Sooner or later, everyone visits Ottawa. Why, here in late November, was Glen VanHerck, a Kentucky-born US Air Force general, former pilot and instructor of F-15 fighters and B-2 bombers. Since the summer of 2020 he has been the commander of NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command.
In Ottawa, VanHerck met with Canada’s new Defense Minister Anita Anand and Deputy Minister Jody Thomas. He met General Wayne Eyre, the Chief of Defense Staff. He also met some reporters. I am writing the following from a recording of that conversation.
VanHerck was in Ottawa in part because, as a NORAD commander, he reports directly to the governments of Canada and the United States. So, in an operational sense, he was returning “home” for the first time since he got his job. But he also brought urgent news that his Canadian hosts clearly prefer not to hear: a dangerous world is getting more dangerous, or dangerous in new ways. NORAD, which seeks to protect North America, is unprepared for these new threats. Preparing will cost money and force a government that prefers not to think about military threats to make uncomfortable decisions.
NORAD was founded in 1957, in the depths of the Cold War, to protect the US against incoming bombers or missiles with nuclear payloads. As a bonus, it sought to protect the country that those bombers or missiles would be most likely to fly over: Canada. The main threat in those days was the Soviet Union and its vassal states. A range of technology would track potential Soviet Union launches. territory. The main deterrent was the threat to launch a devastating counterattack before an enemy attack could land. They would all die. Nobody liked this, but it worked for decades, in the sense that not everyone died.
These were the years of “mutual assured destruction” many of us grew up in. The climax of the 1983 film War games, with Matthew Broderick trying to stop a rogue computer from launching a global thermonuclear war, takes place at the NORAD command center on Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. These days, NORAD no longer operates from a mountain bunker; use a nearby building. That is not all that has changed. “Our competitors have analyzed our ability to operate abroad,” says a NORAD strategy document from last March, “and have invested in capabilities such as ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, hypersonic weapons, small unmanned aircraft systems, artificial intelligence. , cyber capabilities and delivery platforms to offset our strengths while exploiting our perceived weaknesses. “As a result,” the stakes are higher than it has been in decades. “
The document establishes who is on the list of “competitors”: “China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, violent extremist organizations or transnational criminal organizations.” VanHerck maintains a short version of that list. “You know, I’m registered,” he said. “Russia is one of the main military threats to North America. China is a decade behind. “
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Behind what? China spent the summer testing hypersonic weapons that could be launched from a “fractional orbital bombardment system” traveling 150 kilometers overhead. These are scary. You launch a weapon into space, where it rotates around the planet for a fundamentally unpredictable amount of time. NORAD has spent its entire life protecting itself against an attack on the North Pole, but these new weapons could easily come from the south.
The Russians have simpler, ready-to-use weapons. They can fire cruise missiles from Russian airspace that would fly over the Arctic, old-fashioned, but lower than what NORAD’s radar outposts are designed to track.
VanHerck’s goal was not to advise responses to these threats. That depends on the politicians, he said repeatedly. But in any case, he doesn’t think ballistic missile defense is the main rebuttal to these threats. “My national defense design does not count on us firing cruise missiles over Ottawa and Washington, DC,” he said. Instead, if NORAD can collect and process information fast enough and predict action based on that, it might be possible to deter an enemy before an attack is launched.
“Now, to be honest, we have a lot of work to do” before such things are possible, he said. “To say that we are on the right track in discussions, that we have reached agreements on any issue, would be false information,” he added. “We are getting ready to crawl, so to speak.” How long can the crawling preparation phase last? “You know, North America is only going to become more vulnerable to future capabilities developed by potential adversaries. And decisions must be made in the not too distant future. So I’d love to see that happen sooner rather than later. “
Best of luck with that, General. The triumphant February videoconference meeting between Justin Trudeau and a then-popular Joe Biden ended with a plan to convene a “2 + 2” meeting of the defense and foreign ministers of the two countries to discuss precisely these kinds of things. Ten months later, it still hadn’t happened.
The two countries issued a “joint statement” on the modernization of NORAD in mid-August. Late on a Saturday night. Hours earlier, Trudeau went to Rideau Hall to start an election campaign. At a time when such a document was guaranteed not to get news coverage in Canada. When I asked the US embassy for details about this agreement, they told me that, strictly speaking, it is not an agreement. It is a joint statement.
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Why so scary? In March, the CBC attributed the “golden silence” on NORAD’s modernization to the persistent hangover from Paul Martin’s refusal to participate in George W. Bush’s ballistic missile defense program. No Canadian government wants to touch BMD with a barge pole. Even the Conservatives, who reliably blame the Liberals for refusing to participate in missile defense, did not reverse that decision during the decade that Stephen Harper was prime minister.
But not deciding is a decision: When Americans make command decisions about missile defense, they do so without the presence of their Canadian counterparts, and NORAD ceases to be NORAD for the duration of the conversation. To the extent that the Americans need to ensure their continental defense in the absence of our half of the continent, they will simply continue without us. At some point that becomes embarrassing.
This is the kind of decision Justin Trudeau hates to make. You wouldn’t get credit from your voter base for making North America safer against threats that many voters don’t believe exist, along with an ally that many don’t believe is worthy.
But endless delay is not an option either. It’s a bit like repairs at 24 Sussex Drive, which Trudeau has been working on for half a decade. Meanwhile, the place falls to scrap and some future prime minister will send us the bill. Except in this case it’s a house the size of a continent. It is threatened by something worse than rain and cold winds. The neighbors have noticed and are hitting the roof with a broom.
This column appears in print in the February 2022 issue of Maclean’s Magazine with the headline: “Diterraneans in dangerous times.” Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here.
Reference-www.macleans.ca