When in doubt outsource your defence problems to a former imperial power:
At least two senior British officers already on exchange in Ottawa will be available to help the Liberal government and National Defence conduct a major review of the country's defence posture.
Lt.-Gen. Mark Poffley, deputy chief of the British general staff, said in an interview with The Canadian Press that the two nations are friends, with shared values and a shared outlook on the world.
"Canada, like every nation, will have to work out how it sees itself in the world and how it's going to play," he said.
Britain recently completed its own defence review and some of its lessons could be valuable to Canada, which has not refreshed its military marching orders since the Harper government's Canada First defence strategy in 2008.
What differs from previous review exercises is the pace of globalization, Poffley said.
The era in which both countries could enjoy a relative degree of isolation — either as an island nation or as country separated from turmoil by an ocean — is coming to an end, he said.
When exactly has Britain been in any real sense isolated? The country has spent its entire history within spitting distance of its various mortal enemies. On a reasonably clear day you can seen France from Kent. On a reasonably clear day the only country Canadians can see is the United States. For Britain "splendid isolation" is a deluded conceit. For Canadians it's the essence of our foreign policy. There is only one country that poses an existential threat to Canada, it also happens to be the one country that would never bother to threaten us. The phrase "attack Canada" is a punch line not a battle cry south of the 49th.
There is very little that Canada needs from outside the North American continent. As a practical matter we outsource our foreign policy to Washington - as one once did to London - and the consequences are essentially nothing. No one cares what we do or what we don't do. The whole of the Canadian military could be disbanded and much of the diplomatic corp put into abeyance and I doubt anyone would notice. We fight wars, sign international treaties and debate foreign policy questions as a matter of preference not necessity.
This is not a call for Canada to become an autarkic state. I'm simply establishing the context to understand why much of our defence and foreign policy is so utterly immature. Like a perpetual adolescence we are free from the consequences of our actions or inactions. We as nation face few serious problems and so refuse to act in a serious way. The Harper Years saw a brief respite of maturity on defence and foreign affairs questions. But it was only a respite. Our serious engagement with the world is a mile wide and an inch deep.
Canadians don't care about our foreign and defence policy. Outside of war time elections are not won or lost on Canada's role in the world. This democratic indifference allows both policy areas to become the hobby horses of the serving Prime Minister. From Pierre Trudeau's Peace Tour to Jean Chretien's slash and burn of the military, we have no long term interests or goals that might act as a counter weight to political whim-worshiping. On Monday the PMO wants a robust military. On Tuesday we're a nation of peacekeepers again. On Wednesday the budget must be balances on the backs of our armed forces. The rest of the week is dedicated to photo-ops.
We are a bubble nation and so act accordingly. Inevitably the bubble will burst and how little prepared we will be.
You are right about the Canadian electorate's attitude to our defence.
For centuries their moat, the English Channel, really did afford Britain effective isolation from its various mortal enemies, compared to the situation of those various mortal enemies who were also each other's various mortal enemies separated only by a line on a map. So that's where that historical idea comes from. Most of the time if the British just kept a big enough RN it could keep the actual country isolated from threats. From time to time it would have to contribute ground forces to an alliance to disrupt a continental power that threatened to become strong enough to attack Britain directly, but again if it did that it kept the actual home island relatively isolated from the ravages of war.
Not a bad idea to get a retired RN admiral who spent much of his career on ship procurement to advise us. We do have different problems and requirements in naval matters, but like anthropology, studying someone else's can help us be more objective about our own.
Apart from that, our defence and security problems are quite like Britain's - while we want to be able to maintain our independence we can't afford to go it alone so we have to contribute enough to alliance efforts to earn the respect and mutual support of neighbours and allies. And our biggest threat is actually from letting the wrong sort of immigrant come and attack us directly or use our country as a base to attack others.
Posted by: TheTooner | Friday, February 26, 2016 at 11:12 AM
If Canada wants control over the Arctic then it better prepare to break the bubble, or have it broken for them.
Posted by: Cytotoxic | Monday, February 29, 2016 at 01:17 PM