Military spending groupthink and Canada’s left

 

We are sleepwalking down a road toward significant hikes in defence spending that will come back to haunt us for decades to come

I recently listened to a report on CBC Radio about Canada and NATO military expenditure—hardly a new topic because the Canadian population is apparently now being primed regularly for increased military spending. This particular report wasn’t unusual; it made typical claims through a combination of one-sided reporting reinforced with selective bits of audio from the usual ‘hawks’ that a dramatic increase in military spending is very much needed. This imperative is now often presumed to be self-evident, although towards the end of this particular segment it was spelled out by one of the interviewees, in case people needed a reminder, that Russia is out to get ‘us’—the ‘us’ being NATO members. When further fear mongering is necessary China, North Korea and Iran can be brought into the picture.

Just how Russia is gunning for Canada and NATO isn’t ever explained, because any explanation would sound too ridiculous. For NATO members in Europe, mere proximity to Russia is taken as reason to fear it. Just what they are fearing is unclear. Russian troop levels on their borders are clearly not high as any reasonable open-source assessment will attest. Whatever combat-ready Russian forces (as opposed to residual and training elements at home bases) are present is arguably a response to NATO forces being deployed to Russia’s border, such as in Operation Reassurance in Latvia, involving a brigade-sized NATO ground force in which Canada currently has 1,900 troops deployed, with plans for 2,200 troops by 2026.

In the rare instances that the notion of a current Russian military threat in Europe is challenged, it is typically suggested that if the West allows Russia to ‘win’ in Ukraine then in the aftermath of such a victory Russia will turn its attention to the West. Why Russia would do that is unclear given the fact that even without any increases in defence expenditure NATO members collectively possess not only overwhelming conventional strength but also nuclear weapons. Without any additional mobilization NATO forces have considerably more than double Russia’s personnel strength, more than quadruple its airpower and perhaps double the number of tanks. These forces are backed by a combined economic power that dwarfs that of Russia. In terms of nuclear weapons NATO members have a similar number of warheads to Russia, not that counting matters after a certain point because both sides possess the potential to destroy the other even in the event of an opponent’s first strike, leaving humanity’s continued existence in doubt. NATO could concentrate on organizing its existing capabilities better to maximize combat potential, rather than spending considerably more money.

In the Canadian case, a nebulous notion of Russian activity in the Arctic is usually wheeled out to substantiate the idea that Russia poses a danger to Canada, once again without any clarification. In an immediate sense Russia has clearly stripped many of its ground forces from the north for operations in Ukraine, and the idea that they might be offensively deployed to threaten Canada in co-operation with the Russian navy at any point in time hardly warrants serious consideration. It was an in-joke amongst Canadian Arctic specialists that any such operations would end up being a massive search-and-rescue operation, although such jokes seem to be made less often these days, presumably because making them would highlight the absurdity of the notion of a Russian threat to the Canadian Arctic.

The idea that Russia—bogged down in a protracted war with a Ukraine already backed by billions of dollars of Western assistance—would attack NATO with conventional forces in Europe is similarly dubious. There simply isn’t any evidence of Russian intent. A lack of credible evidence, however, doesn’t stop the usual suspects, including NATO officials and former generals, from suggesting that the West better watch out.  (more...)

Military spending groupthink and Canada’s left