Ernie Regehr is a member of Canadian Pugwash Group
This article was previously published in The Hill Times,
Arctic security needs a Team Canada commitment
Diplomacy across the Arctic’s deepening strategic divide is now dangerously dormant, just as tensions rise and military operations scale up.
Canadian sovereignty and national security have never depended solely—or even primarily—on military defence. In the Canadian Arctic, the military component is currently of growing importance, but Arctic security is still fundamentally a whole-of-government, or Team Canada, challenge.
Even the USAID website—or what is left of it—refers to the “3Ds” of security: “Diplomacy, Development, and Defence” it explains, “are the three pillars that provide the foundation for promoting and protecting U.S. national security interests abroad.” Some formulations add two more Ds: Democracy as good governance, and Disarmament.
While there are deficiencies across all five in the Canadian Arctic, neither the national nor global context warrants the defence “D” being singled out for the most urgent attention. In the real world, defence competes with other security imperatives for scarce Canadian tax dollars, and while those tax dollars may be in short supply, Arctic security needs aren’t.
Diplomacy across the Arctic’s deepening strategic divide is now dangerously dormant just as tensions rise and military operations scale up. The refusal to engage with Russia is portrayed as moral rectitude, but that ignores a key lesson from the Cold War. Then, talks with the Soviet Union persisted despite grievous violations of international law and humanitarian obligations—like the Soviets’ illegal invasion of Afghanistan and the Pentagon’s war on Vietnam and Cambodia. Through it all, engagement continued, not to confer legitimacy, but to bolster security, yielding key arms control agreements and the broader Helsinki Accords.
Pan-Arctic diplomacy is needed to manage tensions, avoid dangerous military encounters and misunderstandings that can easily escalate, and to seek dialogue for exploring the conditions various parties consider essential for easing tensions and building longer-term stability.
Good governance or democracy benefits from deeper involvement of Indigenous communities in decision-making related not only to their basic human security needs and the welfare of their communities, but also in the formation of defence policy and strategic relations—indeed in all matters affecting their Arctic homelands. Such participation is essential for building northern trust in national and regional institutions. As Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy puts it: “strong and resilient Arctic and northern communities increase Canada’s defence against threats.”
The defence component of Arctic security is led by NORAD renewal, but not confined to it. Upgrades include improvements to surveillance systems and Arctic domain awareness (from outer space to the subsea space), research into emerging threats and credible responses, and infrastructure such as forward operating centres for F-35 fighter aircraft. There is an extensive list of current equipment acquisitions, including icebreakers, air-to-air missiles, early warning, and surveillance aircraft.
There is also an emerging consensus that changing strategic circumstances, not least in Washington, D.C., should prompt a new sense of urgency. The collective military challenge in the Arctic is to build and maintain preparedness that promotes stability, and avoids feeding the classic security dilemma that sees reciprocal military expansion raise tensions and diminish security within an already competitive strategic dynamic.
The sense of urgency should apply to the full range of security imperatives and it points to the utility of a Team Canada approach—an integrated whole-of-government operation that mobilizes all of the 5Ds on which security is ultimately built.
Ernie Regehr is senior fellow in defence and Arctic security at The Simons Foundation Canada, and co-founder and former executive director of Project Ploughshares.