NATO nagging? Defence spending takes heat from allies

OTTAWA—At last week's NATO Summit meeting in Washington, D.C., Canadian leaders—including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau—braced themselves for criticism from other alliance members regarding our purported lack of defence spending. It is true that based on the percentage of our gross domestic product (GDP), Canada ranks in the bottom third of the 32 member states. However, when based on the actual dollars spent, Canada ranks seventh in NATO, and—incredibly—16th in the world. However, back in 2014, NATO alliance members collectively pledged to bring their spending up to two per cent of each nation's GDP. At the time, it was the Stephen Harper Conservatives who signed on to that pledge. For the record, Canada was spending just less than one per cent of GDP on defence at that juncture. Under the Trudeau Liberals, that percentage has increased to approximately 1.4 per cent of GDP. Under the latest defence policy update, which was just released in April, that figure is set to climb to 1.7 per cent of GDP by 2027. To be fair, the Liberals have only ever promised to strive to attain the two per cent of GDP goal. They never promised to actually meet that goal, until pressure in D.C. led to a stated timeline of 2032. But I digress. The expected backlash did materialize in Washington, particularly from American lawmakers. One of the most strident voices was that of the United States Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. In a televised interview, Johnson called it “shameful” that Canada has yet to hit the two per cent goal or provided a realistic plan to do so. “Talk about riding America’s coattails.” This is ripe coming from our neighbour and closest ally. I say this because, while we may not be spending the arbitrary proportion of our GDP on defence, the fact is that we have hardly been riding on America's coattails. Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, left, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Defence Minister Bill Blair announce Canada’s plan to hit NATO defence spending targets at a July 11 press conference in Washington, D.C. Screenshot courtesy of CPAC It was their foreign war in Afghanistan that we supported for more than 10 years. As part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, and as part of the U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom, Canada had 158 soldiers killed, with another 2,000 people suffering physical injuries or battle wounds. Of the 40,000 Canadian troops who rotated through the Afghanistan conflict, many thousands are still coping with the invisible wounds of PTSD. Canada cut bait and withdrew from the Afghanistan conflict in 2014. Many a Canadian hawk in the form of politicians and pundits decried this withdrawal as premature as the hoped-for victory was just around the corner. That myth died in the summer of 2021 when the Taliban emerged victorious. The world's greatest superpower aided by NATO, the world's largest, most sophisticated military alliance ever assembled, lost a two-decade-long campaign against a largely illiterate band of fanatics. The wild part about all of this was that eventual defeat was always expected by the senior leadership in the Pentagon. This was revealed by the Washington Post in 2019 in a bombshell story that was based on a series of documents which collectively have become known as the Afghanistan Papers. The Washington Post revelations were based on a series of interviews conducted by the U.S. military's own special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction. The documents reveal that high-ranking officials generally held the opinion that the war was unwinnable, while keeping this view hidden from the public. Due to the difficulty of creating objective metrics to demonstrate success, information was manipulated for the duration of the conflict. The Afghanistan Papers clearly revealed that senior U.S. officials made "explicit and sustained efforts to deliberately mislead the public." What is not known is whether Canadian officials were in on this deception from the outset, or were our U.S. counterparts deliberately misleading Canada and the other NATO members? Neither option will provide any comfort to the families of those Canadian soldiers who paid the ultimate price in the service of their country. Nor will it help to heal the wounds of those who returned from that unwinnable war broken physically and mentally. When it comes to the war in Ukraine, and NATO's efforts to deter Russian aggression, Canada is also not riding on anybody's coattails. As a nation, we have provided Ukraine with military trainers, military equipment, and $14-billion in loans and loan guarantees to keep them resisting the Russian invaders. Since 2017, Canada has forward deployed a battle group to Latvia where we have command of the international NATO brigade. Given the sorry state in which our military currently finds itself, maintaining that sort of operational tempo has been a challenge, and that effort is set to grow in scale with Canada nearly doubling the manning level of the Latvia commitment. I recall an incident back in 1998 when British Lieutenant-General Sir Hew Pike took command of the NATO force in Bosnia. Pike made some disparaging remarks about the quality of the Canadian troops under his command. In response, then-defence minister Art Eggleton rose in the House of Commons to defend the honour of our military. His brief rebuttal was simply, “Take a hike, Pike.” I would hope that Defence Minister Bill Blair could find a similar quip to dismiss Johnson's allegation that we are riding U.S. coattails. Scott Taylor is the editor and publisher of Esprit de Corps magazine. The Hill Times