Military renewal moving too slowly

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/04/2024 (880 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s a changing world — and it’s changing fast enough that Canada may have trouble keeping up.

On Friday, we carried an op-ed on our Think Tank page written by Takeo Akiba, Japan’s national security advisor. We carried it not just because it was an interesting piece in its own right — outlining Japan’s 2022 decision to change its stance on its military, increasing the size and capabilities to improve its ability to play a larger role in protecting the rule of law in the world — but because Canada should think about doing the same thing.

Because there are signs that the United States is pulling away from that role.

Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida took Japan’s message one step further, telling the U.S. Congress, “I detect an undercurrent of self-doubt among some Americans about what your role in the world should be. This self-doubt is arising at a time when our world is at history’s turning point. The post-Cold War era is already behind us and we are now at an inflection point that will define the next stage of human history. The international order that the U.S. worked for generations to build is facing new challenges, challenges from those with values and principles very different from ours. Freedom and democracy are currently under threat around the globe.”

So why the sudden interest in a Japanese policy change from a Manitoba newspaper?

Simple — because Japan’s place among nations in the post-Cold War era has had some similarities to Canada’s. And they may be offering an important lesson.

Last Monday, the federal government continued the process of slow-leaking its budget plans ahead of Tuesday’s federal budget and one of the many topics was Canada’s military.

Labelled Our North, Strong and Free: A Renewed Vision for Canada’s Defence, the new policy particular spells out improving the Canadian military’s arctic capabilities.

That spending got what has become a traditional Canadian budgeting tactic, regardless of who’s in power — you could call it the Alice-in-Wonderland method, with no jam for your toast yesterday or tomorrow, but plenty half a decade from now.

In the case of defence spending, it was $72.3 billion in new net spending over the next 20 years. But only $8 billion of that would be spent in the first five years of the program. That amount of spending would mean that, even by budgetary year 2029-30, Canada would still be spending less than the two per cent of GDP that we have committed to NATO that we would be spending on defence. And the Canadian military was told to come up with cutback savings of $4.4 million already this year.

The new program may have good numbers, but it has a lousy timeline. Quite simply, we’re gearing up for potential future military challenges far more slowly than we should be and far more slowly than many of our traditional allies.

We share a huge and, well, melting Arctic Ocean with a militarily aggressive Russia.

As Prime Minister Kishida rightly points out, freedom and democracy are under threat around the world, but the United States suddenly seems fickle.

The U.S. brought its full attention to Iran’s attack on Israel this past weekend. But while the Americans leapt to Israel’s aid, the U.S. Congress has dragged its feet on helping Ukraine for months, deliberately turning support into a political game of chicken.

There are significant portions of the United States government that don’t seem to care about democracy in the way that they once did. Is it any wonder that American allies might start to have doubts?

Having Canadian military spending set to increase significantly — but not during the next five years — is a horrible misreading of the global barometer.