CDFAI-CIC Conference, Ottawa

NATO & NORAD

Monday, November 2, 2009

Authors:  Hon. William C. Graham and Dr. Jack Cunningham

Since I was first elected to Parliament in 1993, both the threats to Canadian security, and the instruments seen as necessary to meet them, have changed profoundly.  At that time the end of the Cold War and the reduction of the Soviet threat were already forcing us to rethink the roles of NATO and NORAD in our foreign and security policies.  Subsequent events have intensified that process.  Who would have thought then, for example, that NATO’s Article 5 would be invoked in response to an attack on New York originating in Central Asia, part of an international terrorist challenge that Canada and its NATO allies have had to confront since 2001:  an evolving and mutating threat to which we are all still adapting?

Whether as Chairman of SCFAIT, Minister of Foreign Affairs or Minister of National Defence, I constantly found the relative place that NORAD and NATO occupied in our security architecture was a matter for attention and review.  And NATO itself was at times the place where real tensions played out between allies seriously divided over the wisdom of the invasion of Iraq.  

Today at NATO, the current situation in Afghanistan is at the top of the agenda;   it also inevitably drives much of the Canadian debate about the alliance.  Our largest military commitment since World War Two has come at a financial cost that is not entirely clear, but exceeds $10 billion.  The frustrations are many: the fiasco of the recent elections; the enduring strength of the Taliban;  the unstable frontier with neighbouring Pakistan; the drug traffic; the power of regional warlords; and rampant corruption in the provision of government services and the administration of justice.  In light of these difficulties, it’s only natural that the sacrifice in Canadian blood and the magnitude of our aid has come into question.  Similar issues are at the core of the present debate within the Obama administration as it considers the wisdom of committing more troops.

The current mood in Canada is a far cry from the optimism that accompanied our original decision to commit to Kandahar with our British and Dutch allies as a way of extending NATO’s remit to that particularly troubled part of the country.  At that time we believed that we could both fight the Taliban and win the political war in the hearts and minds of the local population through our contact with them.  Taliban tactics, learned in Iraq, soon made that contact both dangerous and problematic.

From the Canadian public’s perspective, NATO’s reputation has suffered as our casualties have mounted while some allies retreat behind caveats, refusing to relieve our troops or even come to their aid. From the perspective of the Canadian Forces themselves there must also be cause for reflection about the nature of the NATO bargain:  a significant commitment should come with the prospect of rotation which permits renewal and avoids mission fatigue.  This has to have been a real factor in our decision for a complete withdrawal by 2011. 

In terms of both politics and strategy, then, Afghanistan provides urgent reasons for Canadians to reconsider the nature of their commitment to the alliance itself. We are not necessarily alone: General McChrystal’s recent remarks suggest he shares some of the reservations about NATO’s capacity that General Hillier has explicitly and in characteristically colourful manner raised in his memoirs.  So while we often say failure in Afghanistan will seriously impact NATO, it is not just the failure to achieve the desired progress in Afghan society, the recent elections, drugs and corruption that are being judged.  Rather NATO itself is on trial and found wanting as an effective military alliance.

Our view of NATO’s performance in Afghanistan must also be seen in the context of both a changed international environment and Canada’s own shifting global priorities. 

With the passing of the Cold War, the likelihood of large-scale aggression by regular forces against Western Europe has reduced to the vanishing point. Both military planners and armchair strategists (retired folks, like myself?) have had to redirect their attention to the new challenges that arise from conflicts involving irregular forces, generally blending into civilian populations, and often with a major religious or ethno-cultural dimension. 

As put in a recent report by the Canadian Forces Aerospace Warfare Centre: 

“It is projected that irregular challenges, asymmetrical warfare, low-intensity conflicts and insurgencies will be the most prevalent form of conflict until 2019”

The lessons of Kosovo, Rwanda, Iraq, and Afghanistan have encouraged substantial rethinking on questions of both strategy and tactics in this type of conflict.  The ideas developed by knowledgeable and experienced practitioners like Generals Rupert Smith and David Petraeus, and reflected in statements of military doctrine like the American Counter-insurgency Field Manual (2006), are being put into practice by a new generation of military leaders like General McChrystal in Afghanistan.  One thing is clear:  the type of conflict envisioned and the means to deal with it are far from the geographical and strategic considerations that gave birth to NATO.

To this we must add the national cultural differences on how to deal with insurgencies that are the result of different experiences and traditions.  For example, Britain’s experience in Burma and Northern Ireland obviously influenced its military approach to this type of situation, an approach very different from that of other allies.  Such   differences in national approaches make applying appropriate tactics in an Alliance structure fairly complicated and sometimes highly political.  As an illustration, one has only to think about the vigorous debate resulting from the use of air power in Afghanistan and its negative consequences for the civilian population.

It is also obvious that any future conflict, like Afghanistan, will likely take place in regions well outside the NATO area.

As a result, a high level of understanding of the region will be necessary to appreciate the risks associated with each Mission.  In the case of our Afghan mission, it might be said that Pakistan’s role required greater attention and knowledge, not only by Canadians but the Alliance as a whole.

One other thread running through recent developments is a more holistic view of security.  At the macro level “soft power” instruments are receiving more serious attention, while at the micro level the role of the military is seen as providing security to complement reconstruction and development aid, and the emergence of good governance rather than an end in itself.  The primary role of force protection has been rethought in the context of the need for protection of the local population if the political battle is to be won.  Individual countries have had to rethink and readjust their approach as Canada did as a result of the Manley Report.

And let us not forget that the issue of national caveats, so difficult when it comes to coordinated military operations, and about which we complain today, is not foreign to Canada.  In 1963 General Norstad, retiring NATO commander, complained of our failure to accept nuclear weapons in our aircraft as a breach of obligations.  And within the Alliance there are constitutional and legal constraints that do legitimately constrain military responses in some circumstances.  Signatories to the Rome Statute, for example, have a heightened view of the legal constraints of proportionality in risking the lives of civilians.

At the same time, all members of NATO have had to take the domestic threat of terrorism more seriously. This has entailed the adoption of UN regulations to hamper the financing of internationally prohibited organizations as well as changes in both policy and organization at the level of national governments. In Canada, we adopted anti-terrorist legislation and reorganized government structures to include new Cabinet committees and a National Security advisor.

As well, the end of the shared Soviet threat loosened some of the tight links between European and North American security. Increasingly, differences of geography dictated differences of emphasis in security interests and threat perception.  Our European allies have turned more of their attention to specifically European entities and processes, such as the ESDP and the Mediterranean dialogue.  The Americans are reevaluating the protection of their own national interests, with Northern Command becoming more important and NORAD’s utility under review.

In Canada, we have recently conducted two major reviews of the role of the military in our security, the Martin review of 2005 and the Harper “Canada First defence strategy”.  As the present Government’s statements in the Canada First strategy and “Canada and The Americas” illustrate, Canadian foreign and defence policies are less centred on Europe than in the age of the World Wars and the Cold War.  Canada was very much a “North Atlantic” nation until after the Second World War, but is now more than ever integrated in North America and of the Americas, with serious and growing Pacific and Arctic security concerns.

Asia is more important than it used to be, and many of our new security concerns pertain to the Arctic and the Americas (with special emphasis on the Caribbean and on Mexican drug trafficking).  These new challenges will necessarily divert energy and resources from NATO and reduce its importance, as Professor Bland cogently argued in a recent Globe and Mail op. ed. piece.

That said, while this reorientation in our priorities is, in my view, both timely and positive, we should not lose sight of the fact that NATO probably remains, despite its shortcomings, the best available multilateral instrument for delivering military assistance.  Looking at recent UN operations in Burma, Haiti or the Congo reminds us why we prefer, when sending our troops in harm’s way, to do so in the company of our NATO colleagues and with their logistical support.  As it is practically inconceivable to conceive of a mission for Canadian troops (or for that matter of most members if the Alliance) that does not involve some form of multilateral framework, whatever the specific institution involved, NATO of necessity must remain our preferred option.

Quite apart from these operational issues, a number of our allies are revising their own views on NATO.  The recent war in the Caucasus between Russia and Georgia, and the recent finding by the EU that Georgia bore much of the responsibility for starting the conflict have, at the very least, slowed the momentum for NATO expansion to include Georgia and Ukraine.  President Obama’s recent announcement on BMD has implications for relations with Eastern Europe that have yet to unfold;  Turkey is expressing a renewed interest in an accommodation with Russia;  and France is rejoining NATO’s military command structure, a positive development but one that will produce some strains and require adjustments.  So there is much for the recently established Albright Commission, and our representative on it, to think about.  They will be doing so, in spite of the problems in the Afghan Mission, in the context of some recent and encouraging successes:   the election of a new Secretary General, a reinvigoration of the NATO/Russia Council and relationship, the reintegration of France as a full participating member of the Alliance and the launch of the work on a new strategic concept to take it into the future.

As for the defence of North America itself, NORAD’s importance to Canadians has never depended exclusively on its tangible usefulness to secure North American skies.  For Canadians, its bi-national command structure is an important political symbol of equality in dealing with our omnipotent neighbour;  we proudly display our integrated status at Cheyenne Mountain and tell how the Canadian deputy commander was in charge of the security of North America’s skies on 9/11.  However, let’s face it, this aspect of the NORAD command, unique in the American experience, has much less attraction for our American colleagues, in part because the disappearance of the imminent Russian threat removes the imperative to submit to joint decisions, in part because of Canadian actions on Missile Defence.

It’s easy now to say that a technology that has yet to work should not have mattered as much as it did in Canadian-American relations, but our failure to even provide the Bush administration with the political cover it desired certainly affected its strategic planning at that time;  we were seen as prevaricating on a defensive system it saw as absolutely necessary, and to which were not asked to contribute anything.  True, the NORAD treaty was renewed and we agreed that it could be used to track missiles for the BMD system, but by ensuring that any decision to intercept would be made outside NORAD, we effectively marginalized it. “North Com” is now the Americans’ primary focus for North American defence; that North Com’s commander is “double-hatted” as NORAD commander cannot conceal that this is a secondary operation for them.  To get a sense of what its future might be, one need only visit the former NORAD Canadian base at North Bay, presently being touted by the local authorities as a safe storage site for documents, or some of our forward staging areas in the Arctic which, when I last visited, we were talking of turning over to the local authorities to house a community college.

One of NORAD’s problems, it seems to me, is that so far, we have failed to find a new vocation for it.  Much hope was invested in the Bi-National Planning Panels, which were to enable us to meet cross-border threats, and even to extend joint operations to the maritime sphere, but these have yet to bear fruit (the maritime aspect is complicated by jurisdictional issues regarding the respective roles of the US Navy and Coast Guard on the American side and the Navy, the Coast guard and the R.C.M.P. on ours).  So unless some unforeseen threat materializes, it seems likely that NORAD will be replaced or, more probably, end up like the Cheshire cat, fading away to little but the grin.

In the end then, as Canadians ponder the appropriate mix of soft and hard power instruments necessary to ensure our security in a volatile global environment, the extent to which we continue to rely on two of our key international instruments requires serious consideration by our national policy makers.  Both are at risk, in my view, for very different but compelling reasons, of becoming less and less relevant to the measures we must take to ensure our security and advance our foreign policy goals in the twenty-first century.