There was an unscripted moment during a panel debate in Toronto last month that could go a long way toward explaining Canada’s long-term reluctance to publicly and wholeheartedly embrace NATO’s guideline for members’ defence spending.
Appearing on a panel at the Eurasia’s group’s U.S.-Canada Summit, the typically unflappable Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly was asked pointedly how Ottawa could be considered a reliable ally when it appears unable — or unwilling — to meet the western military alliance’s benchmark of spending at least two per cent of GDP on defence.
Offering up a dash of realpolitik, the moderator spoke about the enduring debate over the value of hard (military) power versus soft (diplomatic, development) power and said that at the end of the day, “hard power is what tends to shake out promises in the world” from other countries.
Joly was having none of it.
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, left, and her Swedish counterpart Tobias Billström hold a joint news conference in Stockholm, Sweden on Wednesday, May 29, 2024. (Anders Wiklund/AP)
“That’s your assessment,” she said. “We believe in the international rules-based order where rules must be followed, and, you know, small and big countries have the same rules that they have to follow.”
The suggestion that hard power is somehow an affront to the “international rules based order” — that jargony mouthful governments (especially Canada’s) like to invoke — speaks volumes.
The philosophical argument against hard power is not something that has been widely discussed in the often circular debate about NATO’s expectations of member states.
Without question, most governments — regardless of their political stripe — would prefer to spend money on something other than defence. But the fact remains that over the seven-and-a-half decades since NATO was created, NATO allies’ defence spending has tended to rise in times of heightened international tensions and fall in better times.
That’s the way the much-discussed “rules-based international order” has worked up to now to keep the world a few steps back from calamity.
Joly’s answer also indirectly peels back the curtain (somewhat) on what several sources within Global Affairs Canada say was at the root of the delayed delivery of the country’s long-awaited Indo-Pacific strategy.
The federal government was looking for a way — any way — to avoid making the Canadian military the county’s calling card in a region where allies were clamouring for a more visible defence commitment, defence and foreign affairs sources told CBC News.
When it was released in late 2022, the Indo-Pacific strategy bowed awkwardly toward realpolitik with a significant military component, which included a boost to Canada’s naval presence and military participation in the region.
Naval ships from the Royal Canadian Navy, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and the Republic of Korea Navy sail in formation alongside HMA Ships Sydney and Perth during Exercise Pacific Vanguard on Aug. 22, 2022. (LSIS David Cox/Royal Australian Navy via AP)
But even when confronted with the brutal reality of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Canada’s government tends to tilt away from expressions of hard power.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a think-tank in Berlin in March of 2022 that he believed Moscow’s war machine could be brought to its knees solely through the use of sanctions — as though soft power could somehow stop a Russian tank.
He told the non-profit association Atlantik-Brücke at the Munich Security Conference that since the Second World War, the international community had developed “more and better tools” to deal with international aggression — a reference to economic sanctions, which Trudeau said can be far more effective than “tanks and missiles.”
Appearing last spring on a panel at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, Defence Minister Bill Blair offered a broader glimpse of how widespread this skepticism about hard power is within the federal government. He told the audience that meeting the NATO spending benchmark has been a tough sell at the cabinet table.
“Trying to go to cabinet, or even to Canadians, and tell them that we had to do this because we need to meet this magical threshold of two per cent — don’t get me wrong, it’s important, but it was really hard to convince people that that was a worthy goal, that that was some noble standard that we had to meet,” he said.
National Defence Minister Bill Blair tells Power & Politics Canada ‘still has work to do’ to meet NATO’s 2 per cent spending target but he’s ‘confident’ Ottawa will get there.
In Washington on Monday, speaking before a foreign policy audience in advance of this week’s NATO summit, Blair was slightly more bullish. He repeated his claim that uncosted, unannounced additional equipment purchases, such as an investment in new submarines, will push the country toward or over the two per cent mark.
“I think we have a very aggressive plan to move forward,” Blair said. “I’m very confident that it’s going to bring us to that threshold.”
But by his own admission, Blair is going to face an uphill battle within cabinet and with voters who see defence spending as wasteful.
Kerry Buck, Canada’s former ambassador to NATO, said it’s wrong to subscribe to the notion that the military exists only to go out and kill people.
“You don’t want to have to use the military,” Buck said.
“You have the military so nobody has to go out and kill people because it acts as a deterrent. So arguing that investing in hard power means you have to use the hard power and the hard power way, I think, ignores the deterrent effect.”
Speaking in Ottawa, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said he will work to ensure that all allies meet the defence spending benchmark of two per cent of GDP, including Canada.
She said that while diplomacy is the first line of defence for any civilized nation, successive federal governments over the past two decades have not invested in foreign affairs to any great degree.
Andrew Rasiulis, a former senior official at the Department of National Defence (DND) who once ran the department’s Directorate of Nuclear and Arms Control Policy, said a reluctance to be seen employing hard power is deeply rooted in the Canadian psyche.
“It’s the Boy Scout thing,” Rasiulis said. “It’s what Liberals love, right? And it’s their constituents who love that.”
He said that while he’s not entirely convinced the Liberal government is philosophically driven by the need to invest in defence, it clearly has put more money into the military.
Rasiulis sees the reluctance to embrace the two per cent metric as pragmatic politics for a minority government — something he doesn’t believe would change if the government changes hands next year.
“It’s butter before guns,” he said, referring to the age-old political maxim that describes an either-or relationship between defence and social spending.
“I’m not sure that the policy of the government would be radically different if the government were to change. You haven’t heard [Conservative Leader] Pierre Pollievre pledged to do two per cent either,” he said.
“They may have stronger words, like Conservatives generally do. And as we know, the Conservative records sometimes fall short.”
The New Democrats have declared a federal byelection victory in their Winnipeg stronghold riding of Elmwood—Transcona.
The NDP candidate Leila Dance told supporters in a tearful speech that even though the final results weren’t in, she expected she would see them in Ottawa.
With several polls still to be counted, Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds conceded defeat and told his volunteers that they should be proud of what the Conservatives accomplished in the campaign.
Political watchers had a keen eye on the results to see if the Tories could sway traditionally NDP voters on issues related to labour and affordability.
Meanwhile in the byelection race in the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun the NDP, Liberals and Bloc Québécois remained locked in an extremely tight three-way race as the results trickled in slowly.
The Liberal stronghold riding had a record 91 names on the ballot, and the results aren’t expected until the early hours of the morning.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
VANCOUVER – An incumbent BC United legislative member has reversed her decision not to seek re-election and has announced she’ll run as an Independent in the riding of West Vancouver-Capilano in the upcoming British Columbia election.
Karin Kirkpatrick has been a vocal critic of BC United Leader Kevin Falcon’s decision last month to suspend the party’s campaign and throw support behind the B.C. Conservatives under John Rustad.
Kirkpatrick announced her retirement this year, but said Monday that her decision to re-enter the race comes as a direct result of Falcon’s actions, which would force middle-of-the-road voters to “swing to the left” to the NDP or to move further right to the Conservatives.
“I did hear from a lot of constituents and a lot of people who were emailing me from across B.C. … that they didn’t have anybody to vote for,” she said. “And so, I looked even at myself, and I looked at my riding, and I said, ‘Well, I no longer have anybody to vote for in my own riding.’ It was clearly an issue of this missing middle for the more moderate voter.”
She said voters who reached out “don’t want to vote for an NDP government but felt deeply uncomfortable” supporting the provincial Conservatives, citing Rustad’s tolerance of what she calls “extreme views and conspiracy theorists.”
Kirkpatrick joins four other incumbent Opposition MLAs running as Independents, including Peace River South’s Mike Bernier, Peace River North’s Dan Davies, Prince George-Cariboo’s Coralee Oakes and Tom Shypitka in Kootenay-Rockies.
“To be honest, we talk just about every day,” Kirkpatrick said about her fellow BC United incumbents now running as Independents. “We’re all feeling the same way. We all need to kind of hold each other up and make sure we’re doing the right thing.”
She added that a number of first-time candidates formerly on the BC United ticket are contacting the group of incumbents running for election, and the group is working together “as good moderates who respect each other and lift each other up.”
But Kirkpatrick said it’s also too early to talk about the future of BC United or the possibility of forming a new party.
“The first thing we need to do is to get these Independent MLAs elected into the legislature,” she said, noting a strong group could play a power-broker role if a minority government is elected. “Once we’re there then we’re all going to come together and we’re going to figure out, is there something left in BC United, BC Liberals that we can resurrect, or do we need to start a new party that’s in the centre?”
She said there’s a big gap left in the political spectrum in the province.
“So, we just have to do it in a mindful way, to make sure it’s representing the broadest base of people in B.C.”
Among the supporters at Kirkpatrick’s announcement Monday was former longtime MLA Ralph Sultan, who held West Vancouver-Capilano for almost two decades before retiring in 2020.
The Metro Vancouver riding has been a stronghold for the BC Liberals — the former BC United — since its formation in 1991, with more than half of the votes going to the centre-right party in every contest.
However, Kirkpatrick’s winning margin of 53.6 per cent to the NDP’s 30.1 per cent and the Green’s 15.4 per cent in the 2020 election shows a rising trend for left-leaning voters in the district.
Mike McDonald, chief strategy officer with Kirk and Co. Consulting, and a former campaign director for the BC Liberals and chief of staff under former Premier Christy Clark, said Independent candidates historically face an uphill battle and the biggest impact may be splitting votes in areas where the NDP could emerge victorious.
“It really comes down to, if the NDP are in a position to get 33 per cent of the vote, they might have a chance of winning,” McDonald said of the impact of an Independent vote-split with the Conservatives in certain ridings.
He said B.C. history shows it’s very hard for an Independent to win an election and has been done only a handful of times.
“So, the odds do not favour Independents winning the seats unless there is a very unique combination of circumstances, and more likely that they play a role as a spoiler, frankly.”
The B.C. Conservatives list West Vancouver School District Trustee Lynne Block as its candidate in West Vancouver-Capilano, while the BC NDP is represented by health care professional Sara Eftekhar.
Kirkpatrick said she is confident that her re-entry to the race will not result in a vote split that allows the NDP to win the seat because the party has always had a poor showing in the riding.
“So, even if there is competition between myself and the Conservative candidate, it is highly unlikely that anything would swing over to the NDP here. And I believe that I have the ability to actually attract those NDP voters to me, as well as the Conservatives and Liberals who are feeling just lost right now.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads to Egypt on Tuesday for his 10th trip to the Middle East since the war in Gaza began nearly a year ago, this one aimed partly at refining a proposal to present to Israel and Hamas for a cease-fire deal and release of hostages.
Unlike in recent mediating missions, America’s top diplomat this time is traveling without optimistic projections from the Biden administration of an expected breakthrough in the troubled negotiations.
Also unlike the earlier missions, Blinken has no public plans to go to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on this trip. The Israeli leader’s fiery public statements — like his declaration that Israel would accept only “total victory” when Blinken was in the region in June — and some other unbudgeable demands have complicated earlier diplomacy.
Blinken is going to Egypt for talks Wednesday with Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and others, in a trip billed as focused both on American-Egyptian relations and Gaza consultations with Egypt.
The tamped-down public approach follows months in which President Joe Biden and his officials publicly talked up an agreement to end the war in Gaza as being just within reach, hoping to build pressure on Netanyahu’s far-right government and Hamas to seal a deal.
The Biden administration now says it is working with fellow mediators Egypt and Qatar to come up with a revised final proposal to try to at least get Israel and Hamas into a six-week cease-fire that would free some of the hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Americans believe public attention on details of the talks now would only hurt that effort.
American, Qatari and Egyptian officials still are consulting “about what that proposal will contain, and …. we’re trying to see that it’s a proposal that can get the parties to an ultimate agreement,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Monday.
The State Department pointed to Egypt’s important role in Gaza peace efforts in announcing last week that the Biden administration planned to give the country its full $1.3 billion in military aid, overriding congressional requirements that the U.S. hold back some of the funding if Egypt fails to show adequate progress on human rights. Blinken told Congress that Egypt has made progress on human rights, including in freeing political prisoners.
Blinken’s trip comes amid the risk of a full-on new front in the Middle East, with Israel threatening increasing military action against the Hezbollah militant organization in Lebanon. Biden envoy Amos Hochstein was in Israel on Monday to try to calm tensions after a stop in Lebanon.
Hezbollah has one of the strongest militaries in the Middle East, and like Hamas and smaller groups in Syria and Iraq it is allied with Iran.
Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged strikes across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas started the war in Gaza. Hezbollah says it will ease those strikes — which have uprooted tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the border — only when there’s a cease-fire in Gaza.
Hochstein told Netanyahu and other Israeli officials that intensifying the conflict with Hezbollah would not help get Israelis back in their homes, according to a U.S. official. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks, said Hochstein stressed to Netanyahu that he risked sparking a broad and protracted regional conflict if he moved forward with a full-scale war in Lebanon.
Hochstein also underscored to Israeli officials that the Biden administration remained committed to finding a diplomatic solution to the tensions on Israel’s northern border in conjunction with a Gaza deal or on its own, the official said.
Netanyahu told Hochstein that it would “not be possible to return our residents without a fundamental change in the security situation in the north.” The prime minister said Israel “appreciates and respects” U.S. support but “will do what is necessary to maintain its security and return the residents of the north to their homes safely.”
Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, meanwhile, warned in his meeting with Hochstein that “the only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes will be via military action,” his office said.
In Gaza, the U.S. says Israel and Hamas have agreed to a deal in principle and that the biggest obstacles now include a disagreement on details of the hostage and prisoner swap and control over a buffer zone on the border between Gaza and Egypt. Netanyahu has demanded in recent weeks that the Israeli military be allowed to keep a presence in the Philadelphi corridor. Egypt and Hamas have rejected that demand.
The Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7 killed about 1,200 people. Militants also abducted 250 people and are still holding around 100 hostages. About a third of the remaining hostages are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, said Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its count. The war has caused widespread destruction, displaced a majority of Gaza’s people and created a humanitarian crisis.
Netanyahu says he is working to bring home the hostages. His critics accuse him of slow-rolling a deal because it could bring down his hardline coalition government, which includes members opposed to a truce with the Palestinians.
Asked earlier this month if Netanyahu was doing enough for a cease-fire deal, Biden said, simply, “no.” But he added that he still believed a deal was close.
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Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.
