Why does Canada have a military?

2024.03.08

What follows is an attempt to understand the current debates over the sad state of Canada’s military. I will proceed from the assumption that the debates exist because there is no consensus in our country regarding why we have a military. We cannot agree over how much funding the Canadian Armed Forces should get or what equipment it needs or what kind of missions it should carry out because fundamentally Canada as a country does not agree on the first principle underlying all such debates. That first principle can only be arrived at by answering the question, “Why does Canada have a military?”

To answer that question, it is helpful to consider what it means to be a nation-state within the international system. The international system is the ultimate architecture of human organization. It is how human beings organize themselves on the global scale, on the scale of the human race in its entirety. Human beings organize themselves into groupings we call states, and those states can be categorized into three broad groupings: great powers, middle powers, and lesser powers (you could also call this third group non-powers).

Great powers are those states that can unilaterally change the architecture of the system. They can do this because they possess the military might required to impose their desired change on the rest of us. The great power par excellence is America in the three decades after the end of the Cold War. However, this example is somewhat misleading, because for most of the history of nation states – a history that only stretches back to the era of the French Revolution – there has usually been more than one state that possessed that much power. A more representative example of great power politics is the period leading up to World War I when a number of states believed themselves able to overhaul the international system through force. Because great powers only need pay attention to the threat of force, they are principally concerned with other great powers or alliances between a rival great power and middle powers. As such, they are typically hostile to international institutions that facilitate such alliances.

Middle powers are those states that can change the international system through influence. They cannot impose a change through force, but they can form alliances with each other as well as with one or more of the great powers. To think of this clearly, consider NATO, an alliance between the United States and thirty middle powers. Because middle powers do not possess the military might required to change or maintain the international system, they are forever vulnerable to the changes imposed by the great powers. For this reason, the middle powers have a much more vested interest in the functioning of international institutions.

The lesser or non-powers are those states that are essentially along for the ride. They may have some kind of military force but they can neither impose a change on the system nor can they call upon an alliance to change it on their behalf. Many countries in Africa and South America currently fall into this category. After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden recognized they were non-powers and sought to join NATO in order to achieve middle power status. Non-powers are not only interested in the functioning of international institutions but are reliant on them for their continued existence.

Middle and non-powers, if they are to survive and pursue their own interests, must work together to maintain the international system through influence. That influence is achieved chiefly through contributions of military force to broader alliances that keep the aggression of great powers in check.

I will call attention to two specific words used above, namely, “survival” and “power.” The chief strategic interest of every nation state is survival. A state cannot pursue any other strategic interest if it does not survive. And a state cannot survive if it does not have the ability to project power, either alone or in an alliance.