The Decibel - What’s at stake for Canada at the NATO summit

Episode Date: July 11, 2024

This year’s NATO summit comes at a critical moment. Pledges of support for Ukraine drum up questions about why Canada and other NATO members are lagging in their commitment to meet the 2 per cent defence spending threshold. Both Trudeau and Biden are looking to show strength after a rocky start to the summer.Adrian Morrow is the Globe and Mail’s U.S. correspondent. He’s on the show to talk about the significance of this year’s NATO summit, and what’s at stake for Canada’s position on the world stage.Clarification: An earlier version of this episode contained an inaccurate comparison of Canadian and U.S. military expenditures. It has been updated with the correct information.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

The summit for NATO this week is coming at a critical time. It's the 75th anniversary of the military alliance, and countries are increasingly worried about spending targets and growing uncertainty over the international order. My friends, we must be clear-eyed about the current state of global affairs. The long peace after the Second World War is over. We're living in an increasingly dangerous, unstable, and complex world. A lot of the focus of this summit has been on Ukraine, more than two years into the war. But make no mistake, Ukraine can and will stop Putin.

Especially with our full collective support. They have our full support. But that support comes at a cost. NATO members are supposed to spend 2% of their GDP on defense. Canada has not met that target. And the government is facing pressure for not having a solid plan to get to 2%. Adrian Morrow is a U.S. correspondent with The Globe. Today, he's on the show to talk about the significance of this year's NATO summit and what's at stake for Canada. I'm Rachel Levy-McLaughlin, and this is The Decibel, from The Globe and Mail.

Adrian, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. So you are in Washington right now for this NATO summit. So tell me about this pressure that Canada is facing this year. So about 10 years ago, all the members of NATO at a summit in Wales agreed that all of them would pay at least 2% of their GDP into military spending. And this had always sort of been the target or the benchmark for military spending in the alliance. But that was sort of the first time that there was a commitment made by all the members to meet it. Since that time, most NATO members have gotten to that threshold. Canada has not. And there's been sort of fairly persistent talk over the last number of years about Canada being one of NATO's laggards. And earlier this year, the Canadian government

put out a future sort of defence spending plan that goes out to 2030. And it does contain a rise in defence spending as a proportion of GDP. But even with that increase, it only gets to about 1.76% of GDP. So even in a sort of long term planning, Canada has not mapped out a path to get to this 2%. Obviously, this is something that other alliance members are not happy about. It's been a political issue in the United States. And so Canada is expected to face pressure at the summit over the fact that it hasn't reached that level. My understanding is that the Americans have raised this in previous conversations behind closed doors with the Canadians.

On Monday, I had a U.S. official tell me that any country that hasn't reached that 2% threshold can expect to have their feet held to the fire by other countries that have. Julianne Smith, the U.S. ambassador to NATO on Canadian television, singled out Canada as the only country, she said, within the alliance that doesn't even have a plan for getting to 2%. So there's already some of that that's coming out publicly. You can only imagine that behind closed doors, there will likely be more pressure than that put on Canada to basically say, you know, prove to us that you're serious. You know, you talk a good line about how important internationalism is and this rules based order.

You know, it's time to put your money where your mouth is and actually show to us that you have a plan to meet your commitments. And can you just remind us, what is the deal with this 2%? Like what is included, what's not included in this 2%? It's basically just all military spending. So sometimes there's this kind of misconception that Donald Trump pushes that, you know, alliance members are sort of pouring all this money into some huge NATO pot. And there is some funding like that for NATO. But the commitment is more about how much individual spending each of these countries

is making. But the thinking that the more troops that you can field or the more, you know, tanks or planes or ships that you've got in your military, the more likely you are to be able to deter threats and or contribute in the event that a NATO member gets attacked and the other NATO members have to send forces to help them. So that's the idea, basically, that this military spending is everything from this physical size of your force or how many people that you've got in the Army and Navy and Air Force, along with equipment and hardware. So what kind of weapon systems you've got, you know, how many tanks and LRVs and battleships and all of that you're spending money on. Right. So even if Canada were to, let's say, get some new fighter jets or get some new submarines just for us, that would count towards that NATO spending. But also if we're giving military equipment to Ukraine, that would also count. That kind of thing. Yeah, that's correct. That's right. So routine military spending in terms of hiring more soldiers or more fighter pilots or things like that, as well as, yes, if Canada were to decide we're going to donate a bunch of our equipment to Ukraine and then we're going to replace it by spending X amount of money to buy our own

equipment to sort of further down the line, replace that equipment that we've then sent to Ukraine, that would also count towards this commitment. So why doesn't Canada spend that 2%? Like, why isn't defense spending a bigger priority in Canada? Yeah, I think it is just this sense of they're competing priorities for the Canadian government and defense spending is not necessarily as popular as high of a priority among the voters that the Liberal Party depends on or that a lot of parties depend on to win elections. You know, it's very interesting that you look at the alliance members and kind of where

they're at. In the United States, they do a lot of their government spending and their sort of wealth redistribution programs are actually done through the military industrial complex and through having these big military procurement contracts that sustain all these jobs throughout the U.S. And there's this kind of cultural thing in the U.S. about having a big, powerful military and how important that is. And so for them, it's sort of obvious why they're able to sell military spending to their constituencies, because it creates a lot of jobs in the US and it's part of their self-image. There are other countries such as Poland is one of the top proportionally spends a large amount of GDP on defense. And you can see why that is too, because they're a country that borders Ukraine that historically has had a lot to fear from Russia for obvious reasons. And so they clearly feel as a government that this is an important priority. And I'm sure a lot of their voters in Poland feel like this is very necessary to spend this amount of money to have these kind of military capabilities because they might get attacked.

Whereas in Canada, we're probably feeling a little safer over here surrounded by three oceans and world's largest military. Yeah, I think that's it being next to to the United States sort of feeling that well, we've got NORAD in place. So the one major potential threat from Russia is missiles being sent over the Arctic. And we've had this system in place for decades that's supposed to deal with that. So maybe Canadians feel a bit more secure. And these sort of things seem a little bit more abstract and remote. And it's not as much of a part of our culture, I don't think, as it is in the United States, that we have to have this really powerful military and that that's kind of the source of our strength. You mentioned NORAD. Can you just remind us what NORAD is? Yeah, it's a joint missile defense system that Canada and the U.S. run. It's a holder from the

Cold War and essentially is designed to intercept missiles being shot towards the United States or Canada. The main purpose of it is the Arctic. And this thinking that, you know, if there were ever an attack from Russia on the United States any sort of unidentified flying object coming over the Arctic that can then either shoot missiles or dispatch fighter planes to go intercept it. So what are the consequences for Canada not hitting that 2% target? I suppose in sort of a broader policy sense that the potential consequence is that every bit to which a NATO member country isn't pulling its weight or isn't isn't putting the money into it that that's supposed to be the argument would be that it creates less deterrence and that if NATO is all based on deterring hostile countries from attacking,

you know, the more robust all these countries are in having defense spending, you know, the greater the deterrence is, I think, on an immediate level, there's the potential of damaging Canada's relationship with the United States and with some of these other countries that they're less likely to trust Canada. Politically, countries not paying what they've committed to pay on defense spending, I think plays into the hands of Donald Trump and other populists who basically say, well, the United States is carrying NATO. These other countries not paying their fair share, they're basically freeloading off of us. And so therefore, what's the point of NATO? And or should we put pressure on these other countries? You know, you've already had John Bolton,

Trump's former national security advisor, who said that he thinks that Trump will pull the U.S. out of NATO and then would use this as a reason to do it. Maybe that's a nightmare scenario, but that's the kind of thing that's certainly out there and a potential consequence. And then I guess on maybe a more sort of moral level, Canada is one of these countries that has talked a good line about defending Ukraine, has talked a good line about how important having a rules-based international order is. And so if Canada is not willing to do one of the things that is a signal of support for this international order, I think it does look bad on Canada. And it does suggest that there's a gap between what our aspirations or what our rhetoric is as Canadians and maybe what the reality is of being willing to back that up.

So is Canada alone here? How many NATO countries are hitting that 2% threshold? So 23 NATO countries are on track to hit the 2% target this year out of 32. So it means that Canada is not entirely alone. There are a handful of other countries that are not meeting that target. What seems to have set Canada aside in recent months is that Canada has not put out a concrete plan for getting to the 2%. There was a whole big picture master plan that Bill Blair, the defense minister, put out in the spring for where Canada's defense spending is going to go over the next five years. And even under that plan, the country does not get to 2% of GDP. It gets to about 1.76. And I think that's part of what's forcing the conversation now is that not only does Canada not reach that target, but according to Biden's NATO ambassador, it's the only one of those countries that hasn't actually put forward a plan for how to get there. Bill Blair has said a few things about how he's going to do a bunch of procurement, going to buy a bunch more military hardware in the next few years, and that he thinks

that that is ultimately going to get Canada over the 2% mark. But it's not entirely clear that that's the case. Anita Anand, the Treasury Board president, has sort of poured cold water on that idea and said, like, you can't really book the money until you've actually done the procurement. So even though there seems to be an aspiration to get to 2%, and Bill Blair has said that he's confident that Canada will, there isn't a hard and fast plan for doing that. And I think that's what is driving this at the moment that on top of the US already wanting Canada to get there, Canada has not presented a plan for how it's going to happen. We'll be right back.

So how do other NATO countries see Canada then as part of this alliance? Are we seen as a valuable ally given that we don't hit this threshold? So Canada has done a very good job from the point of view of NATO in backing Ukraine rhetorically. And on top of that, Canada has given military aid directly to Ukraine, not in the same per capita proportion as the US has, but it has helped out Ukraine. You know, the Trudeau government will talk a lot about, you know, leading a NATO mission in Latvia meant to deter more Russian aggression, sort of on the eastern flank of NATO. you know, leading a NATO mission in Latvia meant to deter more Russian aggression, sort of on the eastern flank of NATO. You know, and of course, Canada helps maintain NORAD along

with the United States. So Canada is viewed positively in a lot of these ways in being a team player on these fronts. But there's this caveat that it would be really good if Canada could really show its commitment by getting up to 2%. You mentioned Canada's support for Ukraine, and that has been one of the big concerns at NATO this year. So how are we doing on that front? How much has Canada contributed to the war effort? The numbers from the Canadian government is about $4 billion in military assistance that Canada has given to Ukraine since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. And I remember one time very early during the Russian

full-scale invasion, covering a meeting between Lloyd Austin, the US Defense Secretary, and Anita Anand, who was then the Canadian Defense Minister, where the US was talking about this multi-billion dollar package that they were trying to get through the US Congress to send aid to Ukraine. And Canada had committed four howitzers. And it just sort of showed this disparity in the two countries, you know, approaches and abilities, basically, that this is what Canada sort of has on hand to give to Ukraine. So, you know, the Canadian government, to be fair to them, has been helpful to Ukraine and certainly been, you know, had a lot of moral clarity on the issue of Russia being an aggressor, but has not gotten to the same level as our closest ally in putting our money where our

mouths are. And Canada has provided that $4 billion in military assistance to Ukraine. The U.S., by comparison, has contributed around $50 billion in military assistance. But Canada has also provided other financial assistance to Ukraine, right, including aid, which totals around $12 billion. Yeah, and Canada did play a large role, especially early on in kind of pushing the sanctions conversation, because there was some resistance, you know, from the Europeans and to some extent, even on the American side, there was a little bit of resistance kind of early on in terms of how far the sanctions on Russia were going to go. And I remember in particular, I think Trudeau was the first G7 leader to publicly call for Russia to be kicked out of the SWIFT payment system, which is how most international payments are made, banking payments are made, which adds a lot of cost to an economy and is, you know, is another thing that's kind of damaging to Russia. That was something

that a lot of people were calling for as a way of punishing Russia. And Trudeau was the first G7 leader to sort of publicly push for it. And eventually, the rest of the G7 agreed with him and they went ahead and made that happen. So yeah, so there are a lot of other ways that Canada has certainly been helpful. You know, the raw military spending is not necessarily the be all end all. But it is one metric that certainly matters to a lot of people. I'm curious how Justin Trudeau has been approaching the summit, because he's been really vocal in his support for Ukraine. But he's also been facing this pressure at NATO and at home. He's had a pretty rocky start to his summer. So what has the summit been like for him? How has he been approaching this? So he gave one speech at the Canadian

Embassy this week, where he essentially said at the Canadian embassy this week where he essentially said that the global peace that's been in place since the Second World War is over. So his headspace seems to be that he feels that there are significant problems and dangers that NATO has to confront. The danger that he personally seems to feel he has to confront in the near term is the possibility of Donald Trump coming back to office. And of course, if you ask the Canadians on the record, they will be very careful about how they frame their relationship with Donald Trump. But, you know, when you talk to them in candid conversations, they'll say that it was terrible. You know, Donald Trump not only disagrees with them fundamentally on the importance of NATO and international alliances and these sort of, you know, the Trudeau government in a lot of

ways sort of represents the neoliberal international consensus, you know, both of, you know, the Trudeau government in a lot of ways sort of represents the neoliberal international consensus, you know, both around multilateral engagement on national security as well as on free trade. And Donald Trump wants to go back to a place of more nationalism and protectionism and sort of isolationist, non-interventionist foreign policy. But on a practical level, you know, Donald Trump forced Canada to renegotiate its free trade agreement with the US and constantly threatened to just tear the whole deal up. He imposed steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada and a whole bunch of other countries and provoked a continental trade war. All of these things are very likely to come up again in a second Trump administration. NAFTA is supposed to come open for review.

And I'm certain that if Donald Trump is president, he will want to change a lot of things in it and maybe make it more protectionist again. And of course, the guy is just, it's just unpredictable. And you don't necessarily know when he's just bluffing or making threats because he wants to put some pressure on somebody or when he's actually serious about wanting to do, to take some of these more drastic actions.

So in order to prepare for all of that, the Trudeau government has spent the last several months, basically since the beginning of this year, sending out business leaders and politicians and provincial premiers to the U.S. to try to rebuild these relationships or to try to strengthen these relationships. So Trudeau has been doing some of this outreach this week, where he had meetings on Capitol Hill with Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, the Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate, along with a number of other senators. He had a meeting with Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House, and some members of Congress there. He apparently asked for a meeting with Mike Johnson, the Republican House Speaker, but apparently Johnson was unavailable. You know, Johnson is a close ally of Donald Trump's and actually came under a lot of fire from his own party for allowing the last vote on Ukraine to go forward. So maybe it's not surprising that he doesn't want a photo op that shows him,

you know, with the Canadian prime minister. So he's been sort of doing some of this work that previously he's been sending cabinet ministers down to do to try to kind of, you know, with the Canadian Prime Minister. So he's been sort of doing some of this work that previously has been sending cabinet ministers down to do to try to kind of, you know, reinforce these relationships so that if Donald Trump does get get in again in November, Canada can sort of call on these people as needed and say, can you please help us put pressure on the White House not to, you know, sort of blow up continental trade? Wow. So obviously, Trudeau is thinking a lot about a potential Trump presidency here. I imagine US President Joe Biden is as well. So what's at stake for Biden at this NATO summit? Yeah, I mean, he's appears to be down on the polls, and he had a disastrous debate performance

against Donald Trump last month, which revived all these questions about whether he's suffering from age related declines that make him unfit to to do the job of president or at least unable to defeat Donald Trump in an election. So he has a lot to prove in terms of essentially just showing both his own party and voters, as well as showing NATO allies that, yes, he's up to the job, that he has the fitness to continue running the country for another four years. And at the very least, that he has the ability to defeat Donald Trump in November. You know, so we saw a speech from him at the opening NATO gala where he was quite forceful and basically declaring that the alliance is very strong, that Ukraine is going to win the war against Russia. And he was able to deliver that without any significant stumbles. So I think that's the tone that Biden wants to set to try to make himself look as fit and vigorous as possible to try to push back against fears that he's not

fit for office and also to tamp down attempts within his own party to defenestrate him. Right. So does this feel like a particularly significant year for this NATO summit? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's really significant because there is a question of how strong the support for Ukraine is going to be. Ukraine is also asking for NATO membership. And NATO is in this place of wanting to, I think, wanting to grant membership to Ukraine, or at least rhetorically saying so, but hemming and hawing whenever it comes to the specifics of when that's going to happen. And I think the problem that they're confronting is that if Ukraine became a member of NATO, NATO would be obligated to defend Ukraine from Russian aggression, meaning NATO countries themselves would have to then fight Russia. And there's

this fear that in the absolute worst case scenario, it provoked Vladimir Putin to use a nuclear weapon and it would just escalate the conflict. And so they're in this kind of awkward place of wanting to support Ukraine, but not wanting to support Ukraine by sending their own troops to fight against Russia. And so I think that's, you know, so that whole issue is on the table. There's a meeting with Vladimir Zelensky is already in, the Ukrainian president is already in Washington at the moment. There's a meeting between him and NATO leaders on Thursday that all of that is going to come up. So I think Ukraine is sort of the number one topic for discussion. And that makes the summit very significant. And then number two, of course, is the possibility of Donald Trump getting back into office. And these questions over Joe Biden, you know, his viability as a candidate to defeat Donald Trump.

You know, Trump this time around is having people vetted to try to ensure that anybody he puts in place who becomes president is going to be a nationalist and a non-interventionist type like him and is going to want to push his agenda forward. So I think there's much more, you know, probably much more concern among NATO members about Donald Trump getting back in than there was the last time around. Right. Adrian, thank you so much for talking us through all this today. Thanks for having me. Before you go, we want to let you know that we've updated this episode from an earlier version to clarify a comparison on military spending between the U.S. and Canada. This version now accurately reflects that comparison. That's it for today. I'machel levy mclaughlin our producers are madeline white and michael stein david crosby edits the show adrian chung is our senior producer

and matt franer is our managing editor thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you soon