By Scott Taylor
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has captured the imagination of the Canadian public in a manner which seems almost inexplicable. Even when Canadian soldiers were being killed on the ground in Afghanistan, or RCAF aircrew were blowing up 'bad guys' in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Kosovo, there was no general clamour by average citizens to drastically increase Canada’s defence budget.
Yet with Ukraine battling the Russian military, suddenly it seems that every retired general, defence pundit and politician is convinced that we need to commit to significant increases in the annual defence budget.
The magic solution that these individuals collectively propose is that of increasing our spending to equal “2% of Gross Domestic Product (aka GDP)”. Canada currently spends about $23 billion per year on defence and this is equivalent to 1.3% of our $1.7 trillion GDP. The Colonel Blimp brigade parrots former US president Donald Trump in proclaiming Canada to be a ’shirker’ for this failure to meet NATO’s stated goal of members spending 2% of their GDP on defence.
The problem with aiming to spend an arbitrary amount on the military just to spend a required percentage of GDP does not in any way guarantee an actual increase in our national security. In theory we could simply boost our military salaries threefold and tell NATO ‘mission accomplished’.
We also need to put some perspective on what these percentages and dollar totals mean on the global landscape. The USA has an annual defence budget of some $811 Billion (USD) which is almost equivalent to the rest of the world combined.
China spends $252 billion (USD) to put it in a distant second place on the list of annual defence budgets. Every western strategic analyst will tell you that we need to be ‘very afraid’ of Chinese ‘militarism’ however by Trump’s own standards they are ‘shirkers’ by spending just 1.7% of their GDP on defence. If you compare the USA’s defence expenditure per capita ($3806) to China’s ($200) the myth of Chinese militancy evaporates.
Big bad Russia outspends the US in terms of percentage of GDP on defence by a factor of 4.3% (Russia) to 3.7% (USA). However as a result of Russia having a relatively puny $1.57 trillion GDP, that amounts to a total defence budget of only $61 billion (USD) per year.
Based on defence dollars spent per capita, Canada’s $23 billion for 35 million citizens ranks 20th in the world, whereas big bad Russia’s $61 billion spent on its military and a population of 144 million places them a very distant 57th in world rankings.
In terms of the military power that Russia fields based on their defence budget, they have an impressive total of 425,000 regular force personnel, 2800 Main Battle Tanks (MBT’s), over 11,000 infantry armoured combat vehicles, 1300 combat aircraft and a naval fleet of over 350 warships. That force seemed impressive until it was tested and failed in Ukraine.
The defence budget for Ukraine is just under $6 billion (USD) with which it is able to field some 200,000 regular troops and an additional 600,000 reservists equipped with over 1600 MBT's. They are also able to count on the motivation of their soldiers fighting to defend against the Russian invaders. Canada by comparison has just 80 MBT’s and about the same number of CF-18 Fighter jets.
Saudi Arabia spends a whopping 8.4% of their annual GDP on defence making it the 4th largest military spender in the world at $57 billion (USD). Despite that, Saudi Arabia has been unable to militarily subdue tiny Yemen which can afford a measly $1.4 billion (USD) to battle the Saudis.
Poor old Afghanistan was spending 10.6% of their GDP on defence (not to mention the massive US aid on top of that) yet their 400,000 strong security force collapsed like a cardboard suitcase the minute the primitively equipped Taliban re-emerged last summer.
If there is anything we can learn from these recent examples is that money, numbers of personnel or sophistication of weaponry are not guarantors of military proficiency on the battlefield.
Before Canada makes a knee-jerk reaction and promises to commit to a meaningless dollar figure of defence spending, let’s focus first on what our military actually needs and more importantly, the role that Canada wants it to play moving forward into an uncertain future.
For the record, meeting the 2% of GDP spent on defence objective would cost taxpayers an additional $15 billion per year.
