Why the 2020 Presidential Election Matters for Canadian Defence
By Dr. James McKay, Assistant Professor at the Royal Military College
Politics in the United States inevitably affects Canada. The 2020 Presidential Election is no exception. President Trump, having survived the effort at impeachment, appears likely to win the Republican nomination, and the Democratic Party race is far from over, with the race currently between former Vice-President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders. The structure of Democratic caucuses and primaries can defy predictions of the results of the National Convention and consequently the choice American voters will make will not be clear until mid-July. Thus, there are two scenarios with a Democrat in the White House in January 2021; one is a social democrat and the other is a moderate. The most likely outcome of the Republican primaries is that Mr. Trump will be the Presidential candidate. After Super Tuesday, he had won over 800 delegates as opposed to Bill Weld’s lonely delegate. A second term for President Trump represents a third scenario.
What does this mean for Canadian defence policy? The last defence policy statement, Strong Secure Engaged, was released in the spring of 2017. It was initiated prior to, but its release followed, a new foreign policy statement. The foreign policy statement suggested that Canada needed to be prepared to display greater leadership on the world stage if others were declining to exercise leadership, which came with the implication that greater resources may need to be dedicated to international matters. This seemed like a signal or justification for an increase in defence spending. Careful examination of SSE revealed a nominal increase, where Canada would adopt accounting practices similar to those of a number of European member-states. The result of that change moved Canada from the bottom tier of spending when measured through Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to the median. It forecasted consecutive annual increases to defence spending, with an acceleration in 2020 and beyond, and with major equipment purchases such as a fighter replacements and new warships. It also outlined what the Government of Canada expected as operational outputs from the Armed Forces under the annual resource allocations, suggesting that it might not fund activities from supplemental estimates unless those outputs were exceeded. SSE comes across as a means of addressing competing imperatives. It looks like an increase in defence spending intended to mollify the Trump Administration. It also does not significantly increase defence spending until after the forecasted deficit reduction, which would limit the opposition parties’ ability to criticize the Government. Yet SSE was the product of a majority government, and that majority was lost after the 2019 election. The main implication is that the Government of the day must now bargain with the opposition parties in order to achieve policy goals and needs to be able to offer them concessions — all of which come with price tags. The course of Canadian defence policy may be affected by the degree of pressure that emanates from Washington after the upcoming presidential election.
In November 2020, one of the following scenarios will occur, and its full effects will be felt after January 2021:
• President Trump gets re-elected. The Trump Administration consistently take a far more pointed approach towards exhorting allies to take on greater share of security burdens. The last NATO report on defence spending shows a relative decline in Canada’s standing when measured in percentage of GDP. It is now in the bottom tier. This is unlikely to go unnoticed and thus an increase in pressure from Washington to do more for defence is likely to occur.
• Joe Biden becomes the Democratic candidate and is elected. In this scenario, it is likely that a Biden Administration would make the occasional polite call for increased efforts that are sufficiently weak that they are misinterpreted and / or ignored. By way of example, in his remarks to Parliament, Obama remarked that “. . . the world needs more Canada.” Most reporting fixated on that part and omitted what followed immediately thereafter: “NATO needs more Canada.” Thus this scenario would see a reduction, but not an elimination, of pressure from Washington.
• Bernie Sanders becomes the Democratic candidate and is elected. A Sanders Administration would seek to reduce American military efforts abroad. This would mean attempts to get American allies to take on greater shares of the security burden, as it would be viewed as an enabler for retrenchment and / or uses of greater diplomacy or multilateral efforts.
Ottawa will need to prepare for a range of possible outcomes. It is too soon to forecast the exact results of the race for Democratic candidacy and the White House, but two out of three scenarios do forecast an increase in the pressure to spend more on defence. What might this mean? Ottawa has a range of options to deal with increased pressure. One is to increase spending, as SSE forecasted, but this is, as the government has argued, is only an input measure. The second would be to increase outputs, namely contributions to operations. The third would be to seek to ‘weather the storm’ without doing either, as it can lead to domestic criticism. Ottawa, in the meantime, will continue to watch the races closely in order to forecast which scenario will come to pass.
Dr. J.R. McKay is an assistant professor of Political Science at the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) since 2008. He served as the Chair of the Military and Strategic Studies programme from July 2011 until January 2014. Dr. McKay primarily teaches courses in international relations and strategic studies but is developing deeper research interests in Canadian politics.
