Author: James Horncastle | Assistant Professor and Edward and Emily McWhinney Professor in International Relations, Simon Fraser University
Intro:
As the Donald Trump administration in the United States continues to threaten Canadian sovereignty — including a recent suggestion that Alberta could secede from Canada and join the U.S. — Canadians, like many others in the world, finds themselves in a period of extreme uncertainty.
Trump’s continued violations of the rules-based international order means Canada can no longer rely on its partners to the same extent as it has in the past.
The world must, as Prime Minister Mark Carney recently noted, accept the current climate as it is, rather than looking to the past.
To do so, Canada must develop a defence policy that can meet the country’s needs. The Canadian government’s recent budget envisions a significant increase in defence spending over the next several years. The problem Canada faces, however, is one that all middle powers face: an inability to compete with great powers in a conventional war.
The Canadian government must therefore pursue non-conventional means to overcome conventional weakness. Simultaneously, the country must be cognizant of the implications of alternative defence policies. The former Yugoslavia provides a harrowing example.
An excerpt:
The biggest vulnerability is the enemy eliminating their command-and-control functions early in the conflict. The U.S., as seen in Iraq in 1991, excels at these types of operations. Russia, while not as effective, attempted to do the same against Ukraine in the early phases of its full-fledged invasion.
For a smaller country to survive such an attack, it needs to ensure that resistance can continue regardless if centralized command is compromised.
Under the theory of total national defence, countries decentralize command and control functions to prevent them being eliminated.
The extent to which countries do so varies. Individual units may operate at the local level without centralized guidance to maintain the struggle against an opponent. In short, even if an opponent succeeds in eliminating the central command of a state, its army and people can continue the struggle.
The Yugoslavia example is very worrying. Who knows how they would have fared in an invasion, but just normal politics was deadly.
In the modern digital world it doesn’t seem necessary to decentralise much, since lines of communication can be very durable, if not necessarily fast. Even North Korea has data going in and out. If chain of command is clearly established and enforced ahead of time, and forces are numerous, integrated, nicely hidden away and given initial orders, I don’t expect decapitation would work well. Not in the Canadian cultural context.
I hear the Taliban has been an inspiration in these wargames. That works, they’re definitely hyper-central.
The US kidnapping Carney won’t cripple the government but it will cause a major outrage. Unlike Maduro Carney is popular and was duly elected.
I don’t like Carney for many reasons, but I did vote for him and I don’t want him abducted or assassinated.