Is there any chance we can stop beating ourselves up over our defence spending? Should everything in respect to our contributions to war and peace be judged in the context of dollars and cents spent, or not spent?
We’ve become obsessed with one barometer, it being our failure to meet the NATO target of two per cent of our GDP on defence outlays. Never mind, as former prime minister Stephen Harper and others have contended, that a GDP ratio is hardly an accurate way of judging one’s defence contributions. It doesn’t matter. We don’t meet the random criteria and we therefore rank among the world’s weaklings.
It’s always been the case that we can count on the Pentagon to take issue with our alleged scrimping. But during the many decades that I’ve been watching the debate, I’ve never seen the consensus so strong among so many that we’re derelict. Everybody’s on the bash Canada bandwagon.
Many considerations are being overlooked, starting with the fact that, as our Liberal and Conservative governments have found over the years, big spending on the military has never been a high priority for Canadians. We’ve been a country more inclined to condemn the arms race than join in. Our priority has been devoting more revenues to building a more equitable society than to guns.
Critics need to compare the benefits over time of that approach as opposed to the monies going to armies and armaments.
To be considered also is that given the luck of location. Canadians haven’t felt threatened to a degree that they want to spend, spend, spend on defence. This country hasn’t experienced a real invasion since 1812. We sit next to a megapower ally. We are not in a war theatre like European nations. It makes sense for them to spend more than us.
As for the tunnel-vision focus on a specific number, since when has the size of military budgets been the be-all-and-end-all on battlefields? On defence, the U.S. has spent massively, doubling and tripling the amounts spent by major rivals. In the Vietnam and Afghanistan wars, where did that superiority get them?
On Canadian spending, it need be remembered that when Justin Trudeau took power in 2015, succeeding the Harper Conservatives, who had decreased defence spending, there was little pressure for big new military outlays. But who could have imagined what happened? Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine happened and Chinese sabre-rattling happened and a Middle East war happened. Suddenly our defence spending looked dreadfully inadequate.
The cause of most of the handwringing is the threat posed by the dictator Mr. Putin. But he doesn’t have nearly the military strength that the old Soviet Union had. He can’t even take out a much smaller power like Ukraine. His losses in that war have been staggering. But those in a panic over NATO budgets like Canada’s fear he will move on to the rest of Europe. Even without further upgrades, NATO budgets, by the way, have vast superiority over the Kremlin’s.
Ottawa’s military budget, we might recall, did not prevent us from taking on a major role in the Afghanistan war with our forces fighting in the hottest war zone of Kandahar. We didn’t need a big budget for Iraq because we didn’t follow America’s foolish lead in invading that country. We didn’t need defence money in helping forge the landmines treaty. Smart diplomacy did it.
Canada has its concerns over Arctic sovereignty, an issue that has been around for ages. But if push comes to shove, the superpowers will eventually have their way there, no matter our might. As for Mr. Putin, his priority is to reclaim old Soviet territories. The Canadian Arctic isn’t one of them.
That is not to say the performances of our governments in the defence domain have been impressive. Recall, for example, the number of military procurement fiascoes. As for Mr. Trudeau’s foreign affairs follies, Marc Garneau, who served in his cabinet, writes in his forthcoming book that the Prime Minister was ill-prepared and as a result Canada has lost standing in the world.
Nor is all this to say that given the new daunting global circumstances, the two per cent GDP number, now vaguely targeted by the Trudeau government, isn’t a good goal. It would satisfy NATO’s demands. It might help mollify Donald Trump if he returns to power. If it can be done without wreaking havoc on other budgetary priorities, by all means.
But let’s not get carried away with the denunciations. Canadians haven’t been interested in building a warrior nation. Priorities other than lofty defence spending have been defensible.