Boeing's MQ-25 refueling drone moved to air base for flight testing

On the same subject

• 

  November 16, 2022 | International, Naval

  Spanish-British shipyard team wins bid for UK naval logistics fleet

  The government vows to keep most of the work in Britain, following unions' fears that key skills could be outsourced to other countries.

• 

  October 21, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  What can Ukraine expect from Canada’s federal election?

  By Olena Goncharova. EDMONTON, Canada — As Canadians head to the polls on Oct. 21, the Ukrainian government may be wondering how a potential change in leadership could alter relations with Kyiv's closest overseas ally. Among the numerous parties represented on ballots across the country, there are six with enough legitimacy and reach to take part in nationally televised debates, and only three — the Liberal, Conservative and New Democratic parties — which will almost certainly garner the overwhelming majority of votes. And the real contest comes down to only two: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party and Andrew Scheer's Conservative Party, which have been exchanging leads or tied for almost the entirety of the parliamentary campaign. While the candidates are competing on an array of issues ranging from climate change to economic policy, this time foreign policy has played an even more substantial role than usual in how the parties have defined themselves. The 2019 campaign is different from previous ones due to an increasingly dangerous international environment and uncertainty over U.S.-Canadian relations. But no matter the election outcome, there is unlikely to be any significant change from Canada's current political stance vis-a-vis Ukraine, experts believe. The ruling Liberals put “democracy, human rights, international law, and environmental protection” at the heart of their foreign policy. In their campaign, they are calling for the establishment of the Canadian Center for Peace, Order, and Good Government, which will lend expertise and assistance to those seeking to build peace and advance justice. They also call for a continued increase in Canada's international development assistance every year until 2030 and want to ratchet up the Magnitsky sanctions regime on foreign human rights offenders. However, the Liberals do not have any specific points geared towards Ukraine. The Conservatives' promises are more detailed. They want to cut 25 percent of all foreign aid spending, strengthen ties with Japan, India, and Israel and deepen their commitment to Canada's democratic alliances — NATO and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Under the Liberal government, international assistance in 2018 stood at $6.1 billion and accounted for almost 1.8 percent of federal budget spending. And $57 million of that aid went to Ukraine. In its campaign, the Conservative Party has promised to refocus aid away from middle-income and higher-income countries, a category which would seem to include Ukraine. However, Scheer says a Conservative government would increase military and other aid to Ukraine. Other Conservative platform positions include supplying the Ukrainian military with lethal defensive weapons, restoring the practice of sharing RADARSAT-2 imagery with the Ukrainian army and providing additional humanitarian assistance to support internally displaced people. Fen Hampson, an international affairs expert and professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, says both candidates “are and have been strongly pro-Ukraine” and will continue to apply sanctions against Russia and provide economic assistance to Kyiv. In fact, the biggest risk to Canadian support for Ukraine is likely connected not to which party is victorious, but to the absence of a winning party. “If we have a minority government as many are now predicting, which is to say neither party wins a majority in parliament and has to work with other parties, this may mean a government that is focused on internal as opposed to international issues,” Hampson said in a written comment to the Kyiv Post. “That could have an impact on the government's ability to do things proactively, including in foreign policy.” Other experts interviewed by the Kyiv Post share Hampson's take. Andrew Rasiulis, a former director of military training and co-operation at the Department of National Defence and a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, agrees that the two parties have “pretty much the identical position on the issue of Ukraine.” Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky shifted the world's focus toward Ukraine by calling for peace in Donbas and opening negotiations with Russia in the so-called Normandy format peace talks. Canada might have a specific role to play in it, Rasiulis argues, but the new Canadian government will be very cautious in this realm. “They would not want Canada to be caught outside the game, because if there is a Normandy format summit — possibly in November — Canada has a choice to make,” Rasiulis told the Kyiv Post. “We can either be on the sidelines and won't talk to the Russians unless they leave Donbas and return Crimea. But on the other hand, if there are negotiations, then Canada could play a role in terms of offering a peacekeeping force. That force hasn't been discussed yet but I believe it will come up.” Rasiulis believes that if Ukraine implements the Steinmeier Formula as a potential way to reinvigorate negotiations with Russia over the war, which has killed more than 13,000 people in eastern Ukraine, Canada can offer its peacekeeping force to help secure the Russia-Ukraine border during local elections in Donbas and convince Russia that “this force can be objective.” Read More: What is the ‘Steinmeier Formula' and why are so many Ukrainians against it? Over the past four years of the Trudeau government, Canada's armed forces have been present in Ukraine as part of Operation Unifier, which runs until 2022. About 200 Canadian troops working in six-month cycles have trained over 13,000 members of Ukrainian security forces to date. Though Canada is not a major military power, its troops are efficient and well-trained and “have passed on some of their knowledge to those engaged in security issues” and the war in Donbas, argues David R. Marples, a historian and professor at the University of Alberta. Liberal Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland — who is of Ukrainian ancestry on her mother's side — has also been a consistent and outspoken supporter of Ukraine, and is banned from entering the Russian Federation as a result. “It seems clear, therefore, that Ukrainians will not be worse off if Trudeau and the Liberals are granted a second term in office,” Marples said. The historian stresses that the Conservative government's policies might be a bit harder to predict. “Though Scheer is unlikely to make any conciliatory moves toward Russia, the bigger question is whether Ukraine is on his horizon at all, insofar (as) his major focus is on China — he has demanded a much stiffer response to the recent actions of the Chinese government, which have included the arrest of three Canadian businessmen,” Marples said. “On the other hand, he has expressed concern about the lack of unity among NATO allies, with an implicit sideswipe at President Donald J. Trump and his nebulous policies and apparent kinship with dictators.” Moreover, Scheer is close to former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who was a fervent opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Though the extent of Harper's influence in a future Conservative government is unclear, he has often appeared alongside Scheer at public events,” Marples told the Kyiv Post. “For Harper, the priority was dealing with Russia — which he often equated with Communism — rather than China. Scheer appears more reticent, even distant from such an ideological stance.” https://www.kyivpost.com/world/what-can-ukraine-expect-from-canadas-federal-election.html?cn-reloaded=1

• 

  November 8, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Cracks emerging in European defence as NATO faces ‘brain death’, Macron warns

  MICHELLE ZILIO ADRIAN MORROWU.S. CORRESPONDENT French President Emmanuel Macron has warned that NATO faces “brain death” because the United States can no longer be counted on to co-operate with the other members of the military and political alliance. In an interview published on Thursday, Mr. Macron said what “we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” citing concerns about the lack of co-ordinated strategic decision-making between the United States and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Speaking more generally about the future of Europe, Mr. Macron said the continent needs to “wake up” to the shift in U.S. foreign policy toward isolationism and the global balance of power, with the rise of China and re-emergence of authoritarian powers such as Russia and Turkey. Mr. Macron said Europe is at risk of disappearing geopolitically and losing “control of our destiny” if it fails to face this reality. U.S. President Donald Trump has condemned NATO as outdated, and complained publicly that the United States contributes the most to its defence operations, while other allies, including Canada, fail to boost their military spending. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was visiting Germany on Thursday for the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, hailed NATO's importance in uniting democratic countries to win the Cold War. But at a press conference with his German counterpart, Foreign Affairs Minister Heiko Maas, he repeated Mr. Trump's demand that other members contribute more to the alliance. He said he was glad to see German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer's commitment earlier in the day to bring German defence spending to 2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2031. “It is an absolute imperative that every country participate and join in and contribute appropriately to achieving that shared security mission,” Mr. Pompeo said. NATO is an alliance of 29 countries from Europe and North America for mutual defence, fighting terrorism and helping manage crises around the world. Its members contribute to its operations mainly by participating in its missions. Members pledged in 2014 to increase their military spending to 2 per cent of GDP by 2024. U.S. military spending was 3.2 per cent of GDP in 2018, according to the World Bank. Canada has no clear plan to reach 2 per cent in the next decade. In a statement, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan's office said Canada's total defence spending is expected to reach 1.48 per cent of GDP by 2024. However, spokesperson Todd Lane said the government plans to exceed another NATO target, 20 per cent of defence spending on major equipment. Mr. Maas, the German foreign affairs minister, dismissed Mr. Macron's comments. “I do not believe NATO is brain-dead,” he said. “The challenges should not be downplayed in their importance, those that we are facing, but we have an interest in the unity of NATO and its ability to take action.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday in Berlin, also rejected Mr. Macron's “drastic words.” “That is not my view of co-operation in NATO,” she said at a news conference. “I don't think that such sweeping judgments are necessary, even if we have problems and need to pull together.” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday that NATO continues to play an important role on the world stage. He pointed to Canada's leadership of the NATO training mission in Iraq and its involvement in a mission in Latvia as examples of where the alliance is still valuable. “I think NATO continues to hold an extremely important role, not just in the North Atlantic, but in the world as a group of countries that come together to share values, that share a commitment to shared security,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa. Fen Hampson, an international affairs expert at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University, said Mr. Macron made a fair point about NATO's problems, but said use of the term “brain death" was a bit hyperbolic. “This [NATO] is a corpse that perhaps has a beating heart in terms of the intergovernmental machinery, but in terms of its political leadership and political commitment ... I think he is on the mark there,” Prof. Hampson said. In the wide-ranging foreign policy interview with The Economist, Mr. Macron also questioned the effectiveness of NATO's Article Five, which says that if one member is attacked, all others will come to its aid. The collective defence article is meant as a deterrent. Mr. Macron said NATO “only works if the guarantor of last resort functions as such,” adding that there is reason to reassess the alliance in light of the U.S. actions. He pointed to the abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops from northeastern Syria last month, abandoning Kurdish allies. The move made way for Turkey to invade and attack the Kurds, whom Turkey has long seen as terrorists. Mr. Macron expressed concern about whether NATO would respect Article Five and back Turkey, a member, if Syria launched a retaliatory attack. “If the [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad regime decides to retaliate against Turkey, will we commit ourselves under it? It's a crucial question,” Mr. Macron said. David Perry, vice-president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said that while Mr. Trump's withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria sent a troubling signal to allies, it would be much more difficult for him to bypass the U.S. national security community, which widely supports NATO, to make drastic changes to his county's involvement in the alliance. “NATO is different in the order of importance than the American relationship was with the Kurds. Because of that there's enough of the national security establishment built in and around Trump that would safeguard the U.S. role in the alliance to prevent anything catastrophic from happening," Mr. Perry said. Roland Paris, a professor of international affairs at the University of Ottawa and former foreign policy adviser to Mr. Trudeau, said Mr. Macron is right about the need for Europeans to work together more effectively, but said calling NATO's Article Five into question is a “dangerous and irresponsible way to do so.” https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-trudeau-says-nato-is-still-important-despite-macrons-warning-of/