Prime Minister Justin Trudeau heads to Washington today for a meeting of NATO nations where he is widely expected to hear harsh words from allies behind closed doors about his government’s refusal to lay out a clear plan for meeting the alliance’s defense spending targets.
Twenty-three of NATO’s 32 member states are expected to meet the alliance’s target of spending at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense this year. Canada is one of the few NATO nations not meeting that standard.
Kelly Buck, a former Canadian ambassador to NATO, said his experience at these summits shows that name-calling and shaming happens behind closed doors in individual bilateral meetings.
But when all the leaders gather for official meetings, names are not mentioned and instead statistics showing each country’s contributions are displayed on a screen.
“This is being used as a political cudgel,” Buck said of the 2 percent threshold. “If a signal isn’t given before the summit, Canada will certainly be hit with that cudgel.”
Canada currently plans to increase its military spending to 1.76% of GDP.
The Liberal government has asserted that planned military spending, yet to be approved, will push the national budget above 2 percent, but these statements fall short of the clear plans expected by NATO.
“Any wise government should put the 2% out there before Washington, with a date and a plan, because the longer we remain outcasts, the bigger a target we give the next president of the United States to attack,” Buck said.
In a technical backgrounder on Friday, government officials emphasized that the federal government’s new defence policy symbolises Canada’s commitment to hitting the 2 per cent target. One official not authorised to speak publicly argued that the whole debate has been overstated.
“We’ve had a number of summits and meetings with the U.S. and there was a strong expectation that the U.S. side would criticize us, but frankly, that never happened,” the official said, pointing out that defense spending targets were not raised during U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit to Ottawa in the spring.
“The expectation in that debate was that he would criticise Canada for not doing its part. But it was the opposite. They understand the contribution that we are making and they recognise it. I expect nothing will change next week.”
The remarks appear to ignore the fact that a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers wrote to the prime minister last spring urging Canada to meet new standards agreed to by all allies at a NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, last year.
On Friday, outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg highlighted the 2 percent contribution and said allies expected more.
“We agreed last year that 2 percent was the bare minimum,” Stoltenberg said, “so, of course, we still have work to do. I expect that in Washington we will be stepping up our messaging on defense spending and making sure our allies follow through.”
Some NATO countries want a 3% benchmark
Also on Friday, a senior U.S. official acknowledged that some allies, such as Poland, are calling for the benchmark interest rate to be raised to 3 percent.
“Obviously, the situation varies from ally to ally,” the official said at a background briefing in Washington.
“We will continue to press for fair burden-sharing and credible plans for all allies that have not yet met their 2 percent commitment to achieve that commitment as soon as possible in the coming years. And I think there are a number of allies who will come to the negotiating table with credible plans for reaching that benchmark in the near future.”
Another defence analyst said Trudeau was certainly bracing himself for what he would hear privately and publicly from NATO leaders.
“I’m sure he’s prepared to be attacked gently,” said Andrew Laciulis, a former senior official who once ran the Department of Defense’s nuclear arms control policy office. “I don’t think anybody’s going to be upset about that.”
Defence Minister Bill Blair and Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly will accompany Trudeau in Washington. In interviews and public statements over the past month, the two ministers have suggested Canada might offer something more concrete to its allies in Washington, but government officials walked back those expectations on Friday.
Blair said last month that Canada, Germany and Norway were discussing a possible tripartite defense and security partnership covering the North Atlantic and the Arctic, which would give Canada access to submarines the two European nations are building together. But officials at the briefing declined to add anything, saying the federal government was in talks with a range of partners and that the sensitive discussions were continuing.
Ahead of the summit, Trudeau is scheduled to meet with senior U.S. senators and U.S. business leaders to discuss trade and economic issues.
Blair will also speak to an influential foreign policy journal and take part in a NATO policy forum on northern hemisphere security.