National Defence Committee on Oct. 25th, 2012

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jack Harris]

You still have a minute and 45 seconds.

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

Thank you. Much appreciated.

Mr. Meyer, I see that you have served both with NATO and with Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs, including in Moscow.

A few months ago, another disarmament expert, Mr. Ernie Regehr, came to talk to us. He stressed the importance of ties with Russia and the need for us to reinvent our relationship with that country in disarmament matters. In terms of conventional forces, he felt that NATO represented a bigger threat for Russia than Russia does for NATO.

So I would like your comments on the matter. As a country that wants to concern itself with international security, and as a member of NATO, what relationship with Russia should Canada have? What part of the Russia-Canada relationship or the Russia-NATO relationship poses the problem in terms of arms control, disarmament and international security? How do we address those limitations?

[Paul Meyer]

Exactly. There is irony for those who have historical perspectives. NATO for many years insisted it needed a nuclear deterrent policy because it was conventionally weaker than the Soviet Union of the day and the Warsaw Pact. Now the same logic is being reversed, and Moscow says it feels it has to hold on to its nuclear forces because it is conventionally weaker than NATO, and objectively, that's the case.

At the same time, I don't think that should be accepted without efforts to build the level of confidence that would enable those remaining nuclear forces to come down and for cooperation to be sustained. We have to appreciate what an incredible strategic accomplishment, particularly the European arms control and disarmament regimes, were in limiting the forces and the potential for war.

Of course, political changes of great significance went along with that, but there was a whole regime of notification, of observation, of restraint largely put under the limitation of specific weapons systems, eliminations of whole categories of ballistic missiles, for instance, in the INF Treaty. These are very important, a key that we have to continue to reinforce, and indeed to expand upon. That's why I emphasize a need for an active diplomacy regarding Russia on these matters and others.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jack Harris]

Thank you.

Mr. Strahl, you have seven minutes, sir.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to take a quick opportunity to wish all our colleagues who are participating in the Ukraine election observations the best, especially our colleague from Etobicoke Centre, Ted Opitz, who headed out today after his important Supreme Court win.

My questions are again on the idea of nuclear disarmament. There is certainly lots of interest in this discussion around the NATO-Russia relationship, and I'll come back to that in a minute.

Diplomacy with Russia may be possible. I think we can say we continue to have good diplomatic relations there, with bumps on the road for sure. What about countries like North Korea or Iran, which have nuclear capability or certainly nuclear aspirations? Some would say it would be irresponsible for NATO to unilaterally disarm or to not have their eyes open to that threat, so as long as there are countries we don't have diplomatic relations with, or that are outside the mainstream of the international community, would it not be a little short-sighted to eliminate NATO's capabilities in the face of that threat?

Mr. Meyer.

[Paul Meyer]

I think it would be if it were unilateral, and that's not what I would be advocating. There is some scope for initial action. For instance, the repatriation of the remaining U.S. nuclear gravity bombs in Europe is a step that would be helpful for overall relations and would facilitate a further move to getting transparency and controls relating to the Russian so-called substrategic or tactical nuclear weapons that remain in the European area.

When I speak about a more energetic approach to nuclear disarmament matters, it's more the end driving the diplomacy of this to look at ways in which the current levels can be brought down. All of the nuclear-weapons-possessing states would be involved in that. The current attitude of many is that as long as the United States and Russia have something like 95% of the total nuclear arsenal, it's for them to bring down their numbers at least substantially, into the hundreds rather than the thousands, and at that point they would be willing to move.

More than a generation after the Cold War, it is incumbent on all states, non-nuclear weapon states as well as nuclear weapon states, to get more serious about the elimination of what remains a catastrophic if ever used arm, and frankly one that is a diversion from the contemporary military challenges, which are largely in the conventional field.

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

There is a reasonable dialogue among the United States, Europe, and the Russians. But from what I have seen, certainly we don't have normalized diplomatic relations with North Korea and with Iran. My question is more on those two. What do we do there, where we are not having an open dialogue—or an open discussion anyway?

[Paul Meyer]

Obviously those are two difficult cases. If you take North Korea, it's probably the most bizarre regime that currently exists in the world, the most Stalinistic in the worst sense of that. It is a very hard nut to crack in terms of expecting the usual sorts of international behaviour.

That said, I think there are pressures that can be brought to bear, and incentives, and through time a normalization of relations as part of an agreement to de-nuclearize the Korean peninsula is the best prospect.

As China has to assume greater responsibilities as a great power, there can be expectations that Beijing is going to have to be more constructive and assertive vis-à-vis its titular ally in North Korea, and exert pressure on them.

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

Because of your experience both in NATO and with the Russian people, what are Russia's commitments with respect to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation?

What are your observations with respect to Russia's decision to withdraw from the Nunn-Lugar initiative?

[Paul Meyer]

Russia, like all NPT state parties, has an obligation to effect nuclear disarmament, and clearly, as a nuclear weapon state, it has the requirement to take a leading role in that regard, and there has been some progress. Unfortunately, the pace of that reduction, on both the U.S. and Russian sides, I think is far from satisfactory.

I think we have to objectively acknowledge that the espousal of ballistic missile defence in the United States has been a complicating factor, as Russia worries about the potential implications for its deterrent forces if a full-fledged development of that technology goes ahead.

I mentioned briefly the conventional military, the relative inferiority, and as a result that's been a drag. But it has made a commitment through the new START treaty, and I think it's incumbent, again, on all the states that have relations with Moscow to argue that it needs to show a leadership role and to move more rapidly to bring down its arsenals and to be responsible in their use.

The Nunn-Lugar was a very useful program, but I think there is a good argument to be made that now that Russia is in better financial circumstances, it should be financing its own removal of its antiquated and surplus WMD and not have to rely on the largesse of the G-8 countries, including Canada, for that sort of assistance. Maybe there are other countries that could benefit more or be more deserving of receiving G-8 global partnership money at this point in time than Russia.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jack Harris]

Thank you very much.

The next questioner is Mr. McKay. Sir, you have seven minutes.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

First I'd like to ask a question of Professor Mason, and then I'll move to Professor Meyer.

I was struck by your comment that if NATO had stayed within, in effect, a blue helmet capability, the approach to Afghanistan might well have been quite a bit different. You were using Afghanistan as an example, and I assume you have other examples. The lead cannot be military when the solution is in fact political, and the emphasis should be on the preventing of conflict. The tragedy for Canada is that it left us incapable of contributing to blue helmet peacekeeping/peacemaking operations.

Around here, there seems to be some contentment with the notion that we have no real blue helmet capacity. Is it therefore your recommendation that the military-government revisit the capacity that we've had in the past to actually participate in either NATO or UN-led operations, which have as their lead the concept of peacemaking or peacekeeping or conflict resolution, etc.—in other words, moving towards a “political solution” before it becomes a military conflict.

[Peggy Mason]

Thank you very much for that question.

I'd like to go back for a second to the hard lesson, the frustration of the Canadian experience, particularly in the UN Protection Force in the former Yugoslavia, and then compare that to the feeling of satisfaction over the NATO-led missions, IFOR and SFOR, which kind of reinforced the view that we don't want to be in the UN stuff, we want to be in the NATO-led stuff.

I alluded to one change that's happened, one big change, in terms of the UN organizing itself to better engage in these very complex peace operations. But the other aspect I'd like to highlight, which really must not be forgotten, is that the UN Protection Force in the former Yugoslavia was destroyed essentially when there was no peace to keep in the middle of a war. The very robust international stabilization force, the NATO stabilization force, that deployed after the Dayton agreement deployed in the context of an agreement to implement.

So the lesson, I would argue, is not just that you need a capable military force, but you need a peace agreement to implement. That's the part of the equation that got lost when we moved into the NATO side of things and focused our efforts very much on the military capability, and we lost sight of the fact that the two elements really are incredibly important. Then when you're talking about that peacemaking framework, the UN is pre-eminently the lead on that.

In terms of what I'm recommending as a first step—because obviously, this is a change in thinking, a big change—I'm proposing that countries like Canada, with the experience that we've had, engage in a dialogue, take the lead in the NATO and UN context to sponsor a dialogue with the UN on lessons from the use of force in these complex operations.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

We function here under the curse of time, so let me just focus you a little on Libya. What's the lesson learned there? Certainly, under General Bouchard that was a successful military operation, but we seemed to have abandoned ship with respect to the post-conflict conflict, shall we say. What are your pithy takeaways on that?

[Peggy Mason]

I might just say, as an aside, that I was happy to have...General Bouchard was the first Canadian commander I was involved in training with. This was before he ended up as the head of that very important mission.

Maybe we would have done exactly the same thing as we did. But the problem we see with Libya is this. Are we asking the question, did we win in the short term only to lose in the long term? The focus on military action meant that weapons were widely dispersed, not only in Libya but also in the region, in the subregion, and it's led to severe destabilization.

It's impossible to say, in hindsight, but possibly if we had been more cognizant of the fact that there has to be a political solution in the end and cognizant of the dangers of a short-term military effort, and what that can lead to, maybe—maybe—we would have done the same thing. But maybe we would have focused on the political dimension much more at the outset. That might have meant that we wouldn't have necessarily have put conditions on the peace process, like Gadhafi has to go. Conditions that couldn't be met led to the military operation. It causes you to look at it in a different way; it causes you to say to yourself, “The military approach has big risks and big costs.”

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Professor Meyer, you made an interesting observation with respect to the withdrawal from the AWACS, in the context of smart defence and things of that nature. This was a bewildering decision by the government. Of course, it's in a context of a whole bunch of bewildering decisions, but anyway....

The withdrawal seems to me to have significant implications for any future military missions we might wish to participate in. Am I correct in that assumption?

[Paul Meyer]

Clearly, it's a key capability. It was used in the Libyan operation, for example. When you're part of the program, you have access to that. There were 17 countries in the program, I believe, and I'm not sure how we, as a country that has dropped out, can benefit. Maybe there's a pay-for-use option. As I said in my opening statement, I thought it was an unfortunate act. This is exactly the direction a smart defence would point you in, trying to procure high-ticket items on a common alliance basis.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

But don't you have to question how smart is smart?

[Paul Meyer]

What I'm saying is that the objective of the smart defence, as I understand that kind of terminology, is that you're looking to get benefits and cost efficiencies. One way of doing that is instead of having each member state attempt to acquire really expensive kits or capabilities, they could do it in a collective way, and that would benefit the collective defence purposes of the alliance.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jack Harris]

Thank you, sir. Your time is up.

We're now into round two, and our first questioner is Mr. Norlock for five minutes.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and my thanks to the witnesses for appearing today.

My question is for Mr. Meyer. The question will carry on with the Libyan thing, but with a little different twist. The Libyan mission required some level of coordination with regional partners such as the Arab League and the African Union. Something that is discussed a great deal within the strategic concept is the need for NATO to establish stronger partnerships with countries or regions that are not members of the alliance.

In your opinion, how important was it for the mission in Libya and for future missions that NATO build strong working partnerships with other countries or regions, similar to or like the African Union or the perhaps within the Asia-Pacific countries?

[Paul Meyer]

In short, I think it's very important that those partnerships be developed.

In the absence of the Arab League call for active military engagement in Libya, I don't think the operation would have happened. NATO would have been ill-advised to have attempted that without the political cover, if you will, that came from having an Arab association of states in that region, and afterwards the African Union also, I recall, had a political endorsement. That's an excellent example of reaching out. While there was a very token participation by Qatar in that operation, the political blessing was invaluable in terms of the credibility, and ultimately the acceptability, of that intervention.

Again this has to be thought through more in ongoing consultative processes to identify some of those potential partners and build up.

Peggy's quite right. The ideal would be to do all of this under the UN, where you could fuse a civilian and a military capacity, but the military dimension of the UN, even though it's in the charter, was never realized. So we have to find a way. NATO provides the most sophisticated military capability, but it has to ensure that others feel part of the action, that they have a voice at the table. That working out is still in flux, I would say, to get the proper way that other partners feel they can have a political say and not just their contribution to the enterprise.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Are you saying that since they share the same continent, the African Union and the Arab League should be more involved in the Libyan situation rather than NATO?

[Paul Meyer]

I think there has to be greater responsibility, and to be fair, I think the African Union in particular has moved along that route. But one also has to acknowledge the limited capabilities of many of those states.

A good example of this NATO force multiplication, if you will, that I would advocate was that NATO agreed to provide strategic airlift to African Union forces in connection with the mission in Somalia, an African Union/UN-blessed mission, but the reality is that without the help of a sophisticated military-heavy airlift, those troops couldn't readily get in and be supplied, etc. So I'd like to see more of this.

The reality is that NATO is an alliance of fairly developed states. They have capabilities that the majority of other states lack. Yet those other states should have a role, and can provide, let's say, the infantry, or can provide some basic elements. But if NATO could come with those more sophisticated aspects and assets, I think that represents a very reasonable and solid way of performing both the military function as well as clearly having an expanded political partnership. Those are the routes of the future, in my mind.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you.

I'd like to switch gears now and head into outer space.

Professor, you—