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American Military Cutbacks: The Implications for Canada

Ottawa Citizen - January 21, 2012

By Colin Kenny

American taxpayers have shelled out trillions of dollars over the years to provide the kind of stability that Canadians and other allies need to prosper in an interdependent world.

The Americans have certainly made military mistakes – Vietnam and Iraq come most immediately to mind. But as far back as the First World War the Americans have overridden isolationist sentiments at home to try to advance liberal western values abroad, at great cost in terms of money and lives lost.

Now they are pulling back.

The 2012 U.S. military budget is more than a trillion dollars – 4.7 percent of the country’s GDP. Faced with an unsustainable national debt, President Obama has pledged to cut nearly half a trillion dollars over the next decade.

The message is clear:  while Washington will continue to try to play the role of the world’s top cop, it may not show up on the beat quite as often.

That’s not a good thing, because for all America’s international mistakes, the benefits to Canadians and other allies – most of whom spend far smaller proportions of GDP on defence ¬– have been profound.

Unfortunately, the need for Washington to put its books in order in the coming years is also profound. Which means that Canada and other like-minded countries need to carefully assess how much damage the U.S. military pullback is likely to do in terms of lessening resistance to the real threats that are out there.

We must also be wary that if those threats appear to be becoming more unmanageable offshore, the Americans may decide that hunkering down at home beats trying to put out fires around the world. Isolationism might actually work for Americans, but it certainly won’t work for any of its allies.

Would Canada and its military partners have come out on the winning side in World War I or World War II had U.S. leaders not overcome isolationist instincts and joined the fight? Probably not. The Americans may have been late, but they proved essential.

Would European countries have survived the expansionist dreams of the Soviet Union during the Cold War if the Americans hadn’t created the Marshall Plan and contributed more than all other nations combined to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? No chance.

So what now if China decides to run the world, if North Korea or Iran go on a nuclear offensive, if Palestine explodes . . . the list goes on. 

International stability is essential to security and prosperity – our security and prosperity, and the security and prosperity of other nations.

Tyranny cannot be allowed to prevail. Who among us would want our grandchildren to live under the thumb of people with the mentality of the current Chinese politburo? Of radical Islamists? If the West doesn’t maintain sufficient capacity to deploy force to resist the unthinkable, our way of life is going to come to an end.

The Americans have deployed forces around the world, with 11 aircraft carrier groups in foreign waters and troops on the ground for 60 years in places like South Korea, Japan, Germany, and have now made a long-term commitment in Australia. That costs American taxpayers a lot of money, but it also promotes the kind of stability that a trading nation like Canada needs to feed our families.

Can we keep depending on the Americans to stand nose-to-nose with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the Strait of Hormuz, or push back at radical Islamists in Pakistan eager to expand their anti-western influence, or provide backbone to South Korea in its standoff with the crazed despots of its northern neighbours?

We Canadians will never be able to project force that comes anywhere close to what the Americans can. But, collectively, America’s allies need to start sharing more of the burden. Canada could show leadership here – a number of our European allies are slashing their military budgets to cope with deficits that need to be dealt with.

Canada currently spends 1.3 percent of GDP on defence. That ranks us far down on the list of NATO countries – the NATO target is 2.0 percent. Most Canadians know that we’ve been taking a bit of a free ride.

The current federal government has made some useful investments in the military in recent years. But 1.3 percent doesn’t cut it. Moreover, the prime minister’s office is hunting for new ways to cut spending. The defence department has always been an easy target because defence spending is discretionary, while a lot of federal spending is tied up in statutory expenditures.

It is in Canadians’ own interests to do everything we can to maintain enough military power to play a significant role when events are tilting out of control on the international scene. We don’t have to go to every war that Washington decides to wage, but we do have to be ready to contribute when it makes sense to us.

If America’s allies walk away from the fight for a better world, you can be sure that there are plenty of people out there who don’t share our values who will be pleased to fill the void.


[Colin Kenny is former chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca]