Canadian Army soldiers attend a NATO military drill exercise in Adazi, Latvia, in February, 2019.INTS KALNINS/Reuters
Peter Jones is a professor at the University of Ottawa.
Philippe Lagassé is an associate professor at Carleton University and the Barton Chair at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.
President Donald Trump’s attack on Canada’s sovereignty will affect the country in many ways. One of these will be our defence and security ties with the United States. Prime Minister Mark Carney has already ordered a review of the purchase of F-35 fighters from the U.S. Reports indicate that senior Trump administration officials have spoken of expelling Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence sharing arrangement. The binational North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) may no longer be sacrosanct south of the border. The leadership of the Canadian Armed Forces must be ready to face these fundamental changes to our defence posture, however unthinkable they may have been a short time ago.
Both the Liberals and the Conservatives agree that Canada must meet NATO’s 2 per cent of GDP defence spending target. We believe this is critically important, but this new spending cannot be devoted to doubling down on Canada’s role as a junior partner of the United States military. Rather, we must use these extra dollars to build a more independent voice in the world by reorienting ourselves away from our present overwhelming military dependence on the U.S. The political message to our defence establishment must be clear; there will be extra money, lots of it even, but it must be spent on capabilities that will advance Canadian strategic autonomy or foster stronger partnerships with allies other than the United States.
Canada and the U.S. have a unique defence relationship. Canadians and Americans serve in each other’s military establishments on exchanges which take them into some of the most sensitive jobs in each other’s forces. NORAD is the United States’ only binational command, answering to both the Canadian and American governments. The Deputy Commander of NORAD is always a Canadian and takes charge when the Commander (an American) is away. This means that there are long stretches when the aerospace defence of the continent is led by a Canadian. Our navy is one of the few in the world that is able to seamlessly integrate a ship into an American carrier strike group, and does so frequently. Our army officers routinely hold senior positions with large and important U.S. Army formations.
This close partnership has had an inevitable effect on Canada’s military establishment and approach toward capability development and the conduct of operations. Ensuring “interoperability” between the Canadian and American militaries has been a principal driver of the CAF’s equipment purchases for many decades. Interchangeability between American and Canadian equipment fleets has also become a priority, since it reduces costs and increases efficiencies. Ottawa’s recent decision to purchase the American-made P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft is a case in point.
Generations of Canadian military officers have come to see operating alongside the United States as the norm, and as a purpose in itself that should not be easily abandoned. No matter what happens at the political level of the American government, the Canadian military trusts that their “working level” co-operation with their counterparts in the U.S. will endure. This deeply ingrained view is not surprising, nor should we be quick to criticize our military for seeing things this way. We cannot blame the Canadian military for doing what it was told to do; successive Canadian governments have leveraged our close ties with the United States to get the most out of our low defence spending.
This long-standing Canadian approach cannot continue. The U.S. is not the country it was a few months ago. Mr. Trump’s repeated intention to annex our country through economic force makes it clear that Canada can no longer be so closely intertwined with the U.S. military, let alone economically. In an era when the U.S. Navy was primarily a force dedicated to keeping the seas open for all and defending democratic allies, it made sense for Canada to have a ship dedicated to such close co-operation. In an era when the appearance of a U.S. carrier off your coast may be a prelude to a coercive demand for privileged access to raw materials, does Canada want to be any part of that?
It is too simplistic, however, to simply say that Canada should just stop co-operating with the U.S. military. The defence of North America will require some sort of ongoing co-operation. NORAD’s future as a binational command may be uncertain, but a bilateral approach to continental defence will continue at some level.
Thus, like a supertanker at sea, Canada’s defence posture is not able to turn on a dime. The CAF will continue to use equipment that relies on proprietary American technology, data, encryption codes, and satellite communications. A significant amount of the equipment and capabilities Canada has acquired in the past decade is either American-made or designed to be interoperable with the United States. Jettisoning all these new and existing capabilities would leave Canada without a viable military. Instead, Canada must spend the coming decades developing its own systems and partnering with other, more reliable allies. As Europe rearms en masse, Canada should seize opportunities to accelerate its own domestic defence industry, and partner with others on major projects and initiatives, particularly those that would provide backups in the event that the U.S. cuts off data, parts, or network access. The good news is that talks are already under way between the Canadian government and Europeans allies to do just that.
Perhaps even more difficult to change, however, will be the worldview of our military leadership. They will insist that the Trump administration will eventually be over and that our two countries will move on. But what is going on now is no simple spat, and there are no guarantees that “Trumpism” will end when he leaves office; the MAGA movement shows every sign of becoming a fixture of American politics for decades to come.
The President is committed to the using economic coercion to achieve the destruction of our country – and few in the U.S. are fighting back against this goal, at least not yet anyway. Perhaps more resistance to Mr. Trump’s plans will emerge as the economic downsides of tariffs begin to bite the American public, but it is disturbing that many political leaders in the United States have been unwilling to categorically declare that annexing Canada is just wrong.
Mr. Trump, moreover, is abandoning Ukraine and cozying up to Vladimir Putin, a ruthless dictator who is a threat to the democratic world. That alone should prompt a rethink of Canada’s defence relationships.
So, what can we do? Several steps are necessary.
First, the senior leadership of the CAF and Department of National Defence must be directed to begin the difficult transition away from viewing a deep relationship with the United States as an inevitability or as a core Canadian national interest. Interoperability in North American defence and on certain operations overseas will be needed, but strategic Canadian autonomy must be the overriding objective. As Canada builds closer defence ties with other allies, officers should be sent on more exchanges and exercises with them, instead of overwhelmingly with the U.S. armed forces. This will develop, over time, a new cadre of officers who no longer look to the U.S. as our natural dominant partner, and will also reinforce the message that Canadian defence is pivoting and the extremely close alliance with the United States is no longer axiomatic.
Second, we must reorient our capability development toward partnership with allies in Europe and Asia, and where possible, our domestic defence industries. Sending billions of dollars south of the border for equipment which only deepens our dependence on the U.S. is not sensible in the present or foreseeably future environment. In addition to fighters, Canada will be acquiring several new capabilities in the coming years, including new submarines, surface ships, tanks, and early warning aircraft. We must consider non-U.S. equipment for these and other purchases. To enable this pivot to be made quickly, Parliament should empower cabinet to temporarily dispense with cumbersome layers of procurement red tape in order to expedite these projects so that Canada can secure spots in production lines that will be quickly filling up as European military spending vastly increases. We believe that a much closer relationship with European and Asian defence producers is something Canada must prioritize; we must examine whether weapons produced in these regions will work for us and how we can enter into joint research and production arrangements. Recent announcements that Canada will be adopting an Australian over-the-horizon radar and investing in the European Union’s new defence initiative are good examples of how we should be collaborating with a wider set of allies. All of this will not just reduce our defence dependence on the U.S., it will also assist us in signalling our seriousness as a partner to those nations with whom we will wish, and need, to trade much more in the future.
Third, we must achieve a higher measure of defence independence. The ability to deploy, sustain and command forces is as important as the forces themselves. Presently, we are heavily reliant on the U.S. for these capabilities; if the CAF goes abroad and into harm’s way, we rely on American logistics, command, intelligence and other capabilities to operate. This may have made sense when there was no circumstance where we would deploy on major operations overseas without the United States. But that assumption no longer holds, as the Europeans are finding out as they prepare for a security force for Ukraine without American support. If we are to be taken seriously by future defence partners beyond the U.S., we must show them that we are capable of showing up and fighting on our own. The ability to transport large numbers of troops and their equipment, both by air and by sea, and then to sustain and command them is critical. In addition to new weapons and many more troops, significant increases in our logistics and associated capabilities must be made and they will not be cheap.
Finally, as part of our capability reorientation, we must seek opportunities to work with like-minded states beyond the U.S. to achieve, in time, a greatly increased level of interoperability, all while retaining a greater degree of autonomy for Canada. We must recognize that, while Canada is uniquely tied to the U.S. because of geography, we are far from alone in our present predicament. Our European allies are rapidly coming to grips with the fact that the U.S. defence guarantee is not what it once was, as are nations in Asia. If the security of Europe remains a vital Canadian interest, and we believe it is, the return of a permanent base there could a signal of the seriousness of our intent. If we believe that the Asia-Pacific region is critical to our security and prosperity, basing ships there will be a sign to the states of that region.
None of this will be easy. Those who have lived their lives in the shadow of the U.S. military establishment will resist. There will always be good reasons to keep going along the path we are on, in either equipment or personnel terms. We will hear much talk of “sunk costs” and long-standing traditions. The leadership of the CAF will always have an argument why it is easier to strengthen our dependence on the U.S. than it is to embark on a new and risky search for alternatives. But we have reached a cross-roads. Today, it is an even greater risk not to reduce our dependence on the United States.
It will probably require that whoever is prime minister after the upcoming election appoint a minister or high-ranking official with a mandate, and with the power, to disrupt existing patterns of defence co-operation and insist on change. The new prime minister will need to maintain a continuing personal interest in this file, if only to ensure that long-standing mindsets do not quietly revert to the favoured path of going on as before once the spotlight is turned away.
This final point is important. If we are to embark on this path we had better make sure we are committed to it. Part of the reason Canada allowed itself to become so closely associated with the U.S. on defence is that it was cheap; we could achieve a higher level of capability without having to invest in all of the logistics, intelligence, transport and other capabilities that would permit real independence. If we decide the time has come to really go our own way, we are going to have to accept that this parsimonious approach will not be possible. There can be no part-way in this; if we revert to our usual pattern of making big announcements and then quietly failing to invest the money required to follow through, we will end up with nothing. Since a large part of the reason to do this is to show that we are independent and capable, our credibility in the eyes of the world requires that we be prepared to spend the money over time to see this through.