An unexpected moment occurred during a debate in Toronto last month that may go some way to explaining Canada’s long-standing reluctance to openly and uncritically adopt NATO guidelines for its members’ defence spending.
While on a panel at the U.S.-Canada Eurasia Group summit, the usually reserved Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Jolie was asked how Ottawa could be considered a reliable ally when the country is in a bind over standard Western military alliances, spending at least two percent from the United States.
Providing a practical political example, the moderator spoke to the ongoing debate about the value of hard (military) versus soft (diplomatic, development) power and said that ultimately it is hard power that differentiates countries from the rest of the world on the promises they make.
Jolie is not interested in that.
“That’s your judgment,” he said. “We believe in a rules-based international system, where the rules have to be respected and, you know, small countries and big countries have to obey the same rules.”
The claim that hard power is an affront to the “rules-based international order” – often used rhetorically by governments (particularly Canada) – is a powerful one.
The philosophical argument against hard power is not a widely debated topic in the frequent debates about NATO’s expectations of member states.
There is no doubt that most governments – regardless of their political ideology – prefer to spend money on other things than defense. But the fact is that in the seven and a half decades since NATO was founded, defense spending by NATO allies has increased in times of rising international tensions and decreased in better times.
This is how the much-vaunted “rules-based international order” has so far managed to keep the world from disaster.
Jolie’s response indirectly revealed (to some extent) what many sources at Global Affairs Canada believe is the main cause of the delay in implementing the country’s long-awaited Indo-Pacific strategy.
Defence and foreign affairs sources told CBC News that the federal government is somehow trying to avoid making Canada’s military the calling card of a region where allies are demanding more concrete defence commitments.
When this plan is released in late 2022, the Indo-Pacific strategy will lean oddly toward a pragmatic policy with a significant military component, including increasing Canada’s naval presence and military engagement in the region.
Yet even in the face of the brutal reality of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Canadian government avoided resorting to coercive force.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a Berlin think tank in March 2022 that he believed Moscow’s war machine could only be crushed by implementing sanctions — as if soft power could 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 – economic sanctions, which Trudeau said could go a little further, more effectively than “tanks and missiles.”
While appearing on a panel at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute last spring, Defence Minister Bill Blair offered a broader view of the federal government’s skepticism about hard power. He told the audience that it was difficult to get NATO spending standards across the cabinet table.
He said: “Going to the Cabinet or even to Canada and trying to explain that we have to do this because we have to hit that magic two percent threshold – don’t get me wrong, it’s important, but guys. It was very difficult to convince the United States that this was a worthy goal and that this was a high standard that we had to meet.”
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 meet the goal.
Speaking on foreign policy on Monday ahead of this week’s NATO summit in Washington, Blair was a little more optimistic. He repeated his claim that free and unexpected purchases of additional equipment, such as investment in new submarines, would take the country to or above the 2% mark.
“I think we have a very aggressive plan going forward,” Blair said. “I’m confident it will get us to that point.”
But Blair himself has acknowledged that he will face an uphill battle in the Cabinet and among voters who view defence spending as wasteful.
Kerry Buck, Canada’s former ambassador to NATO, said the perception that the military exists only to kill people is false.
“You don’t want to use the military,” Buck said.
“We have an army, so nobody needs to go out and kill people, because that has a deterrent effect. So to say that investing in hard power means investing in hard power and hard power. Using such violent methods, in my opinion, is to ignore the deterrent effect.”
Speaking in Ottawa, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said he would ensure that all allies, including Canada, met the defence spending standard of 2 percent of gross domestic product.
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 make significant investments in foreign affairs.
Andrew Ratioulis, a former senior Department of National Defence (DND) official who once headed the department’s nuclear policy and arms control branch, said the reluctance to be seen using force is ingrained in the Canadian psyche.
“It’s a scouting thing,” Rasiulis said. “That’s what liberals love, right? And their voters love it.”
He said that while he didn’t entirely agree that the Liberal government was motivated by the need to invest in defence, it had clearly invested more money in the military.
Ratioulis sees the reluctance to adopt the 2% measure as a convenient policy for a minority government – something he says will not change despite a change of government next year.
“It’s no different with guns,” he said, referring to an old political adage describing the relationship between defense and social spending.
“I don’t think there will be a major change in government policy if the government changes. “You didn’t even hear that (Conservative Leader) Pierre Poilievre promised two per cent,” he said.
“He can have strong words, as conservatives usually do. And as we know, the conservative record is sometimes a failure.”
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