Facing a difficult truth: Canada's military needs to prepare for war

Published in the Globe and Mail, July 12, 2024

Canada’s plan to buy 12 new submarines, announced during the recent North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Washington, may have eased the pressure on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau amid criticism from Canada’s closest allies that it has become a freeloader in the alliance.

Going into the summit, Canada was the only NATO member without a clear plan to meet its commitment to spend 2 per cent of its economic output on defence. While the Trudeau government has taken important, if belated, steps toward this goal, Canada is still years away from reaching the target – the goal is by 2032, Mr. Trudeau said on Thursday – unlike the 23 NATO members that will do so in 2024.

We find ourselves in this awkward position because successive Canadian governments have neglected our military capabilities since the end of the Cold War. After the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, the prospect of Canada becoming involved in a major war between advanced militaries seemed remote, if not unthinkable.

Today, however, such a war is increasingly plausible – and not in the distant future.

Poland’s Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, has warned that Europe has entered a new “prewar” era because of the threat that Russia poses to the continent. The head of the British army has similarly described young Britons as a “prewar generation” who may have to prepare themselves to fight against Russia. The commander of the Swedish military has bluntly warned: “There could be war in Sweden.” Germany’s Defence Minister has called for his country to become “fit for war,” a striking departure from Germany’s postwar pacifism.

These leaders recognize the danger that a newly aggressive Russia poses to peace in Europe. Since first becoming President 24 years ago, Vladimir Putin has transformed from a technocrat into a tyrant intent on restoring Russia’s imperial greatness, including its power over nearby countries.

In an essay published in July, 2021, seven months before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he explained why Ukraine should not be considered a sovereign state. Ukrainians were not really a distinct people, he argued, and large swaths of Ukrainian territory had previously been part of Russia.

He once called the demise of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century, and more recently he has lamented the loss of “the lands of historical Russia” at the end of the First World War. Prior to that war, Russian territory included parts of what is now Poland, Finland and the Baltic countries, although Mr. Putin insists that he has no designs on those countries.

Speaking to a group of young Russian entrepreneurs four months after the invasion of Ukraine, he offered yet another distorted but revealing history lesson, recounting Russian czar Peter the Great’s conquest of Swedish territory on the Baltic coast in the early 18th century. “On the face of it, [Peter] was at war with Sweden taking something away from it … [but in fact he] was not taking away anything – he was returning.” Nor did it matter, Mr. Putin further suggested, that other European countries refused to recognize Russian sovereignty over the conquered territory.

“Almost nothing has changed,” he said, linking this historical anecdote to the present and apparently likening himself to Peter the Great: “Clearly, it fell to our lot to return and reinforce as well.”

It would be foolish to believe that Mr. Putin’s bid for imperial aggrandizement could be satisfied simply by annexing parts of eastern and southern Ukraine. While the analogy is imperfect, a similar misapprehension led Western leaders to hand German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia to Hitler in 1938, wrongly believing that his ambitions were limited. By the time they realized their mistake, Hitler was invading Poland – and the Western allies were woefully unequipped for war.

Today, a large war in Europe is preventable – by providing Ukraine with the long-term support it needs to regain the upper hand against Russia’s invasion force, by effectively deterring Mr. Putin from threatening members of NATO, and by rapidly rebuilding the military readiness and capabilities of all its members. The old Roman aphorism – “if you want peace, prepare for war” – applies in this case. Mr. Putin must know in advance that further imperial forays will end in Russia’s defeat.

Such a strategy can only be sustained, however, if Western publics and their leaders, including in Canada, recognize that the peace of Europe and future of NATO are now at stake. The main barrier to responding to the Russian challenge is as much psychological as it is political or budgetary. Settled assumptions about the durability of peace are not easily shaken after decades of relative stability.

The tendency to underestimate dangers and their possible consequences, and to believe that things will continue to work the way they normally have, is called “normalcy bias,” and history is replete with examples.

When British prime minister Neville Chamberlain turned his back on Czechoslovakia in 1938, he described it as a “quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing” – a phrase that still haunts his legacy. But in the same speech he revealed a deeper psychological failure: “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks,” he said, referring incredulously to the emergency war preparations under way in London. Chamberlain was not alone in failing to understand the very real threat facing Britain and Europe. The British public largely cheered on his appeasement policy until just months before the war broke out.

Although many Canadians may view Russia as a distant problem, Canada has a compelling interest in the security of Europe’s democracies, which are among our closest allies and partners in an increasingly unfriendly world. Authoritarians elsewhere are watching closely. Some are quietly, and others not so quietly, supporting Russia’s war of conquest in Ukraine. And let us not forget that Russia is our neighbour across the Arctic, a region that China is also eyeing.

Canada must awaken from its long, comfortable slumber. While mounting criticism from our allies may be the jolt we need, a new sense of urgency and resolve must ultimately come from within – from our political leaders and from Canadians themselves.

For decades, Canada’s defence policy has been ”miserly,” as The Economist put it, because most Canadians, seeing no immediate threats to Canada, apparently wanted it that way. Some observers criticized this approach as ”immature,” but it was a pragmatic strategy for its time: Canada spent just enough to maintain its key alliance relationships with the United States and NATO.

Now, however, the threat is serious, and Canadians must face a difficult truth: The familiar world in which peace could be taken for granted is already gone, and there is no alternative in this new world but to prepare our military to fight in a large-scale modern conflict – frightening as that may sound.

Here is another hard truth: The price of rebuilding our military will be enormous. But failing to do so could be substantially more costly. If Mr. Putin’s Russia is not deterred and contained, Canadian troops may end up fighting in a major war that could have been prevented.

This is the “fantastic, incredible” reality that we cannot afford to ignore.