Season 2: #4 The Bear, the Dragon and the Eagle

Which of the three superpowers poses the greatest risk to Canada? We can go through the different threats. Sadly, you already know the answer.

Transcript

3          The Bear, the Dragon, and the Eagle

Donald Trump poses a clear and present danger to Canada. But Canada’s formal defense strategy assumes that Russia and China pose the greater threat. 

Canada does not meet the NATO target of 2% of GDP for military spending. General Jennie Carignan, Chief of the Defence, clearly has her hands full. There are 68,000 men and women serving full time, and 27,000 reservists. Fewer than 4,000 serve overseas. Up to 17,000 military jobs are vacant. Canada’s military spending has gone to American weapons. Canada is totally reliant on the United States for almost all advanced weapons. 

Pressured to spend more, plans are afoot to buy the eighty-eight F-35s at a cost of $44 billion, sixteen Boeing P-8 aircraft for $8 billion, fifteen frigates for $60 billion, Support Ships for $3.4 billion, and icebreakers for $8.5 billion. NORAD will cost $38 billion over two decades.  All this goes to American industry.

Given the shift in American policy towards Canada, it would be reckless not to review the actual threats to Canada, and whether Canada’s approach to security is still appropriate. Which enemy is the greater danger?  That would have been a heretical question in 2024.

Consider Russia, which for half a century was the communist enemy, the evil that lurked behind the Iron Curtain. That seemed to come to an end when the USSR collapsed in 1991. Then, the former KGB agent Vladamir Putin took over.

For much of this new century, the Russian President has seemed untouchable. After ending unpopular wars in Chechnya and Afghanistan, he consolidated power in the Kremlin. He took advantage of economic opportunities that followed the end of the Cold War, and grew the Russian economy. Oligarchs flourished so long as they obeyed him. Western nations helped, thinking it would lead to a new era of peaceful coexistence. But wealth was not enough. Putin dreamed of making Russia great again. The Russian bear was on the prowl, trying to re-take territory that was the empire of the Tsars.

By Putin’s calculation, the United States had lost the will to fight or lead. The United States had by far the most powerful military in history, but with no purpose. American voters had apparently tired of fighting in distant deserts and jungles. American global leadership was in retreat.

The result was a vacuum in leadership for the western alliance. American leadership, at its best, had been based on a belief in democracy and human rights. There was an ethical rational. American reality often fell short, and countless innocents got caught in the meat-grinder.  Still, the Pax Americana avoided nuclear war for three quarters of a century.

When Putin invaded Crimea, Obama was in power, and there was no response. He continued to expand, assassinating opponents, and Washington looked the other way. He invaded Ukraine.  Biden responded by supporting Ukraine, but only in small incremental ways. Today, with Trump, the future for Ukraine looks bleak. 

Europe may well help Ukraine, even if Trump does not. Of course, Ukrainians do the fighting and dying. Less well appreciated, the war has exhausted the Russian military and economy. Russia is weaker and poorer, a second-tier power with a first-rate nuclear deterrence. For decades to come, Russia will be too weak to mount a serious new conventional war. 

Trump has abdicated leadership over the west, and this will have consequences. Europe has relied on Washington for so long that other NATO members forgot how to lead. Out of necessity, this will likely change.  A new European NATO will emerge, with or without Washington. But with Canada.

The Russia weakness is showing for those who care to look. Unwilling to draft soldiers from European Russia, Putin enlisted criminals as cannon-fodder. He drafted men from ethnic minorities in the far east.  Russian citizens really do not want to fight. Putin ended up having to get North Korea to send soldiers, a move that shows weakness. 

Russia started the war with a lot of tanks and artillery; Ukraine drones are defeating these at a much lower cost. Much of Russia’s navy has been bottled up in the Black Sea by inexpensive sea-drones.   The flagship of the fleet was sunk by Ukraine. Of the Kirov-class nuclear powered battlecruisers, once a symbol of Russian power, only one is still in service. Only one Russian aircraft carrier still operates.  Russia does have a strong nuclear deterrence from its submarines.  Still, the bottom line is that Russia may threaten Europe, but not North America. It is a boogeyman used to demand more defense spending from Canada.

The European NATO faces a different calculation. They cannot trust Trump, who has befriended Putin and European neo-Nazis, and betrayed Ukraine. They fear Russia. Without American assistance in the face of invasion, they are ill-prepared to fight Russia. Front line countries like Poland and Finland are somewhat prepared. There is no doubt a frenzy of action underway at this very moment to prepare for war. 

It would be a brutal war, with nuclear escalation almost unavoidable. A strong European deterrence that does not rely on the USA is needed to head off an accidental escalation. Happily, the probability that Russia will attack grows smaller with demographic decline, and again, because Ukraine has fought Russia to a standstill. Deterrence works. Sadly, since Trump has abandoned Ukraine, Putin will likely keep the land he has captured.

Putin may look for easier targets. NATO membership notwithstanding, countries such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Moldova and Armenia all have reason to fear Putin’s goal of reclaiming the land of the former USSR. Given a chance, Russia will attack democracies, impose dictators, and protect his puppets. The hope is that a weakened Putin will be deterred, and a newly united Europe may do the job.  

For Putin, more dangerous threat is emerging in the Far East. The Russian public has no clue how bloody the Ukraine war has been. An estimate by the BBC suggests Russian dead amount to between 150 and 200 thousand.  The Russian media are silent on the topic. To avoid domestic unrest, Putin did conscript troops in eastern Russia, near Moscow. He recruited instead in the Far East. 

This region of Russia is remote, poor, and home to many ethnic minorities. These people have borne the brunt of the Ukraine war, died disproportionately, and have no love for Moscow.

Meanwhile, China has a vague historical claim to Vladivostok and the region. Beijing has hinted that it may well retake the region. This must be tempting to China, given the mineral wealth of the region. The main deterrence is that Moscow’s Pacific Fleet is headquartered in Vladivostok, close to the China border. As Ukraine showed in the Black Sea, the entire Russian fleet could be destroyed by sea drones while in harbour. The Russian army cannot help. It is thousands of miles away in Ukraine. This war might end very quickly. 

This would give China access to the Arctic, and to vast resources. China would suddenly be right next door to Alaska. The Chinese dragon is still awakening. 

The Chinese approach to the Great Game is strategic, long-term, and cautious. Beijing has used an indirect approach while building economic and military strength that rivals that of the United States. Consider the sweep of recent history.

After WW II, Mao Zedong successfully united China under communist rule. He inherited a huge, rural, uneducated peasant society. Behind the Bamboo Curtain, the Communist Party urgently built a new China. 

To deliver a better life to 1.4 billion people, the communists applied totalitarian policies. These were deemed necessary to central planning. It was not easy or kind. During Mao’s Great Leap Forward some 30 million Chinese starved to death. But over time, the communists did deliver growth and better living conditions. The massive peasant population migrated to cities and joined the middle class. China became a modern economy, albeit one with no human rights. The 1989 massacre of democracy advocates at Tiananmen Square made that crystal clear. 

During this period, China followed an indirect approach to foreign policy. Conflict was avoided. Eventually, China opened up and engaged in trade with the west. Factories opened to built goods for western corporations, undercutting workers in countries with higher wages.  There were trade rules, but like Trump, China acted as if rules are for fools.

China plundered Canada’s Nortel. Two decades ago, seventy per cent of the world's internet traffic went through Nortel equipment. China wanted it. They planted spies and surveillance bugs inside Nortel buildings, and stole Nortel's intellectual property. China engineered the Nortel collapse so Huawei could rise from the ashes.  Canada was naïve to the indirect strategy. 

On a larger scale the indirect strategy can be seen in the Chinese control over raw resources globally. China is scouring the world, trying to control both resources and shipping. Under the so-called Belt and Road Initiative, China is building infrastructure, securing contracts, and buying companies around the world. Governments are corrupted, pushed into debt, steered away from democracy.

Western nations may worry that China supports Russia against Ukraine. It is a business transaction. Russia needs machine tools and microelectronics to build weapons; it has natural resources.  Trade is trade, until there is a better option.

The Chinese military, meanwhile, has expanded and become more sophisticated.  The best Chinese jets, missiles, and submarines are apparently not far behind the Americans.  China has started mass production of drones of every size and purpose. With aircraft carriers, destroyers, attack helicopters, and long-range bombers, the Americans have a huge advantage. In terms of sheer manpower, artillery, small ships, and with a new fleet of massive landing craft, China has the advantage. It appears that China is set up to defend itself, and to conquer nearby countries like Taiwan or Japan or eastern Russia. Their military is not designed to invade Canada or the United States.

Taiwan and Japan have built some deterrence, but without American help they are at risk. If Chinese decides that war is too costly, the equation will slowly change. The reason is demographics. For China, the growing population was a problem from the beginning of communist rule. There were simply too many people to feed with too little arable land. With a high rate of growth, China faced a horrible crisis. In response, the communist Chinese imposed a one-child policy. The law of unexpected consequences then kicked in. Chinese culture valued sons more than daughters, so girls were aborted, and the demographic balance went out of whack. 

This took place during the wave of industrialisation as hundreds of millions of peasants left their villages to take factory jobs. China built massive cities. The factory workers now had an urban future. They produced cheap goods for the west, and were better off with every passing year. The economy boomed. Many Chinese bought homes as a long-term investment. 

Then, the tide turned. At current birth rates, the Chinese population will drop almost in half by the end of this century. The Chinese version of communism does deliver the basics of life. This in turn does keep the Communist Party in power. Looking ahead, however, there are too few workers to support hundreds of millions of elderly citizens.  

Other countries accept immigrants. China resists this, believing in racial purity. Over 90% of Chinese are ethnically Han., This leaves hundreds of millions of people, from over fifty ethnic minorities, that are not. China’s demographic response is one of aggressive assimilation. Every child, regardless of language, culture or ethnicity, is forced to speak mandarin and to learn a communist-curated version of history. Under Xi, it is a patriotic duty to place China at the centre of global civilization. 

As its population ages and shrinks, China will need wealth to keep up the standard of living. This is the goal of China’s foreign investments: to underwrite its vision of global economic dominance. Everything else is a distraction. 

From a security perspective, Canada can anticipate China’s long-term strategy.  Military invasion is not a realistic possibility. Economic domination is already in play. Disinformation and political interference is rampant, war by other means.

Canada is vulnerable to the Chinese disinformation, which aims to create discord and disunity in democracies. China does not care which Canadian political party wins, so long as none are effective. Cyber-warfare takes advantage of the western value for free speech.   They are assisted by the global technology giants, who control the algorithms that are so hard to control democratically. 

Apart from eastern Russia, the primary target for China is Taiwan. Taiwan is seen by China as a break-away province that must be brought back into the fold. If Taiwan shows weakness, the temptation for China would be strong. 

That is where the value of deterrence is critical. The Taiwan military is strong, but nowhere close to China. The point of deterrence is not always to win a war, but to make it so painful as to be not worth the effort. For this reason, as Trump withdraws American support, the probability that China will invade Taiwan is higher. Taiwan has to ensure that an invasion would be a Pyrrhic victory.

China’s long-term problem is that demographic destiny is already impacting the economy. The COVID crisis that began in China may have signaled the beginning of the end of Chinese domestic growth. Global supply chains were broken by the pandemic. China no longer built as many products that the west needed. Other poor countries competed with cheaper labour. The Chinese economy slumped, construction slowed to a crawl, and the housing bubble burst. Worst of all, workers reached retirement age and demanded the promised benefits. China has a problem. 

In response, leader Xi Jinping is expanding his economic empire in dependent countries.  Trade is cheaper than war. Under the New Silk Road initiative, China has built ports and railways to bring in cheap resources from poor countries with low-cost labour. Already China also controls most global shipping. This puts those countries into their debt.

Another initiative to control countries in the region involves building eleven massive dams blocking the Mekong River.  These dams will take the water before it reaches Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The Mekong is the lifeblood of Indochina, and the water levels of the river are already dangerously low because of climate change. By taking water for hydro and irrigation, China is slowly putting a chokehold on the region without firing a shot. Dependent economies will have no choice but to bend the knee to China.  

This Grand Strategy aligns perfectly to the indirect approach that military theorist Liddell Hart described. China undermines western democracies, keeping them flanked and distracted, while expanding its economic empire. Political hostages are used as pawns. Trade treaties are broken. Cyber warfare is ongoing. Military exercises that probe Taiwan defenses are constant.

How should Canada and our allies respond to China’s grand plan? If China is famously playing a long game, Canada should too. The democratic long game is to delay confrontation, counteract cyberwarfare, peacefully promote economic and democratic growth in the developing world, and to allow China’s internal pressures to bring change from within. The desired outcome is that China is secure, stable, and confident enough to allow human rights to slowly take root without war. China can be an adversary, but in the long run should not be an enemy.

This requires Canada not be distracted by low-risk provocations. War with China is not imminent. Taiwan needs a strong deterrence, which means weapons. Little Canada cannot help militarily in any meaningful manner. There are other ways, however, where Canada can make a difference.

China can be out-flanked economically and politically. Canada can be a leader in saving the oceans from destructive fishing fleets. Canada can create alternative transportation, like hydrogen airships, to bypass the Belt and Road Initiative. Canada can invest in developing countries, building free markets based on rule of law, and regenerating natural ecosystems. From sports to the arts to climate stability to trade, common interests must be pursued. Diplomacy is essential.

Pulling all this together, the fear of Russia and China has long dictated Canadian defense strategy.  Canada is joined at the hip with the United States. For decades, Canada has been too polite, or too cowed, to notice how Washington has pursued a military strategy that makes the world more dangerous. In the name of freedom and democracy, the United States military has kept growing in ways that escalate the arms race everywhere.   

One starting point for this critique of American policy is four decades ago, during the presidency of the genial but dangerous Ronald Reagan. The United States negotiated several nuclear arms treaties. It might have been a step in the right direction. The world has gone from 70,000 warheads at the height of the Cold War to about 12,000 today. This would be a good thing if it continued. One problem is that it only tales 100 nuclear weapons to destroy the planet. The other is that after the arms treaties were in place, things got crazy. 

Reagan signed a treaty, then initiated plans for a space force. He invested in ballistic defense, the Star Wars programs, to shoot down all incoming missiles. 

Barack Obama signed a small nuclear-arms-reduction treaty, then agreed to nuclear- 

There are three problems with the American strategy. First, there are many ways a determined enemy could mount a nuclear attack. The Iron Dome spends a lot of money to close one door in a large building.  Second, if the Iron Dome works 95% of the time, the world would still end. Finally, enemies already believe that the goal of Star Wars is to provide protection during an American first strike. This terrified opponents, leading to paranoia, and more military spending to circumvent the Iron Dome.  

Canada for decades has politely tried to avoid getting caught up in the American war machine. We refused nuclear weapons. We were arm-twisted into going to Afghanistan. We are constantly pushed to spend more on American arms.  As allies, we tried to cooperate without getting swept into the arms race.

Canada is now threatened by this former ally. The Trump talk of making Canada a 51st state is ominous.  The tariff war is ominous. An American invasion, once unthinkable, is now a real worry. From a Canadian perspective, the greater danger is not China or Russia. The American Eagle is circling.

Over the coming decades China and Russia will pose diminishing threats as their populations shrink. Both will remain dangerous, especially to neighbours. Both will oppose democracies, posturing, engaging in cyberwarfare and disinformation. China in particular will engage in economic warfare. They will both still be global nuclear powers of the first order, but in a multi-polar world. 

The United States, by contrast, is unpredictable, untrustworthy, and right next door. This new reality forces Canada to adopt a new defense strategy to preserve a true north, strong and free. The cold war has ended. The next war must be deterred.