Survival and Power

2024.03.09

To many people, the necessity of power projection is not obvious so I will explain it a bit more. The international system is, at most times, an almost Hobbesian state of nature. This is because, unlike inside a state, there can be no Leviathan that ends the war of all against all. As such, the rules that govern inside a state are completely different than the rules that govern interactions between states. To put it bluntly, there are no rules. There can’t be. Because ultimately no one can enforce them.

The “rules-based international order” that is much lauded by middle powers is not actually “rules-based.” It may be norms-based, provided the great powers all tacitly agree to abide by it. Or, if there is only one dominant great power in the system, it may be enforced by that unipolar power, but it still won’t be a “rules-based” order because the enforcer will not be required to abide by it. In an international system with a single great power, that nation-state is above the law.

Because the international system is always a Hobbesian state of nature, all nation states are effectively trapped in a prisoner’s dilemma. This is especially a problem for great powers as it leads to security competition. Because one great power can never be sure if their rival has hostile intentions, both are compelled to continually increase their own security advantage while simultaneously disadvantaging the security of the other great powers in the system. Entire monographs have been devoted to how this happens, but we less concerned here with the arms races of great powers than with the relevance of security competition to middle power countries like Canada.

Because middle powers can only increase their security through alliance management, and because it is in the interests of a great power to ally itself with as many middle powers as possible, the relationships between a great power and its allied middle powers becomes a target for rivals. To put this is more concrete terms, Russia as a great power rival to the United States has a vested interest in fracturing an alliance like NATO. It does that by targeting the relationships that hold NATO together and especially by attempting to isolate specific NATO countries from the US. This is why Vladimir Putin is constantly trying to interfere in the politics of NATO countries.

For Canada, this game theory problem of great power security competition means we are a massive target for great power rivals that seek to weaken the US.

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I should back up and explain what a nation state is. I have been explaining how the international system works but I skipped over this very important concept. Not surprisingly, a nation state has two components: a nation and a state. I will begin by explaining the state first because in many ways it is the more tangible concept.

A state is a legally defined entity and under international law it has four components that must be present for it to legally exist. Those four components are: population, territory, authority, and recognition. Each of these component concepts is squishy in the extreme and I will do my best to explain them here.

Population. The population of the state may be the nation, but it does not have to be. A state can have multiple nations (like Canada), or it may be almost wholly comprised of a single nation (such as Israel). The important thing is there a group of people recognize themselves as citizens of the same state. And this is amorphous. Populations change. Citizens come and go. Identities change from generation to generation and even within a given generation. What matters is that, despite the flux and flow of human movement, there remains a group of people who consider themselves citizens of the chosen state. Canada is Canada because Canadians think of themselves as Canadian citizens.