There was an unexpected moment during a debate in Toronto last month that may explain why Canada has been reluctant to openly and uncritically accept NATO’s guidelines on its members’ defence spending.
Appearing on a panel at the U.S.-Canada Eurasia Summit, the usually calm Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly was asked specifically how Ottawa could be considered a reliable ally when it seems unable – or unwilling – to meet the benchmarks of a Western military alliance that spends at least two per cent of GDP on defence.
Offering a bit of realpolitik, the moderator discussed the eternal debate over the value of hard (military) power versus soft (diplomatic, development) power and said that ultimately, “hard power is what tends to undermine the promises of the world” of other countries.
Joly didn’t want to accept that.
“That’s your judgment,” he said. “We believe in a rules-based international order in which the rules have to be respected and, you know, small and big countries have to follow the same rules.”
The idea that hard power is an affront to the “rules-based international order” – the jargon that governments (especially Canadian) like to use – speaks volumes.
The philosophical argument against hard power has not been widely discussed in the circular debate over NATO’s expectations of member states.
There is no doubt that most governments – regardless of their political allegiance – would rather spend money on something other than defence. Nevertheless, over the seven and a half decades since NATO was founded, defence spending by NATO allies has tended to increase in times of heightened international tensions and decrease in better times.
This is how the much-discussed “rules-based international order” works to keep the world several steps away from catastrophe.
Joly’s response also indirectly reveals (a little) what some Global Affairs Canada sources consider to be the cause of the delay in implementing the country’s long-awaited Indo-Pacific strategy.
The federal government is looking for a way — by any means necessary — to avoid making Canada’s military the country’s calling card in a region where allies are demanding more concrete defence commitments, defence and foreign affairs sources told CBC News.
When released in late 2022, the Indo-Pacific strategy will lean toward realpolitik with a significant military component, including an increased Canadian naval presence and military participation in the region.
Yet even in the face of the brutal reality of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Canadian government has tended to avoid any expression of hard power.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a Berlin think tank in March 2022 that he believed Moscow’s war machine could be contained through sanctions alone – as if soft power could somehow stop Russian tanks.
He told the nonprofit Atlantic Bridge at the Munich Security Conference that since World War II, the international community has developed “more and better tools” to deal with international aggression – referring to economic sanctions, which Trudeau said can be much more effective than “tanks and missiles.”
Appearing last spring on a panel at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, Defence Minister Bill Blair provided a broader snapshot of the depth of skepticism toward hard power within the federal government. He told the audience that meeting NATO spending standards was a sticking point on the cabinet table.
“Trying to go to cabinet, or even to Canadians, and say we have to do this because we have to get to that magic 2 per cent threshold — don’t get me wrong, it’s important, but it’s very difficult to convince people that that’s a worthy goal, that that’s a noble standard that we have to live up to,” he said.
National Defence Minister Bill Blair told Power & Politics that Canada “still has work to do” to meet NATO’s 2 per cent spending target, but he is “confident” Ottawa will get there.
On Monday in Washington, addressing a foreign policy audience ahead of this week’s NATO summit, Blair was slightly more optimistic. He repeated his claim that surprise, free purchases of additional equipment, such as investment in new submarines, would push the country closer to or beyond the 2 percent mark.
“I think we have a very aggressive plan to move forward,” Blair said. “I’m confident that this plan will get us to that threshold.”
But by his own admission, Blair will face an uphill battle within the cabinet and with voters who view the defence budget as wasteful.
Kerry Buck, Canada’s former ambassador to NATO, said it was wrong to buy into the idea that the military exists only to go out and kill people.
“You don’t want to use the military,” Buck said.
“You have the military, so nobody has to go out and kill people, because that has a deterrent effect. So to say that investing in hard power means you have to use hard power and the means of hard power, I think, ignores the deterrent effect.
Speaking in Ottawa, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said he would ensure that all allies met the defence spending threshold of 2 percent of GDP, including Canada.
He said that while diplomacy is the first line of defence of any civilised nation, successive federal administrations over the past two decades have failed to invest significantly in foreign affairs.
Andrew Rasiulis, a former senior Department of National Defence (DND) official who once headed the nuclear policy and arms control branch, said the reluctance to be seen using hard force is ingrained in the Canadian psyche.
“That’s what the Boy Scouts love,” Rasiulis said. “That’s what the Liberals love, right? And their voters love that.”
He said that while he was not entirely sure the Liberal government was philosophically motivated by the need to invest in defence, it had clearly invested more money in the military.
Rasiulis sees the reluctance to adopt the 2% measure as pragmatic policy for a minority government – something he says will not change if the government changes hands next year.
“Better butter than guns,” he said, referring to an old political adage describing an either-or relationship between defense and social spending.
“I’m not sure government policy would be much different if the government changed. “You didn’t hear (Conservative Leader) Pierre Pollievre promise a 2 per cent increase,” he said.
“They could have had stronger words, as conservatives usually do. And as we know, the conservative record is sometimes far from brilliant.”
“Thinker. Hardcore web aficionado. Zombie evangelist. Pop culture trailblazer. Student. Passionate twitter maven.”
