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Author of the article:
The Canadian Press
Sarah Ritchie
Published on July 09, 2023 • read for 4 minutes
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will depart Ottawa on Sunday, June 25, 2023, bound for Iceland. Trudeau is heading to the NATO leaders’ summit in Lithuania this week, where Canada is likely to play a larger-than-usual role in two critical discussions: the alliance’s growing membership and its efforts to refocus on collective defense. Photo by Sean Kilpatrick /The Canadian Press
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OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is on his way to the NATO leadership summit this week in Lithuania, where Canada is likely to play a larger-than-usual role in two crucial discussions: the alliance’s growing membership and its efforts to refocus on collective defense.
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Trudeau is expected to depart Ottawa for Riga, Latvia, on Sunday evening. He will meet with that country’s leaders on Monday before heading to the Lithuanian capital on Tuesday for the first day of the NATO summit.
At last year’s Madrid summit, NATO leaders identified Russia as “the most significant and immediate threat to the security of allies and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area” in a strategic concept paper declaring their intention to strengthen deterrence and defense to be strengthened was set out. in the region.
That came after a meeting in Brussels in March 2022, when leaders agreed to deploy four new multinational battlegroups on the eastern flank in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, in addition to those in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
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The alliance has drawn up a new defense plan that leaders will be asked to approve in Vilnius, a plan described as a return to the Cold War stance.
“What we’re seeing now is basically a return to NATO’s core business,” said Tim Sayle, a NATO historian and professor at the University of Toronto.
He said it also likely means a return to more challenging negotiations between members as they decide on defense policy and procurement, as they debate whether to admit Sweden and Ukraine. And on both issues, he said, allies will look to Canada.
“Rarely are there peaks where Canada would be the center of all elements, but I think (it) is here,” Sayle said.
“Canada has to make a decision about its role in the Ukraine discussion, but it also has to make a decision about Canadian defense spending and what kind of ally Canada is going to be.”
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Adm. Rob Bauer, the chairman of NATO’s military committee, told the media at a July 3 briefing that the new defense plan is split into three parts: the southeastern area including the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, the central area of the Baltic states to the Alps and the High North and the Atlantic region.
Once the plans are approved, the real work begins. “Then we have to go and do our job to reach the greater number of forces with higher readiness. We have to practice against the plans, we have to buy the capabilities that we need,” Bauer said.
More money is needed for that. Only about a third of NATO members meet the agreed target of spending two percent of their GDP on defense, including a commitment to spend one-fifth of that money on equipment.
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Bauer said he expects two percent to be the spending minimum, rather than the target, by the time the summit is over.
“There is perhaps a stronger connection than ever before between the new defense plans, the new defense investment commitment and the NATO defense planning process,” NATO spokesman Oana Lungescu said at the July 3 briefing.
For the countries that are lagging behind, there will be increasing pressure to go one step further.
Canada spends about 1.3 percent of its GDP on defense and has no public plan to meet the current target. Defense Minister Anita Anand has insisted that Canada’s contributions to the defense of Ukraine and its leadership in leading a NATO battlegroup in Latvia are more important.
Before attending the NATO summit, Trudeau will participate in meetings on Monday with Latvia’s president, Edgars RinkÄ”viÄs, and its prime minister, KriÅ¡jÄnis Kariņš.
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Trudeau is also expected to meet Canadian forces as part of the country’s largest overseas mission.
But even in Latvia, Canada seems to be falling behind. It has been more than a year since Anand pledged to expand the battlegroup into a combat-ready brigade, and detailed plans are still being negotiated. Battlegroups typically have close to 1,000 troops, while military members in a brigade number about 3,000.
Canada has committed to sending a tank squadron of 15 Leopard 2 tanks and some 130 personnel to Latvia from this fall, but it is unclear how many more troops will join the 800 Canadians already present.
Other countries have gone further. Germany has promised to station a brigade of 4,000 soldiers in Lithuania. The United Kingdom, which leads one battlegroup in Estonia, and the United States, which leads another in Poland, tested their ability to rapidly scale up to a brigade earlier this spring.
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Leaders in Vilnius are also likely to focus on the status of Sweden and Ukraine, each of which has applied to join NATO.
Last-minute talks to get Turkiye and Hungary to side with Sweden to join have been unsuccessful. The Nordic neighbor Finland last joined in April.
If Sweden’s membership is approved, Bauer said it won’t take long to adjust defense plans.
“Sweden sits at the table every week in the military committee, in the North Atlantic Council. So they basically already know everything,” he said.
More controversial than that is the question of when Ukraine should be admitted.
Some countries are pushing for immediate membership. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said last month that he hopes for an expedited process.
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Meanwhile, Trudeau has repeatedly stated that Canada will support Ukraine’s membership “when the terms are right,” without defining what those terms are.
Sayle said it’s likely other nations will expect a clearer answer this time around, given the scale of the decision: whether a nation in the middle of an active invasion should be admitted into an alliance focused on collective defense.
“I think what NATO says about Ukrainian membership will affect both Ukrainian and Russian strategic calculations in this war, and any peace that follows,” Sayle said.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on July 9, 2023.
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