Abstract
“We don't get it,” U.S. ambassador Paul Cellucci confessed after hearing that Canada would not participate in U.S. missile defense plans. His confusion was understandable. It was only last year that Prime Minister Paul Martin supported the missile shield and pledged cooperation with the United States. Many saw Canada's August 2004 agreement allowing the U.S. missile defense system to link to NORAD (the joint U.S.-Canada air defense) as a sign that full missile defense partnership wasn't far away.
So, why exactly did one of Washington's closest allies and longtime partner in North American security walk away from the Pentagon's premier military program? Call it a mixture of politics and PR. The government failed to adequately explain missile defense, allowing opponents to seize control of the debate through a highly effective media campaign. It didn't help that, in the wake of the Iraq invasion, many Canadians simply distrust and dislike the Bush administration.
Washington had been trying to corral Canada's participation in missile defense for years. In February 2000, then-U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre told Canadians that their involvement would be instrumental to the system's success and would be a continuation of their traditional security alliance. But there were also threats, which tended to backfire. A month after Hamre's speech, Vice Adm. Herbert Browne, deputy commander of U.S. Space Command, made headlines when he warned that unless Canada signed on, the United States had no obligation to protect its neighbor from missile attack.
Guilt by association: Anti–missile defense banner from the NDP.
Canadian government ministers also waded into the debate with dire warnings. Failure to sign on, they predicted, could mean economic retaliation by America, Canada's biggest trading partner. Or worse–a North Korean missile headed for Detroit could go astray and hit Toronto.
Problem was, Canadians weren't all that worried.
“Canadians just didn't believe there was a missile threat to this country,” says Steve Staples, a defense analyst at the Polaris Institute, a left-leaning think tank. One of the government's main problems was that it couldn't make a coherent argument that U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) was vital to Canada's security, he observes. “It also helped us that the BMD system kept failing in its tests.”
The Polaris Institute joined forces with Canada's Physicians for Global Survival to mobilize 2,500-5,000 disarmament activists to campaign against the missile shield. Two political parties, Bloc Québécois and the New Democratic Party (NDP), also came out against the plan, raising questions about its credibility in the House of Commons. The NDP ran full-page newspaper ads in January 2004 warning that ballistic missile defense would spark a space arms race and that Canada's participation would undermine the country's reputation as a peace broker. “Why is the U.S. Missile Defense Agency putting forward budget requests right now to ask for the opportunity to put weapons in space?” asked Jack Layton, leader of the NDP. “Why does the U.S. military command talk about full-spectrum dominance in the space war theater?”
The argument had resonance in Canada, a nation that has long been a staunch advocate of diplomatic efforts to prevent the militarization of space. (In a 1999 interview, the head of the Canadian Space Agency acknowledged there had even been “very significant debates” over participation in the International Space Station, reflecting concerns that it could potentially serve as an orbiting military base.) Canada's vested interests in keeping Earth's orbit a demilitarized zone were summed up in 2002 by James R. Wright, the assistant Turning over deputy minister for global and security policy: “All told, the space sector in Canada amounts to a $1.8 billion a year industry. The placement of weapons in outer space, and the ensuing antisatellite response, could put all artificial satellites upon which we rely in jeopardy.”
Debbie Grisdale, executive director of Physicians for Global Survival, says that Canadians felt more comfortable with their country as a middle power pushing a disarmament agenda rather than joining forces with the United States on a system they felt had the potential to destabilize arms control. And, she adds, missile defense's strong link to the Bush administration made it an unpopular cause among Canadians who were clearly uncomfortable with President George W. Bush's aggressive foreign policy and with his 2003 decision to invade Iraq.
Those views were evident in the comments posted on the online “Stop Star Wars” petition started by the NDP's Layton. “To join the ‘Star Wars’ defense systems being pushed by the Bush administration is to belie our position as world-renowned peacekeepers,” wrote one signatory. “Mr. Martin, what about trusting Canadians' judgment on this one: After all, we were right about what has become a sad, tragic, and unnecessary painful American invasion of Iraq,” wrote another.
Turning over a new leaf: Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin said “no” to missile defense.
By the time President Bush paid a post-election visit to Canada in late 2004, opinion polls showed that 60 percent of Canadians opposed participating in U.S. missile defense. That figure was even higher in the province of Quebec–a region Martin needs support from if his administration is to be reelected. Martin's fortunes went from bad to worse when Bush (despite earlier assurances to the contrary) used the visit to make a high-profile public plea for Canadian participation, raising the subject not once, but twice. Not only did it look like the president was pressuring the Canadian government, but the media focused on what came across as an ambush of Martin. “Bush Lobs Missile at Martin; the U.S. President Blatantly Requests Canada's Missile Defence Cooperation,” proclaimed one headline in Ontario.
Some three months later, Martin officially declined Bush's missile defense “invitation,” hinting that the space weapon issue played a role: “We didn't want to get involved in something today only to find the situation would be different in two, three years.” A newly declassified Department of National Defence report offered a blunt assessment: “On the whole the public is ill-informed about BMD, and the situation is not helped by critics consistently bringing up the specter of space weaponization. General public interest is expected to be influenced by long-held perceptions about Reaganera ‘Star Wars.’”
Jim Fergusson, director of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba, argues the Canadian government was clearly outmaneuvered by missile shield opponents who used fears about the weaponization of space to get headlines and to mislead the public. Even if the United States did deploy weapons in space, Fergusson thinks it would be unlikely to need–or want–Canadian participation. “The idea we would become involved is just complete nonsense,” Fergusson says. “Did we get drawn into U.S. strategic nuclear weapons? No. Then why would people think we would be pulled into this?”
Fergusson believes the government should have countered the critics by laying out the pro-missile defense arguments to the public. At the same time, he thinks it should have tried to negotiate a non-weaponization of space clause for NORAD, “even though it's irrelevant,” he adds. “It's meaningless because NORAD is not going to get into weapons in space.” But such a clause would have eased public fears that Canada would eventually be drawn into U.S. space warfare plans.
Canada's neighbor to the south hasn't yet given up on missile shield partnership. In March, retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Peter Franklin, the Missile Defense Agency's former deputy director, told a military conference in Ottawa that Canada could change its mind as the missile threat to North America increases. Weeks later, Conservative leader Stephen Harper vowed to reopen negotiations with the United States if his party is elected.
If that happens, missile defense opponents will rally again, perhaps even stronger than before, Staples believes. “Some people feel this issue is finished, but we have been telling them we have to continually keep an eye on it,” he says. “As long as the Americans keep pushing ahead with missile defense, there will be some Canadians who will want to draw us into that system.”
And, no doubt, others outside of North America will be watching. As the United States seeks the cooperation of allies abroad in its missile defense program, the militarization of space looms in the background as a potential wedge issue.
Ian Davis, executive director of the British American Security Information Council, says Canada's rejection of direct involvement in the missile shield highlights the deep division in NATO ranks over missile defense and the weaponization of space. The Canadian decision was taken following a vigorous and far-reaching debate, Davis notes, while in Europe, despite U.S. plans to base at least 10 interceptor missiles there within the next five years, there has been relative silence on the issue. “European debate is almost entirely mute,” Davis says. “European proponents and opponents of missile defense need to take a cue from their Canadian counterparts and start a ‘big conversation’ on this important strategic issue without delay.”