U.S. President Donald Trump was justified in taking a swipe at the majority of NATO nations who fail to meet defence spending targets, but the way he went about it contradicts the values upon which the nearly seven-decades-old military alliance was founded, says one Canadian expert.
NATO Association of Canada president Robert Baines suggests the key to encouraging cash-strapped governments to loosen the purse strings is to unite them behind NATO’s commitment to ensuring safety and stability within its member-states, rather resorting to public shaming.
“It’s a group of nations that are banded together, literally a band of brothers as Shakespeare would have said. To get people together you need to get them into consensus,” Baines told CTV News Channel on Thursday. “Instead, we have a tenor of almost bullying. Really slapping people down for not doing what they are supposed to.”
So far, only five of the 28 alliance members have met the 2014 commitment to spend two per cent of their GDP on defence. Canada in a three-way tie for 20th place, reaching one per cent of GDP as of last Friday thanks to a $400 million contract to upgrade its LAV III armoured vehicles.
At his first formal leadership summit since taking office, Trump railed against the wide-spread spending shortfalls, saying, “This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States,” and “if NATO countries made their full and complete contributions, then NATO would be even stronger than it is today, especially from the threat of terrorism” at an event in Brussels.
The demand is not a new one for Trump, who has flipped between this position and his often-repeated campaign trail claim that NATO is “obsolete.”
For his part, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau argued that Canada does more than its fair share, touting an active role in the fight against terrorism and the decade-long troop deployment in Afghanistan.
The tongue-lashing from Trump comes at an awkward time for Ottawa as officials work to finalize a long-awaited defence policy update. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said Monday that the government would release the policy update on June 7, after Trudeau returns from the NATO talks.
The update had initially been promised at the beginning of the year, before the result of the U.S. election. Baines said Trump’s win likely caught the Liberals off guard, forcing them to take additional time to regroup.
“That was probably a very wise choice,” he said. “They will hopefully be able to take into account what Mr. Trump has been talking about today, and some of the pressure Canada now finds itself under.”
Trudeau’s so-far-so-good relationship with Trump means many NATO members are likely to be watching to see how Ottawa navigates the defence spending issue. If Trudeau can convince the U.S. president of Canada’s relevance to NATO without doubling down on spending, many other leaders are likely to take the same tack.
With files from The Canadian Press and The Associated Press
