NATO allies want Harper to back up tough talk
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has a chance to prove he is not “all hat and no cattle” at the NATO leaders’ summit this week.
No other leader in the 28-coun- try trans-Atlantic alliance has condemned Vladimir Putin’s military adventure in Ukraine more harshly and more persistently than Harper has. However, until now Canada has not done anything more than most of its allies to assist Ukraine in curbing the Russian strongman’s growing appetite for conquered territory or to reassure those countries on NATO’s eastern flank who think they might be next.
The prime minister and his foreign affairs minister, John Baird, are notoriously fond of ferocious rhetoric.
But Reuters broke a story last week detailing deep concern and frustration at NATO over Canada’s meagre spending on defence, which has dropped 13 or 14 per cent over the past two years so that the Harper government can reach its cherished ambition of a pre-election budget surplus.
The charge that Canada has been niggardly on defence spending has been strongly rejected by Defence Minister Rob Nicholson. However, an official in Brussels who is well versed on the issue, dryly noted Monday that Canada had become “very isolated on the issue” and faced “lots of pressure” to spend more.
When pondering why Canada has done nothing yet to rectify this problem, is it too much of a stretch to wonder whether the Harper government is more terrorized by the electorate and next year’s federal election than it is by the danger to global peace caused by the crises in Ukraine and Iraq, and the challenge poised by China’s rise as a military power in the Pacific? After all, Canada is such a sleepy hollow that recent polls have shown that, despite the mayhem overseas, a majority of Canadians are content with the amount that their country spends on the military.
Only four countries meet NATO’s long-stated target of two per cent of GDP being devoted to defence, so it is true that there is plenty of blame to go around regarding spending. It is also true that Canada did its share of the heavy lifting, if not more, in Afghanistan where, mercifully without competitive bidding, it protected troops by buying C-17 and C-130J transport aircraft and Chinook helicopters and leasing drones. Unfortunately for Canada, NATO is understandably more concerned with today and tomorrow than what happened a few years back.
The Reuters report dovetails with rumours at National Defence headquarters that the U.S. has become so concerned at the massive cuts to Canada’s military budget that it recently filed a formal diplomatic démarche in protest. Whether such an extraordinary private communication was made, it is a fact that Washington, as well as Brussels, is vexed at how Canada — which, aside from Norway, arguably has NATO’s best-performing economy — has slashed military spending so much that it may have now dipped below one per cent of GDP. There is also alarm because there are now probably several thousand fewer Canadians in uniform than the official number, which remains 68,000.
The White House’s readout of a conversation between U.S. President Barack Obama and Harper that was published Saturday said the two leaders had “agreed on the importance of ensuring alliance unity on measures to strengthen NATO’s readiness and responsiveness to the full range of current and future threats.” Tellingly, Obama stressed to Harper that an “agreement on increased defence investment in all areas” was a top priority at the summit.
Since the Afghan combat mission ended 38 months ago, the Canadian Forces have had far less money available to keep troops in a state of readiness for possible contingencies. The army has been quietly unhappy about this for some time. The air force may run out of money to fly its planes at the end of this month unless additional funds are found elsewhere in DND’s reduced budget.
Moreover, Canada’s relatively small transport fleet has already been pushed close to the maximum hours allotted to it this year, meaning that to do what the government wants done with ferrying supplies to Ukraine and Iraq, their air frames will pay the price at some point in the future.
NATO is considering trying to tackle what it considers one of its most serious systemic problems by establishing a new formula on spending that is based on wealth. Such calculations would inevitably lead to more demands that Canada pull its weight.
Harper has a chance to get Washington and NATO off his back at the summit in Wales. A brigade-sized multinational spearhead force with air, land, sea and special forces elements is to be announced at the summit. The alliance’s civilian leader, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, told a news conference in Brussels on Monday the force will be able to respond within days to “Russia’s aggressive behaviour” as well as “other challenges.”
This “spearhead,” which is looking for volunteers, will operate within a British-led rapid reaction division that will have a humanitarian as well as a robust combat capability, he said. Canada will have a chance to put its hand up for either venture. But they will cost money. NATO intends to tithe its members to pay for the required bases, infrastructure and the pre-positioned supplies.
The words and, more importantly, the commitments made by Canada’s prime minister this week in Wales will be far more closely scrutinized than usual by his NATO colleagues.