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Article Excerpt
A core concept in international relations theory, especially among realists, is that to survive in an anarchical world, states must rely on self-help. As John Mearsheimer explains,
[S]tates cannot depend on others for their own security. Each state tends to see itself as vulnerable and alone, and therefore it aims to provide for its own survival.... This emphasis on self-help does not preclude states from forming alliances. But alliances are only temporary marriages of convenience: today's alliance partner might be tomorrow's enemy, and today's enemy might be tomorrow's alliance partner. (1)
"Self-help" may apply to great powers, but it loses its explanatory force when extended to smaller states. As Robert Rothstein points out, lesser states are not simply "Great Powers writ small." (2) John Holmes observes that "the foreign policy ... of a middle power is generically different from that of a great power, let alone a superpower." (3) Small states, Rothstein adds, "think and act differently, and any analysis which fails to take that fact into account is bound to be simplistic and inadequate." (4) What sets lesser states apart from their great-power counterparts is "that they cannot obtain security primarily by the use of their own resources and that they have to rely fundamentally on outside help to maintain their independence." (5)
It is clear that self-help does not reflect Canada's security reality. Canada shares a continent with its superpower neighbor, the United States, against which war is inconceivable. In fact, the United States serves as a powerful deterrent to external threats to Canada's safety. But while Canada relies on American power for its protection, the United States also depends on Canada--with its crucial land, air, and maritime approaches--for its own safety. In short, Canada-U.S. security is interdependent. It follows that Canada cannot ignore U.S. safety requirements, nor can Canada easily isolate itself from the consequences of American security decisions. Canada, therefore, participates in North American defense not only to deter possible external threats but also "to ensure national control over the Canadian territory" in the face of possible demands from the United States. (6) Canada does so through "defense against help," a strategy articulated by Nils Orvik, by which a mid- or small-sized state maintains a sufficient level of defense unilaterally, or in cooperation with a large state that is committed to its safety, to avoid "unwanted help" from the large state. (7)
Defining Defense Against Help
In Canada, defense against help is a policy response to that nation's somewhat unconventional "security dilemma," the essence of which is that the United States, in the process of guaranteeing Canada's safety, could itself become a security threat. If Canada were to become a strategic liability to the United States through military weakness or otherwise, Washington could take any measures deemed necessary for its own defense, regardless of Ottawa's preferences. (8) Moreover, if Canada failed to contribute to North American defense, Ottawa would forfeit opportunities to affect U.S. strategic policy decisions on which Canada's safety ultimately depends.
The significance of the defense against help strategy in Canadian policy is evident in what can be called the U.S.-Canada "security bargain," the elements of which were first publicly expressed in statements exchanged between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King in 1938. These statements, which still constitute the core of U.S.-Canada strategic obligations, reveal both similarities and differences in the two countries' priorities and preoccupations. President Roosevelt expressly committed the United States to the defense of Canada, giving the assurance "that the people of the United States will not stand idly by if domination of Canadian soil is threatened by any other empire." King gave Canada's corresponding pledge to the United States:
We, too, have our obligations as a good friendly neighbour, and one of these is to see that, at our own instance, our country is made as immune from attack or possible invasion as we can reasonably be expected to make it, and that, should the occasion ever arise, enemy forces should not be able to pursue their way, either by land, sea or air, to the United States across Canadian territory. (9)
Taken together, these statements acknowledge the fundamental interdependence of U.S. and Canadian security. But they also reveal differences in the two countries' approaches. In contrast to Roosevelt's pledge to protect Canada if it were attacked, King promised only that the country would not become a strategic liability to the United States; he did not commit the Canadian government beyond the defense of its own territory. Although the differing but complementary commitments reflect the obvious disparities in the military capabilities of the two countries, they also reveal convergent and divergent preoccupations, grounded in the common denominator of national security, and pursued in Canada's case through the strategy of defense against help.
A lesser power has two options in pursuing a credible defense against help strategy. First, a lesser state can attempt to maintain or strengthen its defenses unilaterally, with or without coordinating them with those of the large power. Second, such a state can implement its defenses cooperatively with those of the large state, even to the extent of accepting a measure of integration of those defenses. (10) The choice between these options depends on the vagaries of military technology and thus on the extent to which the smaller state, given its limited capabilities and its geographic location, is in strategic demand.
Finland provides an example of the unilateral application of defense against help. After unsuccessfully resisting invasions by the Soviet Union during World War II (by military means and reliance on German power), Finland adopted a credible defense posture against would-be aggressors in order to allay Soviet security concerns. The understanding was confirmed in the 1948 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, which obliged Helsinki, with help from Moscow if requested, to repel an armed attack on Finland or the Soviet Union across Finnish territory. Finland's forces consisted of only 40,000 soldiers. However, Orvik observes, "given the low strategic importance of Finland, the steadfast Swedish non-alignment policy, the preponderance of Soviet forces in the area and the remoteness and improbability of West German, American or other NATO incursions, the well-trained, highly motivated Finnish 'mini-force' could credibly cope with any possible incursions by other powers." (11)
Canada illustrates the use of both unilateral and cooperative defense against help options. The Canadian government began improving its military capabilities in the mid-1930s in response to growing U.S. interest in continental defense. The exchange of statements by Roosevelt and King in 1938, noted earlier, set out their countries' respective security obligations. Given the limited external threat in the prewar period, the Canadian government was able to implement the defense against help strategy by itself. However, Ottawa abandoned the unilateral approach in 1940, when it became apparent that Canada could no longer deal with external challenges on its own. Since then, it has pursued defense against help in cooperation with the United States.
Implementation Issues
Implementation of the defense against help strategy involves issues that arise in many large-smaller state security relationships. One of the most persistent is that of burden-sharing. This is so, Johan Jorgen Hoist points out, because "security is not a 'perfect' collective good in the sense that what is good for the security of one ally is equally good for the other allies." (12) Mancur Olson argues:
[I]n groups of members of unequal 'size' or extent of interest in the collective good, there is the greatest likelihood that a collective good will be provided; for the greater the interest in the collective good of any single member, the greater the likelihood that the member will get such a significant proportion of the total benefit from the collective good that he will gain from seeing that the good is provided, even if he has to pay all of the cost himself.
Moreover:
[T]he largest member, the member who would on his own provide the largest amount of the collective good, bears a disproportionate share of the burden of providing the collective good. The smaller member by definition gets the smaller fraction of the benefit of the amount of any collective good he provides than a larger member, and therefore has less incentive to provide additional amounts of the collective good.
As a result, Olson claims, there is "a surprising tendency for the 'exploitation' of the great by the small." (13) Alfred Van Staden observes that "smaller European allies, being tempted to relax their own defence efforts because they trusted the US guarantee, have frequently been depicted as free riders in the chariot of collective defence." (14) Critics have likewise assailed Canada for what they regard as its failure to pull its weight in North American security.
While there may indeed sometimes be "exploitation" of a larger power by a smaller one--that is, a deliberate failure to contribute equitably to needed defense--in some cases an unequal contribution arises because of a difference of opinion over what measures are required to protect the security of both states. Contrasting assessments of external threats or international obligations can lead to differences of opinion over military programs and projects. Holst notes that states are also "circumscribed by their domestic societies and by the images that these societies hold about their commitments and understandings. Tensions between state and society clearly arise when alignment requires a role to be played by the state that is not sustainable by the society as a whole." (15) This can be seen in the opposition of Belgium and the Netherlands to the deployment of Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, a case in which "the nature of the contributions weighed more heavily than the financial cost." (16) Canada has also refused to participate in U.S. missile defense initiatives because of concerns about the possible destabilizing effects internationally and opposition from aroused domestic publics.
In recent years, the distinction between domestic and international security has become blurred, leading to new forms of large-smaller power collaboration. The main impetus has come from the United States, which reassessed the notion of "vulnerability" after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Raul Benitez-Manaut writes, "Although its intelligence, security, justice, migration, and defense systems had successfully responded to the Cold War threat of communism, a profound transformation of its doctrines and institutions has been undertaken in order to confront the terrorist attack on the country and to fight the overall war against terrorism." The United States has waged a global war on terror, but it "has developed its security commitments to the maximum at the bilateral level" with its immediate neighbors, Canada and Mexico. Benitez-Manaut notes that "the relationship is limited between Canada and Mexico due to the lack of geographic proximity, and cooperation on defense, intelligence, migration, and policing is restricted to the exchange of information. However, the United States remains at the core of North...
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