Forget two per cent of GDP on defence—but maybe that’s not so bad

Released in April, Canada’s latest defence policy paper formalized what was already obvious: that Canada will never reach NATO’s spending targets and has no real intentions to do so. Our North, Strong and Free’s bottom line: $8.1-billion over the next five years—and $73-billion over the next 20 years—enough to bring the defence spending-to-GDP ratio to 1.76 per cent by the end of this decade, short of NATO’s agreed target. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Not the part about underfunding the military or irritating Canada’s allies or talking big about being a good ally and international citizen, but the part about using NATO’s spending target as the lodestar of Canadian defence policy. Perhaps it’s time to forget two per cent. The basic story is well known: in 2014, NATO members agreed to spend two per cent of their GDP on defence to ensure that everyone was pulling their weight. There is a charming simplicity to that logic, and over the past 10 years, two per cent has become a shorthand for alliance burden sharing. NATO boosters use it to rally the alliance in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, op-ed columnists cite it to skewer politicians. Then-U.S. president Donald Trump used it as a cudgel with which to bash freeloaders, and may do so again. Aaron Ettinger is an associate professor in the department of political science at Carleton University. Photograph courtesy of Aaron Ettinger Nevertheless, Canada should not spend two per cent of its GDP on defence, at least not for NATO’s sake. Instead, it should spend a figure that is consistent with the country’s security needs and long-term national interests. What those interests are, however, is more complicated, and it’s a conversation we are not particularly good at in this country. Lost amid the handwringing about Canada’s status as a spending laggard in NATO is the arbitrariness of the target itself. Too often, the two per cent figure is a stand-in for the correct level of spending, when that’s hardly the case at all. In doing so, it impoverishes the debate about what this country’s foreign policy should be, and what level of defence spending is required to support it. The origins of the two per cent commitment underscore how unhelpful it is as a guide to Canada’s defence spending. Basically, two per cent is the outcome of an accounting exercise from a bygone era. Back in 2006, NATO staff wanted to establish some sort of spending target for alliance members. So, they looked at the books and calculated the NATO’s median defence spending—measured as a percentage of GDP—between 1991 and 2003. The number happened to be 2.05 per cent, and a rounded-down number was endorsed by NATO defence ministers. That figure wended its way through the NATO bureaucracy until 2014, when it was enshrined in the Wales Summit Declaration as the official target for defence spending. It has been the anchor concept of NATO burden sharing ever since. This makes little sense. Ask yourself: would it be rational for Canada to set its health care or infrastructure budgets based on what other countries spent three decades ago? Of course not. The defence file should be no different. Canada’s defence needs will not be solved by aiming for an arbitrary target, even if it would lift the ignominy of being a laggard. But looking good in front of our allies is not the point of a defence policy. Canada’s defence spending should be set based on a clear understanding of Canada’s national interests. A clear sense of those national interests has eluded Canadians for decades. As a result, federal leaders have used defence policy for everything other than national defence: regional economic development (shipbuilding policy), partisanship (F-35 procurement), national myth-making (peacekeeping), and alliance solidarity (Afghanistan). The list goes on. Few of Canada’s leaders have been willing to answer the basic question: What is the point of Canada’s foreign and defence policy? What are Canada’s priorities in the world, and why? Canada cannot be all things to all people in this world. Arriving at a clear sense of national interests requires hard decision-making and prioritization. To what degree should Canada adhere to its late-20th century internationalism in the 2020s? Should the Canadian Armed Forces be equipped with across-the-spectrum capabilities, or should it specialize in a certain area? Are some priorities more important than others, and if so, what projects should be abandoned? These are not easy questions to answer, and political leaders have scrupulously avoided confronting them. As Canadians, we should insist that the country’s leaders answer those basic questions first. Only then can we figure out what defence spending ought to be. So forget two per cent. Aaron Ettinger is an associate professor in the department of political science at Carleton University. The Hill Times

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Forget two per cent of GDP on defence—but maybe that’s not so bad

Canada’s defence needs will not be solved by aiming for an arbitrary target, even if it would lift the ignominy of being a laggard.

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