NATO, NAFTA, and STATECRAFT

Vincent J. Curtis

15 Aug 2018

“Whatever floats your boat” is not an expression heard much these days in the Royal Canadian Navy.  With the paucity of boats that float, it is too demoralizing.  But it wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Not long ago, the Canadian government announced a plan to spend $62 billion to refloat our surface combatant fleet.  Hulls from South Korea, propulsion systems from the UK, armaments from Germany, and an electronic suite from Lockheed-Martin, snap together at an east-coast ship-yard and voilà.  At $4 billion a pop, what could go wrong?

Plenty, apparently.  After the mysterious assessment of a game-misconduct penalty to Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, there doesn’t appear to be anybody in the RCN who knows how to put together a warship.

Luckily, there is a way out.  One that not only will muscularize the RCN but could also buttress Canada’s economy.

If Canada were to purchase a small fleet of, say, six Arleigh Burke class missile destroyers from the United States, at US$2 billion each for a total of CDN$15 billion, it would, in the first place, go a long way towards meeting Canada’s NATO commitment of spending two percent of GDP on defense.  The acquisition would double the tonnage, increase the speed, and dramatically increase the fighting power of the RCN.

Fifteen billion dollars is not chump change, even in northern pesos.  A very public and unexpected commitment by Canada to buy American in this instance could be made to go a long way in the really important matter of preserving our trillion dollar trade relationship with the United States.

Dealing Trump some wins isn’t going to hurt our cause.  Trump can claim a win at getting another NATO country to spend more on defense.  (Okay, we’re already committed to it, so it isn’t really “more” and “new,” but the American public doesn’t know that.)  Trump gets another win for that NATO country buying American, a kind of confirmation that America makes the best armaments in the world, as he boasts.  He gets the win for a big and obvious reduction of the “trade deficit” that America allegedly has with those devious and smart Canadians who outwitted American negotiators twenty-five years ago.  That alleged deficit is a very public bone of contention - that can be turned in our favour.

President Trump is not a stupid or ungrateful man.  Despite his invective against China’s trade practices, Trump offered President Xi of China favorable trade terms if he would help out the U.S. with North Korea.  When that help wasn’t forthcoming, China got slapped with tariffs and has a rapidly spreading trade war on its hands; and Trump is determined to dramatically shrink the $500 billion trade deficit that the U.S. has with China.

If we’re smart, we’ll reflect upon what was offered China – concessions on trade in return for help with something else.  For our NATO move, a renewal of the NAFTA agreement on favorable terms is the concession we want, and the new treaty could be spun as a win for Trump also.  We get continued access to US markets.  We get a fleet of faster and more powerful warships than we’ve ever had, at half the expected cost of those gold-plated frigates.  And we’d still have $47 billion left in the surface combatant program.

Since the election of the new Mexican president, Andres Lopez Obrador, bilateral talks on trade began taking place between Mexico and the U.S., while Canada has very publicly been shut out.  Canada had been reluctant to re-negotiate NAFTA in the absence of Mexican representation.  So much for loyalty.

Mexico won’t blend its interests with ours.  Trump wants bilateral trade agreements, and Mexico caved.  We have to look after ourselves, and a bilateral free-trade agreement (and the win for Trump that that entails) wasn’t so bad in 1987.  A noteworthy defense purchase is a big chip we can play.

A big win on trade and for our economy, a bigger, better, faster, stronger navy for a fraction of the original cost – all this for the purchase of a few warships from Trump.  Can Canadian statecraft be devious and smart enough to deal Trump a few wins?

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