On July 8th of this year, while in Warsaw,
Prime Minister Trudeau announced
Canada’s largest sustained military presence in Europe in more than a decade.
Canada plans to lead what is described as ‘a robust multinational NATO
battlegroup’ in Latvia, Canada will provide 450 troops to the 1,000 strong
battlegroup slated to defend Latvia.
Although Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan
said recently that Canada’s military role in Eastern Europe has shifted from
reassurance to deterrence the mission in Latvia is not a classic
deterrent posture and it is widely believed that the message being sent by this
deployment is aimed at both Russia and at NATO itself.
One of the issues that throw the deterrent aspect
of this force into doubt is a key finding of a Rand Report war gaming the defence of the
Baltics. That report found that across
multiple games using a wide range of expert participants playing both sides,
the longest it took Russian forces to reach the outskirts of Tallinn and Riga
was 60 hours.
It is in that context that it should be understood
that the Canadian Forces that will be deployed, and in fact the entire NATO
brigade, lack the numbers and equipment to realistically combat potential
Russian aggression. Advocates of the deployment know this. That is why they
argue that the force’s presence will serve as a tripwire that will deter
Russian aggression, since Russia will fear a broader confrontation with NATO.
A more cynical, if
probably more accurate interpretation of this deployment, is that as Stephen Saideman a professor at
the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs has pointed out, Canada and
its battle-group allies are there to be sacrificed in order to ensure that NATO
members don’t back down from their collective obligations.
However, there is more than a conventional military
threat from Russia. NATO must seek to deter any application of Russia’s
so-called “hybrid warfare” capabilities to its Baltic members. Hybrid warfare
refers to the combination of conventional military power, irregular tactics,
political and information warfare, and economic and diplomatic pressure by a
foreign power to interfere in a country’s affairs. Russia has used these
tactics to occupy Crimea in Ukraine and provoke and support a separatist
movement in eastern Ukraine.
Writing at OpenCanada.org Misha Boutilier and Shahryar Pasandideh Gholamali have
pointed out that this mission poses significant political and legal complexities.
It is unclear what role NATO forces would play in peacetime, during crises or
even during conflict. Will Canadian infantry conduct foot patrols along the
Russian border? If so, what will be the rules of engagement during peacetime,
crises and war? What restrictions will the Baltic States place on these forces?
Has anyone asked what caveats our NATO allies will
place on their troops should a serious crisis with Russia or armed local proxies,
a very real threat, are encountered? Will all the elements of ‘our’ battlegroup
be able to respond in the same way to complex events? Will national elements
need to contact their respective governments for instructions before advising
their nominal commander of their ability to carry out orders?
These are not theoretical questions. National caveats on
personnel participating in NATO-led operations are not a new challenge. Lessons learned from operations
in a number of NATO missions have emphasized the impact of caveats on those
missions. There is no reason to believe that the problems of constraints (i.e.
caveats), which are tied directly to the level of national interests a country
has in a particular mission and the level of risk it is willing to take, have
been solved.
It can be assumed that a large part of the reason
for Canada’s participation in this latest phase of Operation REASSURANCE is to insure for itself a ‘place at
the table’ during NATO deliberations. It
is a traditional Canadian strategy to take leadership positions with our allies
based on the calculated use of forces available.
But what of those forces themselves? Canadian Defence Matters has pointed out in the past that if our forces are not there simply to act as ‘speed
bumps” for passing Russian armoured forces then there must be a plan to
reinforce or extract them in the event deterrence fails and major hostilities
occur.
The same
questions should be asked about what our intentions are concerning the
likelihood of hybrid warfare. How
will we, and our allies, react to the very real likelihood of non-traditional
conflict? If it is true that Canada and its battle-group allies are there to be
sacrificed in order to ensure that NATO members don’t back down from their
collective obligations, then how does Canada plan to live up to those
obligations?
Canada must
answer the question for itself, before Moscow asks it for us. How far we are
prepared to go to defend our Eastern European allies and what measures are we
willing to put in place to deal with the responsibility of putting Canadian
soldiers in harm’s way?
Canada
makes commitment to NATO Defence and deterrence measures
Reinforcing
Deterrence on NATO’s Eastern Flank
War
gaming the Defense of the Baltics
David
A. Shlapak and Michael W. Johnson
Canadian
soldiers are the new deterrents in the Baltics
When
it comes to deterring Russia, will Canada’s Latvia deployment do the trick?
Looking
to the Future: NATO Training Mission-Iraq
Operation
REASSURANCE
CANADA
AND NATO, HOW FAR IS CANADA PREPARED TO GO?
