Abstract
In June 2016, Canada joined the United States, Great Britain, and Germany in becoming a Framework Nation that leads a multinational battalion-sized battlegroup in Latvia. Canada thus appears to be reprising the role it played during the Cold War as a leading participant in North Atlantic Treaty Organization deterrence and reassurance initiatives in Europe. Yet the three tensions that made Canada reduce its military commitments to allies over the course of the Cold War might resurface in the Baltic region. These three tensions relate to conventional specialization amid alliance nuclearization, low defence spending despite that specialization, and the potential decoupling of Canadian security interests from those of its European partners. Canada might find itself lacking the willingness and ability to sustain the tasks attending the Latvia deployment if the threat environment intensifies.
In June 2016, Canada joined the United States, Great Britain, and Germany in becoming a Framework Nation that would lead a multinational battalion-sized battlegroup on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) so-called “northeastern flank.” This vulnerable flank comprises Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland—NATO members that have become especially fearful of Russian aggression after the 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. Having assumed responsibility for the battlegroup in Latvia, the Canadian Armed Forces are contributing about 450 soldiers who partner with troops dispatched from Albania, Italy, Poland, and Slovenia. With $350 million committed to this deployment for the next three years, it is part of a much larger Canadian initiative—dating back to Stephen Harper’s prime ministerial tenure—to bolster NATO efforts in providing defence and deterrence in that region. 1 Canada has previously contributed to the Baltic Air Policing mission, providing fighter jets to protect airspace over the three Baltic countries. Its frigates have participated in training activities, military exercises, and other tasks organized by Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 in the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Canadian Army soldiers have also taken part in interoperability exercises with NATO allies in Poland. 2 These contributions complement Canada’s continued diplomatic and non-lethal military support for Ukraine while it fights Russian-backed rebels in its eastern territories.
Canada thus seems to play a major leadership role in European security at a time when doubts circulate as to the reliability of US alliance commitments under the Trump administration. However, as much as other NATO members welcome Canada’s contributions, Canada does stick out among the four Framework Nations in the Alliance’s Enhanced Forward Presence as having the least obvious interests in improving northeastern European security. The preponderant military capabilities of the United States benefit the Alliance on the whole, whereas Great Britain and Germany have a more immediate stake in preventing further territorial aggression on Europe’s eastern frontiers. Some observers even suspect that Canada’s June 2016 decision was rooted in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s desire to satisfy then-president Barack Obama’s demand for the country to do more for NATO. 3 Regardless as to whether Trudeau’s decision was spontaneous and not the product of intense cabinet-level deliberations, one question is worth asking: to what extent can Canada sustain its contributions to Operation Reassurance—the official designation for Canada’s military assistance to NATO deterrence and reassurance efforts in central and northeastern Europe?
Canada’s Cold War experience in Europe offers some guidance, yet the lessons gleaned from it provide grounds for skepticism over the durability of Canada’s commitment to northeastern European security. Three tensions characterized Canada’s Cold War experience: Canada’s reluctance to embrace nuclear weapons despite their importance to NATO defence planning, Canada’s waning interest in its own conventional forces despite the conventional character of its military presence in Europe, and the decoupling of Canadian security interests from Western Europe’s once the United States and the Soviet Union were at strategic nuclear parity. 4
I argue that these tensions within Canadian defence planning are at risk of resurfacing again amid renewed animosity between NATO and Russia. First, as in the Cold War, Canadian decision-makers might come to see forward-deployed conventional forces as being only marginally useful due to the evolving local nuclear balance. Second, despite conventional military deterrence playing a major role on NATO’s northeastern flank, persistently low defence spending has undermined the ability of the Canadian military to perform such missions. Third, Canadian decision-makers and members of the public alike might begin to wonder whether a deployment in faraway Latvia advances national interests, especially if Russia could use its nuclear arsenal to hold at risk Canadian territory. To be sure, the Latvia deployment does serve Canadian national interests: it helps to prevent further Russian aggression in the North Atlantic region, to reaffirm alliance ties when multilateral institutions are under duress, and to defend the liberal international order at one of its more vulnerable points. However, the mission demands not only that Canadian leaders present a clear and consistent public message on Latvia, but also an honest appraisal of what Canada is willing and able to do. Given its current defence posture, Canada might find itself lacking the willingness and ability to persevere in the tasks attending the Latvia deployment if the threat environment intensifies.
Below, I elaborate on the tensions that characterized Canada’s Cold War experience in Europe. I then describe how those tensions might re-emerge in Canada’s deployment on NATO’s northeastern flank. In the conclusion, I summarize my argument and evaluate several scenarios in which Canada’s commitment to the Baltic region might evolve. I argue that Canadian citizens and leaders alike should not see the Latvia deployment as a good unto itself. Defence and deterrence on NATO’s northeastern flank are not trivial tasks: presence alone is insufficient, especially in the absence of robust capabilities and broad political support.
Tensions in Canada’s European strategy during the Cold War
Canada has contributed significantly to European security. 5 Its participation in the First and Second World Wars resulted in 67,000 and 44,000 Canadian soldiers losing their lives, respectively. During the Cold War, Canada was not only a founding member of NATO, but it also maintained a military presence in Europe, including Canadian Forces Bases Baden-Soellingen and Lahr in West Germany. At its peak in 1961, Canadian Forces Europe had about 14,000 military personnel deployed in Western Europe. 6 The Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal Canadian Air Force committed forces to anti-submarine warfare and the protection of sea-lanes in order to prevent the Soviet Union from being able to cut Western Europe off from potential reinforcements. 7 Moreover, Canada also contributed a battalion-sized contingent to the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus. 8 Canada remained engaged in European security even after the Cold War. Despite closing its German bases in 1994 and withdrawing forces from the continent to reap the so-called peace dividend, over 2,000 Canadian soldiers took part in the United Nations (UN) Protection Force and other peacekeeping missions in Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. Canada also participated in NATO’s 1999 intervention in Kosovo to protect Albanian civilians from Serbian persecution.
By undertaking these missions, Canada was pursuing a strategy that Sean Maloney calls “forward security.” This strategy centers on the belief that Canada should address potential threats to its security and prosperity before they directly affect the homeland. Canada’s military operations abroad were rooted less in a humanitarian impulse and more in an interest to cool nuclear tensions, to prevent Soviet expansion, or to manage tensions between NATO members. 9 Yet Canada’s high level of involvement in Europe during and after the Cold War belied at least three tensions within Canadian foreign and defence policies.
The first tension had to do with nuclear deterrence. Even with respect to its own territorial defence, Canada has been ambivalent regarding the protective value of nuclear weapons. It has supported nuclear disarmament and renounced missile defence, but has benefited from the “involuntary guarantee” that arguably improves whenever the United States increases its nuclear and anti-missile capabilities. 10 In Europe, nuclear deterrence posed a tricky set of issues for Canadian defence planners. War between the Soviet Union and NATO forces might not have remained strictly conventional for very long, especially because both sides deployed tactical nuclear weapons in Central Europe. 11 Indeed, Canadian CF-1041s in Europe were equipped with US nuclear warheads until 1984. 12 For NATO’s part, the anticipated speed of escalation and the massive scale of the nuclear response served alliance-related purposes: the United States needed to convince its Western European allies that it would not abandon them in the face of aggression by a conventionally-superior and nuclear-armed Soviet Union. Accordingly, its war-plans relied extensively on nuclear weapons use. 13 But by addressing these abandonment concerns, the United States stoked worries that it would be too willing to use nuclear weapons, dragging Canada into a war against its own interests.
Although Canada benefited from alliance cohesion, Canadian decision-makers were unsure of the military utility of their own forward-deployed forces when nuclear weapons were playing an increasingly important role for defence and deterrence. This uncertainty deepened once the two superpowers reached strategic parity and détente began to ease East–West relations. Indeed, as Joel Sokolsky recounts, in halving Canada’s military presence in Europe after a defence review, “[Pierre] Trudeau defended his action on the grounds that the essential nuclear deterrent rested with the United States.” 14 Trudeau even described in 1969 Canada’s contributions to European defence as “marginal.” 15 He also denuclearized Canadian air forces in Europe while supporting nuclear arms control initiatives. 16 The Canadian forces that remained in Europe were there for political, rather than military, reasons in order to convey “visible evidence of Canada’s continuing commitment to the alliance.” 17
This first tension fuelled another: Canada was failing to support its major conventional military role with the necessary defence expenditures. Beginning in the mid-1960s, Canada gradually reduced its military spending from almost seven percent of its gross domestic product to just over one percent. Though Canada was not the only country in NATO to reduce military spending, these cuts affected Canada’s war-fighting capabilities. 18 Due to technological advances in computing and communications that attended the so-called revolution in military affairs, Canada was beginning to fall behind in its interoperability with the United States. 19 This gap mattered despite how the condition of mutually assured destruction had imposed itself on the nuclear-armed superpowers. For one, US defence planners began to consider seriously the possibility of a non-nuclear war with Warsaw Pact forces. US Army operations in Western Europe organized themselves accordingly around the doctrinal concept of AirLand Battle in the 1980s. 20 For another, conventional military power helped deter adversaries and assure allies without necessarily relying on strategic, or even tactical, nuclear forces. European allies saw forward-deployed conventional forces as tangible symbols of their treaty commitments. 21 Whether Canada could continue to play a meaningful role became open to question amid these military–technological developments.
The third tension—one that Pierre Trudeau sought to resolve, at least initially, with his diminished commitment to Europe—concerned the relationship between Canadian security interests and those of Western Europe. Like the United States, Canada benefited from being flanked by two oceans and the Arctic region. Accordingly, forward deployments were unnecessary for assuring Canada’s (and the United States’) territorial integrity and security, but useful for signalling commitment to democratic and economically open Western European allies threatened by a conventionally superior, nuclear-armed Soviet Union nearby. Once the Soviet Union acquired a survivable second-strike nuclear capability and achieved strategic parity with the United States in the mid-1960s, the problem of “decoupling” arose with respect to US extended nuclear security guarantees to Europe. Because the Soviet Union could launch a nuclear attack on the US homeland, European allies were unsure as to whether the United States would risk its own cities to defend theirs. Their interests became “decoupled,” in other words. To mitigate this issue, the United States retained conventional forces in Europe to demonstrate “skin in the game.” 22 Yet Canada differed from its allies with respect to decoupling. A Soviet nuclear attack on Canada, unlike its European allies, would automatically implicate the United States due to the geographical proximity of their urban centres. 23 Nor did Canada feel that strengthening US nuclear security guarantees was its responsibility. For Canada, decoupling simply meant that the United States might not defend Canadian forces stationed in Europe in order to avoid nuclear retaliation on North America. Such was the context when the Trudeau government sought to emphasize economic linkages over military ties with allies like West Germany in the 1970s. 24 Though Trudeau increased the defence budget and Canada’s commitment to NATO later in his prime ministership, the secular trend by which military commitments were becoming less important to Ottawa persisted. 25
These tensions are redolent of a post-Cold War debate in US grand strategy about the appropriate level of military engagement abroad. On the one side are liberal internationalists who see a forward military presence as integral for the stability of international order by securing those allies that participate in multilateral institutions and adopt open economic policies. 26 On the other side are advocates of retrenchment. They argue that two oceans and a large nuclear weapons arsenal are enough to ensure that the US homeland is secure. They warn that significant military engagement abroad risks entanglements that could lead to imperial overstretch. 27 Of course, Canada has never faced these dangers with its forward-deployed presence precisely because it was something less than a great power. 28 Still, the basic intuition of the retrenchment position held by some leading US security experts applies even more so to Canada—specifically, that Canada is so secure at home that it does not need to go abroad. Because of the “involuntary guarantee” Canada receives from the United States, it could even free ride and spend less on its military. 29
The solution to these contradictions ultimately involved an incremental waning of Canadian interest in European security. For Canada, this shrinking commitment was palatable because its primary security interests in North America were finally compatible with those of the United States. Even Pierre Trudeau recognized the benefits of working with the United States on matters of continental defence. Of course, this point should not be overstated. Canadian forces remained involved in various NATO- and UN-led deployments in southeastern Europe between the 1960s and early 2000s. Yet even those involvements reflected a larger strategy to recalibrate Canada’s focus away from traditional military missions like defence and deterrence, and closer to newer, more humanitarian forms of conflict management operations, like peacekeeping and peace-building. 30
Operation Reassurance: Back to the future?
Worries abound over how Russia might try to regain former Soviet territory or destabilize its western neighbours, especially after having annexed Crimea and fomented war in eastern Ukraine. 31 With Operation Reassurance, however, Canada appears to be reprising the role it once played in the Cold War as a leading participant in NATO deterrence initiatives.
The Latvia deployment is consistent with the “forward security” strategy that Maloney invokes to describe how Canada went about its military operations abroad during the Cold War. 32 To begin with, further expansion by Russia into Europe is intrinsically undesirable from an international legal perspective, but the connectivity between the Baltic and Arctic regions has strategic importance for Canada. As James Rogers notes, climate change has the potential to open new sea lines of communication that link East Asia and northwestern Europe. Russia could exploit the thawing of the region to enhance its local military presence, to consolidate a Russian-led economic space within the Arctic Circle, and to thus assert a sphere of influence in the Nordic-Baltic space. 33 Moreover, though less concerned with humanitarianism and more with conflict-prevention, the Latvia deployment helps advance the liberal internationalist values that Justin Trudeau has sought to reinvigorate in Canadian foreign policy. 34 By leading one of the four multinational battlegroups in the Baltic region, Trudeau is affirming Canada’s alliance ties in a time when multilateralism is under duress, and in a geographical area where anxieties over Russian subversion exist and liberal democracy has a relatively young history. Indeed, Canada’s 2017 Defence Policy Report identifies a core mission for the Canadian Armed Forces as to “lead and/or contribute forces to NATO and coalition efforts to deter and defeat adversaries… to support stability.” 35
However well or poorly articulated these interests may be in the national discourse regarding the Latvia deployment, the tensions that characterized the Canadian Cold War experience in Europe might resurface. 36 Consider the three in turn: conventional specialization despite alliance nuclearization, low defence spending despite high commitment, and uncertainty over how the Latvia deployment serves Canada’s national interests.
Conventional specialization despite Alliance nuclearization
Nuclear weapons play a much less pronounced role in European security today than they did during the Cold War. Nevertheless, both the 2012 Deterrence and Defence Posture Review and the 2016 Warsaw Summit communiqué acknowledged that “as long as nuclear weapons exist, NATO will remain a nuclear alliance.” 37 The importance of nuclear weapons to NATO might become even greater in the future for at least three reasons. First, Russia has been undertaking a program of nuclear modernization that will boost all legs of its triad. It is updating its bomber fleet, introducing new submarines, and producing more advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles. Russian nuclear doctrine explicitly restricts nuclear weapons use to situations where Russia faces a severe existential threat. However, some Russian officials have argued in favour of using nuclear weapons when Russia’s survival is not at stake so as to target such NATO assets as missile defence facilities. 38 Second, Russia has been rattling its nuclear sabre by deploying nuclear-capable SS-26 Iskander-M short-range ballistic missiles to Kaliningrad. It has also been flouting its commitments to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that it signed in 1987, prohibiting it and the United States from deploying nuclear and conventional missiles (and launchers) that have short and intermediate ranges. 39 Third, NATO members on the northeastern flank worry that they receive inadequate coverage from the nuclear umbrella cast by the United States. Fourth-generation fighter jets would have to carry B61 nuclear gravity bombs from Western Europe to Russia and back, somehow overcoming Russian air defences in the process.
When deployed to the frontlines in a potentially nuclear conflict with a much more powerful adversary, conventional military forces perform a tripwire function. Sometimes they are there to hold out for reinforcements or to fight to a stalemate. More often, however, they are there to die in order to incite the defender to expand its military involvement on behalf of the ally that is hosting its troops. 40 Given the highly unfavourable local balance of power, the Canadian-led forces in Latvia would seem to amount to a NATO tripwire: by attacking them, Russia would precipitate a wider response from the Alliance that could move up the escalation ladder.
The problem for Canada and its battlegroup partners in Latvia is that none of them have a nuclear weapons arsenal. NATO has nuclear weapons insofar as they are possessed by the United States, United Kingdom, and France. 41 Yet those countries are contributing personnel to battlegroups stationed in Poland and Estonia. The tripwire function may become moot if the forward-deployed forces of nuclear-armed NATO members do not die simply because they are elsewhere. In a scenario where Russia exclusively attacks Latvia (or, for that matter, Lithuania where Germany is a Framework Nation), the nature of the Alliance response is even more difficult to foretell because nuclear-armed defenders are only implicated via article 5 of the Washington Treaty. Indeed, the Alliance response may be hamstrung by the need to have 29 members—each with its own threat assessments, capabilities, and interests—reach a consensus decision over how to retaliate. To be sure, article 5 stipulates that an attack against one NATO member is an attack against all. However, its invocation does not automatically imply that NATO members would provide military assistance to a beleaguered ally. This ambiguity did not exist on the Central Front during the Cold War: the Warsaw Pact could not carry out offensives exclusively against areas where Canadian forces were concentrated, because NATO or US Army war plans would have quickly become operational. Hence Canada contributed to the tripwire in Cold War Europe without needing its own independent nuclear arsenal. This is less true today.
Low defence spending despite high commitment
Nuclear weapons notwithstanding, Russia poses a serious conventional military threat to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. Poland stands the greatest chance to repel a large-scale Russian attack, but it still might face significant problems after years of underinvestment in its own territorial defence. 42 By contrast, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania face the direst situation since the Russian armed forces dwarf the combined military forces of the three Baltic countries. Russia could exploit its positioning in Kaliningrad to complicate NATO efforts to defend the Baltic countries. It could use its maritime and aerial positioning to make it difficult for NATO to provide reinforcements to local forces and to move within the theatre of operations. 43
Much like when AirLand Battle made interoperability a potential challenge for Canada late in the Cold War, technological advances are shaping conventional warfare in ways that might make Canada unable to do well on the battlefield. For a good part of the nuclear age, US forward ground force deployments have assured allies not only because they constituted a tripwire, but also because they had been combat credible. 44 This benefit might disappear even for the US Army if Russian precision-strike weapons are able to undermine the extent to which ground forces can take advantage of cover and concealment. Russia could also train its precision-strike weapons to pick off any pre-positioned hardware before NATO forces could get to them. These weapons empower Russia with anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities that can keep those NATO forces outside the Baltic region from entering, and those NATO forces inside from having much freedom to manoeuvre. 45
What could be difficult for US forces in Europe would probably be much harder for Canadian ground forces to handle. After all, the United States has been mindful of these adverse technological developments, engaging in the so-called “Third Offset Strategy” since 2014. The US Department of Defense’s Third Offset is an initiative aimed at harnessing US technological advances to “offset” the local advantages that regional adversaries might enjoy in the conventional military domain. As such, the United States aspires to maintain a military edge over potential adversaries by exploiting its technological strengths in stealth, directed-energy, and robotics. Such aspirations are plausible given the level of investment and importance that the United States accords to its military, setting aside the technological abilities of its private sector. Unfortunately, this initiative might mean that US allies—including Canada—are at risk of falling even further behind in their ability to fight together. 46 Specifically, Canada might be unable to meet calls for US allies to develop strike capabilities that cut through Russia’s A2/AD bubbles, especially if its procurement efforts are already wracked by difficulties in replacing outdated equipment like tanker ships, naval frigates, maritime helicopters and CF-18 jet fighters. 47 Improving intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities might similarly prove tricky for Canada. 48
Ironically, the quality of the Canadian military might suffer more if it strives to restore its combat credibility in a theatre of operations like northeastern Europe. Consider a recent analysis conducted by Kim Richard Nossal of defence procurement decisions in Canada. 49 He argues that Canadian politicians from both major parties defer to the military when determining which equipment to acquire, only to decide later that those weapons systems should receive less priority in relation to other spending initiatives. The result is a dysfunctional procurement process whereby long delays and mounting costs attend efforts to modernize much-desired capabilities. Because Canadian voters are inattentive to defence policy and recognize that Canada only undertakes military operations abroad on a coalition basis, politicians go unpunished. Nossal proposes that politicians need to assert themselves more forcefully in defence planning so as to recalibrate procurement strategies, in view of Canadians’ general unwillingness to spend much money on defence. He thus contends that Canada should limit its procurement to those weapons systems that directly service North American defence. A multi-role, combat-credible and well-equipped military is too expensive, and perhaps even inappropriate, given Canadian attitudes towards the armed forces. If Nossal’s analysis is correct, then making investments in preparation for a war in the Baltic region might leave the pathologies that he identifies unresolved, to the further detriment of the Canadian military.
Uncertain security interests
By virtue of technology and geographical proximity, Canada receives an “involuntary guarantee” from the United States. Partly for this reason, Canadian politicians and members of the public alike might begin to puzzle over the connection between Canada’s national interests and Latvian security. And indeed, the rhetoric of Canadian politicians suggests considerable latitude in thinking about the region. Justin Trudeau has been flippant about the region—both before, and early in, his time as prime minister. When asked to pick his favourite of the three Baltic states, he clumsily responded, “That’s not a thing.” He once explained Russian aggression in Ukraine as the result of a hockey match. 50 In justifying Canada’s leadership of the NATO battlegroup, Trudeau asserted that “Canada’s ties to Latvia date back a long way.” 51 By contrast, Harper compared the Crimean annexation to Nazi aggression in Central Europe. 52 In terms of public opinion, a 2015 poll conducted by Pew found that Canadians were split on whether Russia constitutes a major threat (44 percent of respondents) or a minor threat to neighbouring countries other than Ukraine (42 percent).
But more importantly, just as it did in the Cold War, Canada confronts the problem of decoupling on NATO’s northeastern flank. Not only would an attack on Latvia not necessarily mean an attack on Canada, but the local nuclear balance also suggests that Canadians would prefer seeing the battlegroup perish, over seeing Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles strike North America. To be sure, the same Pew survey discussed above found that—of the NATO countries polled—the only majorities who supported using military force to defend an ally from Russia were in Canada and the United States. 53 Nevertheless, attitudes might have changed now that Canadian troops are on the front line in Latvia while US–Russia relations are at their lowest point in the post-Cold War period. The question is less abstract than before.
Two factors might aggravate the issue of decoupling. The first concerns how Russia has resorted to information warfare in order to discredit NATO and the Canadian-led battlegroup in Latvia. Russia disseminated propaganda during the Cold War, but the substance was primarily ideological insofar as it touted Marxist-Leninism in deploying anti-capitalist, anti-American critiques. A distinguishing feature of Russia’s current efforts is its use of ethnic ties, however. Latvia has the largest share of ethnic Russians of the three Baltic states, at 25.6 percent of the national population. In Riga, 38 percent of the population is ethnically Russian, whereas 44 percent is ethnically Latvian. The eastern region of Latgale is also home to many ethnic Russians. About two-thirds of the quarter-million non-citizens in Latvia are ethnically Russian. Ethnic Russians should never be seen as a potential fifth column simply because of their background. Nevertheless, Russia could exploit its cultural ties in order to spread narratives within Latvia that cast negative light on NATO and the Canadian-led battlegroup, if not to agitate members of the population against local authorities. 54 Some ethnic Russians living in Latvia might simply have an affinity for Russia even if they have no desire to be a part of it. And so even before the battlegroup’s deployment, Latvians were ambivalent about having a NATO presence in their country. According to one poll commissioned by the Latvian Ministry of Defence in November 2016, 43 percent of respondents approved of the Canadian-led battlegroup, while 17 percent held negative attitudes towards it. A total of 30 percent were neutral. 55 Russia could seize upon this ambivalence to deepen skepticism regarding the NATO battlegroup within Latvian society. Some evidence has appeared that Russia might already be engaging in such efforts in Canada by supporting the Internet activities of fringe groups skeptical of the Latvia deployments. 56 Russian information warfare could widen the strategic disconnect engendered by decoupling between Canadian security and the status of Latvia.
This discussion leads us to the second factor that could worsen the problem of decoupling: the extent to which Canadians perceive the Latvia deployment as being compatible with their conception of what Canada’s global role should be. At least two visions of Canadian internationalism exist: one is an active internationalism that renounces isolationism and so embraces “general involvement” in international affairs; the other is a liberal internationalism dedicated to “development assistance, a reduction in poverty and inequality, and the protection of human rights.” 57 As Claire Turenne-Sjolander observes, sometimes these visions are in tension, especially when active internationalism calls for combat credible forces in defensive situations, whereas liberal internationalism—at least the mainstream Canadian conception of it—privileges humanitarianism and peacekeeping. In the case of Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan, because liberal internationalism has become a major influence on how Canadians conceptualize their country’s role abroad, Canadian politicians had to frame that mission in terms that were consistent with peacekeeping despite its combat characteristics. Opinion polls conducted on how Canadians saw the Afghanistan mission showed that support was highest when pitched in terms of humanitarian assistance. 58 This framing strategy seems much less applicable to a European state that benefits from European Union membership. Deterrence on NATO’s northeastern flank might be out of step with Canada’s self-identification as a specialist in conflict management operations like peacekeeping. Revealingly, when Trudeau announced Canada’s contribution to the battlegroups, his foreign minister at the time—Stéphane Dion—lamented that “it is terribly unfortunate that Canada has to deploy its forces in Latvia instead of having peacekeeping in Africa or in an area of the world where it is much more needed.” 59
Putting it together: A question of sustainability
These tensions point to the unsustainability of Canada’s leadership role in the Latvia deployment. Canada’s interest in European security is likely to be short-lived because the reasons for its eventual disengagement during the Cold War have not fundamentally changed.
Some readers might point out that disengagement from Latvia may not be an option available to Canada. Aaron Ettinger and Jeffrey Rice argue that “its foreign policy internationalism and need to be perceived as a good ally leaves Canada particularly vulnerable to external pressures when participating in coalition warfare.” In explaining variation in the duration of Canada’s post-September 11 limited-term mission commitments, they find that “the most significant influences… are [Canada’s] commitments to NATO and to key allies, whose influence Parliament is unable to offset.” 60 Similarly, Justin Massie contends that what he calls “soft-balancing Atlanticism” best accounts for Canada’s choice of military operations abroad: that is, a strategic culture that seeks “to maintain transatlantic solidarity (hence avoiding Anglo-American unilateralism), reinforce NATO structures, and posture Canada as a relevant and distinct ally (to avoid political marginalization within the alliance).” 61 Canada would thus stay the course in Latvia as long as other NATO members do.
Yet staying the course is only half the challenge, since deterrence requires much more than a mere presence on the frontlines. Canada maintained a forward military presence in Europe for the duration of the Cold War, yet the military capability and political willingness that attended its deployments in Europe weakened over time. From a broader Alliance perspective, what compensated for this trend was that the United States remained dedicated to the Central Front and continued to invest in its military accordingly throughout the Cold War. Unfortunately, the level of cohesion and shared threat assessments that had characterized NATO in the Cold War no longer hold. The Alliance has become fractured partly because its states are more numerous and varied in their threat assessments and security interests than ever before. 62 Adding to these problems is uncertainty over the importance of Europe to contemporary US foreign policy, especially now that Donald Trump is president. 63 The United States has steadily reduced its involvement in Europe since the early 1990s, and the Trump administration has sent mixed signals in its attachment to NATO and attitudes towards Russia. Canada might not be as able to get away with inattentiveness and military under-investment as it has in the past. 64
Conclusion
The decision to lead the battlegroup in Latvia is consistent with how Canada has sought to secure itself in the past via forward deployments in Europe. However, the factors that weakened Canada’s commitment to European security over the course of the Cold War remain present. I identified three tensions that characterized Canada’s Cold War experience in Europe: ambivalence towards nuclear weapons regardless of their importance to NATO war plans, the neglect of Canada’s conventional military capabilities despite preferring them over nuclear weapons, and the decoupling of Canadian security interests from Western Europe’s amid global nuclear parity. These three tensions are manifest today on NATO’s northeastern flank due to the evolving local nuclear balance, capability gaps in the Canadian military, and Russia’s ability to use its nuclear forces to decouple Canada from Latvia.
Canada’s approach to the Latvia deployment could thus evolve in one of several ways. One consists of a continuation of the status quo: Canada would muddle through the duration of the mission in order to maintain its status as a good ally within NATO. In other words, Canada will be in Latvia for as long as the United States is in Poland, and the other Framework Nations are in Lithuania and Estonia. This scenario is consistent with Ettinger and Rice’s observation that Canada’s limited-term military commitments are often the result of alliance dynamics. As much as war in the Baltic region may be highly unlikely, the risk to Canada is that its military commitment may be a paper tiger if it ever comes under fire, given the state of its armed forces and the lack of public interest in the deployment. To be sure, the Trudeau government has pledged to increase Canada’s defence spending by 70 percent over the next ten years. Nevertheless past efforts to resuscitate the Canadian military have ended prematurely. 65
Another possible scenario is that public opinion could turn against the Latvia deployment. After all, some observers worry that Canada’s military commitments abroad suffer from a lack of domestic legitimacy, making it harder for Ottawa to “keep out public criticism of its alliance commitments.” 66 Members of the public could come to see the Latvia deployment as being too difficult, having payoffs too uncertain, and being too divorced from Canadian interests. In what would follow Pierre Trudeau’s precedent in the early 1970s, members of the Canadian public might not be “willing to maintain costly forces in Europe merely to have a seat at the table.” 67
A milder scenario involves Canada trying to recalibrate its diplomatic approach towards the Baltic region while steadily reducing its military role. This recalibration could see Canada renewing its interest in nuclear arms control, thus echoing what Pierre Trudeau had also attempted to do in Europe in the 1970s. 68 Such a policy would mirror what some leading German politicians have been pursuing since tensions between NATO and Russia have ratcheted up in recent years. Current German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier, foreign affairs minister Sigmar Gabriel, and other members of Germany’s political left have proposed reinvigorating Cold War-era policies of détente and Ostpolitik. 69 Confidence-building measures, greater transparency, and renewed dialogue regarding strategic stability in Europe are some of the tools that Canada might embrace. The downside is that calls for nuclear arms control might fail to resonate not only with the United States and Russia, but also with those allies who are worried about Russian sabre-rattling and gaps in their received security commitments from the United States.
However the mission unfolds, the Latvia deployment presents an important opportunity for Canadian citizens and leaders to contemplate what sort of defence posture their country should have, as well as the nature of its interests and commitments abroad. If nothing else, the Latvia deployment should not be seen as a good unto itself. Nor should it simply be a ploy to retain good standing within NATO or to have a seat at the proverbial table. Canada’s decision to assume a leadership role in the Baltic region should be celebrated, but deterrence and defence require more than just presence to be effective. Capabilities and political will—backed up by a clear sense of national interests—are critical.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
1
2
3
Andrew Richter, “The Liberal government of Justin Trudeau and Canadian defence policy,” CDA Institute Analysis (November 2016): 6–7.
4
Joseph T. Jockel and Joel J. Sokolsky similarly detect these tensions when they write that “Canada sometimes struggled with being entangled with nuclear weapons in the service of the west’s collective defence, doubted whether any direct Canadian military contribution to European defence made sense, and even worried that participation in NATO was overwhelming its foreign and defence policies.” Jockel and Sokolsky, “Canada and NATO: Keeping Ottawa in, expenses down, criticism out… and the country secure,” International Journal 64, no. 2 (June 2009): 316.
5
On the motivations behind Canada’s Cold War contributions, see Joel Sokolsky, “A seat at the table: Canada and its alliances,” Armed Forces and Society 16, no. 1 (fall 1989): 16–20.
6
Andrew Cohen, While Canada Slept: How We Lost our Place in the World (Toronto: McLelland and Stewart, 2003), 45.
7
Howard G. Coombs and Richard Goette, “Supporting the Pax Americana: Canada’s military in the Cold War,” in Bernd Horn, ed., The Canadian Way of War: Serving the National Interest (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2006), 277.
8
On Canada’s involvement in peacekeeping operations during the Cold War, see Sean Maloney, Canada and UN Peacekeeping: Cold War by Other Means, 1945–1970 (St. Catharine’s: Vanwell Publishing, 2003).
9
Sean Maloney, “Helpful fixer or hired gun? Why Canada goes overseas,” Policy Options (January–February, 2001): 60.
10
Jockel and Sokolsky, “Canada and NATO,” 323–324. See also Albert Legault and Michel Fortmann, Diplomacy of Hope: Canada and Disarmament, 1945–1988 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991).
11
Even the declared strategy of flexible response would have had trouble controlling nuclear escalation. See Francis J. Gavin, “The myth of flexible response: United States strategy in Europe during the 1960s,” International History Review 23, no. 4 (2001): 847–875.
12
On Canada’s history with nuclear weapons, see Sean Maloney, Learning to Love the Bomb: Canada’s Nuclear Weapons During the Cold War (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2007).
13
Marc Trachtenberg, History and Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991): 153–168.
14
Sokolsky, “A seat at the table,” 14.
15
Jockel and Sokolsky, “Canada and NATO,” 325.
16
John Clearwater, Canadian Nuclear Weapons: The Untold Story of Canada’s Cold War Arsenal (Toronto: Dundurn, 1998), 119; Paul Meyer, “Pierre Trudeau and the ‘suffocation’ of the nuclear arms race,” International Journal 71, no. 3 (2016): 393–408. Trudeau also shut down the controversial CIM-10 Bomarc surface-to-air nuclear-armed missiles used for defending North America. Harald Von Riekhoff, “The impact of Prime Minister Trudeau on foreign policy,” International Journal 33, no. 2 (June 1978): 277.
17
Trudeau quoted in Sokolsky, “A seat at the table,” 24.
18
Sokolsky, “A seat at the table,” 26–27. See also Mancur Olson and Richard Zeckhauser, “An economic theory of alliance,” The Review of Economics and Statistics 48, no. 3 (1966): 266–279.
19
Andrew Richter, “‘Alongside the best?’ The future of the Canadian Forces,” Naval War College Review 56, no. 1 (winter 2003): 67–107.
20
Manfred R. Hamm, “The AirLand Battle doctrine: NATO strategy and arms control in Europe,” Comparative Strategy 7, no. 3 (1988): 183–211.
21
Trudeau seemingly recognized this benefit in conversations with West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt. Francis Maas, “‘We must take our allies’ views into account’: Pierre Trudeau and the turn back to NATO in the mid-1970s,” International Journal 71, no. 2 (June 2016): 279.
22
The continued US military presence in Europe was also part of a larger grand bargain over the continent’s security—one that sought to curtail European independence and feared West German nuclear ambitions while recognizing local spheres of influence. See Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); and Brendan Rittenhouse Green, “Two concepts of liberty: U.S. Cold War grand strategies and the liberal tradition,” International Security 37, no. 2 (2012): 9–43.
23
Hence the creation of what would become the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
24
Roy Rempel and Wilhelm Bleek, “Defence and economic linkages in Canadian–German relations: 1969–1982,” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 7, no. 3 (2000): 81–98.
25
Maas, “‘We must take our allies’ views into account.’” On the secular trend, see Andrew Richter, “Forty years of neglect, indifference, and apathy: The relentless decline of Canada’s armed forces,” in Patrick James, Nelson Michaud, and Mark O’Reilly, eds., Handbook of Canadian Foreign Policy (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006), 51–82. Domestic politics also reduced the importance of foreign policy more generally for Trudeau in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Adam Bromke and Kim Richard Nossal, “Tensions in Canada’s foreign policy,” Foreign Affairs 62, no. 2 (Winter 1983): 342–343.
26
See, e.g., Stephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, and William C. Wohlforth, “Don’t come home, America: The case against retrenchment,” International Security 37, no. 3 (2012): 7–51.
27
See, e.g., Barry R. Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014).
28
Adam Chapnick, “The middle power,” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 7, no. 2 (1999): 74–78. See also Robert W. Murray and John McCoy, “From middle power to peacebuilder: The use of Canadian forces in modern Canadian foreign policy,” American Review of Canadian Studies 40, no. 2 (2010): 172.
29
Because of the uniqueness of its security guarantee, free riding on the United States is much more rational for Canada than it is for European countries. See Alexander Lanoszka, “Do allies really free ride?” Survival 57, no. 3 (2015): 133–152.
30
Michael K. Carroll, “Peacekeeping: Canada’s past, but not its present and future?” International Journal 71, no. 1 (March 2015): 167–176. For the view that even these peacekeeping missions reflected traditional security objectives, see Maloney, “Helpful fixer,” 61.
31
For a Latvian perspective, see Toms Rostoks and Nora Vanaga, “Latvia’s security and defence post-2014,” Journal on Baltic Security 2, no. 2 (2016): 71–108.
32
Maloney, “Helpful fixer.”
33
James Rogers, “Geopolitics and the ‘wider north,’” RUSI Journal 157, no. 6 (December 2012): 44–46. See also Andrea Charron, Joël Plouffe, and Stéphane Roussel, “The Russian Arctic hegemon: Foreign policy implications for Canada,” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 18, no. 1 (2012): 38–50.
34
Roland Paris, “Are Canadians still liberal internationalists? Foreign policy and public opinion in the Harper era,” International Journal 69, no. 3 (September 2014): 274. See “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Address to the 71st Session of the United Nations General Assembly,” 20 September 2016, 
(accessed 21 September 2017).
35
Department of National Defence, “Strong, secure, engaged: Canada’s defence policy,” Ottawa, 2017, 17.
36
Such difficulties in domestic political communications are not new. Canadian politicians had trouble clearly articulating Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan. See Jean-Christophe Boucher, “Selling Afghanistan: A discourse analysis of Canada’s military intervention, 2001–08,” International Journal 64, no. 3 (June 2009): 717–733.
37
NATO, “Deterrence and Defence Posture Review,” 20 May 2012, http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_87597.htm (accessed 21 September 2017); and NATO, “Warsaw Summit Communiqué,” 9 July 2016, (accessed 21 September 2017).
38
On Russian nuclear capabilities and doctrinal statements, see Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, “Russian nuclear forces, 2017,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 73, no. 2 (2017): 117.
39
Ulrich Kühn and Anna Péczeli, “Russia, NATO, and the INF Treaty,” Strategic Studies Quarterly 11, no. 1 (2017): 66–99.
40
Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press [1960], 1980), 187.
41
France is distinct insofar as its nuclear arsenal remains independent of NATO nuclear forces. Great Britain’s nuclear arsenal is operationally independent of the United States, but technologically dependent on US technology and equipment. Vipin Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 154, 171.
42
Tomasz Paszewski, “Can Poland defend itself?” Survival 58, no. 2 (2016): 117–134.
43
See Stephan Frühling and Guillaume Lasconjarias, “NATO, A2/AD, and the Kaliningrad challenge,” Survival 58, no. 2 (2016): 95–116.
44
Michael A. Hunzeker and Alexander Lanoszka, “Landpower and American credibility,” Parameters 45, no. 4 (2015–16): 22.
45
Alexander Lanoszka and Michael A. Hunzeker, “Confronting the anti-access/area denial and precision-strike challenge in the Baltic region,” The RUSI Journal 161, no. 5 (2016): 12–18. On precision strike more generally, see Thomas G. Mahnken, “Weapons: The growth and spread of the precision-strike regime,” Daedalus 140, no. 3 (2011): 45–57.
46
Daniel Fiott, “A revolution too far? US defence innovation, Europe and NATO’s military technological gap,” Journal of Strategic Studies 40, no. 3 (2017): 417–437.
47
Andrew Richter, “Sharing the burden? U.S. allies, defense spending, and the future of NATO,” Comparative Strategy 35, no. 4 (2016): 301–303.
48
Luis Simón, “The ‘third’ US offset strategy and Europe’s ‘anti-access’ challenge,” Journal of Strategic Studies 39, no. 3 (2016): 437.
49
Kim Richard Nossal, Charlie Foxtrot: Fixing Defence Procurement in Canada (Toronto: Dundurn, 2016).
50
Aaron Hutchins, “The Baltics to Trudeau: Yes, we’re a ‘thing,’” MacLean’s, 16 December 2015, http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-baltics-to-trudeau-yes-were-a-thing/ (accessed 21 September 2017); Laura Payton, “Justin Trudeau under fire for Ukraine joke,” CBC News, 24 February 2014, (accessed 21 September 2017).
51
52
53
Pew Research Center, “NATO publics blame Russia for Ukrainian crisis, but reluctant to provide military aid,” June 2015, 17.
54
See Rostoks and Vanaga, “Latvia’s security,” 85–89. On how Russia has used this strategy elsewhere in Europe, see Alexander Lanoszka, “Russian hybrid warfare and extended deterrence in Eastern Europe,” International Affairs 92, no. 1 (2016): 175–195.
55
56
57
Don Munton, “Whither internationalism?” International Journal 58, no. 1 (Winter, 2002–2003): 161.
58
Claire Turenne-Sjolander, “A funny thing happened on the road to Kandahar: The competing faces of Canadian internationalism?” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 15, no. 2 (2009): 79–80. On how peacekeeping requires effective conventional military capabilities, see Patrick James, Canada and Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
59
Althia Raj, “Canada preparing to commit troops to UN peacekeeping missions: Sources,” Huffington Post, 12 July 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/07/12/canada-un-peacekeeping_n_10954236.html (accessed 21 September 2017). On the inconsistency of the Trudeau government with respect to its campaign promises and deployment decisions, see J. R. McKay, “Deliverology and Canadian military commitments to Europe circa 2017,” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal (June 2017).
60
Aaron Ettinger and Jeffrey Rice, “Hell is other people’s schedules: Canada’s limited-term military commitments, 2001–2015,” International Journal 71, no. 3 (September 2016): 372.
61
Justin Massie, “Making sense of Canada’s ‘irrational’ international security policy: A tale of three strategic cultures,” International Journal 64, no. 3 (September 2009): 641.
62
Stéfanie Von Hlatky, “Introduction: American alliances and extended deterrence,” in Stéfanie Von Hlatky and Andreas Wenger, eds., The Future of Extended Deterrence: The United States, NATO, and Beyond (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015), 8.
63
See Luis Simón, “Europe, the rise of Asia and the future of the transatlantic relationship,” International Affairs 91, no. 5 (2016): 969–989.
64
Some scholars observe that young Canadians now pay less attention to Canadian foreign policy and Canada’s stature abroad than they did during the Cold War. See Brian Bow and Andrea Lane, “Generations: The sources of our ideas about Canadian foreign policy,” International Journal 72, no. 2 (June 2017): 161–162.
65
Department of National Defence, “Strong, secure, engaged,” 43. See also Richter, “Sharing the burden?” 301; and Nossal, Charlie Foxtrot.
66
Jockel and Sokolsky, “Canada and NATO,” 334; Massie, “Making sense,” 644.
67
Sokolsky, “A seat at the table,” 24.
68
Meyer, “Pierre Trudeau.”
69
For the clearest statement of this German position, see Egon Bahr and Götz Neuneck, “Against renuclearising Europe,” Survival 57, no. 2 (2015): 130–134.
Author Biography
Alexander Lanoszka is a lecturer in the Department of International Politics at City, University of London and a non-resident fellow at West Point’s Modern War Institute. He is completing a book manuscript on the politics of extended nuclear deterrence.