Canada and Australia are remarkably alike in many areas. It was no surprise that Prime Minister Stephen Harper in addressing the Australian Parliament in 2007 called the countries: “strategic cousins.” Given this, with some proposing Canada should shift its military focus westward into Asia, it seems only sensible that the two countries should cooperate more fully.
As middle powers, Canada and Australia already undertake significant cooperation across governmental, commercial, and cultural domains. Indeed, cooperation in the security field has steadily deepened given both nations’ involvement in Afghanistan and East Timor. There are now annual Australia-Canada Ministerial Bilateral Meetings, annual Chiefs of Defence Force meetings and senior Departmental official’s meetings.
This is a rosy picture but some real deficiencies are hidden in it. Both countries are highly pragmatic, with present cooperation largely driven by pressing security matters – as these wax and wane so does mutual collaboration. The urgent displaces the important. This makes Canadian-Australian cooperation episodic and idiosyncratic rather than long-term and enduring. In some respects this is understandable.
Canada and Australia, with their distinct and distant geographic locations, have quite different strategic concerns and drivers.
Canada and Australia, with their distinct and distant geographic locations, have quite different strategic concerns and drivers. Canada’s defence is ultimately underwritten by the US while generally Canada has seen Western Europe as its major defence focus. For Australia, national defence is fundamentally an Australian responsibility with South East Asia of greatest defence concern. To paraphrase the old Chinese adage, in defence matters Canada and Australia have historically had different beds and different dreams.
Read the full “A strategic focus for Canada-Australia security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific” article in Inside Policy by Griffith Asia Institute Visiting Fellow Peter Layton.
