Canada and ballistic missile defence: dilemmas and options.

Should Canada participate in a North American missile defence system? Recent US steps toward the deployment of such a system have placed the issue on Canada's agenda, but the debate needs to be framed more broadly.

So far, the ballistic missile defence (BMD) debate in Canada has largely avoided the question of what Canada should do about the ballistic missile threat. Instead, the issue has been framed entirely as a question of what Canada should do about what the Americans do about the particular ballistic missile threat they have identified as the problem. Of course, this being Canada, there is no shortage of pundits, advisors and writers for The National Post to insist that Ottawa has little option but to gratefully follow where Washington leads. And Washington is definitely leading - in increasingly dramatic assertions of a particular kind of ballistic missile threat, in a deepening bipartisan commitment to mounting a continental ballistic missile defence system in response, and in the quintessentially American faith that technology will find a way.

To keep Canada focussed on the American version of the problem, the United States will be inviting Canada to join its version of the solution, a limited BMD designed to protect North America from a limited ballistic missile attack, the most likely source of which they say will be one of a group of small states with newly acquired intercontinental ballistic missiles and an enduring hostility toward the United States. Thus the choice for Canada, we're told, will come down to being either in or out of the American plan.

Shifting the debate

Only when the debate in Canada shifts attention to the full global ballistic missile threat and how Canada might respond more effectively to it will a broader range of available options emerge.

That means redefining the threat to focus on all ballistic missiles armed with weapons of mass destruction. At the top of the threat list are ballistic missiles in the acknowledged nuclear weapon states. They have a global reach, they bear enough warheads to destroy humanity and to poison earth's environment indefinitely, and they are dangerously designed to be launched instantaneously, and as such are subject to the vagaries of human miscalculation and technical glitches. This clear and present danger is now joined by the provocative uncertainty that one of these states, Russia, still possessing one of the largest arsenals, is dangerously unstable - dramatically increasing the dangers of human miscalculation and technical breakdown. Adding further to the threat is the climate of uncertainty that attends efforts by other states to acquire weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them, initially threatening their neighbours, but also developing ever-lengthening reaches and ever-expanding places to threaten.

The Americans do not assume that BMD is the full answer to this whole panoply of threats, and thus they do pursue other measures in nuclear non-proliferation, strategic arms reduction, and ballistic missile technology controls. But their current fixation on BMD is tenacious, and what they seek most from Canada is solidarity, not critical engagement, and they are certainly not inclined to welcome multilateral intrusions into the management of their strategic nuclear forces.

So Canada faces a daunting challenge - how to respond to the global ballistic missile threat with policies that preserve Canada's sovereignty, respect and advance arms control and disarmament imperatives, advance a human security agends, cooperate broadly with other states, and maintain a constructive security relationship with the United States.

Sovereignty

Curiously, concern for Canadian sovereignty is frequently invoked to portray Canada as having no practical option but to support an American BMD system. A prominent unofficial view among Canadian officials and advocates of BMD is that if the United States proceeds with what it calls a "national" ballistic missile defence scheme (by which it actually means a continental scheme operated through NORAD) designed to protect Canadian and American territory alike, Canada's sovereignty would be unacceptably compromised if this country were entirely uninvolved in the system's design and operation. A primary responsibility of any sovereign state, they point out, is the defence of national territory, and if that defence is provided by a foreign power without any formal agreement that affirms the sovereignty of the "kept" state, then sovereignty is undermined. Furthermore, it is argued that if the Americans proceeded unilaterally, without Canadian involvement, Canada would lose its seat at the continental defence table, and whatever influence might be had there.

There is no question that Canadian influence and sovereignty would seriously suffer, indeed, that we would truly be a "kept" state, if it was Canada's assessment that ballistic missile defence was essential to Canadian security, and if Canada then relied entirely on the Americans to provide that defence and made no effort on its own behalf. In such a situation of total reliance on the Americans for the defence of Canada, we Canadians would effectively have no control over crucial military decisions related to the defence of our territory - with independence and sovereignty both unacceptably compromised. Hence, if Canada, through public consultations and serious discourse, concludes that BMD as conceived and operated by the Americans is essential to Canadian security, then we have an obligation to participate.

On the other hand, if we in Canada conclude that BMD is not essential, indeed is not helpful and is likely to be detrimental, to Canadian security and international peace and security, then there is an obligation on Canada to decline participation in BMD and to take other responsible measures for our own and the international community's security in the face of the ballistic missile threat. In such a situation Canadian sovereignty would not be in the least compromised, and it would be a toss-up whether our influence would be hurt or strengthened.

Sovereignty, far from robbing Canada of options, makes choices possible and necessary, and saying "no" to continental BMD is more likely to become a realistic option if Canada actively pursues alternative security measures.

Arms control and the missile threat

One such security measure essential to reducing the ballistic missile threat to Canada and the international community is of course participation in efforts toward not only the control and radical reduction in ballistic missiles, but especially the reduction and eventual elimination of the weapons of mass destruction that those missiles are designed to deliver.

And in the case of both missiles and nuclear weapons, it is not credible to claim an undiminished right to retain, maintain, and further develop them, while insisting that all others must forego them. Monopolies in either weapons of mass destruction or ballistic missile technology are a thing of the past. Technologies are spreading and double standards are discredited. Mutual restraint, indeed, mutual divestment, is the only realistic option. Jonathan Dean, a former US arms control negotiator and now with the Union of Concerned Scientists in the US, has put forward a plan for a worldwide regime restricting production, possession and deployment of long-range ballistic missiles for military purposes. (Dean 1998) Canada at one time advanced similar approaches through its "strategy of suffocation".

Canada's arms control and disarmament tradition has built upon, albeit with varying degrees of persistence and activism, some widely accepted principles. As part of its response to the BMD challenge, Canada has an obligation to articulate those principles clearly and forthrightly, not least to change the dynamic of the BMD debate from a question of whether Canada accepts or rejects an American overture, to a question of whether the American BMD plan accepts or violates broadly accepted disarmament principles. Such principles include:

I. a renewed commitment to the elimination of nuclear weapons as accepted by the US and the other major nuclear powers under the NonProliferation Treaty of 1968,

II. a commitment to the pursuit of threat reductions related to existing arsenals through no-first-use and de-alerting measures,

III. a total ban on weapons in space, and

IV. the preservation of and strict adherence to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

"Rogues" and human security

But what of states controlled by regimes that are fundamentally out of step with international standards, that support terrorism, and that seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction and the intercontinental ballistic missiles to fire them, and thus to terrorize the entire globe? The American approach, symbolized in their use of the term "rogue state," is to isolate and demonize such states in the effort to force them, sometimes with the aid of direct military attack, into submission.

The relevant alternative security doctrine embraced by Ottawa, and by the growing international peacebuilding community, is "human security," which implies engagement over isolation and particularly the strengthening of civil society in states whose governments are in gross and systematic violation of international standards. The spectacular impotence of the world's awesome military might and technology in bringing the outlaw regime in Iraq to heel, and the similar failure of the attempts at political and economic isolation, counsel alternative approaches to bringing outlaw regimes into compliance with international laws and standards and to persuading them to eschew the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. The only insurance against tyranny and the tyrant's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is an emboldened indigenous civil society that claims the right and acquires the capacity to give direct expression to the principles of justice, political participation, and the pursuit of economic priorities that attend to the well-being of the population. Iran, long one of Washington's favourite "rogues," may well be emerging as an example of a regime turning from extremism, not by virtue of external military threats, but by virtue of the emergence of an internal civil society that supports moderation and seeks a place of respect within the international community, and, according to recent reports, moving toward participation in international efforts to control and eliminate weapons of mass destruction.

The states that are routinely identified as the most threatening, Iraq and North Korea, are classic cases of the urgent need for peacebuilding approaches - they are, after all, "failed states," not formidable powers. And they will cease to be threatening when they are transformed from "failed" or "rogue" states to states engaged in the international community, and especially engaged in international, multilateral efforts to control weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them. The route to such engagement is through measures to strengthen, not the exiled rivals of the regime, but internal civil society.

Is there a prudent defence available?

But does prudence not require that arms control and human security measures be complemented by reliable defensive military systems capable of protecting vulnerable populations from limited ballistic missile threats? What would prudent missile defence require? First, it would require reliable technology at a reasonable cost. Second, it would require a system that would encourage and advance multilateral disarmament and create disincentives for states to seek access to either ballistic missiles or weapons of mass destruction. Third, a prudent BMD would be one that would encourage and support a strategy of engaging "rogue" regimes and in building the conditions for sustainable peace in those societies.

The hard reality is that no such BMD system is, or is likely to be, available. Current proposals fail on all three counts.

First, present technology is utterly unreliable. At a cumulative cost that by some counts is well in excess of $75 billion (Canadian), 15 years of ballistic missile defence research has failed to produce anything that can reliably and consistently intercept a ballistic missile in flight. If the funds spent on the search for BMD over the past 15 years had been made available to the UN over the same period, the international organization's core operation, as well as peacekeeping and conflict prevention and resolution work could have more than doubled. One can only speculate what the payoff might have been in human security terms, but it is hard to argue that BMD capability is being acquired at reasonable cost.

Furthermore, even if the technology to destory incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles became available, it would not pass the test of effectiveness because it would still not protect vulnerable populations against determined terrorist attacks. States or non-state actors determined to terrorize the United States or any other place, including Canada, with threatened or actual attacks with weapons of mass destruction, would be much more likely to use an anonymous, smuggled suitcase than a missile which would advertise the source of the attack.

But, second and more important, BMD would scuttle, rather than promote, arms control, creating enormous incentives to increase efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. Armed with a combination of offensive missile capacity and ballistic missile defence, however doubtful the latter's capacity, the US would be perceived to be in a position to threaten and dominate at will. This would be intolerable to Russia and China. They would feel constrained to, at a minimum, halt any discussion of arms reductions. In the Geneva UN Conference on Disarmament China has already warned that US interest in BMD runs "counter to the trend of the times," is "detrimental to international efforts in arms control and disarmament," could "trigger a new round of the arms race," and could "turn outer space into a new battlefield." (Reuters 1999) And Russia's Boris Yeltsin has explicitly given his approval to the Duma's plan to make ratification of START II conditional on the ABM Treaty being preserved as it now is. (AP News 1999) And any other state with a grievance against the US would soon join the international effort to create countervailing forces and capacities that could overwhelm American defences. The Americans, on the other hand, would constantly be under pressure to "improve" their defences, and each step in that direction would be a signal to other nuclear weapons states to "improve" their attack capacity, and so on and on. The name for that process is all too familiar, it is called the nuclear arms race.

The third consequence of BMD is that it would actively undermine efforts to engage "rogue" states and work with them in support of constructive governance and respect for the security of their citizens. Generating and maintaining political support for BMD requires the political hyping of the ballistic missile threat, and especially the demonizing of states identified as the source of the threat. Just as Cold War demonization of the Soviet Union as the "evil empire" undermined efforts to engage and normalize relations with the USSR, so too the demonization of Iraq and North Korea precludes any effort to deal with those regimes in new and innovative ways.

A notable American critic of BMD is the aerospace industry journal Aviation Week and Space Technology, as reflected in a February 1, 1999 commentary which effectively sums up the case against BMD:

Having thoroughly alienated Moscow on both NATO and ABM, while at the same time standing idly by as Russia topples into irreparable collapse, the [US] Administration is leading the world perilously close to a strategic hell: a strengthening of Russia's authoritarian and fascist pathologies; a greater likelihood that a bankrupt and embittered former superpower will resort to selling nuclear weapons to the Irans of the world; an inducement to China to accelerate its strategic modernization in converting from liquid- to solid-fuelled launchers; in turn propelling India and Pakistan forward on their nuclear courses; an invitation to nations everywhere to pursue and proliferate NMD-defeating cruise missiles and multi-warhead ICBMs.

Responding to the Americans

But, whatever the lack of merits of BMD, the bottom line for Canadians is that if we say no to the US initiative it will mean the end to NORAD, an end to the historic defence cooperation between Canada and the United States, and the onset of a period of seriously troubled relations between our two countries. That is the fear widely repeated in Ottawa these days, and the conclusion conventionally drawn is that participation in NORAD requires participation in BMD. But only a few years ago the argument coming out of the Department of Foreign Affairs was not that the continuation of NORAD depended on participating in BMD, but that participation in NORAD was precisely what would enable Canada to reject participation in BMD.

When NORAD was renewed in 1996, the new agreement included a provision that allowed for, but did not require, including new operations such as BMD within its mandate. At the time, when opponents of BMD objected to that inclusion, the government argued that, far from committing Canada to supporting future US BMD deployments, the new agreement guaranteed that Canada would be consulted and that Canada would have the formal right to either consent to or withhold consent from any NORAD operated BMD system. Foreign Affairs Minister Axworthy told the House of Commons that "as a result of the NORAD agreement we are in a position to exercise real control and judgement." Any expanded aerospace defence mission in NORAD, he said, "will require the approval of both governments to proceed. In effect, we have a veto within the North American defence agreement to say no to these particular proposals." (Hansard 1996)

What the Americans do on their own is their business (although all states have a responsibility not to take unilateral national actions that imperil others), but what they propose to do in the bi-national NORAD is decidedly Canada's business as well. Canada has the sovereign right to say "yes" or "no" and, of course, the duty to pursue alternative responses to the ballistic missile threat. That the Americans would prefer a yes is obvious, that they would respond to a no with sustained pique and a determination to end all security cooperation, including air defence cooperation, across the longest and most vaunted undefended border is unlikely.

References

AP News Service 1999, "Yeltsin accepts parliament's conditions for START II ratification," March 22.

Aviation Week and Space Technology 1999, "Paving the way to Strategic Hell," February 1.

Dean, Jonathan 1998, "Controlling Ballistic and Cruise Missiles," Disarmament Diplomacy, Issue 31, October.

Hansard (House of Commons Debates) 1996, March 11.

Reuters 1999, "China hits out at US missile defence system," February 11.