Contributors

Two Priorities for the Canadian Forces

How should we define the priorities of the Canadian Forces? Steve Saideman raises this question in his latest post. In my view, the CF should have two overriding missions: first, the protection of Canada’s coastlines and airspace (along with assistance to civil authorities in emergencies); and second, the ability to contribute contingents of highly capable and versatile ground forces to overseas multilateral operations.

Steve believes that Canada faces a threat only in the Arctic, because the rest of our coastline and airspace are “quite safe.” He suggests, therefore, that when I argue that continental security should be the top CF priority, that I am actually putting the Arctic first.

In fact, that’s not what I am saying. Although the Arctic will be an area of increasing international competition (given undersea resources and new shipping routes opening up due to melting sea ice), Canada still must be able to identify and intercept potentially dangerous ships, planes, and cargo before they reach their destinations. We know all too well that airplanes can be hijacked, and that ships can be used for mass human trafficking, for example, and we have an immense coastline and airspace to monitor and patrol. More …

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Foreign Policy Is Not Just Defence

I welcome the opportunity to kick off this CIC series on the future of the Canadian Forces (CF), not least because the series invites a broader discussion of the role of the military and the Department of National Defence (DND) in Canadian foreign policy. Too often, media coverage and expert debates about the military end up focusing on its capabilities: the technical characteristics and costs (or cost overruns) of particular weapons systems, the size and composition of CF personnel, and the like. These are important questions in their own right, but they presume that we have an idea of what we want our military to be doing – or, more precisely, what kind of foreign policy we want for Canada, and what role the military can play in effecting that policy.

In recent years, Canadian foreign policy has sometimes seemed to boil down to a military policy. Yes, we have launched free-trade negotiations around the world and promoted religious liberty, among other things. But as Eugene Lang recently observed, aside from trade promotion, the main pillar of our foreign policy appears to be the willingness to provide Canadian military forces to fight in coalition operations. More …

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R2P Is Not a License for Military Recklessness

In the New York Times last week, Tufts University’s Alex de Waal penned an op-ed that scathingly criticized the responsibility to protect (R2P) doctrine and a group of people he calls “idealists.” In the article, he identified only two members of this group – Gareth Evans, the former Australian foreign minister who co-chaired the commission that first proposed R2P, and Samantha Power, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, who now works on the National Security Council staff in the Obama White House.

Evans, Power, and their “fellow idealists” misunderstand the nature of mass atrocities, de Waal argues. Instead of recognizing that skillful diplomacy can, in some circumstances, achieve political solutions to large-scale violence, “idealists” tend to view perpetrators as insatiable killers who can only be stopped by sending in the cavalry against them. According to de Waal, this tendency to turn to military solutions for mass violence is naïvely moralistic and dangerous.

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A Warning to NATO: Afghanistan Could Collapse

Steve Coll, the Pulitzer Prize-winning president of the New America Foundation and regular contributor to The New Yorker, spent a day in Ottawa last week discussing NATO’s exit strategy in Afghanistan.  His message was sobering and deserves to be printed out in a large font and placed on the desk of every NATO leader:

The greatest risk to NATO’s policy and investments in Afghanistan is that the country essentially cracks up under the pressure of the transition in 2014.

Understandably exhausted by years of war, the U.S. and its allies have little appetite for such a message.  Yet, Coll argues that NATO policy is on a trajectory that could end in a collapse of Afghanistan’s fragile governing arrangements and an explosion of violence far worse than what we have witnessed in the last decade – and perhaps as bad as, or worse than the civil war that devastated the country in the 1990s. More …

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The New Canada: Fomenting Fear at Home and Abroad

Why base policy on facts and evidence when you can exploit fear instead? It doesn’t take a psychologist to know that fear is a much more powerful motivator than boring old rational argument. Political scientists have long studied the use of fear-based appeals as techniques that “entrepreneurial” politicians may use to mobilize support. The Harper government seems to understand this intuitively, based on the comments of senior ministers this week, both at home and abroad. 

Imagine a split-screen image. On one side is Vic Toews, Canada’s minister of public safety, testifying Wednesday before a Senate committee on the government’s omnibus crime bill.

During the 2011 election campaign, the Conservatives promised to make Canada a place where “law abiding” folks “don’t have to worry when they go to bed at night; where they don’t have to look over their shoulders as they walk down the street.” However, the tough-on-crime agenda ran into an awkward fact: Canada’s crime rate had been falling for years. According to Statistics Canada, police-reported crime continued declining in 2010 (the most recent year for which statistics are available), and reached its lowest level since 1973. More …

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Stephen Harper’s Worrying Words on Iran

Is Prime Minister Stephen Harper preparing the Canadian public for a possible conflict with Iran? In two recent interviews (here and here), he has “raised the alarm” about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, which he views as the “world’s most serious threat to international peace.”

Harper is right to be concerned about the possibility of Tehran acquiring nuclear weapons. Any proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is bad news, and there are few more odious regimes in the world than the one that has ruled Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

But is he justified in saying that Iran would have “no hesitation of using nuclear weapons if they see them achieving their religious or political purposes”?

This is an important point. If Harper is correct, virtually all measures, up to and including a military attack on Iran, might be warranted, or perhaps even required, to prevent that country from building such weapons.

The problem, however, is that the prime minister’s assessment flies in the face of what we know about the behaviour of the Iranian regime. For all their revolutionary jihadist talk, Iran’s ruling mullahs have consistently worked to realize one goal above all others: keeping themselves in power. More …

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The Total Surveillance Society Approaches

In today’s Ottawa Citizen, I write about a recent Brookings Institution report by John Villasenor, an engineering professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, in which he argues that authoritarian regimes will soon have the capacity to monitor, record, and permanently archive the communications and activities of their citizens from birth to death.

Here is the conclusion of my op-ed (including a couple of hyperlinks that don’t appear in the newspaper version):

“Some might dismiss this vision as a dystopian fantasy. But why wouldn’t countries with records of using every tool at their disposal to monitor their citizens also take advantage of these new surveillance and data storage capacities as they become available? And isn’t it true that even in liberal democracies with strong privacy laws, including Canada, we have also seen a gradual shrinking of private space and pressures for more ubiquitous surveillance?

The main benefit of Villasenor’s report – like that of other stylized visions of the future, including George Orwell’s – may not be its specific predictions, but rather, its ability to shock us into seeing real-time trends that might otherwise go unnoticed, including in our own society. Indeed, it speaks to the importance of a different kind of heightened vigilance: not of our fellow citizens, but of our right to remain largely hidden from the constant gaze of the state.”

You can read the full op-ed here.

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Canada-U.S. Border Deal: From Aspiration to Action?

Yesterday, Canada and the United States announced a security and economic cooperation plan similar in style and substance to the 2005 Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). It’s worth recalling, therefore, that the SPP died of neglect shortly after it was launched. Unless political champions at the highest levels in both countries commit to driving today’s agenda of cooperation forward – month after month, year after year – this new initiative will likely suffer the same fate.

The new agreement, like the SPP, sets out a menu of policy objectives to be jointly pursued over the coming years. They broadly aim to reduce unnecessary regulatory differences between Canada and the U.S. and other physical and regulatory barriers to the more efficient movement of goods and people between the two countries, while also shifting some security screening to the “perimeter” of the continent. Broadly speaking, these were the objectives of the SPP in 2005, and they are the objectives of the initiative announced today.

As before, moreover, there is no “Big Bang” of sudden continental integration, as some had feared or hoped. We won’t have open borders with the U.S. similar to those between European countries within the Schengen zone, nor will we be eliminating differences in the two countries’ external tariff rates and creating a North American customs union. Rather, what’s now being proposed is incremental and modest. Whether you love or hate these proposals, they will happen slowly.

“Is There a Problem in Canada-U.S. Relations,” Roland Paris asked earlier this year.

Duncan Wood and Robert Pastor react to perimeter.

Or perhaps they won’t happen at all. The old SPP plan included “Ministerial-led working groups” as well as semi-annual reports to be issued by the security, industry and foreign affairs ministers (or their equivalents) from all three countries. The model for that arrangement, in turn, was the Canada-U.S. Smart Border Accord, which had been created immediately after 9/11 and was led by then-Deputy Prime Minister John Manley and his American counterpart, Tom Ridge. It was the personal attention and energy of these two cabinet officials which drove the progress of the Smart Border Accord action plan.

But that was a different time. In the wake of 9/11 there was a sense of urgency on both sides of the border that began to dissipate well before 2005. Partly as a result, the ministers who were nominally responsible for overseeing and implementing the SPP lost interest in the mundane but vital details of the workplans, which languished after running into the inevitable bureaucratic obstacles.

The agenda announced today will run into bureaucratic obstacles, too. Many of its specific objectives are still aspirational – such as negotiating a “preclearance agreement” that would “provide the legal framework and reciprocal authorities necessary” for inspections at the Canada-U.S. land border to take place on each other’s territory (just as they do in airports today when we clear U.S. customs before getting on a flight to the U.S.). These legal issues are extraordinarily complex, and have stymied efforts to negotiate such a deal for years. Nevertheless, the new cooperation plan states that a land preclearance agreement will be reached by December 2012.

The chances of meeting this target – or, for that matter, achieving breakthroughs on other difficult issues in the bilateral relationship – will depend in large part on the willingness of both the Prime Minister and the President to devote sustained attention and political capital to these objectives. Yet we are already less than 12 months away from the next U.S. presidential election. Let’s just say there will be many other demands on Mr. Obama’s attention over the coming year.

The broad vision outlined in this bilateral cooperation agenda is in both countries’ interests to pursue, but doing so will require both the expression of intention and a sustained political effort to turn aspiration into action. It remains to be seen whether today’s leaders can deliver the latter part of that formula.

Photo courtesy Reuters.

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A Pivotal Moment? U.S. Policy Towards Asia

Is the United States “pivoting” its foreign policy towards the Asia-Pacific region, as prominent Obama administration officials, news reports, and commentators have claimed? 

Daniel Drezner, a Fletcher School professor and Foreign Policy blogger, isn’t convinced. For one thing, he points out, the U.S. never really lost interest in maintaining a presence in East Asia. The big difference now is “the eagerness with which the countries in the region, ranging from Australia to Myanmar, have reciprocated.”

Second, regardless of what U.S. officials may say or want, the rest of the world will continue to demand their attention:

A pivot implies that the United States will stop paying attention to Europe or the Middle East and start paying attention to East Asia. While I’m sure that’s what the Obama administration wants to do, it can’t. Europe is imploding, as are multiple countries in the Middle East. The United States can’t afford to ignore these regions, since uncertainty there eventually translates into both global and domestic problems.

Drezner sums up: “Talking about a United States ‘pivot’ in foreign policy is meaningless.”

Well, yes and no. Of course, the U.S. never lost its economic or strategic interest in the region, and there is a goodly dose of salesmanship in the administration’s talk of a foreign-policy reorientation towards the Asia-Pacific. And, yes, with the Middle East undergoing revolutionary changes, Europe facing the prospect of cascading economic crises, and American soldiers still dying in Afghanistan, any administration will be at the mercy of “events, dear boy, events.”

But Drezner understates the significance of recent U.S. moves in the Asia-Pacific. The administration’s talk of a “pivot” was clearly intended as a signal to China’s neighbours that, in spite of U.S. domestic fiscal problems and drawdown from Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. is not about to go wobbly on its military and diplomatic commitments in East Asia. The speech that U.S. President Barack Obama delivered in Australia last week challenged Chinese policies right across the board, from China’s currency-management practices to its regional military aspirations. Indeed, it read like a politely veiled U.S. containment policy towards China.

Related:

The 800-Pound Panda in Obama’s Asia Speechby Roland Paris

Global Leadership at Cannes: China’s Arrival or What Happened to America? by Gregory Chin. 

Perhaps that’s putting it too strongly, because the U.S. is interested in both containing and engaging China. Nevertheless, these speeches – combined with related U.S. actions – have communicated renewed American resolve in the region. In addition to the symbolically important deployment of U.S. Marines to Australia’s northern coast, Singapore may soon provide basing for the U.S. Navy’s new littoral combat ships, Vietnam has invited the American warships to call on its Cam Ranh Bay port for the first time in three decades, and we may soon hear more announcements of U.S. ships and planes being allowed to operate out of local bases across the region. (In case anyone didn’t get the message, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chose the deck of a guided missile cruiser as the venue to deliver a speech reaffirming the U.S. alliance with the Philippines “and all of our alliances in the region.”)

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy has recently tested a new unmanned warplane designed to be flown from U.S. aircraft carriers, reportedly with three times the range of carrier-based manned aircraft. These drones would not only greatly extend the reach of U.S. air power in the region, but would also allow the carriers to operate outside the maximum range of Chinese anti-ship missiles.

Consider the sum total of these words and deeds. They may not add up to a “pivot” – at least, not if Drezner is correct and the metaphor implies that the U.S. will “stop” paying attention to Europe and the Middle East and “start” paying attention to East Asia. However, I doubt that the Obama administration has been formulating its policy in such stark, zero-sum terms. The message of the administration’s recent speeches and actions, rather, was that the U.S. will be increasing, not decreasing, its involvement in the affairs of the Asia-Pacific. And that is an important and credible message to communicate at a moment when the U.S. is disengaging from Iraq and Afghanistan, when China’s rising military assertiveness has been fuelling regional fears, and when there’s so much at stake in the Asia-Pacific for the future of U.S. military and economic power.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

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The 800-Pound Panda in Obama’s Asia Speech

Sometimes, the most interesting part of a political speech is what’s not said. On Thursday, President Barack Obama delivered an address to Australia’s Parliament in which he set out the rationale and priorities of the U.S. policy shift towards the Asia Pacific region. The speech was largely about China, but Mr. Obama barely dared to say that country’s name out loud. The complexity and sensitivity of the U.S.-China relationship were on full display, for those to read between the lines.

Much of the speech sought to reassure China’s neighbours about America’s commitment to regional security in the face of rising Chinese power. The United States, said Mr. Obama, will “deter threats to peace” and keep its commitments to allies including to Japan, South Korea and Australia. It will adopt a more “flexible” military posture, including by basing Marines in northern Australia and by training the naval and land forces of regional partners. It will also deploy “new capabilities,” an oblique phrase that may refer to ship-based drone aircraft, which have the potential to significantly expand the reach of U.S. air and naval power.

The rest of the speech addressed several other hot button issues in U.S.-China relations. For example, the president emphasized the need to ensure that “commerce and freedom of navigation are not impeded” and that “countries with large surpluses take action to boost demand at home.” He called for a “level playing field” for business in which “every nation plays by the rules” and “intellectual property and new technologies that fuel innovation are protected; and where currencies are market driven so no nation has an unfair advantage.” Moreover, he spoke strongly about upholding human rights – and workers’ rights, in particular. These messages were clearly intended mainly for China.

Amazingly, however, Obama barely mentioned China in the speech. The text of his address was 50 paragraphs long, but he referred to China in only one of these paragraphs.

This omission served a diplomatic purpose. China is extremely sensitive to American criticism – and even more so to what it views as American meddling in the region. By speaking indirectly, President Obama was able to reassure China’s nervous neighbours, while communicating his entreaties to China, along with implicit warnings – without unduly insulting or provoking Beijing.

Nevertheless, isn’t it striking that these messages have to be communicated so obliquely, and that relations between the world’s two most important countries remain so brittle that a speech that is essentially about China needs to be dressed up as something else?

The silences in Mr. Obama’s speech were as eloquent as his words.

Photo Courtesy Reuters.

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