This week, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese released the report of a national defense policy review his centre-left government commissioned after he was elected last year. Rather than repudiating the approach of his Conservative predecessor, who sealed a new military alliance with the United States and Britain requiring massive defense investment, Mr Albanese announced his intention to go even further in this way. “We must build and strengthen our security by seeking to shape the future rather than waiting for the future to shape us,” he said, responding to the report.
With a population of around 25 million people, the equivalent of two-thirds of ours, Australia already spends more than Canada on defence. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Australian military spending totaled US$32.3 billion last year, while Canada spent US$26.9 billion on defence. Australia is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), whose member countries are required to devote at least 2% of their gross domestic product to military spending.
Nevertheless, it is meeting this target and even plans to exceed it in the years to come due to a vast effort of military mobilization aimed at better preparing the country for new threats. “China’s military expansion is now the most ambitious in the world since the end of World War II,” notes the Defense Strategic Review. Therefore, for the first time in 80 years, we must go back to basics [et] take a fundamentals-based approach to how we manage and seek to avoid the highest strategic risk we face as a nation: the prospect of a major conflict in the region that directly threatens our national interest. »
Australians are not afraid of their beliefs. Who wants peace prepares for war. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Chinese incursions into the South China Sea put an end to the thirty years of military demobilization that followed the fall of the Soviet Union. All Western countries have taken note of this over the past year by undertaking a major review of their defense policies and/or a significant increase in their military spending.
Everyone except Canada. Certainly, the 2022 federal budget promised a review of Canadian defense policy. The fact remains that this commitment looked more like a dilatory means to postpone any action that might offend those who would prefer that Canada become a kind of neutral country like Switzerland.
Last week the washington post reported on a Pentagon assessment that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau informed NATO leaders that Canada would “never” meet the 2% of GDP threshold for military spending. According to NATO, Canada spent 1.27% of its GDP on defense in 2022.
“Widespread defense deficiencies hamper Canadian capabilities […] while straining partner relationships and alliance contributions,” wrote the Post in reference to the Pentagon document leaked on the Discord platform in March.
It has become an open secret: Americans are getting impatient with the Trudeau government’s reluctance to follow up on Pentagon requests to accelerate its investments aimed at modernizing the North American Aerospace Defense Command. (NORAD) and the expansion of the Canadian Armed Forces, whose capabilities continue to decline due to a lack of recruits and obsolete equipment.
The latest budget provides $38.6 billion over 20 years “to strengthen the defense of North America, strengthen Canada’s support for our NORAD partnership with the United States, and protect our sovereignty in the North”, without specifying when these investments will begin or even at what pace. The Trudeau government finally announced last January the purchase of new fighter jets, after seven years of procrastination and increasingly strong American pressure. But these purchases will still leave our spending well below the expected 2% threshold.
The United States Ambassador to Ottawa, David Cohen, no doubt sought to spare Mr. Trudeau (in public anyway) when he came to Canada’s defense by pointing out that the 2% target n t is only one indicator among others for the commitment of NATO member countries to provide their share of efforts. “Whenever there was a need, Canada stepped in,” he said on the sidelines of a conference at the Canada-United States Law Institute in Cleveland.
However, his predecessor, David Jacobson, who took part in the same conference, set the record straight by saying that the article in the Post could make it even more difficult to resolve bilateral irritants and reinforce the position of some American politicians that the United States should stop acting as a protector of allied countries like Canada. “At some point people are going to say, ‘Well, we’ve got all these profiteers — I hate to use that term — and we’re not going to do that anymore. »
Alas! Don’t count on these criticisms to upset Justin Trudeau. The Canadian Armed Forces’ lack of resources and personnel serves as a pretext for rejecting requests from our allies to participate in international missions outside of Latvia, where Canada leads a NATO battle group. Which, we suspect, is entirely his business.