Trends in Canadian Security Policy And Commitments

Abstract

Canadian governments actively promoted the creation of NATO and demonstrated commitment to an Atlanticist security orientation throughout the Alliance's formative years. The goal of ensuring ongoing yet constrained American engagement in European security affairs obviously accounted for this early Canadian support for the North Atlantic concept. But there were composite motives at play, including a predisposition for multilateralism over an exclusively bilateral security relationship with the country's North American ally and guarantor. The consummate irony, of course, is that Canadian security policy since at least the mid-1960s has contributed to the undermining of the very principles on which the country's Alliance membership was founded. Thus, the muchdiscussed commitment-capability gap in Canadian defense policy constitutes but a surface manifestation of a basic misreading of intra-Alliance political and military linkages that has now persisted for more than two decades. The 1987 White Paper has introduced a measure of belated corrective to the Canadian security policy drift, but it may well represent a classic instance of "too little, too late," especially since it echoes an existing declaratory stance more than it provides a blueprint for a renewed Atlanticist action policy.