Evidence of meeting #70 for National Defence in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was states.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
It's about that time. I'd like to welcome everyone to the defence committee this afternoon.
More importantly, Dr. Sarah Jane Meharg, adjunct professor, Royal Military College of Canada, and Dr. Mark Sedra, president, Canadian International Council, thank you both for attending today.
We're here to discuss Canada's role in NATO. I would like to invite Dr. Meharg to open with her remarks. You have up to 10 minutes. The floor is yours.
Dr. Sarah Jane Meharg Adjunct Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual
Thank you for inviting me to testify to the committee. It's an honour to be with you today.
My expertise is in post-war reconstruction, and I'm often called upon by the Canadian Forces to work with them on the identity and cultural dimensions of security, in essence how to manage the people problems that arise in conflict and post-conflict environments, especially when planning goes awry, and how to better measure the successes of our interventions.
Last week I was part of a panel presentation with my U.S. colleagues on redefining the instruments of power related to reconstruction and stabilization, an operational capability that Canada's armed forces have been involved with for many decades, in particular through our NATO commitments. From these two perspectives, I will approach this briefing to you.
Today I want to offer three topics for your consideration. The first is the benefit Canada derives from its involvement in NATO. The second is the way that Canada measures this benefit, and the third is how a certain secure future is built on this involvement.
To begin, I will orient us to what we know about Canada's commitment to defence and security. We know that Canada is part of a collective security web in which we commit our defence capabilities so that we can work shoulder to shoulder with our allies in insecure environments around the world, but also to protect our national sovereignty and the security of Canadians. We know the international security environment in which interventions and the entire spectrum of armed operations are occurring is no longer recognizable. The suffering of civilians happens in an ugly, dirty, violent, and heart-wrenching reality that the world shares through digital media, and in which our militaries are deployed.
First, what benefit does Canada derive from its involvement in NATO? It's no surprise to you that in Canada we have the luxury afforded by our geography. We do not have the world's downtrodden at our doorstep, breaking down the door to get in, which produces the security dynamics in most, if not all, NATO countries. We do not have our own eastern front to defend.
Instead, Canada has an identity born out of our distant and vast geography, which affords us time to consider our defence and security decisions, our policies, and our strategic outlook. Canada is not in a threatened state—putting cyber-threats aside—and experiences something called ontological security of the state. Ontological security is the preservation of self, so the ability of a state and an individual to preserve its sense of self. In the same way that individuals experience threat to their very being, so too can a state.
Individuals and states fear uncertainty as an identity threat and suppress that fear through routines to which they become attached. These routines can come in many forms such as Canada's involvement in NATO. Changes to this involvement, such as budgetary, political will, or even uncertainty regarding the U.S. administration, can really undermine these routines. This results in a lack of consistency, and when routines change, relationships change too between Canada and our allies.
The people who represent Canada at NATO headquarters and throughout the NATO system are deeply affected by these inconsistencies because they are known to undermine the meaningful relationships among our people and those representing our allies. Undermining routines and relationships contributes to ontological insecurity of a state, and therefore, affects a sense of a certain future. This logic, again, applies to individuals and the state. In other words, consistency creates a certain future. Certainty allows states to interact with one another. The interactions inform behaviours and cause something called routinization. Routinization forms meaningful relationships, and these things underscore the level of security that a state can experience.
NATO is no more than the security and defence practices that its members, including Canada, have agreed to engage in, which means that its continuation depends on the constant reproduction of those practices. Individual and group-level routines at the strategic, operational, tactical levels in headquarters, and when forces are deployed at NATO missions, thus constitute NATO, which in turn stabilizes the state's sense of self, including Canada's.
Empirical research in various areas of social psychology confirms that uncertainty generates identity insecurity, which is really resolved through routines. Canada's involvement in NATO reinforces its security of self because it's involved in the routines that express our membership there.
The second point is how Canada can measure this benefit. The international community has become preoccupied with measuring the effectiveness of its activities in complex emergencies, marked by the very expensive U.S. invasion and subsequent reconstruction of Iraq in the early 2000s. This focus on measuring effectiveness is partially motivated by a need to calculate the costs of our interventions, because many of our activities have a huge price tag, yet levels of success are not commensurate and can rarely be justified. At one point, Canada was very interested in measuring the effectiveness of its work in places like Afghanistan, because we witnessed the realities in the field, which compelled us to make the goals, plans, and systems of our interventions more effective.
From this, I want us to consider measuring the benefit we derive from our involvement in NATO, rather than our performance at NATO. Although this is not the typical way of framing measures of effectiveness, it serves as a useful activity in better understanding the level at which we seek to be involved and how this involvement reinforces our own sense of Canadian state security.
Measuring derived benefits comes from our routines and relationships. Canada is already a part of some NATO routines, and it becomes important to the activity of measuring benefit by participating in activities that align Canadian interests and values within the alliance. These could include developing a few Canadian Armed Forces-focused capabilities that neatly fit into the collective security web woven by the alliance, the OSCE, the EU, the UN, and NORAD; increasing our support for NATO deployments in deployable resources, personnel, and financial support; developing a visible representation of Canada's commitment to UN resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security in our future alliance contributions for at least the next 10 years, which means deploying more women on NATO missions, serving in headquarters, and participating at all the different levels; and increasing active involvement, shoulder to shoulder, in multinational training and live exercises to improve our in-theatre relationships, which is a self-serving involvement that ensures that when our forces deploy with our allies, we are protected through a logical chain of command, reliable comms, and logistics in the field, as well as the necessary combat support when deployed to non-permissive theatres of operation.
This alignment of routines and the corresponding relationships that are formed confirm Canada's Warsaw summit commitments and strengthen the web of collective security that Canada has invested in for more than 70 years. If we do them well, and with the right level of political will, Canada can move effectively within the alliance by providing focused capabilities that serve the wider spectrum of NATO operations. These focused capabilities are ones that we already have, such as humanitarian aid and disaster response operations. They just need to be made ready and available when NATO begins to require its members to manage crises within the wider spectrum of operations, from air strikes all the way to aiding in humanitarian emergencies.
My third topic is Canada's certain future. What we know is that Canada reinforces its ontological security by participating in collective security and the meaningful relationships that result from a long and positive history with the alliance. From sociological theory, we also know that consistency creates a certain future. This level of certainty allows states to interact with each other. Canada should think of its continued involvement in NATO as a way to create a certain and secure future.
Let me describe this. NATO is made up of member states, and these are represented by people. These people practice routines of membership and, over time, build meaningful iterative relationships, relationships that can be repeated. I have noted that routines and relationships are the keystone of ontological security—the security of state—which is equally powerful at the state level and the individual level.
Last, I urge us to consider investing in iterative, repeating relationships at headquarters, at all levels, and on NATO missions; doing away with questioning how or why to be involved in NATO; and contributing to a certain and secure future for Canada by committing to the NATO systems and routinized structures, which reinforce patterns that already exist. This means putting more effort, including some funds, into what is working already, and doing that for 10 years.
I urge us to also consider refocusing on the benefit of the relationships to Canada's ontological security, rather than focusing on the amount of recognition that Canada gets from specific efforts within the alliance, and last, measuring the effectiveness of Canada's involvement in NATO by asking the right questions, first, about the effectiveness of our iterative relationships within the alliance, and second, about the value of the decades-old routines, practices, systems, and patterns that contribute to Canada's sense of a certain future.
By connecting the three topics I've described for your consideration, we have a useful perspective to derive benefit from Canada's involvement in NATO, we can more easily measure the benefit we derive, and we can establish a more certain and secure future for Canada.
Thank you.
Liberal
Dr. Mark Sedra President, Canadian International Council, As an Individual
Great. Let me start by thanking the committee for inviting me to speak to you today. It's an honour for me to do so.
There's no doubt that NATO is an indispensable pillar of the liberal global order that has been in place since the end of the Second World War, an order that has helped furnish Canada and the west with an unparalleled era of peace and prosperity. But is it still relevant today?
This is a question that has come up time and again since the fall of the Soviet Union. After all, the alliance was formed to act as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism and aggression in Europe during the Cold War. NATO's raison d'être was gone.
I believe, however, that NATO can be as relevant today as it ever was but with a big caveat. It must remain vigilant in responding and adapting to the rapidly shifting global security environment.
Before I explain in more detail how NATO can position itself as an adaptive organization that will be indispensable for global security for the foreseeable future, let me say a few words about how the alliance has evolved since the end of the Cold War.
The wars in the Balkans in the 1990s presented NATO with its first major post-Cold War era challenge and dispelled any notion of the alliance's irrelevance. NATO-led interventions on the doorstep of western Europe helped to halt civil conflict and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia. These missions would pave the way for NATO's first out-of-area operations in Afghanistan, from 2003 to the present, and in Libya in 2011.
While the current situations in Afghanistan and Libya are far from stable, and the broader international interventions in both countries could scarcely be described as successful, this should not cloud the important and impactful role that NATO has played in both countries.
When NATO assumed control of the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, in Afghanistan in August 2003, the Taliban was just beginning its comeback. I was there. The situation in the country has gradually deteriorated ever since, but this is attributable more to the broader failings of the U.S. and western strategy in the country and the dysfunction of the Afghan government than it is to the actions of NATO.
One of the peculiar facets of insurgency warfare on full display in Afghanistan is that you can win almost every battle against an enemy—and NATO surely has against the Taliban—and still lose the war. The current chaos in Libya, marked by the emergence of competing national governments and the division of the country into militia-controlled fiefdoms, often colours people's opinions of the NATO air campaign in 2011. We must not forget, however, that NATO intervened in Libya to halt an impending atrocity as Gadhafi's forces rushed to the city of Benghazi to crush a rebellion and create, as Gadhafi publicly proclaimed to the world, rivers of blood.
Make no mistake, the NATO mission led by a Canadian general prevented an impending war crime. Despite these interventions, the utility of NATO continues to be challenged. President Donald Trump has called it obsolete, although he would walk back the claim after his first NATO summit.
Despite such rhetoric, NATO remains a critical component of the global collective security architecture and vital to Canadian interests. Let me list some reasons why I believe this to be the case.
First, NATO's value extends well beyond the security sphere. It continues to maintain a sense of political unity and common purpose among its diverse 29 member states, many of which have been adversaries in the past, in the recent past.
Second, it is one of the cornerstones of the global multilateral system that Canada helped to build after World War II, which amplifies our voice and influence on the world stage.
Third, it can play an important role in bolstering perennially under-resourced UN peacekeeping missions, providing the kinetic capacity that today's more dangerous missions increasingly lack.
Fourth, it can serve as a vital tool to facilitate co-operation in the Arctic, an area of critical interest to Canada and several other NATO member states.
Finally, it can act as a counterweight and deterrent to a militarily resurgent Russia, particularly after the 2014 intervention in Ukraine.
While NATO continues to be a major strategic asset for Canada and a key to western collective security, its continued relevance depends on its ability to adapt to changing geopolitical and security conditions. In recent days NATO released its “Strategic Foresight Analysis 2017 Report”, which rightly emphasizes the fluid and complex security environment that demands “the transformation of NATO’s military capacity, to ensure the Alliance remains relevant and credible, now and in the foreseeable future”.
An old saying in military circles—although I'm not from the military—warns that militaries should be wary of always preparing to fight the last war. NATO must heed this warning and modernize, innovate, and diversify to prepare itself for the coming challenges.
Here are four areas where NATO could take action in this regard.
First, NATO must avoid the temptation to be overly Russo-centric in its posture despite the recent rise in tensions with Russia. Rather, it must be prepared to confront an array of 21st-century security challenges, from cyberwar and terrorism, to pandemic disease and climate change. NATO must continue to consolidate its transformation from a Cold War military alliance to a multi-dimensional security body. Previous NATO missions to counter piracy in the Horn of Africa, secure the Mediterranean Sea, and support disaster relief in Pakistan and even in the U.S. in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina shows the alliance's capacity to respond to a multiplicity of challenges. It must continue to develop this broad spectrum of capabilities.
Second, NATO should become a global hub and centre of excellence for security sector reform, the process to build the capacity of military and public security institutions in fragile, failed, and conflict-affected states. NATO has supported military training activities on an ad hoc basis in an array of complex settings, from Afghanistan and Iraq, to the Balkans and sub-Saharan Africa. But it should develop more institutionalized and rapidly deployable security sector reform capacity, which is desperately needed in many unstable countries and regions making difficult transitions.
Third, NATO could assist other regional organizations such as the African Union and the Organization of American States to develop their capacity for collective security and peace support operations. The alliance has already embarked on this road with the African Union, providing airlift support to its peace support mission in Somalia, and expert training to its fledgling African standby force. The alliance could expand these capacity development efforts to build a robust and integrated network of regional security organizations, thereby strengthening the global collective security system.
Lastly, in light of the nuclear crisis in North Korea, NATO—and this is a long-term goal—should work to reduce nuclear stockpiles and contribute to international nuclear control regimes, working alongside the UN, IAEA, and global civil society actors.
Ensuring that a massive alliance like NATO is constantly adapting to changing geopolitical and security conditions—and they're changing rapidly—requires political will and resources. The resource issue remains the elephant in the room. A consistent and not wholly unwarranted criticism of NATO is that it's become a two-tier alliance, comprising a small number of states contributing their fair share, and a larger number of free riders that are not. Only five of the 29 NATO member states, by my count, have met the 2% of GDP target for defence expenditures set by the alliance in 2006.
Canada is one of the countries below the 2% threshold. I think, however, there is validity in the Canadian government's argument that, despite its failure to meet the spending target, it has consistently punched above its weight in other areas, most notably troop deployments, as the current mission in Latvia shows.
In fact, a case can be made that NATO should develop a new metric, apart from just spending, that takes into account contributions to ongoing alliance activities. Nonetheless, for the alliance to survive and thrive in the future, it must be appropriately resourced by all member states. The government's plans to increase defence spending encapsulated in the defence policy review is a good sign that Canada could lead other NATO members in making new investments. Indeed, I do think Canada is well positioned to drive innovation and modernization across the alliance.
In this period of geopolitical volatility such leadership is invaluable and may need to come from countries like Canada, with the U.S. and other alliance members increasingly preoccupied with domestic challenges and isolationist pressures.
Thank you for your attention. I look forward to your questions.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
Thank you, Dr. Sedra.
For meeting context, we're going to have you until about five o'clock. That will give us enough time to go through one round of formal questioning. I have a speaker's list here. Then we'll go into about 30 minutes of committee business.
This is the white flag for when it's time to surrender, to yield the floor back to me so that I can transfer to somebody else and make sure everyone gets a chance. If you're speaking, just glance over here once in a while so that I can get your attention and move along so everyone gets an opportunity. Sometimes that's difficult for me.
Mark Gerretsen, we'll start with you.
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the two witnesses for being here today.
Ms. Meharg, towards the end of Mr. Sedra's remarks he started to talk about measuring the benefits of Canada's contribution to NATO. For me personally, this is one of the things I think I've really evolved in terms of my perception of Canada's involvement. When we started our study on NATO, I would say I was pretty close to being a staunch supporter of Canada's needing to commit 2% of its GDP. As we studied this and as we visited the different operations that Canada is involved in with respect to NATO, it's becoming more and more obvious to me that this idea of 2% is difficult to use on its own.
When we were in Latvia, we were told that other countries are joining the battalion led by Canada because Canada is there. Out of the four battalions with Operation Unifier, the one that Canada is leading has the most involvement. As Mr. Sedra said, we continually punch above our weight when it comes to showing up. We might not have the most money involved, but when we're asked to be there, we show up.
You talked a bit about measuring Canada's involvement. Would you agree with his assessment that there's more to this than just the monetary end of it? Further to that, how do you start to capture some of these other contributions? Should we encourage NATO to apply another metric, as Mr. Sedra said, that involves more than just the monetary contribution?
Adjunct Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual
Thank you so much for your question.
I'd like to address this first by talking about how we approach measuring phenomena, especially international interventions, and perhaps the work that Canada does.
I wrote a book called Measuring What Matters in Peace Operations and Crisis Management. I actually went over to NATO headquarters and did two dozen interviews with top brass in Belgium and talked to them about how they were addressing this problem, because at that point in time Afghanistan had come to the fore. We knew that we were not making the changes in attitude and behaviours in the local populations that we had intended and that the political rhetoric had sold to us before our deployments.
What I can tell you is that there are two ways to measure: the quantitative approach and the qualitative approach. Often, we get stuck in the quantitative approach. That's the numbers, the kilometres of roads we asphalted in Afghanistan, the post holes dug, the seats in the chairs at the training events, and the mentoring programs. We focus on quantity. I think what my colleague has suggested is that there's a balanced approach to measuring. We probably need to measure that 2% commitment in different ways and break that apart differently. It's my understanding that different countries actually use a different formula to calculate the 2%.
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
To that point, one of the other things that became very obvious was that everybody was calculating it differently. Even within just the monetary part, it was difficult to quantify.
Adjunct Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual
That's right.
Just beware that there's no perfect measurement out there, no perfect metric, that will allow us to calculate Canada's ability to punch above its weight. We either need to lobby at different levels at headquarters to figure out what a better formula is, but that could take years—
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
That's where I'm interested. I'm limited in time, but I'm interested in knowing.... Our opportunity here, as a committee, is to recommend to the government to take various different actions as it relates to NATO, at least in the context of this study.
Would you suggest or recommend that the government encourage NATO to change the formula that it's currently using instead of just this monetary approach?
Adjunct Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual
Adjunct Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual
I think there would be too much effort.
There's always effort in education and effort in changing policy that already has a track record, so it's possible that we just want to change our approach to how we measure our 2%.
Liberal
Adjunct Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual
Then we probably have to have a discussion about what benefit Canada's deriving from its involvement in some of the operations that we participate in. We need to sell it on both sides.
Liberal
President, Canadian International Council, As an Individual
Yes.
What I would say, first of all, is that there's no question that there is a need across the board among NATO member states to increase defence spending to support the alliance. I am not an expert on monitoring, evaluation, and developing metrics to measure these sorts of things. There's a science to it, and Sarah knows that better than I.
However, I would say that I think there is a need to, in addition to the spending category, look at some of these other contributions that alliance members are making. There is no question. If you look at Afghanistan, Canada was—to overuse that term—punching above its weight. It made major commitments to the mission. We suffered proportionately more than any other NATO member state as a result, and that has to count for something.
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
In your opening comments, you referred to the different classifications of countries and you said some were free riders.
Were you putting Canada in the category of a free rider?
President, Canadian International Council, As an Individual
No, because I actually do very much buy into the notion that our qualitative contributions are so great that I wouldn't put us there. I think that there are nations that are both underspending and not making the contributions to the alliance activities that are necessary.
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
My next question can go to both of you as I have about 30 seconds left.
How important is it to have countries like Canada that bring clout with them to the organization, because they're regarded as countries that are genuinely—not that all aren't—trying to make a difference respecting NATO's contributions.
President, Canadian International Council, As an Individual
I think it makes a big difference. I think we carry weight, especially now with some of the geopolitical shifts we're seeing and some of the changing views of the United States and others. I think it carries a lot of weight to come from Canada.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
You missed the flag because you weren't looking over here.
I will commend you on an excellent round of questions, Mark.
Mr. Yurdiga.