National Defence Committee on Oct. 16th, 2012

[Prof. Jennifer Welsh]

I think the question I was trying to uncover is really what kind of Canadian Forces would provide the most influence mainly in multilateral efforts, whether we're thinking of NATO or UN types of operations. If you took the Libya example, you would say you want advanced interoperable aircraft. That would allow you the most effective participation in multilateral efforts. If you're thinking about Afghanistan, you might conclude that it's a flexible, adaptable army, although strategic lift can help greatly in that respect as well.

Canada is obviously making a decision to invest in its own security through investments in the air force and the navy for home defence, if you will, but also for some multilateral operations, and it wants to invest wisely in terms of its capability for these multilateral efforts.

The only suggestion I was making is that the F-35s will involve a trade-off. They may very well mean, unless other kinds of changes are made, less money for the flexible, adaptable army. It's just understanding what those trade-offs might be.

I'm making an assumption about a fixed pool of resources and I'm also completely aware of the other calls on taxpayers' money, so you're in a world of trade-offs. I'm just trying to explore what the implications might be. It might mean we would have less capacity to put boots on the ground where needed, but there may be scenarios in which we could combine F-35s with maintaining that capability.

To an extent it's just the challenges of our own North American space increasingly requiring our resources. It was really only in 2005 that North America came to be seen as a theatre of operations in its own right. That, obviously and rightly, is taking up a great deal of our thinking and our resources in terms of defence.

I don't know if that's helpful.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

It will give us something to think about, that's for sure.

You mentioned something else that caught my attention. You mentioned whether NATO should have an accountability mechanism or whether there should be greater accountability to the UN when NATO is operating under a UN mandate.

I've heard some criticisms in the past that NATO doesn't want to be seen as the muscle for the UN. How do you reconcile those two—the need or the desire for NATO to remain independent and the UN's desire to ensure that they're not acting outside of a UN mandate?

It's probably a question that doesn't have an easy answer, but it was something that did twig some questions for me. I'd ask you to expand a little further on how you see NATO's relationship to the Security Council being practically applied.

[Prof. Jennifer Welsh]

There is a complex relationship here. The UN charter called for the development of a military staff command of real operational resources for the UN that never came to pass, so whenever the UN authorizes an operation it is relying on states to respond either through some kind of a coalition or through an alliance.

In the Libya campaign it was very interesting. In the first 10 days, it was not a NATO operation; it was a U.K.-U.S.-French operation. Interestingly, what I have heard, and this tells you a lot about the politics of these sorts of situations, is that the French and the U.K., who were very much out front in the beginning—and it's often said the U.S. led from behind in Libya—were very concerned about the optics of a French-British intervention in the Middle East. I heard the word “Suez” many times, so for them NATO was the solution for the legitimacy of what they wanted to do.

This will be the case for NATO; it will be seen as a good instrument for the states that comprise it. That also means, if we are to take on board this belief in the legitimacy of Security Council authorization, that NATO will often be operating as the arm or the operational agent for the UN. This isn't new; it's done it through peacekeeping before, but there are robust mechanisms for accountability with respect to peacekeeping—well, I should say there are mechanisms. Are they always as robust as they could be? However, for civilian protection operations that are different from peacekeeping....

This was not a consensual peacekeeping operation. The Security Council authorized the use of force without the consent of the Libyan state. This was a big deal. For those kinds of operations, currently we don't have those kinds of accountability mechanisms; they can be developed, but we need to start thinking about how that will happen.

I would be a little worried on the flip—

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I'm going to have to interject and stop you here. We have a five-minute time limit for questions and answers. We'll ask you to be very concise in your responses now that we're into the five-minute round.

With that, we'll move on.

Ms. Moore, go ahead.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to know how the situation in Syria is affecting the level of cooperation between NATO and Russia.

[Prof. Jennifer Welsh]

Does Paul want to answer this question?

I'm happy to answer, but Paul may have some thoughts, given that he mentioned Russia in his presentation.

[Paul Ingram]

I think clearly there have been a series of actions that NATO has undertaken over the years, from Kosovo onward, that the Russians have taken great exception to.

There are two angles here. The first is NATO taking action that the Russians are uncomfortable with because of the action itself; the second is that it demonstrates quite clearly NATO's capacity to intervene in regions outside of its own area of operations, which reinforces the Russian fear that NATO, as perceived within Russia, is a tool of western hegemony.

They didn't oppose the intervention actively in Libya, but they were very uncomfortable with it and felt taken along, as if on a train. They felt they faced undesirable choices one way or the other.

Again, I emphasize that this is a Russian perspective; it's not necessarily my perspective, but I'm often explaining perspectives that are different from our own.

From their perspective, this underlines their relative weakness with regard to the alliance, and their own need, therefore, to maintain vigilance to not trust the alliance. They perceive the willingness of the Americans and the alliance as a whole to move forward on projects such as missile defence and the development of novel conventional capabilities, whatever the consequence on the perceived security of other states, as indicators that NATO is not to be trusted.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you very much.

In Libya's case, for example, we know that Gadhafi didn't become a dictator overnight. When we work alongside countries with less than stellar human rights track records, how do we approach that relationship, ethically speaking?

[Paul Ingram]

Perhaps I could answer that first.

I think that we in the west need to be very cautious about measuring moral and ethical interventions purely by the measuring stick of military intervention. Professor Welsh stated quite clearly that responsibility to protect is not simply about military intervention. I would go further and say that the prime movement of responsibility to protect is not about military intervention. That's just the icing on the cake, the top of the iceberg. We need to be more consistent over a longer period with respect to countries like Libya and indeed across the Middle East.

In my observation, ethical and moral issues actually drive people's opinions in the Middle East more strongly than they do even here in Britain or over there in Canada. I perceive there to be a stronger attachment here to strategic calculations, to real political calculations, while in the Middle East it's quite common for people both in government and on the street to be perceiving inequality, unfairness, and immoral behaviour in virtually everything we do in the west. If we are to engage for ethical reasons—and I would very strongly support engagement for ethical reasons, using both military and other means—then we need to do so much more consistently and coherently than we have done up to now.

Libya is a prime example of that. Certainly in this country, recent governments had been cooperating very closely with Colonel Gadhafi for many years, ever since he started to cooperate with our governments on such issues as weapons of mass destruction and the like, despite the human rights abuses. There are documented cases of cooperation between our intelligence services here and his forces in handing over suspects who were opposition activists within Libya.

Therefore, if we're serious about the ethical engagement across the world—and I think we do need to be—we need to be much more serious across the piece than we have been up to now.

[Prof. Jennifer Welsh]

Could I make a very brief comment in response?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

You can, if you can do it in under 30 seconds.

[Prof. Jennifer Welsh]

Okay. I won't, then.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

We're out of time. We have to keep on moving.

Committee members, I will ask you to make sure to indicate which witnesses you would like to answer your questions. That would also help with our staff and with directing technology.

Mr. Opitz, you have the floor.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Ingram, you've written extensively about nuclear issues, disarmament, and so forth. Do you think Canada should join a NATO-led ballistic missile defence arrangement, or should we remain outside of it, as is presently the case?

[Paul Ingram]

I think Canada would need to look at its own national security interests. I have to say that I'm not sufficiently familiar with your own national security concerns to know whether you should join, but I would say that looking alliance-wide, it's very important that we take seriously the unintended consequences of the development of such technologies.

Missile defence will be essential if the world is to seriously move towards reduced and then zero nuclear weapons, but if we do so simply with our own security in mind and do not take into account the unintended consequences in terms of the reactions from states like Russia, China, and those in the Middle East, then we're only storing up trouble for the future.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I'd like to stay with that for a minute, because a lot of your stuff, as you said, is centred around nuclear disarmament.

In a case of totalitarian and theocratic states like North Korea and potentially Iran, would they take similar measures if they witnessed, for example, NATO disarming? Let me put it this way: would you not agree that as long as nuclear weapons are a reality, that pragmatically NATO should remain a nuclear alliance, given states such as the two I just mentioned as examples?

[Paul Ingram]

My opinion is that whatever my opinion, NATO will remain a nuclear alliance as long as there are nuclear weapons in the world.

I wasn't referring to any contest to that statement when I was referring earlier to there being a lack of cohesion amongst the alliance. I don't perceive that. I think the alliance will remain a nuclear alliance for as long as nuclear weapons remain in the world. It was particularly the deployment of the free-fall nuclear weapons that I think increasingly have no military value and no deterrence value. That was what I meant.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I'm going to shift to Professor Welsh.

Professor, you mentioned something very interesting a little while ago in one of your answers, and that was about a military staff command at the UN. If we take the example of Bosnia in the early part of the nineties, where the UN had its role at the beginning and NATO had its role at the end, could you compare and contrast some of that, and maybe add a comment on where you think a military staff command at the UN would have been useful?

[Prof. Jennifer Welsh]

Well, what I meant when I was referring to the military staff committee was that it, by implication, would also have combat-ready or available forces to actually execute UN mandates itself, as opposed to having to contract those out.

What happened in the Balkans is that you actually had a fair amount of oversight—interestingly, by the UN Secretariat—over some of the decisions that were made with respect to targeting and the actions of troops on the ground, particularly with respect to safe areas. That didn't happen in Libya. In the Balkans you had NATO operating as a regional organization authorized by the council, but you had much more oversight from the UN than you had in the case of Libya.

Now, there were also problems with that. Many of the memoirs of generals from NATO countries have referred to the difficulties in getting a consensus between the UN and NATO countries on how to act in safe areas, but it did exist.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

In your opinion, what do you think would have been the potential fallout if NATO had not intervened in places such as Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Libya? Do you think there are other international regional organizations that would have had the capacity to protect the local populations?

[Prof. Jennifer Welsh]

I think that in the case of Kosovo, there was no other candidate. NATO was the region's capable agent, if you will, so what you would have seen in that instance, if we believe the evidence put before decision-makers at the time, is more ethnic cleansing and more atrocities against civilians, although retrospectively, I think, the evidence much more shows that NATO's actions actually contributed to further ethnic cleansing. Nonetheless, I'm someone who believes that the action was legitimate, even though it was illegal.

The case of Afghanistan again is a very different situation, in that you don't have regional players of the kind you have in Europe, Latin America, or even Africa, so the possibility of there being a regional actor really doesn't come to light in the same way. The question is, what would have happened had NATO not become involved through ISAF in a much more multi-dimensional operation in Afghanistan, beyond what the Americans did very early in 2001? I think that's an interesting counterfactual that I'm sure we're all thinking about, but there was a moment there when we had an opportunity, through a massive show of force, to prevent the Taliban from having a foothold in Afghanistan, and we know where we are today.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Your time has expired. We'll move on to Mr. Kellway.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank our guests for coming in today and sharing their expertise. It's been very interesting so far.

I'd like to start, Professor Welsh, with this issue of fixed resources. It seems to be an operating assumption for you. If we are working in a world of fixed resources, is the smart defence concept a sensible and viable response to that world?

[Prof. Jennifer Welsh]

I think in theory it is, but the experience of NATO gives me caution as to whether it could actually work.

As I mentioned, if you are going to specialize militarily as part of an alliance, you are going to have to rely on your allies in theatre to show up with the things that you need and to provide them for the collective in a way that will meet your objectives. I come back to the example of the helicopters in Afghanistan. Canadians were relying on the U.K. and the U.S. for helicopters, but those two countries prioritized their own efforts first. We found ourselves having to use convoys and create greater risks for our own soldiers because we did not have that capability. We specialized.

It will only work if you can have the assurance that your allies will provide that capability to you, and because of those realities and because of some of the caveats that countries have on their operations, this may not work perfectly. I don't say that to indicate that it's impossible, but NATO has to be thinking about how it can address that issue; otherwise, smart defence will leave countries very vulnerable in the field.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Do you have any thoughts on how they can address that issue internally in the alliance?