This article was published by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Washington office, the Center for North American Prosperity and Security (CNAPS.org). It originally appeared in Must Read Alaska.
By Daniel Dorman, December 18, 2024
In the 1930’s France built the Maginot Line, an array of defenses along the German border to prevent invasion. The Germans, you’ll remember from history class, simply went around it through the Belgian wilderness. The French had a blindspot – the previously impenetrable terrain of their northern neighbour.
80-some years later, America may have a similar exposed flank to the north: Canada’s Arctic.
However secure Americans feel in their well attested military superiority, trouble could be coming over the ‘top’ of the world. As global tensions rise – as a future conflict between the Russia-China axis and Western democracies seems ever more likely – Americans have every right to be frustrated with Canada’s failure to properly equip military personnel in the north and enhance continental security in a serious way.
A recent audit of Canada’s Department of National defense revealed just how threadbare Canada’s Arctic defense infrastructure has become. One investigative journalism website, blacklocks.ca, summarized the audit in stark terms: “Canada’s military is unprepared to defend the Arctic with few soldiers on deployment, few airfields fit for use by the Air Force and little winter training of combat forces.”
Canada only has 308 regular forces and 2,021 reservists in the North – leaving a third of Canada’s Joint Task Force North unstaffed. Thirty-eight percent of military buildings are more than 50 years old. The military’s equipment is either non-existent or unfit for service such that a majority of expenditure’s for Arctic defense is spent on airlifts and equipment rentals from private contractors. And, as blacklocks.ca also points out, a majority of training exercises are done in the warmer months of the year, rendering their value questionable.
All this adds up to what Canadian military historian J.L. Granatstein wrote recently, “Canada, for all practical purposes, is undefended.”
Neither Canadian nor American politicians are unaware of this. On December 6, Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, released a new Arctic Foreign Policy which, to the government’s credit, includes a section on strategic challenges and evolving security threats to the Arctic. The Arctic Foreign Policy claims: “The safety, security and defence of the Canadian Arctic comprise a fundamental priority for the Government of Canada and are critical to the collective defence of North America.” But, if that is the case, why is the military so under-resourced and under-staffed? The gap between the government’s verbiage and the progress towards equipping and modernizing the armed forces is palpable.
Earlier this year Canada also released a defense policy update, Our North Strong and Free, which was rightly focused on the Arctic, but, as defense expert Richard Shimooka explained: “From its production to the presentation of the details contained within, the government often seemed more interested in how it was perceived by the various constituencies it sought to impress.” In other words, the document was posturing for Americans more than a serious effort to fix the Canadian military’s deep set procurement and personnel woes.
What Canada’s needs isn’t posturing for friends, but, as professor Rob Huebert calls for, a serious effort to convince Canada’s “enemies that they cannot successfully attack the United States through our Arctic region.”
To paraphrase professor of Arctic studies Whitney Lackenbauer, the concern is regarding threats through the Arctic, not to the Arctic. The Canadian Arctic is an impractical place for a large-scale ground invasion, and there are no strategic goals accomplished by landing an army on Ellesmere Island or Tuktoyaktuk.
But the Canadian Arctic is an exposed flank of North America – an obvious path for cruise and hypersonic missiles to pass through on the way to targets in the United States. For this reason the Arctic has been a military theatre since the advent of nuclear weapons and the beginning of the Cold War. Sensors were placed along the DEW (Distance Early Warning) Line and the Mid-Canada Line to detect missiles with enough lead time that they could be intercepted before reaching their intended destinations. This later evolved into what we have today, the North Warning System.
Sadly, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the peaceful decades (at least for the West) that followed, Canada allowed the capabilities of the NWS and its contributions to the defense of North America through the North American Aerospace defense Command (NORAD) to diminish. We are now vulnerable to new weapons systems being developed by our adversaries that can evade our outdated defenses.
With the recent belligerence of Russia and the ascendance of China, renewed effort is required to create Fortress North America: a continent with such exquisite defense systems as to be impenetrable in the case of attack, thus deterring such an attack in the first place.
Arctic security is not about insulating the Arctic from shipping traffic, preventing a race for resources, or maintaining sovereignty over specific lands and waters. It is about protecting a vulnerable flank of North America from Chinese and Russian nuclear missiles. The United States has its hands full neutralizing threats on the Atlantic and Pacific sides. If Canada could just defend its own Arctic through increased military investment and better detection and interception capabilities, the United States could concentrate resources in other hot spots.
President-elect Donald Trump, fixated as he is on ensuring NATO allies do their part, will no doubt push Canada to rise to the challenge of Arctic security. Trump, however brash his diplomatic methods may appear, would do all North Americans a favour by forcing Canada to take its national defense commitments seriously.
Daniel Dorman is the managing editor and director of operations at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa, and the Center for North American Prosperity and Security in Washington, D.C.
