Canada: The missing AUKUS member

22 February 2022

The dramatic announcement of a new trilateral defence partnership in September 2021 between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States — dubbed “AUKUS” — promises to transform the existing security architecture of the Indo-Pacific region. Although the partnership’s core objective is to jointly construct a fleet of state-of-the-art nuclear submarines to modernise Australia’s defence capabilities, AUKUS offers to provide the first elements of an integrated defence strategy to counter China’s military provocations in the region.

However, the only detail more interesting than the members of this trilateral partnership is those nations that are missing. Specifically, several American allies and security partners — France, the European Union, India, and even Japan — have been excluded from the new security alignment. While this is arguably due to the sensitive and central role of nuclear submarines in the partnership, AUKUS signals a shift in America’s defence priorities away from broad partnerships, such as NATO, and towards a core alliance of Anglo-Saxon maritime powers.

But there is one country that is truly absent from AUKUS — and it is not France, despite the dramatic collapse in relations between Washington and Paris after the loss of the Naval Group’s contract with Canberra. Missing is America’s friendly neighbour to the north: Canada. Its omission from the trilateral defence partnership is a missed opportunity for both Washington and Ottawa to leverage their longstanding alliance to support America’s security policy and establish Canada as a relevant power in the Indo-Pacific.

A historic security partnership

Canada was once America’s closest ally and security partner. That dates to 1940 when the two nations agreed to form a Permanent Joint Board on Defence (PJBD) to protect the Americas in the event of a German invasion during World War II. The result was the formation of a unified security strategy between the United States and Canada independent of the United Kingdom.

Canada and the other three ‘Anglo-Saxon’ nations — the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand — are the core of an alliance system, which buttressed American military and economic power during the Cold War. Ottawa is party to an alphabet soup of security pacts all derivative of the 1943 UKUSA Agreement that formalised the 1941 Atlantic Charter. Commonly referred to as the ‘Five Eyes’, they agree to share intelligence, communications infrastructure, and defence technologies, as well as to institutionalise military interoperability among their armed forces.

Canada, along with the US and the UK, was also a founding member of NATO in 1948. Unique among NATO allies, Canada formed America’s last line of defence against the Soviet Union as part of the bilateral North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD). Formed in 1958, NORAD managed the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line, a network of radar systems dotting Canada’s high north and designed to alert Washington in the event of a surprise nuclear attack.

Canada's exclusion from AUKUS is surprising. Canada, like Australia, would have stood to benefit from a nuclear submarine fleet, expanding its military capabilities in response to the challenge of China in the Pacific and Russia in the Atlantic.

Despite the fall of the Soviet Union, Canada still maintains this vital security role amid the latent threat of a nuclear conflict with Russia or China, and in the face of a resurgent Moscow in the Arctic. The DEW Line was reformed as the North Warning System (NWS) in 1988 and continues to be jointly operated by the American and Canadian air forces. And the PJBD remains active to this day — it held its 239th meeting to discuss NORAD modernisation in June 2021.

Discovering the limits of balancing

Given this close security cooperation, Canada's exclusion from AUKUS is surprising. On the specific issue of nuclear submarines, Canada, like Australia, would have stood to benefit from such a fleet, expanding its military capabilities in response to the challenge of China in the Pacific and Russia in the Atlantic. And unlike the only other ‘Five Eyes’ nation excluded from the pact — New Zealand — Canada, as a part of NORAD, isn’t opposed to nuclear technology.

Part of the problem is that it is unclear whether Canada was invited to join AUKUS or not. So far, Ottawa has remained “mum” as to whether the AUKUS nations directly invited Canada to join. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed Canada was not a party to AUKUS as it did not intend to purchase nuclear submarines, and his administration indicated it knew of AUKUS in advance. But that does not answer whether Canada was offered to join and demurred, or whether the AUKUS members snubbed Canada, determining it was not a worthwhile alliance partner.

One explanation is that Canada, despite its close security and economic ties with the US, chose to ignore AUKUS because it pursues a more open, cooperative foreign policy in Asia. Such a policy seeks to nurture Canada's trade with China — which accounts for some 7 per cent, or USD 87.4 billion, of Canada’s total trade balance (mainly through imports). A more balanced relationship based on Canada’s respected internationalism, especially on trade and humanitarian issues, also allows Ottawa to establish a certain independence from Washington.

This predicament is not unique to Canada. Australia too was once caught between a more independent trade policy and a closely-knit security alliance with the US. But increasing Chinese military provocations in the South China Sea, high-profile attempts at espionage in Canberra, and China’s “wolf warrior diplomacy” have shifted Australia’s political and strategic consensus towards further alignment with the US, despite the potential costs to commercial ties with China, its largest trading partner. Ultimately, this process led Canberra to join AUKUS.

Canada has faced its own reckoning with China over the case of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. Detained in Canada since 2018 at the request of the US Justice Department, Beijing saw this as a hostile act and an attack on a key asset responsible for building China’s 5G infrastructure network. China attempted to punish Canada, notably by detaining two Canadian citizens on trumped-up charges of espionage, later sentenced to death, in clear retaliation for the Meng case. In September 2021, the United States allowed Meng to leave Canada, which immediately led to China releasing the two detained Canadians, thus diffusing the crisis.

Since then, Canada has adopted a notably more assertive security policy in the Indo-Pacific. It now criticises China’s actions in the South China Sea and, in March last year, the Canadian navy’s HMCS Calgary conducted a goodwill visit to Southeast Asia, traversing waters contested by China in the Spratly Islands, although this was not an official freedom of navigation operation. A later joint-naval operation in the Taiwan Straits between Canada and the United States sent a strong message that Ottawa’s security policy is in agreement with Washington.

Forging a new national purpose

Despite this clear convergence of security interests and the fallout from the Huawei case, Canada did not join AUKUS. Part of the problem is that Ottawa aspires to maintain a balanced foreign policy despite the changing security environment in the Indo-Pacific. It is, in many ways, integral to Canada’s identity as a liberal, outward-looking nation independent of Washington.

This is not a dissimilar attitude to its Five Eyes partner New Zealand. Wellington was neither invited nor interested in joining AUKUS because of its longstanding opposition to nuclear weapons. But New Zealand’s independent foreign policy, despite the ANZUS alliance, is also a function of its geographic isolation. It is “a dagger aimed at the heart of Antarctica”, as Henry Kissinger once allegedly quipped, and largely insulated from great power competition. Asia is also New Zealand’s largest export market, and China is its largest trading partner. A balanced foreign policy is vital to preserving that trade, which underpins its social democratic system.

Balancing is an effective strategy for many smaller states to survive great power competition. But Canada does not have that same luxury. Already bound by its historical alliance to Washington, Canada’s security is an extension of American power. And while it may hope to expand trade with Asia, its economic future lies with the United States, which is responsible for a whopping 65 per cent of all Canadian trade, and the majority of both its imports and exports.

Given this reality, Ottawa’s foreign policy must remain in lockstep with Washington. The end of the Huawei saga, and the political mandate — however weak — afforded to Prime Minister Trudeau after the 2021 general election provides ample opportunity for Canada to craft a more assertive foreign policy, and one that may ultimately lead to its integration into AUKUS.

Joining AUKUS requires a detailed discussion with Canada about Ottawa’s potential to purchase nuclear-powered submarines. Ottawa already maintains four ageing Victoria class submarines, three of which are stationed at its Pacific naval station in Esquimalt, British Columbia. A robust nuclear submarine squadron would only strengthen Canada’s naval forces in support of its American and Australian allies in the Indo-Pacific. And those submarines can also be deployed in the Atlantic, in cooperation with NATO, to deter Russia’s military expansion in the Arctic.

AUKUS offers Canada a chance to craft a foreign policy vision as a maritime democracy defending the international order it helped build since 1940. Such a national purpose may be just what Canada needs to overcome its political and societal divisions. Otherwise, Canada faces a continued and gradual slide towards what some have termed a “pedestrian nation”.

As for the United States, to ignore Canada’s role is to ignore its historical and central role in US security policy. Ottawa has a great potential to contribute to any alliance structure in the Indo-Pacific geographically, militarily, and economically. To ignore Canada is to under-utilise those resources easily available to the US in its bid to restrain a rising and assertive China in East Asia. Canada should be welcomed into AUKUS, and Ottawa should do everything in its power to join the alliance. Revising the new acronym is a small price to pay for the benefits of this partnership.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biography

Moez Hayat is a Fulbright scholar and visiting researcher at the Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD). He holds a Master of Arts in Asian Studies from Georgetown University. The views expressed in this article are his own and do not represent those of the Fulbright US Student Program, the US Department of State, the Fulbright Commission or the UBD. Image credit: Flickr/NATO.