Canada could find itself embroiled in a hot war it isn’t expecting: Canada Undefended

Rising dangers require tough decisions about defence spending, and assessing our capabilities, commitments to allies, and place in the world

(Written by Michael Higgins. Originally published here in the National Post, republished with permission.)

Canada’s military is short 16,000 troops, its branches are operating below readiness thresholds half the time and its budget is being cut as wars erupt worldwide. In this series, National Post examines the dangers of Undefended Canada, and how to regain our security.

An aggressive China in the Indo-Pacific, an ambitious Iran in the Middle East, a dangerous Russia in Europe and an arms race in Asia are just some of the potential flashpoints that could erupt into a hot war that could drag in Canada.

In this volatile world, Canada will be forced to respond by making tough decisions about defence spending, re-assessing our capabilities, renegotiating commitments to allies, and taking a good hard look at our place in the world.

But why is the world a more dangerous place where a major war is increasingly likely?

According to military leaders and analysts, academics and intelligence officials, the blame can be laid on several factors: the foundational structure for peace, including American power and international co-operation, is being undermined; super-power rivalry is rising; dictators such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping are becoming more assertive and threatening; attacks on democratic institutions by outside states are becoming the norm; and military spending in some parts of the world is skyrocketing.

Wesley Wark, who served two terms on the prime minister of Canada’s Advisory Council on National Security, said “absolutely” the world is becoming more volatile.

“And it’s not just the obvious attention we need to pay these days to the outbreak of state-on-state conflict: Russia-Ukraine and now Hamas-Israel and the wider potential for escalation in the Middle East,” said Wark, a senior fellow with the Centre for International Governance Innovation. “Against all that, there is an ongoing reality where there are a lot of threats that are manifest in the international system these days, just below the threshold of war.”

These conflicts, called grey zones or hybrid wars, include aggressive espionage, cyber attacks and transnational threats. Take the security impact if changing climate effects spark instability in parts of the world through food shortages or forced migration.

In Canada, a public inquiry has been called to look into China’s much-publicized attempts to subvert our electoral independence. Such actions by China in particular, but also by Russia, may have been why Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre said he believed those two countries consider themselves at war with Canada.

“We must remember that Russia and China do not differentiate between peace and war,” Eyre said in the introduction to a military document, the Pan-Domain Force Employment Concept. “The hostile intentions and actions of our adversaries show that they consider themselves to be at war with the West. We must accept this reality and respond accordingly.”

The danger in grey-zone conflict is the potential for accidents, miscalculations and the crossing of “red lines,” leading to a full-blown war.

Russian and Chinese grey-zone aggression “bring profound risks of miscalculation,” said a 2017 report by the United States National Intelligence Council.

The report, Paradox of Progress, painted a bleak future.

“The risk of conflict, including inter-state conflict, will increase during the next two decades because of diverging interests among major powers, ongoing terrorist threats, continued instability in weak states, and the spread of lethal and disruptive technologies,” it warned.

But the risk of a major war bringing in countries around the world increases significantly when states are already firing at each other.

Raphael Cohen, a senior political scientist at the Rand Corporation, said the Israel-Hamas conflict is particularly dangerous.

“If Hezbollah chooses to get involved, then it becomes a somewhat larger regional conflict,” he said. “And then if you have direct Iranian involvement, just by the nature of geography, you’re going to end up dragging in a whole bunch of different regional actors, and you get a big regional conflict.”

That could pull in larger powers, such as the United States and Canada.

China’s designs on Taiwan were often cited by security analysts as another area where a hot war could be triggered.

“The best way to deter China is to double down on support for Ukraine,” said Cohen. He said if the international community coalesced around Ukraine, it could deter the Chinese premier from attacking Taiwan.

“Ukraine was supposed to last a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks, and has turned into a two-year long war,” he said, which would also cause Xi to reflect on future actions.

However, Cohen acknowledged a counter-argument that Xi might view the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East as giving him a freer hand in the Indo-Pacific area.

The U.S. seems particularly concerned about the China-Taiwan situation. A BBC report in November reported that the U.S. has been heavily boosting Taiwan’s defence.

The report said U.S. President Joe Biden had signed off on an US$80-million grant for Taiwan to buy U.S. weapons and Taiwan also had another order for American military equipment worth US$14 billion.

Meanwhile, the Chinese military machine is growing ever larger. Trying to assess China’s defence budget is difficult because of a lack of transparency, but some analysts suggest that in recent years the percentage growth has consistently been in the high single digits. One U.S. senator said the American government now believed China’s annual defence budget was about US$700 billion, higher than previous estimates and nearly the level of the U.S.’s defence spending of US$800 billion.

Canada, spending about $37 billion last year, fell well below its commitment to NATO to spend two per cent of GDP on defence.

Complacency from all political parties is to blame for that, said Thomas Juneau, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa who focuses on defence policy.

“The neglect of foreign defence, national security issues, to my mind has been largely bipartisan,” said Juneau.

One recent example of the indifference to defence is Canada staying out of AUKUS, a security partnership between Australia, the U.K. and the United States. The alliance was set up primarily to discuss purchasing nuclear submarines, but Canada was not invited to join because it had no intention of buying nuclear submarines.

However, AUKUS has since morphed to include broader issues about information sharing and co-ordination on technological issues, said Juneau.

“And that’s a problem for us not to be there,” he said, saying a similar issue arose with “the Quad,” a partnership between the U.S., Australia, India and Japan.

“More and more, the U.S. prefers these types of flexible bodies,” said Juneau. “The U.S. invites countries that have something to contribute. So, the question is not, ‘Are you our traditional friend? Yes, you’re in.’ The question is, ‘What do you have to bring to the table?’

“And right now, in the Indo-Pacific, the clear answer for Canada is ‘very little.’ And that’s a problem for us because that tendency towards transactional, flexible multilateralism is going to intensify.”

For all the sabre-rattling in the Indo-Pacific, there are other hotspots that look just as threatening. South Asia doesn’t get as many headlines, but Wark believes the region warrants a lot more concern.

“I think there are huge problems in regard to the current state of Pakistan, a nuclear-armed power, that is facing terrorist threats, is riven internally, and has a mode of governance that puts its military and its political elements at odds with each other,” Wark said.

“Questions with regard to Pakistan are often asked about its nuclear command and control. Is there really any in Pakistan?

“I would say Pakistan is one of those areas of the world where instability is real and could have real consequences in terms of the possibility of the outbreak of conflict, either in terms of internal strife or actual warfare with some of those neighbours, obviously India comes to mind, but there are also real problems between Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

A 2022 study, the Future of Warfare, by the Rand Corporation, noted that in Asia, military spending was up by 59 per cent in real terms from 2008, with Pakistan and India raising their budgets by 40 per cent over a decade.

“If there is a war (in Asia), it portends to be a bloody one, if for no other reason than the sheer amount of arms in the region,” said the report.

The rise in defence spending elsewhere comes as Canada is cutting its defence budget by almost $1 billion, even as some experts are calling for increased spending in certain areas.

A report by the Canadian Global Affairs Institute said militaries around the world were increasingly using unmanned aerial vehicles; loitering munitions (a kind of exploding drone that can loiter aerially as it waits for a target to launch itself at); anti-tank guided missiles; ground-based air defences; and long-range precision fires where targets can accurately be hit from over 100 kilometres.

Should the call to arms come for Canada, said the report, “weapons and the corresponding doctrine and training need to be addressed to permit success on the 21st century conventional battlefield.” Canada just announced in December the purchase of the Air Force’s first 11 drones, to begin delivery in 2028.

The risk of war was also being compounded because of the erosion of the rules-based international order, where nations no longer understand the importance of maintaining peace and security, said Wark.

“I think it’s universally recognized that the international system doesn’t have a lot of central glue or strength to it these days,” he said.

“That rules-based order works for us because we built it — ‘we’ being the West,” added Juneau. “So that rules-based order being challenged is a direct challenge to our interests.”

Then there’s the human factor. By the nature of being autocratic “strongmen,” people like Putin and Xi often find themselves without the best intelligence, because telling the boss he’s wrong might just cost you your life.

“Dictators who stay in power for too long don’t get good information at the top. People are unwilling to tell the boss the truth,” said Cohen.

Wark added, “So often they are pursuing policies and playing great power politics with these blinders on and they’re not seeing the world well. And they risk misadventure, they risk engaging in wars that they might not be able to win — as has been demonstrated by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.”

Dictators can also go rogue. Recently, Putin signed a new law withdrawing Russia’s ratification of a treaty banning the testing of nuclear weapons. Ties between the U.S. and Russia are said now to be at their lowest since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The U.S. National Intelligence Council also noted that a new global landscape was emerging, drawing to a close an era that American had dominated following the Cold War.

“Uncertainty about the United States, an inward-looking West, and erosion of norms for conflict prevention and human rights will encourage China and Russia to check U.S. influence,” said the report.

As the risk of war increases, there are those who hope — as they have in the past — that new technology will shape the future of war, that now robots and artificial intelligence will somehow save mankind from the carnage of the battlefield.

Cohen is not one who believes technological advances will save us from living through bloody wars.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “Look at Ukraine.”

National Post