private-sector technology innovation
History teaches us that an investment in
the democracies, but the common values of free and fair elections, personal freedoms and the rule of law overseen by independent judges. A country with these attributes that agrees to spend the requisite annual fee of at least 2% of its gross domestic product on defence can join the most effective collective defence alliance ever devised. Creating GATO – now, there’s an ambitious and noble goal for Italy’s 2024 Apulia Summit and beyond. deterrence is far cheaper than the war brought on by appeasement”
novel drone technology is only truly powerful when it can be produced at a monthly rate of 50,000 units at a unit price that every democracy can afford. Thus, recommendation number 2: the G7 has an important coordinating role in ensuring that the global arsenal of democracy produces sufficient numbers of leading-edge weapons and ammunition while generating equitable industrial benefits across all alliance members. Winning Cold War 2.0 will be expensive. It is estimated that in 2023 an extra $800 billion was spent by the democracies on new weapons systems in response to the increased belligerence of the autocracies. As US president Dwight Eisenhower reminded the world in 1953, each such dollar spent on the military means less money for education, health care and pensions. But again, this is exactly the point in calling the challenge posed by the autocracies a new cold war, because it signals that it will be quite a while before military spending in the democracies can shrink again, as it did in the 1990s. Finally, recommendation number 3 is for each of the democracies to be part of an effective collective defence alliance. The G7 should pave the way for the democracies of the Western Pacific, including Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, Korea and Thailand, to join with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to form ‘GATO’, the ‘Global Alliance Treaty Organization’. The rationale behind GATO is that in our ever-shrinking world it is not geography that unites
GEORGE S TAKACH George S Takach was national technology industry leader at the McCarthy Tétrault law firm, where for 35 years he represented Canadian and international technology companies on financing, mergers, acquisitions and commercial matters, as well as traditional companies and governments. He is the author of Computer Law and two other books on the business of technology. He now writes on technology and geopolitics, including Cold War 2.0: Artificial Intelligence in the New Battle Between China, Russia and America.
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globalgovernanceproject.org
2024 — G7 ITALY: THE APULIA SUMMIT
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