Not so long ago Ottawa was being made fun of by those who claimed that attempts to renew our military equipment, including frigates, helicopters, and fighter planes, were just an exercise in conservative ideology. No matter what kit is proposed, a chorus of voices always protests that peace-loving Canada has no need to spend such sums on the tools of war.
Our withdrawing from Afghanistan and the Middle East was not just quiescent but seemed to be succumbing to the siren call of democracy and human rights through the Arab Spring. Militarily, Russia was seen as a Potemkin village, and the idea that we needed the capacity to respond to their probing of North America’s air defenses dismissed as the ravings of ideologues.
The University of British Columbia’s Michael Byers called it a “make-believe threat.”
Today, in the face of naked Russian aggression in Ukraine, a spike in its probing of the air defenses of numerous NATO allies, and the rise of the murderous ISIL movement in Syria and Iraq, the criticism of the federal government’s policy has flipped. Now it is that Canada has been running down its capacity to engage militarily far from its shores. We are in danger of becoming a toothless laughingstock, quick to threaten the bad guys but unable to field properly kitted-out troops where the national interest requires them to be.
It so happens that latter criticism is entirely justified; the Conservatives have been stealthily running down the navy, army, and air force for short-term budgetary reasons.
The result has been the West’s most aggressive rhetoric on the defense of freedom coupled with an embarrassing inability to make good on that rhetoric.
The truth of the matter is Canada has for years been able to behave irresponsibly on military matters because we outsourced our defense to the U.S. taxpayer. Ever since President Roosevelt’s 1938 promise that the United States would never let outsiders threaten Canada, we were largely relieved of the responsibility most other countries face of offering a credible defense of the nation. And President Kennedy’s promise to bear any burden and pay any price to defend freedom around the world also basically let us off the need to be able to project significant power internationally when required in defense of our interests.
But faced with an increasingly isolationist U.S. electorate and commander-in-chief, the Roosevelt and Kennedy guarantees have been downgraded to a voicemail box that an assistant checks occasionally for messages. Inconvenient calls are not returned.
Here are two realities for a Canada waking up to the diminishing value of the American security guaranty in a dangerous world. The first is that every single bit of the much-criticized defense procurement of the last 30 years, whether frigates, fighter planes, or light-armored vehicles, has been called into extensive service. It did not gather dust in warehouses.
The second is that it takes far too long to get the kit we need, in part because of the rancorous debate and second-guessing that takes place. Every armchair general claims we don’t really need this or that piece of equipment because there is no credible threat when the purchase is proposed. The average time it takes from a major defense purchase first being mooted until actual delivery is now more than 16 years. If an urgent and unexpected mission crops up and you don’t have the necessary equipment, you can’t buy it at Wal-Mart. Military conflict today is largely a come-as-you-are affair. Serious countries take the long view of their security needs and equip themselves accordingly.
Talking the talk is not enough. We must put boots on the ground and walk the walk.
Brian Lee Crowley is the managing director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an independent nonpartisan public policy think-tank in Ottawa: www.macdonaldlaurier.ca. This article previously published at TroyMedia.com.
