In the coming days, 23 member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will have mobilized more than 30,000 troops to prepare for the exercise. Cold Response 2022. During this tactical and strategic organization effort, only 10 Canadian soldiers will come close to Norwegian soil. 10 soldiers, not one more, not one less.
Is this an admission of powerlessness or disengagement, to use the words of Conservative MP Pierre Paul-Hus? Was it to be expected? At a NATO conference held in Brussels in mid-February, Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand spoke about Canada’s military build-up capabilities in Eastern Europe. At the end of this meeting, Anita Anand promised, on behalf of Canada, that Ukraine and NATO would benefit from the continued solidarity of the Canadian Armed Forces… if they were unable to deploy more soldiers to Eastern Europe. Is. If it is true that the symbolism of this solidarity is measured first by an admission of insufficiency reflected by 540 Canadian soldiers in Latvia, it goes without saying that such a weak commitment can only be interpreted as an admission of impotence, compared to the Russian deployment counting more than 150,000 soldiers on the Ukrainian borders.
Can we protect ourselves from an arsenal of sufficiently valid reasons to incite our transatlantic allies to turn a blind eye to this semblance of disengagement in the future? After all, isn’t everyone able to forget that only 10 soldiers out of 30,000 were Canadian during an operational exercise in Norway? Which in itself is ironic, one might say, especially when we understand that our participation will have been so anecdotal at the end of this exercise.
Labor shortage
In the meantime, the fact remains that the Canadian Armed Forces have more than 2,000 soldiers deployed in some twenty different operations in Canada, in the Middle East, on board ships at sea in Europe and in the Asia-Pacific region. At the end of November 2021, approximately 10,000 Canadian soldiers were missing for various reasons and another 10,000 soldiers were listed as unavailable. Some were physically unable to serve due to health problems, others because they were not properly trained. This shortage of manpower within the Canadian Armed Forces, supposed to number 100,000 soldiers, probably made it even more difficult to send soldiers to Eastern Europe. However, it should be remembered that 304 soldiers who refused to receive a vaccine against COVID-19 are currently unmobilizable. Of the lot, 58 soldiers have so far been expelled, and the remaining 246 are on probation.
Under the circumstances, the shortcomings of the Canadian Armed Forces are not necessarily synonymous with disengagement, but rather with impotence, within NATO. And the exacerbation of the current labor shortage in the military speaks volumes about this. But what could this mean for other NATO member states? How can a state claim to want to defend the interests of its transatlantic allies and its own territory in the North when it relies on its allies to defend it without even offering a quid pro quo at the time of such a major diplomatic crisis?
In the wake of its invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military has indicated for the first time that it will not just observe the deployment of troops during the exercise cold-response and that she is going to organize her own training. So to what extent will Canada’s allies be prepared to increase their capital of transatlantic solidarity without questioning the nature of Canada’s commitment?
This does not seem to be a problem for NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, insofar as Canada’s commitment is notably marked by “financial support and essential equipment for several hundred million dollars”. It is true that the $507.8 million loan publicly promised to Ukraine by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has helped to put to rest criticism of the low number of Canadian soldiers deployed in Latvia as well as the many sex scandals that the Canadian Armed Forces are currently investigating.
Our protection would therefore be guaranteed and we have nothing to fear with regard to Canada’s position within NATO in the future. But at what cost ? What image of itself has Canada given to its allies and to Russia? That of a State which buys the protection that it has not been able to obtain by its own means, that of a State which benefits from a capital of transatlantic solidarity.