Canada's Security Axioms No Longer Apply

2024.03.10

Why does all this matter? Why do I feel compelled to blather on about great power politics and Canadian defence strategy? It is because the axioms that have underpinned every conversation and every decision regarding national security in Canada for over a century no longer apply.

To illustrate what I am talking about, here is a great quote by Douglas Bland, a former Chair of the Defence Management Studies Program at the School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University:

“…More than half a century earlier, Sir Wilfrid Laurier had identified the rationale and the truly Canadian character of the country’s national defence strategy. In 1910 the Prime Minister cautioned his professional British military commander, Lord Dundonald: “You must not take the militia seriously, for though it is useful for suppressing internal disturbances, it will not be required for the defence of the country, as the Monroe doctrine protects us from enemy aggression.” Few prime ministers have been as outspoken, yet all have held (unknowingly, one suspects) to what might be called the “Laurier Doctrine” because its fundamental logic frees them from the bother and expense of building for Canada a traditional armed force dedicated as a first priority to the defence of the country.”

The Monroe Doctrine that Bland refers to is the US foreign policy position that holds that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers is a potentially hostile act against the United States. It was named after President James Monroe in 1823. Monroe sought to separate the Old World of Europe from the New World of the Americas as separate spheres of influence. His government did not want former European colonizers to interfere with the recently liberated colonies in the Western hemisphere nor did they want to see any new attempts at territorial expansion by European powers into the Western Hemisphere. By turning the Western Hemisphere into America’s sphere of influence, the Americans sought to insulate themselves from European aggression.

By the turn of the 20th century, this doctrine was taken very seriously by the US foreign policy establishment, and they had the military might to back it up. An unforeseen consequence of this US policy was an unearned sense of security by every Canadian government since that time.

As a result, Canada has historically had two principal axioms of national security:

1.        We are far from threats and hard to get to; and

2.      America won’t let any threats get near us.

Neither of these statements is true any longer. And because of that, our lackadaisical approach to national defence and security is no longer something we can afford. We can no longer assume we are the beneficiaries of US defence and foreign policy.

Here is a bit of a tangent but it helps explain the Monroe Doctrine. In the 1950s, when the Cuban Revolution resulted in a communist government with strong connections to the Soviet Union, the Monroe Doctrine was used to justify covert actions in Latin America to prevent the spread of communist subversion. This culminated in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 when President John F. Kennedy invoked the Monroe Doctrine as grounds for the United States' confrontation with the Soviet Union over the installation of Soviet ballistic missiles on Cuban soil.

The Monroe Doctrine, as Sir Wilfrid Laurier rightly understood, amounted to a de facto security guarantee of Canadian territorial integrity by the United States. Because of that de facto guarantee, Canada could join Great Britain in its European wars because we never had to worry about defending our own territory. This understanding of the Canadian military as a tool to signal virtue to our allies through expeditionary operations of choice not necessity has so consumed the Canadian psyche that we have never even considered our armed forces might be needed to defend our country.

Now, we effectively have no military and no Monroe Doctrine and the threats can reach us.