This article originally appeared in The Hub.
By Christopher Coates, March 30, 2026
The Cold War and Canada’s away game
The Canadian military was upside down.
In 1987, the Cold War was in its late stages. The superpower confrontation that had shaped global politics for four decades was still very real, but the momentum was shifting. Canada and our allies were increasing pressure on the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. That same year, the last Canadian defence white paper of the Cold War era—and the last serious Canadian defence white paper—was released, authored by Perrin Beatty, then minister of National Defence.
That white paper—and its introduction by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney—was clear about what defence was for, at that time, in that moment. It spoke not only about protecting Canadian territory, but about protecting Canada’s prosperity, our interests, and our values. And it stated plainly that the best way to do that was with and through our NATO allies.
There’s a photograph in the document with a caption that proudly declares: “Canada’s newly acquired CF-18s are state-of-the-art fighter aircraft.” At the time, they were. History has a way of humbling that kind of confidence and of putting today’s challenges in context.
The 1987 White Paper is often remembered for one controversial proposal: the idea that Canada should acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines to defend its Arctic approaches. But what tends to be forgotten is that this proposal was framed explicitly in a NATO context. The bulk of the white paper was not about sovereignty patrols or domestic emergencies; it was about driving toward a victory in the Cold War, making a serious, sustained commitment to NATO’s collective defence and the defence of Europe. The document says it outright: “Much of Canada’s defence effort is focused on Europe.”
There was also recognition of Canada’s role in peacekeeping, which by then had become part of our national self-image. And finally, there was acknowledgement of the need to protect Canada itself, particularly from overflight by Soviet strategic bombers heading toward targets in the United States. But even that mission—air defence—was conceived largely through the NORAD relationship.
In short, it was all about the away game.
I joined the Royal Canadian Air Force the year that white paper was released. Two years later, I was assigned to a Canadian squadron in Germany, flying helicopters as part of Canada’s NATO commitment. For a young officer, this was not abstract policy. This was the strategy made real: Canada forward-deployed, shoulder to shoulder with allies, preparing to fight a war that everyone hoped would never happen.
Our upside-down approach
As it turned out, Canada did not build up its forces in Europe as the Beatty White Paper had recommended. Budgets tightened. Politics shifted. The Cold War ended; I did not complete my full tour in Germany.
But while there, I noticed something important: I saw militaries that were focused, first and foremost, on their own national defence.
They operated through NATO. They trained with allies. They planned collectively. But underneath all that cooperation was a clear, unambiguous understanding: their primary mission was the defence of their own country. Their doctrine, their force structure, their logistics, and their planning all reflected that assumption.
Canada was different.
At first, I assumed the other countries were a little odd, even parochial—overly focused on their own territory. They didn’t, for the most part, deploy their forces overseas on a routine basis. We often acted like the United States: deploying abroad, operating forward, showing up. That reinforced the idea that we weren’t the odd ones.
Then, slowly, it dawned on me that my frame of reference was off. Maybe Canada’s approach to defence was the thing that was upside down.
The Canadian Forces, as an institution, were overwhelmingly focused on operations “over there,” not on defending Canada itself. This wasn’t accidental. It was cultural. It was doctrinal. It was embedded in planning assumptions and reinforced by decades of practice.
The Army exemplified this most clearly. Its culture, doctrine, and operational planning were oriented toward expeditionary operations—first in Europe, later in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. The Air Force, through NORAD, retained at least a partial connection to the defence of Canadian territory. But even there, the conceptual heavy lifting was often outsourced to the bilateral relationship with the United States.
The Royal Canadian Navy likewise focused primarily on alliance support roles: anti-submarine warfare, escort duties, and maintaining sea lines of communication between North America and Europe. These were critical contributions, and Canada performed them professionally and credibly.
Over time, the Army came to dominate the Canadian Armed Forces, numerically and culturally. And with that dominance came a set of assumptions: that threats should be dealt with far from home; that Canada was best defended by helping others; that geography and alliances would take care of the rest.
“Keep the threats over there.” This outlook didn’t just shape military planning. It seeped into the broader national mindset. Canada developed no real security culture. We produced no enduring national security strategy. Defence policy became episodic, reactive, and often symbolic.
Of course, it is sometimes difficult to separate cause and effect. The significant reductions in defence spending through the late 1980s and 1990s sharply constrained what was possible. “Contribution warfare,” Canadian-style, was often all we could afford.
Along the way, we lost something fundamental: a sense of what militaries in democracies are for. We didn’t really talk about deterrence—what it meant, what it required, or how Canada contributed to it. We didn’t talk seriously about defending Canada as a system: economically, informationally, politically, and militarily. We talked about values. We talked about multilateralism. We talked about being helpful.
We need a new mindset
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the world that allowed Canada to behave this way is gone. For much of the post–Cold War period, adversaries were limited in their ability to directly target Canada. That is no longer the case. Canada is now exceptionally vulnerable. In an increasingly competitive, connected, and technologically enabled world, those vulnerabilities represent real risks to Canada and to Canadians. And they are risks that the government has been largely unwilling to explain openly to the Canadian public.
What we are seeing now—a renewed focus on defence spending, on NATO commitments, on Arctic security—is not primarily the result of a Canadian strategic awakening. It is externally driven. It is the product of pressure, persuasion, and in some cases, outright coercion from allies who are no longer willing to carry our weight for us.
And crucially, this shift has not been accompanied by a corresponding recognition that Canada itself needs to be defended. Canadian leaders are not using this moment to educate Canadians about threats or about the role of the military. Instead, they speak in the language of modernization, affordability, and spending caps—without leading Canadians on how to think about the threats we face.
Yet an undefended rich country is not a viable rich country.
Canada’s prosperity depends on a world that is stable, predictable, and governed by rules we did not create but from which we benefit enormously. If we want to remain rich and prosperous, we need to help defend that world, and we need to defend ourselves within it.
Those two things are not opposites. They are inseparable.
Take the Arctic, for example. Arctic defence has become the safe, politically comfortable stand-in for a broader conversation about defending Canada. It allows us to talk about sovereignty without talking about vulnerability. About presence without capability. About geography without strategy.
The Arctic absolutely matters. But defending Canada is not an Arctic problem. It is a national problem that includes the Arctic.
The threats Canada faces today are comprehensive. They span the military domain, certainly—but also the economic, informational, technological, and political domains. Supply chains can be weaponized. Information can be manipulated. Infrastructure can be disrupted. Social cohesion can be targeted.
The Canadian Armed Forces cannot address this alone. Canada needs a national security culture: a shared understanding across government, industry, and society of what needs to be protected, why it matters, and how we go about doing it.
Threats are a combination of capability and intent. Capability often takes years to develop and is visible. Intent, however, can change quickly—and can be hidden, camouflaged, or denied until it is too late. A national security culture, supported by a national security strategy, would force us to grapple with that reality. Any decision to leave Canada vulnerable would be made consciously, with awareness, rather than by default or naïveté.
That begins with a national security strategy—one that actually prioritizes threats, articulates trade-offs, and involves the full breadth of government in the security of the nation. The strategy itself is not a bureaucratic exercise. In the military, we used to say, “It’s not the plan, it’s the planning.” The same applies here. What is really required is shared understanding and a cultural shift.
The act of creating a relevant strategy—and renewing it regularly—is about building that culture. It provides a common language, a shared perspective, and a mechanism for prioritization. It allows Canadians to understand the risks they face and the choices their government is making on their behalf.
And it must be followed by a real national defence strategy—not a shopping list of equipment, but a coherent explanation of what the military is for, what it must be able to do, and what risks we are prepared to accept.
Canada has avoided these conversations for decades. We have preferred ambiguity to commitment, rhetoric to realism. But ambiguity is no longer a luxury we can afford.
The Canadian military was upside down because Canada itself was upside down—comfortable, protected, and largely unaware of how contingent that comfort really was.
Getting to 2 percent spending is certainly an admirable step, but the challenge is not simply to spend more or to buy better equipment. It is to re-learn how to think about our security. To accept that defence is not something we subcontract. That deterrence is not automatic. And that prosperity without protection is temporary.
That is the story we need to start telling ourselves—before the world forces it upon us.
LGen (ret.) Christopher Coates is the director of foreign policy, national security, and national defence at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
