Thank you for the warning, and the invitation and opportunity to appear before the committee. This is indeed both a vital and urgent topic.
I would like to state at the very beginning that from my perspective, any analysis of North American defence may be deconstructed only for analytical and functional purposes. A full understanding of the issues and modalities of Canadian and North American defence ultimately needs to operate within a larger context, given that we live and operate in a globalized system. Consequently, threats are interconnected and developments far away have an impact on us.
What I propose to focus on here are specific Canadian and continental defence concerns, while trying to keep in mind the larger perspective that I outlined. Within the narrow analysis, we should nonetheless be cognizant of the full range of threats, from the political to the military and the environmental. The current comprehensive review of Canadian defence policy, one that I understand should be completed in 2017, will hopefully take this holistic and global approach.
Canadian defence, I would argue, operates at three levels: the country, continental arrangements, and the larger trans-Atlantic Alliance. In essence, as in the case of any state, Canada is first and foremost responsible for the production of its own sovereignty and national interests. However, we are also part of NORAD and NATO, as we have seen, and for several decades our defence and that of the continent, at least from north of the Rio Grande, has been a blending of these three levels.
At the country level, we know that Canada operates the Joint Task Force North, and Canadian Forces maintain a year-round presence in the northern region. The RCAF's mission, in turn, ranges from search and rescue to sovereignty protection. Canada, as well, pursues military co-operation through the tri-command, which is the relationship between the Canadian Joint Operations Command, the U.S. Northern Command, and NORAD. NORAD, the bi-national military command, has a significant presence in the north through operations and training. Further, NORAD's north warning system, using radars covering 4,800 kilometres, looks for airborne activity and, since 2006, also potential maritime threats. Outside of this area, Canada also co-operates with NATO regarding global security concerns.
All of these activities function within a certain context and environment, and any analysis cannot be judged in abstract terms. That is, Canada has to respond to specific threats. Also, as has been outlined by my two other colleagues, the two primary threats to Canada—and there are also threats on the periphery—emanate from Russia, and potentially from North Korea. By far the greatest threat comes from Russia.
I would like to begin by saying that we are not in a new Cold War. Rather, to the contrary, I would contend that Russia, as really a remnant of the Soviet Union, is not the same as the Soviet Union, although we do need to worry about various acts of aggression on the part of Russia. There are no longer two conflicting universal ideologies confronting each other across the globe. There's not the same threat of nuclear Armageddon or nuclear winter, and in terms of conventional warfare, we do not have the threat of scores of Russian divisions pushing through the Fulda Gap on their way to the Channel. Having said that, this is far from contending that we need to be reassured, because we have seen an assertive, and even aggressive, Russia with very virulent manifestations of this in Ukraine, and earlier in Georgia. We have returned, as Walter Russel Mead has suggested, to geopolitics.
The Russian government is also prodding and probing western weaknesses. It has outlined new ambitions, particularly in the vast and strategic Arctic, which is so much a part of Canada's concerns about protecting sovereignty.
The rhetoric from Moscow and even that from Washington is troubling. At the February 2016 conference in Munich, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev claimed, “we have slid back to a new Cold War.... On almost a daily basis, we're called one of the most terrible threats either to NATO...or Europe, or to the United States.” This is somewhat ironic, since it was Russia using hybrid warfare that illegally annexed Crimea, and continues to fund, arm, and direct separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.
The Americans have also expressed alarm. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter declared in February of 2016 that “we haven't had to worry about this”—meaning a Russian threat or attack—“for 25 years” and “[w]hile I wish it were otherwise, now we do.”
Despite this rhetoric, we are not quite yet in a new Cold War; Russia's capabilities are limited by the fact that it has a GDP roughly that of Italy's in nominal terms. But this does not mean that it does not enjoy very significant regional advantages, as has been outlined by others, and I would not by any means wish to minimize those threats. But how do we deal with that?
The west is basically hard-wired—and this is not necessarily bad—to negotiate. That is not necessarily the Russian approach or the approach of the Kremlin currently. Russian foreign policy is driven to a very large extent by a series of intertwined domestic crises. We need to understand this if we are to cope with the military threat, because it operates within the larger political context. It is persistent and is likely to continue for a very long time under the current leadership in the Kremlin.
The domestic motive forces of Russian action and Russian military threats externally are driven by four domestic crises: the political legitimacy crisis, the economic crisis, an identity crisis, and a coming succession crisis. In light of the Kremlin's inability or unwillingness to take the fundamental steps that would be needed to resolve these crises, the Putin government not only has been shrinking the zone of democracy within Russia, but has relied on manufacturing external threats to create a kind of permanent mobilization as an alternative to genuine political legitimation.
Its economic problems have also pushed Russia to try to gain as much control over the Arctic as possible, both in terms of political goals and in terms of economic value. The Arctic has enormous potential resources, but the Arctic is also a very fragile area. If we look at the threat in the Arctic, we see four areas of concern: one, environment and ecology; two, energy exploration; three, trade and navigation; and four, security. I will skip over the first three because I want to spend a little more time on the fourth one.
Needless to say, any major spills in the Arctic would be catastrophic. That exploration would take place in one of the most ecologically fragile areas in the world and that no country has a worse record as a custodian of the environment than Russia, and no country is pushing for more exploration than Russia.... Russia also tries to control navigation, and this is where the Russian capacity to use icebreakers, which other countries don't have, and which neither the Americans nor we in Canada have paid enough attention to, I would argue, presents Russia with certain advantages.
In the fourth area, Russian security and military aspirations in the Arctic are enormous. The Russians have created the joint strategic command, SEVER, and have deployed a large Arctic brigade only 50 kilometres from the border of Finland. They continually conduct large exercises, including the vast military exercise in the north in 2015, involving something like 80,000 troops.
In December 2014 the Kremlin established the Arctic strategic command with the same legal status as the four other long-standing military districts. In 2015 Mr. Putin not only created a coordinating mission for development of the Arctic, vested with power in all areas and activities, but confirmed in March of that year as commission chair the notoriously anti-Western and aggressive deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin, who famously quipped that “tanks don't need visas”. Russia has also deployed extensive nuclear assets in the Arctic, including the nuclear Borei-class submarines with Bulava missiles.
Clearly, Canada cannot cope with a threat of this magnitude on its own. It needs help from its American ally in NORAD and from its other allies in NATO.
In the case off NORAD, however, in addition to the Russian threat, at some point we may also face one from North Korea, which is becoming more imminent as we get information on the possibility of the militarization of nuclear warheads and the deployment of mobile missiles in the case of Korea.
The problem with NORAD is that we rely a great deal on the United States. Under the current administration in the United States, there is a preference to limit engagement or to “lead from behind” and to lower defence expenditures. So reliance on the United States, allies have found, has become significantly more uncertain.
In terms of NATO—and this involves Iceland, Norway, and Denmark, as well as the United States, as they are fellow NATO members—the alliance itself does not have a particularly encouraging record of maintaining its defence capabilities. Despite the agreement in Wales two years ago that committed all 28 members to meeting the 2% of GDP defence expenditure target, only five countries have done so. Among the five that do, the United States and the U.K. have, in fact, been diminishing their defence expenditures. Canada, at roughly 1%, with a zero increase in 2014-15, also has a less than encouraging record when we have vast areas to protect in terms of our sovereignty. Germany, the second largest economy in NATO, has expenditures on defence of only about 1.2% of GDP, and last year those declined in absolute terms.
There is no magical solution to defence. You have to spend the money, you have to get the weapons. Negotiations, cooperation, and improved discursive practices all help, but ultimately the largest regional threat—the one coming from Russia—has to be addressed with both capacity and the will to dissuade. Moscow has taken aggressive political, military, and economic steps, particularly in the Arctic. The threat is not one of all-out attack, at least in the Arctic—and I'm not looking at the Baltic States, which are somewhat different. But the danger in the Arctic is one of misperception, miscalculation, and missteps. The response should be driven by prudence, not paranoia.
In conclusion, Canada needs to protect its rights in the Arctic, and air power will play a key role, but it all has to be done in a coordinated, comprehensive, deliberate, and determined fashion. Russia deserves respect, as does any other state, but a certain reality needs to be communicated to the Kremlin. Clever tactics by Moscow, the use of hybrid warfare in various parts of the world, and political pressure do not change the fundamentals of a country, Russia, that should concentrate far more on its domestic issues and on tapping its vast human and natural resources in order to become a modern state, rather than looking to find some sort of imaginary road to its restoration as a superpower through various foreign adventures.
The west, in turn, needs to have an integrated approach, a kind of grand strategy where Canada works together with the U.S. through NORAD and with NATO in its approach to the Arctic and to North American threats in general.
Russia should be made to understand that not only an outright conflict but even just an all-out military competition would ultimately be very bad for it, because it simply cannot match the capacity of a combined and determined west. Russia needs to look to Cervantes and Sancho Panza's line about a ceramic pitcher, where he said, “if the pitcher hits the stone or the stone hits the pitcher, it’s bad for the pitcher”. In an all-out confrontation, Russia is the pitcher. So perhaps Russia should be persuaded, indeed, to focus more on its domestic issues, as foreign adventures are not a substitute for resolving those problems.
Lastly, another European writer-philosopher, Voltaire, put it best in terms of advice. Voltaire, in Candide, speaking through his ever-optimistic hero, who had been mugged by reality, declared that ultimately, “Il faut cultiver notre jardin”, we must cultivate our garden. This perhaps is particularly timely advice for Russia and others who may pose threats to North America.
