Hello, ladies and gentlemen.
I will speak in English, but do not hesitate to ask questions in your preferred official language.
In 2015, I spent a week in Kiev teaching an executive-level seminar on civil security sector relations at the Ukraine defence university on behalf of the director of military training and co-operation within the assistant deputy minister of policy's office in DND at the behest of the Prime Minister's Office and the global engagement strategy. I've also twice been to Latvia in recent months at the invitation of the Latvian Institute of International Affairs.
I point this out because, of course, we need to consider that the region, and Russian actions in the region, are consuming considerable Canadian military resources if we look at the size of our mission to Ukraine, if we look at our deployment to Latvia, both the battle group and the headquarters deployment, plus our various forms of engagement throughout eastern and central Europe on a more ad hoc basis. I think there's an important question here for parliamentarians as to what sort of resources to allocate, and how to allocate scarce resources effectively and efficiently in the pursuit of Canadian interests. What we need to keep in mind here is a debate.
When Bill Clinton started to propagate NATO enlargement toward the east, George Kennan, the famed U.S. ambassador and strategist with regard to Russia, said that Bill Clinton was basically undoing his life's work. On one side are the people who want to respect what Russia considers its sphere of influence, and on the other side are folks, such as Clinton, who say that countries should be able to make sovereign decisions and should be able to enact the democratic will of their people. Canada, I think, is trying to navigate those two elements as best as it can.
If we think of the enhanced forward presence in Latvia, if we think of our deployment to Ukraine, eastern Europe, there's part of an important component of Canadian grand strategy here. We're not here to make the world a better place. This isn't altruistic. Europe is our second-most important strategic partner after the United States. Anything that compromises European borders, European stability, the cohesion and integrity of the European Union, of the Schengen entity, profoundly runs counter to Canadian interests. To some extent we can think of, for instance, what we're doing in Latvia, as a peacekeeping mission in a sort of conventional British bobby Sir Robert Peel policing sense. Ultimately, this is not a force that's going to stop the Russians, but it can provide a visibility and as a result, hopefully, a deterrent. I think that's also an important component that we forget. We always focus on the instrumental piece of what we're doing in Ukraine, but I think simply showing the flag has a certain deterrent effect.
We need to consider the context, though, of what's happening in Ukraine. This is a frozen conflict. Not much has really happened strategically in the last three years. Ukraine, I would contend, remains the most important strategic theatre for Russia today in the world. We're only going to see progress if either Russia or Ukraine concedes interests, and I don't see that happening. We're therefore likely going to have this frozen conflict stalemate for some time to come, and Canada needs to consider what it's going to do here.
What is this ultimately about? Ukraine is sort of considered a classic invasion route by the Russians, when they think of Napoleon, Charles XII of Sweden, of Hitler. Then also, of course, Europe has the same perspective, that this has been a way for Russia to compromise European interests over history. It's a classic invasion route because the geography is flat, and it's a very large country so it serves as a buffer.
Russia considers it important because it can thereby influence and control what's happening in Transnistria, the breakaway region within Moldova. It is concerned about the northern Black Sea coast and the ability to control that. I think that's what much of Crimea was about: ultimately Russia wants to control all of the Black Sea, and from Crimea you can get everywhere easily and readily. Within the Black Sea, you can control the Kerch Strait, which leads to the Sea of Azov. The Sea of Azov is key for Russia in terms of energy supplies and in terms of water routes. From there you reach the Don River, and if you can make your way up the Don River, Russia is deeply concerned about the potential detachment of the Caucasus region from the rest of Russia. From its perspective, it thinks back to the Crimean War where that was a real risk, of course.
Putin's hope and the gamble that the Putin regime has been dabbling in is that it will be able to parlay the gains in Syria into bargaining concessions from the west with regard to Ukraine. It hasn't been able to do that, and much of Russian meddling and involvement in conflicts—everything from providing intelligence and document support to the Taliban, to its statements in support of North Korea, to even now having a substantial diplomatic mission and effort in Libya—is all a way of trying to leverage these conflicts as a negotiation tool and parlay them into bargaining chips over Ukraine.
That Russian strategy so far has not borne out, because the west has blocked Russian initiatives, in particular around Syria. To the contrary, we've seen an increase in sanctions from the United States and we'll likely see a similar response from the European Union by year's end or early 2018 against Russian state companies.
Of course, we have the context of the Russian presidential elections, and I might remind you that we're going to have one more term of Putin, but what comes after that? Will he then manipulate the constitution or will he have another swap? Putin isn't going to be in charge forever, so we also need to hedge about possibilities of change and regime change in that regard.
Currently, we see the U.S. resorting to some delivery of lethal weapons and engaging in military exercises in Moldova and the south Caucasus regions. Both the west and Russia have key strategic imperatives. Russia is trying to leverage its conflict involvements, while the west is trying to block Russian initiatives as a way to disincentivize Russia from getting involved in all these other conflicts around the world and creating strategic challenges for the west there.
There are five things the committee needs to think about, going forward.
Does Canada want to buy into military manoeuvres outside of the traditional NATO realm when it comes to supporting some of the allies in the region, in particular Moldova and south Caucasus, or do we want to leave that up to the Americans?
Does Canada want to get involved in providing lethal weapons or things that can be subsequently parlayed into lethal force, such as satellite intelligence, and under what conditions?
Does Canada want to join the U.S. in ratcheting up the sanctions regime? We've already seen some of that response from Canada.
How can Canada best coordinate with the European Union and the United States in an effort to thwart these broader involvements by Russia, both in Ukraine and in other conflicts?
Finally, how can Canada actively discourage Russia from trying to meddle in many other places in the world? At the same time, we need to make sure we continue to work and co-operate with the Russians, because of course we have a number of strategic common interests, such as weapons of mass destruction.
In the context of Canadian grand strategy—where we want to make sure we keep all the NATO players onside and involved, as well as keeping the Americans in NATO and contributing to it—there are four key elements that Canada needs to think about. The first is how can Canada best support the Minsk II process? It's easy to talk about militarizing the conflict when you're in Ottawa and Washington, but if you're sitting in Berlin or Paris and you're only a few hundred kilometres away, that picture looks very different.
Canada needs to continue to incentivize the agreement and the process, however flawed they might be, to make sure Ukraine as a partner—in return for support—adheres to the commitments it has made, in particular with regard to decentralization, recognition, and some of the rights of the Russian-language minority. Ukraine is effectively a bilingual country, much more than Canada is. We're not going to be able to settle the issues if we can't get the political elites to recognize that and make some concessions around it. We need to work to continue to professionalize the armed forces of Ukraine. We've made some inroads in that regard, but there is a lot more heavy lifting to do.
We need to make sure we can continue to disincentivize corruption within the country. A lot of the effort that Canada has invested in transformation and transparency, with Europe as a key partner, is really important, because the regime that was set up is a spinoff of the Putinist authoritarian regime that is essentially structured around a rent-seeking elite. The way you keep the regime in place and stable is that everybody has an interest in the status quo, because they're all part of that rent-seeking elite and they're all heavily intertwined. Undoing that in Ukraine is going to take some time. It's going to be critical not just to transform Ukraine and provide a basis for the legitimacy of a democratic regime, but also to encourage economic development.
I want to end on that point. Ukraine faces significant challenges. It has gone from 50 million to 40 million people in the last 20 years, with a rapidly aging population. This has significant political implications for how people vote, for instance. What can we do to make sure that Canada can invest in a stable, long-term economic, social, and political development of Ukraine going forward?
I think some of the initiatives that the European Union has started in that regard are a good model for Canada to support and to join. As in many of these types of missions on the military side, our partners might be in the anglosphere, the U.K. and the United States. At the same time, Canada has been very good and strategic over the years in co-operating with the European Union on political, social, and economic reform. Striking a balance between those two will be key going forward.
