The Danes are doing it, the Germans too, can Canada be far behind?

Yes! (Or, strategy is not our national game)

The Danish government produced a foreign and security policy document just before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Recognising the seismic shift this attack generated, they have just produced a new version.  Even more remarkable, Germany has just published its first ever national security strategy, recognising that Europe’s most populous and powerful nation has arrived at a historic moment, a Zeitenwende (“watershed”), as Chancellor Olaf Scholz described it.

Denmark and Germany are two key European allies, NATO partners, both members of the Euro-Atlantic security community. The Canadian government should be paying close attention, in fact benefitting from the lessons these two new strategic documents present, and following in their wake (as quickly as possible). The Canadian delegation to the NATO summit in July in Vilnius could even make a down-payment on closer Canadian attention to geopolitical and national security issues by telling our allies that we are getting to work on just such a public strategy.

If Germany produced its first ever national security strategy last week, Canada is really positioned in the same starting blocks. Officials with long memories will recall that Canada produced its own first-ever national security strategy in 2004. Everyone else can find it, with some diligent searching, on the website of Library and Archives Canada (that’s how forgotten it is).

You can find the German national security strategy here:

https://www.nationalesicherheitsstrategie.de/en.html

The Danish Foreign and Security Policy Strategy is here:

https://um.dk/en/foreign-policy/foreign-and-security-policy-2023

So, what are the lessons for Canada of the two new European national security strategies?

The first, and most obvious, is the way they set out their purpose.  It is to lay out the new realities of the national security environment for their own publics. They pledge responsive policies their governments intend to take, thereby setting down markers for public accountability. In the case of the German national security strategy, the promises for policy action are extraordinarily numerous and cut across many areas of government action.

These two national security strategies are quintessential instruments of national security transparency, so lacking in Canada.

The realities of the national security environment set out in the Danish and German strategies are, no surprise, very similar. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, in the preface to the Danish strategy, describes the world as “uncertain, unpredictable, and complicated. Brutal at times…There is more tension and greater competition than there has been for a long time.” This means a realistic outlook is required. 

The Danish perspective on complex threats notes that “energy, health, food, research and the development of new technologies are increasingly intertwined with our foreign and security policy.” 

The reality of complex threats is also the overarching theme of the German national security strategy, along with a sense that “Germany’s security environment is undergoing profound change.”  There is that word again, “Zeitenwende.” For both countries the game changers are geopolitical change and heightened contestation, international insecurity, and the undermining of the liberal, rules-based international order. This matches a Canadian outlook, surely.

For both Germany and Denmark, a major prompt for new thinking about national security is the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, and the broader threat this poses to European security, including to vulnerable states on Russia’s borders, such as Moldova and Georgia, and in the western Balkans.  The German strategy identifies Russia (for now), as “the most significant threat to peace and security in the Euro-Atlantic area.”

On China, the Danish strategy recognises the Asian giant as a “challenging” global actor but also a necessary partner in tackling some of the world’s greatest problems, above all climate change.  The German approach is similar, describing China as a “partner, competitor and systemic rival.”

If the Russian assault on Ukraine is a key factor in generating these new strategies, it is far from the only prompt.   Both strategies consider the wide array of threats facing them, some “new” and transnational, some old and persistent. The new threats include pandemics and climate change—hardly new per se, but new in terms of the need to come to grips with their destabilising national security implications, from domestic societal upheavals to economic impacts at home and abroad, to geopolitical change and attendant global migration challenges.

The Danish strategy states that “the climate crisis constitutes the 21^st century’s greatest challenge.” The German document states that the “climate crisis is threatening our livelihoods and the very foundations of our economies.”

On the relation between climate change and national security, the German strategy promises two things.  One is to make the climate crisis a “fixed item on the agenda of the security agencies.” The second is to promise a study involving leading academic institutions and the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) into understanding the impact of the climate crisis on national security.

On pandemics, the German national security strategy emphasizes the importance of prevention and early warning (“swift reaction”) as a “key to guaranteeing human security.”

The Danish strategy rates the threat of cyber-attacks as “very high” and underscores the cyber enabling of foreign interference campaigns. The German strategy emphasizes the threat of cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure, stating that in a crisis such attacks “can rapidly pose an existential threat.” It pledges a name and shame approach to identifying the perpetrators of cyber-attacks, combined with targeted sanctions. Interestingly, the German strategy also “fundamentally rejects the idea of using hack-backs as a means of cyber defence.” (Canada does not, at least in theory and legal authority).

The old threats (with a new face) include war, espionage, influence campaigns, organized crime, extremism, terrorism. Persistence is their game.

Attention is paid in both strategies to hard power. Both Germany and Denmark make historic pledges in their strategies to meeting the NATO defence spending commitment of 2% of GDP, although the timeline for Germany is vague (multi-year) and that for Denmark stretches to 2030. Once again, this is a commitment path, even with extended timelines, that Canada could and should follow.

Support for Ukraine is a given. The Danish strategy states, “Denmark must support Ukraine in being able to defend itself and re-establish its territorial integrity and self-determination.”  The Danish government supports “Ukraine on the road to future [NATO] membership. The German strategy doesn’t go that far in terms of Ukraine in NATO but there is no doubt of the government’s long-term security commitment to Ukraine. Canadians know the extent of their government’s commitment to support Ukraine, but not its position on NATO membership for the embattled country.

One offshoot of the Russian war against Ukraine and of intensifying Chinese global ambitions is what the Danish strategy calls a “battle for influence” globally, a battle fought through information warfare and economic initiatives, such as the Chinese Belt and Road initiative, and in the Russian case with mercenary forces in the shape of the Wagner group and its operations in Africa.  Denmark’s proposed response is short on details but is rooted in concepts of equal partnerships with developing countries and a commitment to Danish values. Denmark, which is to assume the EU presidency in 2025, puts a lot of weight on building out the EU into a global actor, including reliance on the EU’s “Global Gateway Initiative” for trade.

The Danish security strategy, not surprisingly, pays attention to the Arctic region, given Denmark’s historic and contemporary governance ties to Greenland and the Faroe Islands.  Denmark pledges ongoing efforts to ensure “low tension and the continued development and protection of the Arctic,” while noting that these goals are made more difficult by an “unpredictable” Russia, the shelving of the Arctic Council, and the long-term interests of China in the region.   Canada’s strategic outlook on the Arctic has a lot in common with that of Denmark. You wouldn’t want a scissors and paste job in any future Canadian national security strategy, but there is good language here to reflect on.

Both national security strategies give prominence to the importance of economic resilience. For Denmark that means a strengthened EU and a hard look at existing dependencies regarding critical minerals supply chains and technologies. While the Danish strategy calls attention to the need for tighter scrutiny of foreign investment and research security, it also positions Denmark as an economy reliant on global trade, albeit with new cautions. “Friend-shoring” as an economic principle does not make an appearance, as it has in Canadian official statements There is a promised Danish “Globalisation strategy.”

The German strategy addresses economic security through the need to reduce critical dependencies, to prevent new dependencies, and implicitly casts into doubt the premises of globalisation. Again there is no mention of “friend-shoring,” which seems for now, a Canada-US proposition. Stated new approaches do not extend much beyond tightened domestic economic security, heightened scrutiny of critical raw materials supply chains, and reliance on EU initiatives.

The German strategy goes further in stressing societal resilience as a key feature of national security, perhaps unsurprising in a country with the historical legacy that Germany bears and concerns that strengthened measures for national security will come as a cultural shock and be potentially divisive. As Chancellor Scholz states in his covering letter to the German strategy the “cohesion” of German society is a foundational key. Should such cohesion be of concern in any future Canadian national security strategy?—the Freedom Convoy and a host of other tensions in our federal system suggests…yes.

A complex, multi-faceted security threat environment, one that is spelled out in some detail, is the main message of both national security strategies. While there are many promises made about meeting the challenges of national security, there is no sugar-coating of diverse threats. In the German case, the meal is a particularly heavy one.

If the path to a national security strategy might have come hardest for Germany, these two publications underscore the timeliness of crafting such strategies, the important role they can play in educating publics about the complex realities of the threat environment we face, and their significance in providing an accountable road map for government action.

The German government, alive to the new security environment, pledges to take “consistent” account of security issues in all areas of policy making.  It hopes the security strategy will “contribute to the further development of strategic culture in Germany and be the starting point for societal debate.”

Good thought.

Get to it, Government of Canada!