Vanguard Magazine

www.vanguardcanada.com FEBRUARY/MARCH 2026 19 F E AT U R E T RAT E G Y D uring my time as Director, General Plans at the Strate- gic Joint Staff, I observed how this culture manifests. The staff's work was to co- ordinate military advice and ensure align- ment with government policy, not to ar- ticulate an overarching theory of national purpose. Decisions were reactive, cali- brated to events rather than guided by a unifying framework. That pattern persists across the national security enterprise. Canada has therefore never institutional- ized the process of strategy-making. The United States, United Kingdom, France, and Australia all possess interdepartmental structures dedicated to continuous strate- gic assessment. Canada does not. Its de- fence and foreign policies operate in par- allel, often with compatible rhetoric but rarely with integrated planning. The result is a state that manages security compe- tently but without vision, a "policy state" rather than a "strategic state." True strategy is not a collection of initia- tives. It is the art of relating ends, ways, and means: defining what a nation seeks to achieve, how it will pursue those goals, and with what resources. The logic is de- ceptively simple but demands intellectual discipline. Strategy is also inherently po- litical. It involves prioritization, trade-offs, and the acceptance of risk. To define ends is to admit limits. Modern discourse has diluted the term. Governments routinely label any long-term plan a "strategy": an innova- tion strategy, a communications strategy, a climate strategy. These are useful poli- cies but not strategy in the classical sense. They lack the integrative quality that binds statecraft together. Historically, "strategy" was purely mili- tary. It referred to the maneuver of forces to achieve victory in battle. The notion of grand strategy, namely the orchestra- tion of all instruments of national power, emerged only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, largely through naval thinkers. Alfred Thayer Mahan and Julian Corbett recognized that maritime power, trade, and industrial capacity formed a single system of influence. Their insights transformed strategy from battlefield art to statecraft. For Canada, the lesson is clear. As a mar- itime trading nation dependent on global commerce and continental defense, its prosperity and sovereignty are inseparable from the sea. The logic of grand strategy is therefore inherently maritime. The end of the Cold War ushered in a period of unipolar stability that allowed Canada and many Western states to drift strategically. Under the protective canopy of U.S. hegemony, Canada could afford to treat foreign and defence policy as an ex- tension of domestic values. The language of "rules-based order" and "responsibility to protect" replaced the language of na- tional interest. This posture was comfortable but de- ceptive. It obscured the material foun- dations of stability: American military preponderance, global trade liberaliza- tion, and the absence of peer competi- tors. While those conditions endured, Canada's lack of strategy seemed a virtue, proof of moral clarity rather than geopo- litical dependence. That world is gone. The return of great- power competition has exposed the fragil- ity of a system built on assumption rather than design. The United States, China, and Russia are now engaged in multidi- mensional rivalry that fuses economics, technology, and ideology. The notion that trade automatically promotes peace has proven false. Interdependence has become a weapon. Canadian Coast Guard Ship Pierre Radisson. Photo: Sergeant Alana Morin, Joint Task Force (North), DND.

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