Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 14 - Evidence - Meeting of April 15, 2013
OTTAWA, Monday, April 15, 2013
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 4 p.m. for the election of the chair; and to examine and report on Canada's national security and defence policies, practices, circumstances and capabilities.
[English]
Josée Thérien, Clerk of the Committee: Honourable senators, there is a vacancy in the chair of the committee. As clerk of your committee, it is my duty to preside over the election of the new chair, and I am ready to receive a motion to that effect.
Senator Dallaire: I propose that the Honourable Senator Lang do take the chair of this committee.
Senator Mitchell: I second that motion.
Ms. Thérien: It is moved by the Honourable Senator Dallaire that the Honourable Senator Lang do take the chair of this committee. Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
Ms. Thérien: Carried.
I invite the Honourable Senator Lang to take the chair.
Senator Daniel Lang (Chair) in the chair.
The Chair: Thank you very much. In order to reconstitute the committee, I would ask that there be a nomination for a third member to be represented on the steering committee.
Senator Nolin: I propose that the Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure be composed of the chair, the deputy chair and the Honourable Senator Plett. Do you agree?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: Carried.
There is another requirement today, and that is the nomination of a new member of the Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs. Is there a motion?
Senator Dallaire: I propose that the Honourable Senator Lang be a member of the Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs.
The Chair: Questions? Is it agreed?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: Carried.
Senator Dallaire: Welcome to the subcommittee.
The Chair: Thank you.
Before we hear from witnesses, I would like to express my appreciation to the members of the committee for your confidence in me. I am honoured to be the first member from Canada's northern territories to be elected to serve as chair of this historically important standing committee.
I look forward to continuing the legacy of previous chairs as a strong champion of our military, our veterans, our women and men who wear the Canadian uniform and their families who contribute so much at times of war and peace. I also know that committee members will agree that national security will continue to be a top priority for this committee.
I would like to recognize the Honourable Senator Dennis Patterson from Nunavut as a new member for our committee.
Senator Patterson: I am happy to be back. I look forward to working with you.
The Chair: Welcome, Senator Patterson.
Finally, on behalf of the committee I would like to express our thanks to Senator Wallin, the former chair, for her commitment, contribution and leadership.
Ladies and gentlemen, today we will continue to examine and report on Canada's national security and defence policies. Earlier today as part of Operation INGITION, a task force of 160 Canadian Armed Forces personnel from across Canada, with six CF-18 Hornets from Bagotville, Quebec, and supported by a CC-150 Polaris tanker from Trenton, Ontario, completed their mission to Keflavik, Iceland. This deployment to patrol Iceland's airspace was the second under a Canadian Armed Forces periodic initiative and it supports the North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission. On behalf of our committee, I would like to extend our congratulations and special thanks to the members of the task force and to Lieutenant-Colonel Darcy Molstad, task force commander for Operation IGNITION 2013.
Canada's commitment to NATO remains strong. However, NATO is facing a future in which many of its members are planning to or have already made significant cuts to their military spending. In some cases, these cuts are not unlike what Canada experienced in the mid-1990s. At a time when the world is becoming a more dangerous place and NATO is being called upon to do more and more, many worry that the planned cuts will limit NATO's ability to assume responsibilities in Europe, North Africa and elsewhere.
With us to discuss NATO and the challenge of austerity, as their report is called, are Stuart E. Johnson, Senior Policy Analyst, and John Gordon IV, Senior Policy Analyst, at the RAND Corporation. I assume that Mr. Johnson and Mr. Gordon can hear us.
Welcome, gentlemen. We are pleased to have you here via video conference. I understand Mr. Gordon has some opening remarks. Please proceed.
John Gordon IV, Senior Policy Analyst, RAND Corporation: I will defer to my colleague and I will follow him, if I may.
The Chair: Proceed.
Stuart E. Johnson, Senior Policy Analyst, RAND Corporation: My colleague John Gordon and I are very pleased to have the opportunity to engage in a dialogue with you about the future of NATO forces, their capabilities, and how to sustain those capabilities going forward. I thought your introductory remarks framed the issue perfectly, Mr. Chair.
Of course, the context of our conversation is the pattern of reductions in defence spending, primarily and most recently among our European NATO allies. Let me start by saying that we are at an inflection point in our transatlantic alliance. If we are going to make sacrifices, if we are asking our publics to make sacrifices, we have to make these alliance strategies clear to our publics and must assure them that the burden is being shared appropriately.
NATO has a very powerful and successful record that we feel is very important to build on. It was instrumental in halting the spread of Moscow-dominated communism in Europe in the post-war period. At the end of the Cold War, it served as the key institution to begin integrating the central European states away from Moscow's sphere and into our Euro-Atlantic community. It also provided the appropriate structure for accommodating a reunified Germany into our security system without fear of aggression on their part.
When it came to reflective action in the Balkans or a coordinated effort in Afghanistan, NATO largely delivered. However, all trouble is not behind us, as the chair carefully pointed out. There is still work to be done to provide a secure institution for several Balkan nations with unresolved disputes, and to settle those disputes. There is a need to engage with the caucuses in Central Asian states to ensure that they look to our Euro-Atlantic community as they develop their future security strategy. Aside from those countries being in key geographic regions, a number of those states are significant energy producers, which makes stability there all the more desirable.
In short, when collective action has been needed, NATO has been and will be the prominent organization of like- minded democratic nations to bring collective action to bear.
The way forward is not simple. As the chair mentioned, fiscal pressures, particularly among our European allies, has caused an across-the-board drop in defence spending for all but two of our transatlantic allies. This is already affecting the capability that such spending buys. Over time, that is projected to be more serious.
As someone who served for some years at NATO headquarters doing force planning, I have noticed an even more serious trend: These cuts have not been carefully coordinated with an eye to minimizing their impact on alliance capabilities as a whole. I will cite two examples that we mentioned in our report that we find particularly troublesome.
The United Kingdom, in accommodating reductions in their defence budget, has cut the number of ground forces that it can deploy and sustain outside its borders. It has typically been able to deploy and sustain two brigades of army forces outside its border. It will now be able to sustain only one brigade outside its border. That is a serious cut into a very important capability that the alliance has depended on since the end of the Cold War.
While it is a smaller country, the Netherlands is another example of the lack of coordination alliance-wide. When the Netherlands had to take cuts, it let those cuts fall heavily on their ability to mount shallow-water operations and maritime surveillance. These are key capabilities going forward, and they are in short supply in the alliance. There is growing activity around and attention to confined waters and shallow waters, such as the Mediterranean, to be sure; the Gulf of Aden, where piracy has proven to be a very difficult challenge; and there is a possibility of instability in the Baltic as well. Therefore, we need to put the brakes on the Netherlands' loss of capability for shallow-water operations and maritime surveillance.
The NATO solution, at least the declared policy of solution, is smart defence to encourage greater cooperation and coordination among NATO countries in procuring and training military forces. That is very admirable, but it is only as good as the resources that the alliance countries have to work with.
I will finish by saying that we need a two-pronged change in direction. First, put the brakes on these cuts in defence resources. Second, we require more careful coordination across the alliance on future challenges that the alliance will face.
With that, I would like to pass things to my colleague John Gordon, who has some supplementary remarks to make.
Mr. Gordon: My remarks will be brief.
First off, I would like to say that I was in southern Afghanistan in early 2007. I was very fortunate to be stationed there with the Canadian Forces in Kandahar. Being a former U.S. Army officer, I can honestly say to you that I was very impressed with the Canadian Armed Forces that I was hosted by for several weeks in southern Afghanistan. The Canadian Forces had just come off a very difficult year in 2006. I was very much impressed with their professionalism and their military capability in one of the most difficult parts of that country.
I have some remarks to supplement and echo what my friend and colleague said. Since the late 1940s, NATO has been a key contributor to European and Atlantic security and unity. The Cold War was in no small part won by the alliance framework that NATO created. For over 60 years, the ability of the militaries of many European nations, Canada and the United States to interact and operate together has been facilitated and enhanced by NATO. NATO has been and is still important.
However, cuts being made by NATO European nations are significant; there is no getting around that. When it takes the combined efforts of several European NATO nations to be able to deploy and sustain a single division outside of Europe, that is telling, and that will be the unfortunate reality in the near future, by roughly the middle of this decade.
It is important to note that many in the U.S. government and military will — indeed, some already have — start to think differently about militaries of the European members of NATO. For example, at mid-decade, the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force and the British Army all combined will be smaller than the United States Marine Corps. That is something that does not go unnoticed by the senior members of the American military and other parts of the American government.
The challenge for NATO's European members is how to stave off further cuts, serious as those are; to better coordinate their actions by coordinating their planning efforts better; and understanding how to better utilize and reduce the forces that they will have by mid-decade.
The Chair: Thank you very much, gentlemen. I would like to lead off with one question, and then we will put it to the floor here.
I would like to first refer to the paper that you provided to us earlier: NATO and the Challenges of Austerity. In that paper, you noted:
. . . the air, land, and sea forces of key U.S. European allies are rapidly reaching the point where they can only perform one moderate-sized operation at a time and will be hard-pressed to meet the rotation requirements of a protracted, small-scale irregular warfare mission.
Post-Afghanistan, post-Libya and taking into account the situation in Mali, are you optimistic about the future of NATO in view of the comments that we have just heard?
Mr. Gordon: As we both said, NATO is and will continue to be important. NATO has done a tremendous service, not only for European and Atlantic stability, but it has done very tremendous service for global stability in the last 60- some years that NATO has been in existence.
Since the end of the Cold War, real threats to the interests of most European countries have come largely from outside of Europe, with the problems in the Balkans being a notable exception. Therefore, more so than in NATO's past history, the ability to deploy and sustain forces outside Europe, possibly for protracted periods of time, is very important, as Iraq and Afghanistan have shown. Future crises, at least in Africa or wherever else they may be, are showing that those challenges remain.
The question now is: Will NATO have the capacity to undertake operations like that, realizing that some of these go on for protracted periods of time? If they do last for protracted periods of time, you need a sufficient rotation base to support brigade or multi-brigade operations. With the size of these militaries being reduced and with the levels we can support, it is without question difficult for them to do that.
Mr. Johnson: I feel, as Mr. Gordon does, that the intention is not on the horizon for the United States or a cluster of NATO allies to engage in an operation of the scale of Iraq or Afghanistan in the short term. The idea that we can avoid stabilization operations altogether is also unreasonable because these things happen. Often the only response is to be able to deploy quickly, stabilize a situation, and then and only then remove. If we are right on the edge of our allies' capability to do so, it limits our policy options greatly.
Senator Dallaire: Gentlemen, we are allowed two questions, and I hope we will have time for a second round.
My first question comes from the argument of NATO as the security instrument that you speak of where conflicts are imploding nations and failing states that are out-of-area. As an example, south of the Sahara is an area of concern. If the UN is giving mandates that NATO fulfills by providing the security forces that the UN does not have — and many nations prefer going into a mission with a UN mandate versus simply a NATO mandate — why does NATO not look at its role as being first in and first out, as was coined for a period of time? They go in with significant capabilities — command and control and logistics, as well as the kinetic capability — and then stabilize the scenario for a follow- on force by the UN that nations could help to build and train, thereby giving the Security Council much more command and control and strategic planning capabilities to run these things. Why not take a specific dimension of the problem versus looking at the protracted employment of NATO?
Mr. Johnson: I largely agree with what you said. I feel that as we go forward we will increasingly see ourselves in operations to stabilize out-of-area operations. Invariably, a UN mandate will be very helpful and significant but it takes the UN a long time to implement, if it can. I share your view that NATO is the obvious group to implement.
Let me give a slightly different perspective on what is likely. It is likely that fast-breaking operations, as we saw in Mali, require a lead nation to take action quickly, as France did. NATO must then be ready to support the lead nation. You put your finger on a number of capabilities that are important. My argument to the NATO leadership is that of course the number of troops is important but for an operation like Mali, which may be repeated in other places, the key enabling capabilities for NATO or African Union forces certainly would be transport, surveillance, precision strike and deployable logistics to support the indigenous forces that we hope will very quickly take the lead from France, in the case of Mali.
Security would be very well served with NATO focusing on the ability to enable local forces, which was the implication of your statement.
Senator Dallaire: Let us take another angle. The UN has been arguing for some time that it wants regional capabilities to be built up — the African Union as an example — to have rapid reaction capabilities so that an African standby force can be initially deployed. We are not seeing a lot of support for that. The European Union has 1 (German/Netherlands) Corps, which is nothing more than a paper tiger. Whether the European Union could actually put a force together without the Americans is still very questionable.
If NATO is looking at its employment in the future, why is it not encouraging other capabilities to be built up to have that initial strike and strategic planning deployment capability and to be replaced in these protracted operations that will continue to be protracted? We are going into those places for 5, 10 or 15 years. We have been in Cyprus for 50 years. Why not assist in building regional capabilities as part of the mandate?
Mr. Johnson: I agree with you. I did not mean to contradict that in what I said. Capacity building is an imperfect science. The NATO alliance and individual countries are well served in continuing to invest capability in that area — to build the capacity of indigenous local forces. I would say that the strategic concept for NATO could be an initial deployment, because there may have to be forces that are capable of staunching a bleeding situation and then heading over expeditiously to indigenous forces. It takes the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, time to get the political structure in place and then to get the forces on the ground.
In Mali we have seen an uneven response on the part of African forces, with Chad being the exception as they were rather prompt in getting capable forces there. The initial deployment may still have to have a substantial NATO element to it, certainly in transporting indigenous forces. I would agree with you that indigenous regional forces ought to be put quickly in the forefront; and NATO should deliberately plan on enabling capabilities to allow them to perform well. Again, the two key enablers are surveillance and reconnaissance, and logistical transport support.
Senator Nolin: Thank you very much, Mr. Gordon and Mr. Johnson, for accepting our invitation. We had the privilege of reading Mr. Larrabee's abstract. His first recommendation dealing with the European allies is that they should pool and share resources to help mitigate the impact of defence budget cuts.
That echoes the Obama administration recommendation. It also echoes the interesting speech that Ambassador Vershbow made in Oslo in February, where he went a little bit further. You were probably there when he delivered his speech. I have been around NATO circles — and I am not alone — for almost 20 years. Let me first read something to my colleagues so that they at least have the flavour of Ambassador Vershbow's speech:
I would suggest promoting efforts — in both NATO and the European Union — to work towards a collective European full spectrum military capability to balance that of the United States.
On paper it looks very good, and I want to hear your comments. For the last 20 years, NATO has been trying to sit down with the EU to come up with a common understanding to try to do things better. How can we seriously look into the ambassador's proposal and see the future as bright? I would love to see the future as bright, but I cannot see that. What is your opinion?
Mr. Johnson: I share your skepticism about the idea that pooling and sharing resources and effort will allow us to substantially stretch the resources available to NATO. Let me first be pessimistic and then a bit more optimistic.
My pessimism grows from looking at the attempts that our continental European allies, in particular, have made to pool their resources and share the cost of a program, particularly the European fighter program.
The problem that this program has run into is that the administrative structure has become so burdensome. The need to negotiate where parts are going to be built, where they are going to be assembled and who is going to make what contribution and the inability of the countries to maintain their financial commitment as governments change makes this ideal very nice, but I think it will not lead to a strategic leap forward.
Where does pooling and sharing work? Pooling and sharing works when it is bottom-up instead of top-down. When Belgium and the Netherlands got together to work on naval, submarine warfare and countermine systems, this worked very well. They quietly extended cooperation to that portion of the German Navy that works in shallow water operations and, eventually, to the Danish Navy. When it is bottom-up, I think it can be very helpful, and there is a track record of success there. I have yet to see a top-down consortium of our European allies, particularly our continental European allies, that has not been bogged down by the administrative burden and the expense that goes with that.
Pooling and sharing sounds good. Ambassador Vershbow is very intelligent, very capable and a thoughtful policy- maker. I am reserving my judgment on how much we can expect from this. I think less than the rhetoric would imply.
Mr. Gordon: I have two quick comments to supplement what Mr. Johnson said. You will recall that, in his opening remarks, he mentioned that, in this current round of cuts announced by Britain and European countries, unfortunately there was little attempt to integrate those. You had strictly national decisions: We are doing away with tanks. We are doing away with minesweepers. We are doing away with maritime patrol aircraft. Pooling and sharing is not a new idea. NATO has tried things like this for many, many years. Given the magnitude of the cuts being made today, there is some more urgency to this concept. However, I think, as Mr. Johnson mentioned, that this current round of cuts was unfortunately done in a rather unilateral matter by most of these countries. For pooling and sharing to work, that must be fixed. You have to have a more coordinated, integrated international approach as to who will maintain what force structure or capability.
An additional cautionary note is that if you are going to rely on one or two countries to provide all of a certain type of capability, of course, when a crisis actually occurs, there will still be national decisions on whether we will participate or not. This is the problem that a lot of the European countries had when the Germans did not want to participate in the operations in Libya. Basically, two major European air forces in NATO had the suppression of air defence capability — the German Luftwaffe and the Italian Air Force. When the Luftwaffe did not come to participate in the Libyan operation, it put a disproportionate burden on the Italians. Had the Americans not been available, it would have been a problem.
Again, those are just a couple of cautionary examples. Essentially, pooling and sharing are good things, but, as both of us have said, it is not a panacea.
Senator Nolin: I totally agree with you. When I was reading, there were two key phrases from the ambassador: "specialization by default,'' which you just explained, and "specialization by design,'' which is preferable. I, too, had in mind the German withdrawal at the last minute. The minister is no longer there to explain the decision he took at that time, so that is for another day.
Let us be positive, as you said, Mr. Johnson. In his remarks, the ambassador is referring to 24 projects that have been accepted by the NAC and, I presume, labelled as smart defence. Can you expand a bit more? I think you have already mentioned a few, but can you explain, for the benefit, of my colleagues those famous European projects labeled as smart defence?
Mr. Johnson: There are a number that have been repackaged and presented as part of those initial projects, and there are others that are in development. Many of them are in the aviation or the maritime field.
I will give you the classes. The classes that I think will be most successful are those that have a lead nation with a consortium cooperating. The example of the German development of the Leopard 2 tank was a good one. They began the program, and then, from the ground up, other countries joined, contributed to production costs and brought the Leopard 1 and, later, the Leopard 2 into their force structure.
As for the U.S. F-16 program, the value of that program was that the United States said, "We are going to lead a consortium building the F-16,'' then later the F-18, which was a smaller consortium, but it was also successful. We focused on current, proven technology. Those programs that focus on current, proven technology tend to be very successful because proven technology is accessible to a broad spectrum of our NATO allies.
We should be careful, if we are going into a multinational program, that there is not high technology risk with what we are doing.
There does not have to be. Extant military technology resides almost entirely amongst us and our allies. Moscow has really slowed down its ability to fill up modern systems. With those programs that meet the criterion of proven technology, preferably a lead nation that has already done a great deal of technology and a bottom-up organization as opposed to starting with a top-down structure and trying to manage a program from the top down. Those are the ingredients for success.
Senator Mitchell: I am quite interested in NATO, the challenges of austerity to which you have referred — and it is from RAND — and the recommendations, in particular the one about Germany being encouraged to take on greater responsibility for ensuring security and stability in Eastern Europe. First, can you give us a quick rundown of what you feel the threat is there? Second, could you indicate whether this kind of recommendation and that type of initiative would be commensurate with strengthening NATO or a de facto admission that NATO is weakening?
Mr. Johnson: That is a very good question, but it also tees up the issue of what NATO will focus on. My take is that the big problems that we as an alliance face are not a massive invasion of Russian forces into Eastern Europe, but instabilities in the Mediterranean littoral, piracy in the Gulf of Aden, instability in energy production and transportation in the Middle East, Asia and the Caucasus, and of course instability in places like Mali.
What about Moscow, though? Whenever we have talked to our Central European allies, they are still plenty worried about Moscow. We did a review for the Polish Ministry of National Defence for what security environment they were in — history has dealt them a bad hand, of course — and how they can leverage their membership in the alliance to provide for their security. I came away from that study with two conclusions. One was that, fortunately, Russia was crumbling in trying to keep its forces equipped with modern capable equipment. It was having trouble maintaining capable forces and a capable officer corps. It was also limited in its ability to project power. The Poles disagree. The Poles were plenty worried about Moscow. The Baltic states, particularly Estonia, are plenty worried about Moscow, as are other Central European countries.
Who is the obvious candidate to provide ground reaction forces? It is Germany. When I first had these discussions with Poland, I thought Poland still had bad memories of a strong German armed force. However, the Poles surprised me in saying that they were very concerned or nervous about the cuts that Germany was making in their defence capabilities because they very much saw Berlin as a counterweight to Moscow.
That is what we were talking about. I do not expect an overland invasion, but we must have a certain deterrence, if for no other reason than to curb anything crazy a new leadership in Moscow might do and to keep our Central European allies confident in their security while we — "we'' being the U.S., Canada and allies further west in Europe, the U.K. and France — look to addressing with other allies the real sources I see of instability going forward.
Mr. Gordon: If I could add to that, I was fortunate to also participate in that study for the Poles. Mr. Johnson and I worked together and, to be frank, I was somewhat taken aback about how concerned the Poles still were about the Russian threat. It was quite real. They were exaggerating to some extent, I believe. It was, nevertheless, a concern on their part.
Going along with what Mr. Johnson just mentioned, I think that there was a clear perception among a number of the European defence officials that we spoke with outside Germany that they saw a real change in German attitudes. They were using Libya as a very recent example of this. They perceived that, barring some very undeniable threat to German security interests, the likelihood of Germans being willing to participate in operations was very low. Again, they had the Libya experience staring them right in the face in the recent past. Germany is the wealthiest and most populous country in NATO Europe. The role Mr. Johnson has talked about of reassuring Eastern European members of NATO that NATO is behind them is a reasonable role to expect of the Germans in the future.
Again, I cannot emphasize enough the strong feeling of the other European defence officials we spoke to. They think that because of the attitudinal changes in Germany, the likelihood of the Germans being willing to go out of area is very small.
Senator Mitchell: My second question addresses the issue being raised with respect to cooperation and pooling as a way of counteracting austerity initiatives, specifically with respect to the velocity of technological development in the weapons of war and the possibility that some countries will jump way past other countries — if not frequently from time to time — and other countries will either not have the predisposition or the money to get there. Is that not another erosion of the real potential for interoperability and the emphasis that seems to be placed upon it?
Mr. Johnson: Yes, it is, and I am concerned about it. The French, based on their experience in Mali, have begun talking with us in the United States for transfer of technology in the unmanned aerial vehicle area, the drones.
Now, it is not so much the airframe anymore; it is the electronics in that airframe, of course. They want to make sure that any unmanned aerial vehicles — that is, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, collection vehicles that they deploy — are interoperable with U.S. systems so that if the U.S. supplements French, or more broadly NATO forces as we did in Libya, that they have access to the information that we are developing through these drone flights and that they can share information with us.
At least France and the U.S., and I am sure Canada and the U.K. as well, recognize that the key capability that we can bring to these kinds of operations is not large cadres of manpower but rather information; it is dominance of information on the battlefield. That gave the French very high leverage in Mali as they drove the invaders for the most part — insurgents less so — out of the north of Mali.
I am afraid that is a long answer to a short question, Senator Mitchell, but I think you have put your finger on an area where NATO will be well served by planning that delivery. Right now it is ad hoc.
Senator Mitchell: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Senator Buth: You have made some comments in terms of collaboration and pooling. I am interested in your comments about niche capabilities or niche specialization. Can you describe what this means? Perhaps you can provide examples. Are there niche specializations that you would see as being particularly suitable for Canada?
Mr. Johnson: My comment about the Dutch decision to reduce — almost eliminate — its shallow-water maritime capabilities is a very good example. The Netherlands is a small country. It is a serious member of the alliance, and its contribution was really one that was in short supply in the alliance.
By the way, in preparing this study, when I sat down with the Dutch planners in The Hague, they said that they actually queried NATO headquarters: "We are about to make our cuts; where would they be the least damaging to alliance capabilities as a whole?'' The Dutch claimed that the NATO force planners were not able to give them a good answer, so they went with what they did.
I think that is an example, senator, of a niche capability that was important. NATO should have let them know that was important and said, "By all means, prevent cuts in your shallow-water, constricted maritime capability.''
To the extent that we need large assemblies of ground forces on the continent of Europe to give our essential European allies a feeling of security with Russia to their east, I think it would be a very useful niche capability to lean on Germany to maintain a sizable ground force and mobilization-capable forces to expand as needed.
I would see deep-water naval forces as an area where we can do more sharing or pooling. Again, bottom-up is the important rule. The Franco-British agreement to share naval forces, to sometimes share crew on the naval forces and to share aircraft on the carriers will have a multiplicative effect and will be very useful. Again, it is bottom-up and a matter of who countries negotiate with when no one has told them that top-down should be done.
As fond as I am of my time as a force planner at NATO headquarters and of my colleagues there, I think it is better that NATO keep track of these things. However, the formation of the pooling cannot be successful if it is top-down.
Mr. Gordon: I can offer an example. The senator asked a question about the capability of the Canadian Armed Forces. One of your colleagues mentioned earlier in this discussion the idea of building capacity in the militaries and police forces in some countries — in Africa, for instance, just to pick a problem place where they need to have capacity building. I think the Canadian Armed Forces, ever since the 1940s, have a lot of experience in peace operations around the world and recent combat experience, as well, in the case of Afghanistan.
Given the fact that the Canadian military already has the reputation of conducting peace operations in many parts of the world under the auspices of the UN, in some cases you have advantage over the Americans because you do not necessarily bring some of the baggage with you that the American military would to these places.
To the extent that picking out selected areas to contribute to regional stability with appropriate mentoring and appropriate capacity building of probably both their military forces and police forces — that could be a very useful capability for Canadians to provide.
Senator Day: You are getting us all thinking about the term "smart defence'' that the secretary general has been promoting. I was concerned when the Secretary General of NATO started using the term, because I was not sure that it meant the same thing. It was defined clearly enough that it meant the same thing to everyone, and now Secretary General Rasmussen is going around saying that it was not intended to tell nations that they could spend less money but that they were supposed to be spending it more wisely. You have undoubtedly seen those comments.
Did the term come along before nations started cutting back on defence expenditures as a result of the economic downturn, or has this just been a convenient opportunity that came about as a result of the economic downturn that this term "smart defence'' started to be used?
Mr. Gordon: I will start off the discussion. Given Mr. Johnson's experience as a NATO planner, I know he will pick up on this very quickly.
As I mentioned earlier in the discussion, this is not completely new. There was the idea of NATO specialization. That term was being used back in the 1970s and 1980s; certain nations would specialize in certain capabilities. We know now because of the depths of the cuts and the very much-reduced levels of capability and force structure that they have really given more urgency to this. Again, this is not necessarily a new idea.
Mr. Johnson: I will generally agree with your headline, but I think it entails telling a more nuanced story.
Senator Day, as Mr. Gordon says, my observation is that there have always been committees in and oversight at NATO that encourage countries to pool their resources to more effectively purchase capabilities. However, my take on smart defence is that it is very much exactly as you say — that these cuts were coming. To make a virtue of necessity, or at least to minimize the damage cuts would do, as one of his first initiatives, the secretary general put out this smart defence initiative. I must tell you that I do not know whether he would have put it out anyway without the pressure of fiscal cuts in defence spending; but the two are definitely correlated. It makes the best of a bad situation and is a solution, a suggestion, an initiative that will be helpful on the margins but certainly will not compensate for the real cuts in forces that we have seen in the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands and other key allies.
Senator Day: My next question relates to what is happening on the ground. In terms of the specialization that we have been discussing today, is it conceivable that we could expand the role of NATO where there is a pooled known asset, whether by a group within NATO and not necessarily all of NATO participating in all of the activities? I am thinking of the Airborne Warning and Control System, AWACS, as an example of pooled ownership that avoids the difficulty of nations having the choice of participating in the mission and, if a nation is putting that particular asset forward alone, whether that asset will be available when it is needed. I am not sure where they are with respect to transportation and the C-17 purchase by NATO as a pooled asset as opposed to one nation making an aircraft available for airlift when needed. Is it conceivable that we could grow that pooled asset ownership?
Mr. Johnson: The particular example you chose of the pool of transport aircraft, to which a number of nations contribute and pay the operating costs when it is used, is a very good one. It has largely been successful and provides a good model. The AWACS experience has turned out to provide a bad model. I was surprised and NATO headquarters was surprised when Germany forbade its crews from taking part in the operation; and that crippled the effectiveness of those assets. There are ways of configuring a NATO transport program in a way that does not give an individual nation a veto power over the deployment of the asset by withholding its crews, as long as it is a NATO-agreed operation, such as support to the French in Mali.
Mr. Gordon: I agree. Certainly, the idea you pose is in line with the spirit and probably the letter of the law of what the secretary general is hoping for with pooling and sharing. However, the devil is always in the details of these things. Will a country elect to participate and commit its assets? The American military establishment will be watching this very, very carefully because in some future operation, one or two key capabilities might be held by one or two European NATO members and those countries might elect not to participate in an operation, such as minesweeping or suppression of air defence. For example, the Italians and the Germans were the only NATO air forces with significant capability in Libya.
If in some future operations one or two NATO countries, which have theoretically signed up for the concept you describe, elect not to participate, it will have a telling effect on the American attitude toward NATO from that point and beyond. American leadership will look increasingly toward bilateral relationships with certain European NATO members or with a trusted few, for example the British and the French. They can come along and participate in an out- of-area of operation so they will deal with them only because of what just happened in a recent operation where country A or country B had a key capability and elected not to participate. That will always be the danger. American leadership will be watching this very carefully to see how it will play out, but with Libya already providing one point of view.
Senator Day: I would like to go down this line of questioning a little further, but my time has run out. I appreciate your comments.
Senator Patterson: Gentlemen, you talked about the main threats being to coastal states. I understand that Britain and the Netherlands have eliminated their maritime surveillance capabilities, virtually, even though the U.K. had at one point talked about shared NATO capability for maritime surveillance, perhaps akin to the AWACS model. Do you have any comments on the implications of the British and Dutch governments' decisions to eliminate their maritime surveillance capabilities and where we go from here?
Mr. Johnson: This is an extension of what I mentioned about the Dutch cutting out their shallow-water maritime craft. As you point out correctly, they are also in the process of standing down their maritime surveillance aircraft, which the Brits are also doing. This is a case, in my opinion, of a mismatch of the challenges we face going forward and individual decisions by nations. The European allies will be increasingly challenged by operations in shallow, unconfined waters. The Gulf of Aden and the Mediterranean Sea are the most obvious but we must not forget the Baltic Sea. The British and the Dutch are not on the littoral of the Mediterranean or the Baltic. My take is that the decision was made more or less in isolation. My colleagues at NATO headquarters, and I was one of them, have to do a better job at articulating the criticality of these capabilities in collective defence. With a good deal of reluctance, I agree with what you have put your finger on. Only pressure from other allies in NATO will turn these kinds of decisions around or prevent more of them.
Mr. Gordon: I have nothing to add to that.
Senator Patterson: I will turn to the United States, which has made an enormous contribution to NATO. Some commentators have argued that perhaps the United States could focus more on the contribution to smart defence by eliminating Cold War era weapon systems and by looking at ending waste in the U.S. defence budget. Could you comment on the argument that the U.S. could do more to apply smart defence thinking in its planning and procurement?
Mr. Gordon: There are very recent articles in the American defence media. Questions are being asked, for example —
The Chair: I would like to thank you, gentlemen, for your patience. I do not know if it was your connection or our connection. However, technology does have a way of failing, and then we have a way of fixing it. Here we are again. I know Senator Patterson is eagerly awaiting your reply to his question, so if you could proceed, that would be great. Thank you.
Mr. Gordon: I do not know exactly what moment we cut off. When our screen went dark, I was just remarking that there have been very recent articles coming out and in our conversations with the people in the defence department that we deal with. Although the American military will have a lot of money in the future — there is no question about it — there was clearly a downward trend in the American defence budget even before the sledgehammer of sequestration came down. I think you are starting to see serious discussions, probably more so than at any time since the American military started to draw down at the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, taking a serious look at redundancies. The cuts across the American military will not be even. It is likely that the air force and the navy will come out rather better than the army and the marine corps because the ground forces were used intensively in Iraq and Afghanistan and those operations are coming to an end. As Mr. Johnson mentioned, there will be a strategic pivot in the direction of Asia, although the ground forces will have an important role in making contact with militaries in that part of the world, some of which are faced with problems of insurgencies. I think that, in relative terms, the air force might do rather better, in the foreseeable future, than the army and the marine corps.
However, there are questions being asked about unnecessary redundancies, such as: Why do we need to maintain so many helicopters across all four of the services? Those are very expensive systems to acquire, to maintain and to train with. The same question is being asked about why so many fixed-wing fighter aircraft have to be maintained in the marine corps, the navy and the air force. Some of these questions have not been asked in a serious way since the American military started to come down, rather significantly, at the end of the Cold War. A lot can probably be done. I think the reduced budget forces one to take a harder look than has been taken in a long time at the need to maintain these capabilities that we could probably shed a bit of.
Mr. Johnson: I largely agree with that. I have to confess that I think that it will be very difficult for us to maintain the manpower in our ground forces that we have in the past. Personnel have become very expensive in the United States and other NATO allied countries, and one gains savings very quickly by reducing personnel.
That may not be a bad thing as long as the future unfolds as we think it will, which is that the United States will not be involved in large land warfare or extended stability operations, but will be more in an enabling role to local forces. We will engage robustly in building partner capacities so that it is a Moroccan soldier on the street, not a U.S., French or Malian soldier on the street.
That said, the process will be very imperfect and I am one of those who questions whether we are going to be able to afford a sizable air force if we try to press forward with the large purchases that are planned for the Joint Strike Fighter. I think we will see some compromises that do not have us in the forefront of the highest tech, short range, light payload tactical aircraft but that do preserve our dominance, our superiority in modern battlefield capabilities, surveillance and reconnaissance, precision strike and rapid mobility.
Senator Dallaire: I think it is also one of the wisest decisions being taken, even within NATO, that the U.S. not be a lead nation any more, that it kicks some butt in a number of other countries to be lead nations and that you hold a supporting role. I think that would be advantageous in coming to grips with a number of these conflicts that could perhaps be handled by middle powers with reinforcements in certain specialties rather than by the big powers.
The reduction in personnel, in size, particularly in the army, is a dangerous exercise to entertain when you look at the monies they are trying to save going into other areas. I explain it the following way. It is one thing to cut your regular force, but if you are not building or sustaining your reserve force, you are literally cutting significant capabilities. I have not seen NATO pushing to see a counterbalance in building capacity within the reserve forces as they are cutting regular forces.
On the contrary, if we use the Brits as an example, they cut 17 major units. They have kept all the bands, but they have cut the units. However, they just announced in their 10-year budget that they will spend £35 billion on upgrading their nuclear capability. Why are we upgrading an absolutely useless weapons system while we are taking away capabilities of responding to what we are discussing, which will be far more fractious, out-of-area, imploding-nation scenarios? Where is their logic and where was NATO when the Brits decided to put so much money in a nuclear capability?
Mr. Gordon: This is an example of these national decisions. Some countries, like the Brits and the French, are used to maintaining a "full spectrum capability'' in the nuclear arena.
When we looked at the British case in this study, they were in a particularly awkward situation because they almost had a perfect storm of modernization needs coming together at one time. They had the very large two aircraft carriers they were building, and it is becoming quite apparent they will only be able to operate or retain one of the two. They needed new airplanes for those carriers. They have a capability gap now because the Sea Harriers are gone, the RAF Harriers are going and they do not have the Joint Strike Fighter yet.
They needed the new airplanes for these ships and were determined to retain their strategic nuclear deterrent, which meant expensive new submarines to maintain this independent strategic nuclear deterrent. In the British case, they had almost a perfect storm of simultaneous requirements coming together with huge price tags on a number of these things. It is a very difficult situation for them and they have elected to try to maintain all of this capability but at reduced levels. Go to three submarines instead of the four Vanguards that they had before. Maintain the aircraft carrier capability with appropriate airplanes but at a lower level than the Royal Navy used to have in the past. There is a price. As defence budgets are coming down, the countries want all these capabilities. There is a price that usually has to be paid in terms of quantity. As we have both said, a lot of these decisions by all these countries, not just the British, were made in a unilateral manner.
Mr. Johnson: I would say that what the senator has pointed out indicates, with your background, a problem that NATO is having in this environment, which is: "Okay, we think we need a deterrent nuclear capability. We think we still need other things. Where do we reduce?'' We reduce our ability to deploy ground forces, which is a very important alliance priority.
The Chair: We will suspend for a few minutes, if we can get connected here. If it takes too long, we will go in camera.
(The committee suspended.)
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(The committee resumed.)
The Chair: I will call the meeting back to order. We apologize once again, gentlemen, for the technical difficulties we are experiencing here. Perhaps we can proceed again.
We will return to Senator Dallaire. Please finish with your response. We only have two more questioners and then hopefully we can conclude the meeting without any further interference. Thank you.
Senator Dallaire: You were bringing us along with regard to the response to the British exercise they have committed to in terms of reducing capability and essentially deciding, in reducing their expeditionary capability, to keep the spectrum of systems available. There was also the fact that such was not necessarily what NATO wanted or what NATO engaged in. In so doing, maybe they have taken the wrong route. Do you sustain that position?
Mr. Johnson: I sustain that position indeed, senator. I think the contribution that the U.K. can make to our collective security and our collective ability to act is much better developed if they would focus on their expeditionary capability and their shallow-water/confined-water maritime capability.
My own view is that sizable, strategic nuclear forces are no longer at the core of our security needs.
Senator Dallaire: Well done.
Mr. Johnson: I have exaggerated a little bit, but not much.
Senator Dallaire: Perfect. You are right on line.
Senator Nolin: I cannot leave without asking a question about Canada. With respect to the priority Canada places on its membership to NATO, do you have any advice to give our government?
Mr. Johnson: I will repeat that deployable maritime capability is very important. We are not worried about our own shores, at least not now — which is good — but the ability to deploy maritime capability is very useful. We have the ability to assist indigenous forces when necessary, or an ally that takes the lead, as the French did in Mali, with transport aircraft, which Canada has a force of. We also have the ability to support indigenous forces or an ally with deployable logistics and with refueling capabilities. These are very important enablers. You have need of them in your own national security planning, since we still have and will have for a very long time peaceful borders here in North America.
The ability that we have in our Armed Forces to deploy forces is very important and serves an additional advantage of providing key enabling capabilities to indigenous forces or European allies to take the lead in a difficult situation, as the French did in Mali.
I will let Mr. Gordon address the contribution that your Armed Forces could make in building partnership capacity.
Mr. Gordon: We were actually chatting about that, senator, when we lost the video with you. As your colleague mentioned earlier in the discussion, Canada has a long track record, particularly under the auspices of the United Nations, of providing peacekeeping forces around the world.
As we discussed earlier, the value of providing capacity building for key nations, be they in Africa or elsewhere, could be a very useful contribution by the Canadian military, especially now that there are so many Canadian officers and NCOs who have gotten recent combat experience in the past few years. They would add to your ability to provide useful mentoring to other countries, both in terms of military forces and possibly national police forces.
So many of the countries deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan found themselves — whether they wanted to or not — having to build capability for the military as well as the police forces. Therefore, I think that would be a useful contribution from Canada.
Mr. Johnson: In the context of a niche contribution, some areas of the Maghreb and West Africa are francophone countries where French assistance may not be welcome, such as Algeria in particular. We want to keep these nations looking to our Atlantic community and to build up their forces. This is an area where Canada could make a very low investment for a high-leverage, high-payoff role.
Senator Day: Canada withdrew from the NATO consortium with respect to AWACS. You are from outside Canada. I would appreciate hearing your perception of what message that sent to our NATO allies with respect to Canada's position in NATO and world security.
Mr. Johnson: I will have to answer this generally. When I was in NATO headquarters, I had more insight into this than I have now. Any time a country withdraws from a joint elective commitment, it creates a good deal of suspicion about the reliability of that ally to be taken into other collective agreements.
You have cited an area where the pooling of resources is important and can be useful; and we have talked about the German case. Where a cooperative effort is working, it is important that we be reliable in our contribution.
Mr. Gordon: I have nothing to add.
Senator Day: You have been very diplomatic.
The Chair: Thank you very much, gentlemen, for your presentation and for sharing your insights with us. As you have said, NATO has some challenges ahead. Obviously, we face a much more complicated world with the new threats that occur every day.
Mr. Gordon: Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you very much for inviting us. We hope that both the combination of our written report and this discussion have been useful to you. We have tried to be a combination of diplomatic and frank.
[Translation]
Mr. Johnson: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am very glad to have met the members of your committee. I found the conversation very informative and helpful. Thank you and I hope we meet again soon.
Senator Nolin: I see that your stay in Brussels for a few months has paid off.
[English]
The Chair: The committee will continue in camera.
Senator Day: I move that our staff be permitted to stay.
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
(The committee continued in camera.)