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By Robert Farley
How does coalition-building affect procurement? To what extent do (or should) states anticipate operating in a multilateral environment, and choose their weapons accordingly? A recent FlightGlobal article examined Canadian military procurement policies, especially with regard to plans to replace the Royal Canadian Air Force’s CF-18 fleet with F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. The F-35 purchase has generated a great deal of controversy because of the heavy price tag and the contracting process. Much of the debate turns on how Canada expects to become involved in foreign conflicts, and consequently on what tasks are required from Canadian military forces.
The process sheds light on how Canada, a state which has long conceived of its security interests as being embedded with the United States and the United Kingdom, thinks about the design of its military institutions. The question of integration with foreign partners has long bedeviled aspects of Canadian defense policy; the disconnect between Canadian civilians and military commanders during the Cuban Missile Crisis played a role in the eventual decision to unify the Canadian armed forces. Because the services were intimately tied to their counterparts in the UK and the United States, Canada ran the risk of going to war without sufficient civilian deliberation.
Canada’s dilemma in this regard is hardly unique. The broader question involves the degree to which military procurement policies will be guided by expectations of integration into a multi-lateral military framework. Middle powers have a choice between procurement policies that maximize their unilateral security, and policies that maximize their ability to contribute to multilateral operations. For example, the United Kingdom faces a choice between preserving its nuclear deterrent (at this point a fundamentally unilateral project), and maintaining viable conventional forces capable of operating at the sharp point of NATO.
Read the full story at The Diplomat