Canada’s one of NATO’s biggest deadbeats, but with Trump, we won’t get away with it anymore
Lawrence Solomon | February 24, 2017
German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen poses with soldiers of the 33rd Panzergrenadier bataillon following a drill which involved the newly developed Puma Armoured Infantry Fighting Vehicle in Neustadt am Ruebenberge, northern Germany.
NATO is the world’s most important military alliance, a noble one-for-all and all-for one pact among 28 countries of the free world that has kept Russia and other bad actors at bay in the postwar era.
All member countries, rich and poor, committed to contributing their share to maintain NATO’s potency, but most of the 28 are laggards and a handful are deadbeats, contributing a pittance to their international responsibilities. Canada is one of those deadbeats, a particular embarrassment given that Canada is an affluent country and a founder of NATO.
In 2006, NATO’s members agreed to maintain their military capabilities by spending at least two per cent of their GDP on defence. Only five countries today meet or exceed that threshold — the U.S., the U.K., Greece, Poland and Estonia — while other wealthy countries such as France and Germany are either close to two per cent or are actively increasing their defence spending to get there.
Canada is near the bottom of the pack, spending just one per cent of our GDP on our own military, despite our wealth, despite having a sizable military export industry and despite having a proud history of military accomplishments. Unlike others, we have made no moves to date to close the gap, despite pressure from the U.S. — which spends more than the other 27 members combined — and NATO itself. Instead we boast that while we may fall down in quantity we make up for it in quality. Canada is one of “the strongest actors in NATO” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insisted in Germany last week, saying that we “regularly step up — delivering troops, participating in missions, being there to do the heavy lifting in the alliance.”
Contrary to Trudeau’s claims, Canada’s military is depleted and at its breaking point. Canada’s navy is dilapidated and its air force operates with aged aircraft unable to meet either NATO or North American Aerospace Defense Command commitments. “Every time we run operations now we’re strained and we’re stretched and we’re scraping from other places,” Rick Hillier, the former chief of defence staff, explained last year in frustration at past defence budget cuts. “The funding issue makes everything fragile. You can’t hire enough people; you can’t get the equipment.”
Hillier was pleading for the Trudeau government’s defence review, which was then underway with a mandate to streamline the military, to recommend the increased funds needed to run a competent military. That review, which is expected to soon be finalized, should be halted and mandated instead to beef up the military. Canada should honour its two-per-cent commitment and also accept responsibility to look after our own defence needs, rather than counting on the U.S. to defend our skies and seas, as if we’re a dependency of some sort.
A member of German Bundeswehr 12th Mechanised Infantry Brigade, 122th Infantry Battalion prepares to unload Marder 1A4/3 military vehicles at the Sestokai railway station some 175 km west of the capital Vilnius, Lithuania, on Friday, Feb. 24, 2017.
Canada’s military has numerous needs that cry out for funding. To meet the NATO involvements Canada is now considering — these include deployments in Iraq, Ukraine, Africa and the Baltic, some to discourage moves by Russia, some to achieve NATO’s heightened anti-terrorism focus — Canada needs more men and women in uniform and decent pay for its personnel, as well as modern equipment.
Our annual $20-billion military budget needs to rise rapidly, doubling in the years ahead to adequately prepare for whatever the future might deliver, as well as to demonstrate that we’ve matured enough to fully pull our weight, earn international respect, and avoid, as Hillier fears, being “marginalized.”
Without a robust military our views count for little with friend and foe alike, no matter how much we might want to pat ourselves on the back for being influential. The virtue in melding diplomacy with military might, to avoid negotiating from a position of weakness, can be seen by looking at the EU’s feckless response to Russian advances in Ukraine and before that in Georgia. As the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace put it, “the EU no longer commands military authority. And as long as the EU is unwilling to project such authority, it will remain weak in relation to Russian leaders who are prepared to spill blood on the altar of territorial control, buffer zones, and power balances.”
An Apache attack helicopter is being unloaded from a Galaxy C-5 transport plane at the US Air Base in Ramstein, western Germany, on February 22, 2017
Fortunately for Europeans and Canadians who want to their nations’ views to count, the Trump administration will be forcing NATO’s laggards to do what they and we should have all been doing unprompted. This month, U.S. Secretary of Defence James Mattis issued an ultimatum to NATO members, telling them to live up to their word or see the U.S. withdraw its support, a warning emphatically repeated afterward by Vice President Mike Pence at the Munich security conference.
President Barack Obama tried to get us to man up on NATO, so did president George W. Bush. They failed because they were perceived as too weak to press their point. President Trump does not suffer from the same perception. Watch all of NATO’s laggards — Canada not excepted — fall into line for our own benefit and for the benefit of world peace.
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In a few years, it will be extremely entertaining watching the Canadian Coastguard and their 5 icebreakers scrambling to assert Canadian sovereignty over the Northwest Passage when hundreds of Russian oil tankers and Chinese cargo ships begin blasting through there.
I expects the news reel of the Artic scramble to be broadcasted with the Benny Hill soundtrack.
China's Northwest Passage Ambitions Could Challenge Canada's Sovereignty
China wants to run tankers right up our Northwest Passage.
Not to find the hand of Franklin. But to ship goods to North America's East Coast ... and challenge Canadian jurisdiction over Arctic waters.
A guidebook produced by China's Maritime Safety Administration (MSA) shows that the People's Republic wants to use Canada's northern waters as a
shortcut to the Atlantic, The Globe and Mail reported.
Ships currently have to reach it through the Panama Canal — a route that takes about 40 per cent more time.
The 365-page "Arctic Navigation Guide (Northwest Passage)" pitches the Northwest Passage as a shipping route by noting that the Nunavik, an ore-carrying ship, made the first unsupported voyage from Deception Bay, Que. to China in 2014.
"There will be ships with Chinese flags sailing through this route in the future," MSA spokesman Liu Pengfei said Tuesday.
"Once this route is commonly used, it will directly change global maritime transportation and have a profound influence on international trade, the world economy, capital flow and resource exploitation."
The Northwest Passage is a route that runs from the Pacific to the Atlantic Oceans via a series of channels through the Arctic.
The Government of Canada projects that it could become a
valuable trade channel if climate change opens it up to more shipping activity.
Sea ice currently makes it difficult to pass through for much of the year. But analysts say it could be ice-free for entire summers as soon as 2050.
Canada has asserted its jurisdiction, over the Northwest Passage — but other countries, such as the United States, claim the region is international waters. China hasn't said where it stands on Canada's authority over the waters.
But there are concerns over whether Canada even has the resources to assert its sovereignty there. Observers say Canada needs than the five icebreakers it currently has on hand.
China's interest in the Northwest Passage could represent "the biggest direct challenge" to Canada's sovereignty over the waters, University of Calgary professor Rob Huebert told The Globe and Mail.
For its part, the federal government is paying close attention.
Joseph Pickerill, a spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion, told
The Guardian that no one has an automatic right to sail through the passage.
"We welcome navigation that complies with our rules and regulations," he said. "Canada has an unfettered right to regulate internal waters."
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/04/21/china-northwest-passage_n_9754534.html
