CDR sent Senior Staff Writer, Joetey Attariwala, to interview Frederic Labarre, a highly regarded academic who received his Ph.D. from the Royal Military College (RMC) of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. Dr. Labarre teaches at RMC where he focuses on strategic and war studies; and he is also an adjunct in Russian studies at the University of Quebec in Montreal. Here is that conversation in full.
CDR: Dr. Labarre, thank you for taking the time to speak with me. How did you enter the world of strategic studies?
Labarre: It’s great to talk to you, Joetey. My first career was in Graphic Communications where I had a number of private clients. Around that time I started approaching the University of Quebec in Montreal, at the School of Business, for a variety of international projects which was basically a form of entry point into the world to come as we saw it in the 1990s — that is a world that was transitioning from autocracy to democracy, but also from plant economies to the free market. Like many others, I suppose, I was outraged by what I saw on the news with regards to the failure of the UN at stopping the genocides in Yugoslavia, and so I wanted to participate, in some way, shape or form, in the shaping of a better world especially since the Cold War was over, so that’s why I rejoined Strategic Studies in writ large.
CDR: What prompted you to work at the Royal Military College, and what is your focus there?
Labarre: Well, in the early 2000s I was invited to a Partnership for Peace consortium annual conference in Tallinn, Estonia, where I was working at the time as a defence advisor. I met people from the Military College at that conference and they suggested that I should join them in trying to make the RMC in Kingston a multicolored parade square. In other words, they wanted me to oversee certain projects in international liaison, especially as it concerns the Baltic states themselves and to another extent, Ukraine, and to prepare the Baltic states to meet NATO requirements in terms of military training and education, and also, in general, to transition from a planned economy and also a meritocratic form of government into a more democratic form of government, and with the form of armed forces that should come with that.
So, that was the aim and I was allowed to create a program there called the MA Woods Scholarship, which saw Canada leverage its advantages in terms of distance learning to provide – more or less – free education and training to the Baltic States senior staff officers and senior civil servants, who would then be invited to Canada to finish their studies and to write their thesis. The same thing was predicated for Ukrainian staff officers, although in those years we had rather severe technical difficulties working with Ukraine at a distance. International liaison was the gist of my function there.
CANADIAN SUPPORT FOR UKRAINE
CDR: With Europe and the greater Black Sea region as your focus, how do you view the current situation in Ukraine and Canada’s efforts to support the country?
Labarre: Well, in my estimation, we cannot trust Russia to behave responsibly in the Black Sea. And the Black Sea connects Russia to many NATO countries, as you know — Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and Turkey. So, as a responsible ally, Canada has a responsibility to make sure that those NATO allies are also safe. In the current circumstances, working to better prepare Ukraine against the Russian onslaught is the priority, regardless of the fact that Canada has more than 1 million Ukrainian natives as a diaspora. So it’s not only a question of catering to a significant minority in Canada, it’s also a question of doing what is right for which Canada is renowned, I would say, and also protecting our allies.
In the current circumstances it’s difficult to say what more Canada could do, but there’s always more that we can do, and certainly from a variety of other different ministries Canada can do a little bit more. We can welcome more Ukrainian officers at RMC, whether at RMC Saint-Jean or RMC Kingston. We can certainly welcome more Ukrainians at our training schools — the armor training schools especially, or infantry schools. We can certainly benefit from the Ukrainians experience for our own benefit. So right there, that’s an important part of it. Money and armaments, that’s a given. We have to support the Ukrainians in terms of material as much as we can, but we should also support them diplomatically – and supporting them diplomatically does not necessarily mean only what we do from the Canadian embassy in Ukraine. It also means supporting them diplomatically at the UN, pressuring the UN to do the right thing as well. I haven’t seen Canada do this a lot, so I would say there’s some gaps there.
CDR: Should we fear a nuclear retaliation from Russia?
Labarre: The risk is never zero, but it is extremely remote. Consider all the things that need to happen for a Russian nuclear missile to successfully launch and find its target in the current circumstances. We now know that Russian equipment and Russian processes are lackluster at best, and Mr. Putin knows this as well. Regardless of what he says for the cameras in his own country, he knows that he cannot trust Russian technical and procedural systems either. He does not know whether the order to launch will be obeyed. If it is obeyed, he does not know whether the contact between the keys and the ignition for those missiles will actually take place. If the ignition takes place, he does not know whether the missile will incinerate in its own silo. He does not know if the door of the silo will open, and if the missile does launch, he does not know whether it will actually complete its full course or crash anywhere in between. And if it does continue on its course, well, then there’s an 87% chance that that missile will be shot down, not least because our anti-air technology is so much better than 25 years ago, as this has been proven by the Ukrainians performance in the field with conventional missiles. But also because of the fact that Mr. Putin should know that at any given moment, we have satellite eyes 24/7 over Russia, and we know where those missiles are located.
Now, the problem with tactical nuclear weapons is of a different order. It is there, but make no mistake, if there is a use of nuclear weapons by Russia, in Ukraine or anywhere else, that will necessarily mean that the rest of NATO will launch on Russia. There is no doubt about that. That also explains why Mr. Blinken, Mr. Sullivan and others have visited the Kremlin at the start of the war, certainly to bring that point across, so the risk of a nuclear escalation is extremely remote, in my view.
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INDO-PACIFIC
CDR: How do you view Canada’s procurement priorities with respect to the CAF’s focus of supporting NATO and increasing engagement in the Asia Pacific region?
Labarre: I would love to see the CAF prioritize the sort of purchases that are needed in the modern land battlefield which is acquiring a fourth dimension — a dimension of time and a vertical dimension as well. That’s what I would like to see, but clearly this is not where the CAF is going in supporting NATO. NATO now is going to demand that allies surpass their budget expenses by 3% of GDP, very soon. So, we will be in a very, very bad position, if Canada continues only spending only 1.37% of its GDP on defence. And NATO will also require that a certain percentage of that 3% should be dedicated to capital expenditures. At the last NATO Summit, it was actually concluded that 20% of the 2% of GDP should be expended on equipment and capabilities. Now in that respect, Canada is actually doing quite well to replenish our stocks and to replenish our capabilities, mostly because those capabilities have been neglected over the last several years after the withdrawal from Afghanistan. So we’re doing well, but our doing well in that department is very incidental, and NATO will require even more from its allies, and we’re not the least of the allies, we are a founding member. I mean, we are the country that has given NATO Charters’ Article Two and we helped shape Article Five as well. So we’re not the least of the actors, so if we want to maintain our aura in NATO, we have to contribute a little bit more.
Our increasing engagement in the Asia Pacific is in support of American responsibilities there. Mr. Trump’s tariff threats are acting as a cold shower on those engagements, I would say. We still have a certain amount of responsibility on the westward facing front, in conjunction with the Americans. What those commitments might look like is open to question, so it may enable us to focus a little bit more on the Arctic. Maybe Canada will say, instead of helping you guys in the Pacific, we will expand in the north on our own, because the United States is, at least in this declaratory posture, becoming a threat to our sovereignty. We know this is a flippant comment, but when Mr. Trump says that Canada should be the 51st State, well that’s a direct call on our sovereignty, and so one of our responses could be to increase commitment in the Arctic. So, the procurement priorities might actually angle towards better equipment for the troops and better frigates to face the ice up there, and certainly replenish our submarine capabilities up there. So that’s where I see the procurement priorities going in reality. Personally, I would prefer that the CAF focus on supporting NATO’s continental European allies, because we may not be able to play with the Americans very much longer if Mr. Trump decides to defect from NATO in any way, shape or form.
READ: Arctic Quick Reaction Force – ARCTIC POLICY
ARCTIC FOREIGN POLICY
CDR: What do you make of Canada’s defence strategy in the Arctic?
Labarre: Well, until now, if you talk about a whole government approach, Canada’s strategy in the Arctic is heavily bound by Global Affairs Canada. Global Affairs Canada has two axioms — it will stay very much committed to a multilateral focus with the Nuuk Treaty, which is a search and rescue agreement among Arctic powers. The Nuuk Treaty freezes any dispute that we may have with other allies or other neighbors who are also Arctic countries for a later resolution. The other axiom is that there shall be no NATO in the Arctic, except for Canada’s own capabilities sailing there. So that’s how the strategy is shaping up right now, and demonstrating sovereignty for now remains in the hands of the Rangers and the occasional patrols that we conduct up there. We may need to do more if we are to be more firm against Mr. Trump. The defence strategy in the Arctic will be explained in relation to the Russian threat, and it may also be explained in relation to Chinese ambitions in the Arctic. But in fact, the Chinese do not have a claim in the Arctic, legally speaking, and the Russians are not a threat anymore. We know where they’re coming from, we know their capabilities, but this is how it might be explained to the public, as we increase our presence there.
CDR: How should Canada reconcile its stated defence ambitions with the realities of its ways and means?
Labarre: If we’re talking about the whole of government approach, then there needs to be a whole of government approach. It’s not only that DND needs to be operating at the behest of Global Affairs Canada. Sometimes we need to define when an increase in coercive demonstration is needed and I believe that in the Arctic, an increase in coercive demonstration is needed. We need to sail with our warships and with submarines in the Arctic, simply to demonstrate that these are our waters and there shall not be any controversy about that. Currently we do not have the means to do this in a credible fashion. The Defence Policy Update, Our North, Strong and Free states things that we cannot realistically achieve in the current budget climate. First of all, even if you’re going to buy new frigates and submarines, you need people to operate them.
If you’re going to buy new frigates, if you’re going to buy new tanks or new artillery pieces, which we should – because we’ve given so much to Ukraine, so we need to replenish our own stocks – but you need to educate and train the experts to actually operate those systems.
So, there’s two or three things that we need to do. DND has to look at all that it does as a continuum and not as things that need to be cut or that can be cut because they seem to be a luxury. Certain things are done luxuriously perhaps, but they’re not necessarily a luxury. To me, emphasizing the training and education aspect, like caring for our colleges and ensuring that the faculty from our colleges can actually learn from other similar colleges and institutions is important.
Second, we need to understand that the men and women are part of the equipment and capability that we procure, and that capability has to be maintained over its whole life cycle. They know this already, but because there’s so little monetary resources there’s always a cruel choice to be made between the tail and the teeth. We should increase the resources given to defence, but redistribute those resources within the DND and CAF systems in a way that the teeth and the tail are better balanced. A T-Rex with no tail will fall on its face, and a T-Rex with only tail will not bite.
BUYING AMERICAN
CDR: In light of the unpredictability of the new Trump Administration and its threats of massive tariffs, should Canada reassess some of the major defence procurement decisions that have been made with US companies but have not been fully executed yet, like the F-35 and P-8?
READ: Arcfield Canada – CF-35s – COVER STORY
Labarre: Absolutely. The excuse for us to purchase American capabilities has often been expressed as one concerning the need to maintain our good relations with the Americans, or to maintain our technological edge, and I suspect that this argument will come back again to maintain that relationship. But if the relationship sours to the point that it becomes attractive to punish the Americans by turning to European allies for certain capabilities, well I can see GAC and DND doing just that. The problem with that is it presumes that within several years the relationship with the United States will become better again, and it also presumes that the United States will remain, if not a superpower, a very, very significant normative and strategic power in NATO and in the western hemisphere, which is not a guarantee anymore. It’s not a guarantee anymore because in the next four years the United States may lose their moral power, their normative power. What Canada needs to realize is that the Americans might be finished as a superpower, which would be ironic of Mr. Trump, who campaigned on making America great again.
Contractually, you can always cancel the contract and pay the penalties. We’ve done that so many times in the past — with the SAR and ship-borne helicopters in the early 1990s, for instance. If we are going to be hit with 25% tariffs, I think we would be glad to pay the penalties on the contract and say to the military industrial complex in the United States that you wanted that kind of President and now you’ve got it and all that that entails. We should not be afraid to distance ourselves from buying American equipment, and we should not fool ourselves to think that European equipment isn’t as capable.
CDR: Thank you.
Joetey Attariwala is CDR’s Senior Staff Writer
