AHC: Canada Maintains Major Military Power Post WWII

What would be needed to be done so that as WWII ends, Canada maintains a military that would be seen as a major force by itself though the 20th century-not in the sense that equal to the US or Soviets, but more like the The Mann's Canadian Power timeline.

As an extra challenge, still have Canada develop some of the socialist aspects it did in the OTL.
 
No Paul Hellyer. Get rid of him and the canadian millitary will remain a force to be reckoned with.

Whilst no doubt better off without Hellyer it still would only make a minimal difference. Politicians in Canada will always look at the Defense budget as ripe for raiding to finance some pet scheme or other. In many ways the Canadian military is much like the US military throughout its history pre-WWII. A small largely ignored force only paid attention to when forced by circumstances. Given Canada's geographical position and powerful, largely friendly neighbor that circumstance is rarely present.
 
What would be needed to be done so that as WWII ends, Canada maintains a military that would be seen as a major force by itself though the 20th century-not in the sense that equal to the US or Soviets, but more like the The Mann's Canadian Power timeline.

As an extra challenge, still have Canada develop some of the socialist aspects it did in the OTL.

In my view there would need to be a credible armed threat to vital Canadian interests that the US and other allies were un willing (or unable) to help Canada meet.

A few very very unlikely thoughts that come to mind:

Perhaps a much more assertive Canadian approach to Arctic sovereignty and economic rights in the waters near Canada leads to a situation where the US declines to support Canada in a dispute with other nations and Canada decides to beef up their military to be able to keep any nation other than the US out ?

Perhaps Canada some how acquires British possessions in the Caribbean (or else where ?), the US and UK indicates that they won't help Canada defend them and Canada then decides to build a military capable of preventing other states from interfering with them and having a credible ability to re capture them (ie a Falklands / Malvinas type scenario) in the event they were seized ?
 
Yes!
What external threat justifies greater military spending?
Over-fishing?
In retrospect, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans should have done a much better job of patrolling the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. Only Newfy and Nova Scotian (home port) boats should ever have been allowed to fish those waters out to the 200 mile limit. If the Grand Banks had been properly patrolled, we would not suffer the current collapsed cod fishery.
Sometimes 'Fisheries would need Royal Canadian Navy armed support to search and seize Portugese or Polish vessels fishing the Grand Banks without licenses.
Maybe we would see a proxy war war between the RCN and the Polish Navy??????

By the same logic, Mainic lobster men would only be allowed to set their traps on half of the Bay of Fundy.
 
Maybe if the Soviets engaged in prolonged provocations in the Arctic Circle that the Canadian people became more supportive long term of being a military power to defend their own territory. I don't know the Soviets would do such a thing.

Canada's limited population and thus economic size puts major restrictions on any peacetime Canadian military. What they would need is a first class force in its regular military component, and a limited expeditionary capability that would allow it to intervene when needed.

In order to get the respect of a "major" power, they would need to intervene a lot. At same time, they can't be bogged down in wars. Not only would it erode their military prestige, it would likely end support of any expeditionary capability. So they'd likely be experts of quick, humanitarian intervention to augment their peacekeeping role IOTL. They wouldn't stay long at any one place and wouldn't play internal politics, but they would come in to secure order and stop killing and then quickly leave.

So we're looking at interventions to prevent spread of civil war or genocide. Possible opportunities might include Lebanon in 1958, the Congo in 1960,t he Rwanadan Genocide, and other similar things when a quick intervention might stop things, but not lead to prolonged involvement.

I think the POD is quite hard without a much different world.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Define "major"

What would be needed to be done so that as WWII ends, Canada maintains a military that would be seen as a major force by itself though the 20th century-not in the sense that equal to the US or Soviets, but more like the The Mann's Canadian Power timeline.

As an extra challenge, still have Canada develop some of the socialist aspects it did in the OTL.

Define "major"...

The Canadian armed forces of WW II, although certainly respectable in terms of both those deployed overseas and at home, were smaller than that of the USSR, ROC, US, UK, India, and France at the end of the war.

In terms of general effectiveness in terms of defending Canada (as "home" territory) proper and integration into Allied forces in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Europe, they certainly were in the fourth spot, but even then, the Canadian 1st Army, the RCAF operational groups in the ETO, and the RCN deployed outside of Canadian waters were very dependent on the resources of the US and the UK; the challenges the Canadians had pulling together an expeditionary force for the Western Pacific in 1945 makes that painfully clear...

The 6th Canadian Division had more women volunteers than they had slots for, and less infantry than the division needed, for example...

Think you have to define what you mean as "major" before there can be any real discussion.

Best,
 
First question needs to be what one means by "maintains major military power". The Canadian Armed Forces today are small in size but among the world's best trained and are well-equipped, and particularly after a decade in Afghanistan have reinforced the idea that they are both a capable fighting force as well as capable of the many different tasks that modern armed forces are sent to deal with.

If major power means a large land army, that's bordering on ASB. It's not necessary with the United States next door (and no scenario involving the United States would make Canada arm up a land army in such a way) and a waste of resources. What I can see, though, is a small-but-extremely-potent land force, maybe a couple of armored brigades, equipped with the latest possible hardware, for deployment to overseas operations during the Cold War, along with a medium-sized infantry force trained primarily in expeditionary operations, primarily a mechanized force with airmobile elements, perhaps trained and equipped as much as possible for shipboard and paratrooper operations. Any larger than that is hard to do without ASBs. Canada demobilized its army massively after WWII for a reason, and while its entirely conceivable that Canada maintains a good land army, having a really big one is out of the question.

The situation is much easier for the RCN and RCAF, though, because of commercial interests - Canada made most of its own gear for both of those, and came up with more than a few tricks the British and Americans didn't think of doing (independent helicopters off of smaller ships, tilt-wing aircraft, DATAR) and produced some of the world's best gear for their armed forces. Is it possible that this continues? Absolutely. Could it grow a lot bigger? Easily. The questions are political will and economics. The former is tricky but not crazy if the idea of national interest can be maintained. The latter is harder because Canada is a small economy, though there is a lot of ideas that were proposed involving particularly the RCAF in the 1960s which had a lot of American/British/Commonwealth co-operation.

Now, even if you settle these questions, what is the purpose of these armed forces? Canada can't really make any more than a small contribution to any NATO vs. Warsaw Pact land conflict for economic reasons. The Royal Canadian Navy could dedicate itself to preventing the Soviets from stopping resupply of those forces from North America, but that's easier said than done once the Soviets begin deploying the Kitchen and Kingfish missiles from bombers and make the threat multi-dimensional. The RCAF will undoubtedly be part of any plan to protect North America from Soviet bombers, but does that defense include Bomarc missiles as OTL, or does Canada have the political will to actually build and deploy the Avro Arrow? Do RCAF units get deployed to Europe to support NATO, and if so in what capacity?
 
First question needs to be what one means by "maintains major military power". The Canadian Armed Forces today are small in size but among the world's best trained and are well-equipped, and particularly after a decade in Afghanistan have reinforced the idea that they are both a capable fighting force as well as capable of the many different tasks that modern armed forces are sent to deal with.

If major power means a large land army, that's bordering on ASB. It's not necessary with the United States next door (and no scenario involving the United States would make Canada arm up a land army in such a way) and a waste of resources. What I can see, though, is a small-but-extremely-potent land force, maybe a couple of armored brigades, equipped with the latest possible hardware, for deployment to overseas operations during the Cold War, along with a medium-sized infantry force trained primarily in expeditionary operations, primarily a mechanized force with airmobile elements, perhaps trained and equipped as much as possible for shipboard and paratrooper operations. Any larger than that is hard to do without ASBs. Canada demobilized its army massively after WWII for a reason, and while its entirely conceivable that Canada maintains a good land army, having a really big one is out of the question.

The situation is much easier for the RCN and RCAF, though, because of commercial interests - Canada made most of its own gear for both of those, and came up with more than a few tricks the British and Americans didn't think of doing (independent helicopters off of smaller ships, tilt-wing aircraft, DATAR) and produced some of the world's best gear for their armed forces. Is it possible that this continues? Absolutely. Could it grow a lot bigger? Easily. The questions are political will and economics. The former is tricky but not crazy if the idea of national interest can be maintained. The latter is harder because Canada is a small economy, though there is a lot of ideas that were proposed involving particularly the RCAF in the 1960s which had a lot of American/British/Commonwealth co-operation.

Now, even if you settle these questions, what is the purpose of these armed forces? Canada can't really make any more than a small contribution to any NATO vs. Warsaw Pact land conflict for economic reasons. The Royal Canadian Navy could dedicate itself to preventing the Soviets from stopping resupply of those forces from North America, but that's easier said than done once the Soviets begin deploying the Kitchen and Kingfish missiles from bombers and make the threat multi-dimensional. The RCAF will undoubtedly be part of any plan to protect North America from Soviet bombers, but does that defense include Bomarc missiles as OTL, or does Canada have the political will to actually build and deploy the Avro Arrow? Do RCAF units get deployed to Europe to support NATO, and if so in what capacity?

Perhaps have the Canadian Army have a rapid deployment Brigade as well as a Heavy Division - with pre positioned equipment in Europe as part of BOAR II - with say each Brigade in the division rotating as the Cadre force stationed in Europe right up til the end of the cold war?

As for the Navy - there was as I understand it a point where they nearly bought some Trafalgers off the Brits (would have been better than the Upholders!) and this would have given the RCN a true blue sea G-I-UK gap ASW capability.
 
The issue with all these "X becomes a major military power" threads is that major militaries are expensive (both in terms of money and in terms of people serving in the military instead of going out and working in industry/starting businesses/etc.). Yes, you get some Keynesian multiplier effects, but it's about the least effective way possible to do so.

So what does Canada give up in order to pay for this military, and what prompts them to do so when they can otherwise mostly freeride off the enormous US military?
 
Current Canada has a population of 35 million, roughly half the size of any developed and democratic country that could today be feasibly be considered a major military power in a conventional sense (ie. the UK and France), and roughly one tenth the size of the population of the current super power (the US). The disparity in population sizes is even greater in the WW2 era: In 1945 Canada's population was only 12 million people to the UK's nearly 50 million and France's 40 million and the US's roughly 140 million. Canada simply doesn't have the population to sustain a large world class military during peacetime, although its large (relative to its population size) industrial base allowed it to quickly build and equip powerful army and navy and air force very quickly in ww2 (especially the navy which was virtually non-existent in 1939 to 300+ ships at the end of ww2 to protect a very large merchant marine. Also it should be noted that Canada essentially maxed out its financial capabilities in WW2 to field the force it did and supply the UK, and at one point faced an economic collapse in the countries ability to fund the allied war effort which was only alleviated by FDR's Hyde Park declaration which essentially committed the US to buy pretty much any war materiel Canada produced and then to sell it to the UK for credit as part of the lend-lease program. This is why Canada was able to produce staggering amounts of certain types of military equipment for the allies such as 500 000 CMP military trucks in WW2 (more than Germany), and allowed for Canada to run its own version of Lend-Lease, the Billion Dollar Gift and Mutual Aid. These kinds of disproportionate exertions would simply have been impossible in peace time, even if the Canadian public had been willing to fund a military to an extent proportionate the the Americans post-ww2.

The one way you can have a post-ww2 Canadian military that is a significant force to be reckoned with is if Canada pursues nuclear weapons (likely in conjunction with the UK effort). A country with a nuclear warhead stockpile and the delivery systems to inflict those weapons on distant countries automatically has to be considered a major military power. With the largest Uranium reserves on Earth, an early head start on nuclear technologies and infrastructure (involvement of Canadian scientists and industry in prewar nuclear research and later Manhattan project, creation of the first nuclear reactor outside of the US), Canada certainly has the potential to become a nuclear power, if not with an entirely independent program (a la France) then certainly as a full partner in a project with the UK, contributing strong research facilities and a huge amount of fissionable material to the joint project. Indeed the US eventually tried to pressure Canada to arm itself with American manufactured nuclear weapons, so even if a joint project Canadian project falls through there is a chance for a nuclear armed Canada operating US warheads, similar to the deal with the UK. The big reason none of this happened was a complete lack of public interest in a Canadian nuclear weapons program or even hosting foreign made nuclear weapons. However the Canadian civilian nuclear sector is definitely a major player on the international energy market with CANDU reactors and CANDU derivatives being the most successfully exported reactor in the world outside of American produced models (present in India, Pakistan, South Korea, China, Romania and Argentina with China), as well a well established nuclear research sector (often based around the SLOWPOKE mini reactors at Canadian Universities) as well as producing the bulk of the world supply of medical isotopes at the Chalk River Reactor, all of which definitely shows the infrastructure and technology necessary to create a nuclear program was and still is present in Canada, it is just there is no desire to do so and there would need to be a major POD to do so. To be blunt it is just so much cheaper for Canadians to outsource nuclear deference to the US as the two countries are geo-strategically joined at the hip due to the massive shared border. So instead Canada is happy to make a tidy profit selling uranium to the US so they can build weapons to defend both countries and to selling nuclear reactors to the rest of the world (which occasionally bit Canada in the ass as in the case where Canadian reactors were used to produce the fissionable material for India's first atomic bomb).

As a whole why would Canada even want a major military? Canada doesn't share any borders with an unstable or hostile neighbor (no jokes about the US please), unlike European nations in the Cold War Canada never faced any realistic scenario involving a foreign invasion and even going beyond that, Canada has been under the direct military protection of two successive Superpowers since the country's inception in 1867. Indeed, as soon as the UK began to weaken the US moved to directly protect Canada (Roosevelt's 1939 Queen's University Address directly stated that any foreign power attempting to invade Canada would face a declaration of war from the US and this was reinforced following the Ogdensburg agreement and the creation of the Permanent Joint Board of Defense in WW2). To be blunt, Canada faces practically no chance of a situation occurring where it would be under a conventional military attack from another state and even if it did, it could quickly lean on its powerful allies chiefly the United States to defend it as such the need for a large standing military force is very small, and that maintaining a WW2 level of military power is simply a waste of resources. What Canada needs in terms of military force is rather, a small mobile force capable of supporting its commitment to allied operation overseas as well as a strong anti-terrorism force to protect from unconventional attacks (basically the same model it has now). In short Canada's privileged geo-strategic position in the world renders a large military redundant and you would need a big POD to change this fact.
 
Yes!
What external threat justifies greater military spending?
Over-fishing?
In retrospect, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans should have done a much better job of patrolling the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. Only Newfy and Nova Scotian (home port) boats should ever have been allowed to fish those waters out to the 200 mile limit. If the Grand Banks had been properly patrolled, we would not suffer the current collapsed cod fishery.
Sometimes 'Fisheries would need Royal Canadian Navy armed support to search and seize Portugese or Polish vessels fishing the Grand Banks without licenses.
Maybe we would see a proxy war war between the RCN and the Polish Navy??????

By the same logic, Mainic lobster men would only be allowed to set their traps on half of the Bay of Fundy.

I suppose there could be a sequence of events early in the cold war era that could result in Canada putting more emphasis on having a Navy and probably Air Force that would allow them to credibly threaten large fleets of warships in their waters without having to rely on the US or NATO for help. Maybe Canada gets into repeated naval confrontations with some of their NATO allies over fishing rights, the US indicates that they won't get involved and the Canadians decide to stay in NATO despite getting into confrontations with other NATO nations. Greece and Turkey are still both in NATO so there is perhaps some precedent for this.

In my view this sequence of events is very very unlikely but perhaps not entirely impossible. It's also debatable if this type of build up meets the definition of maintaining Major Military Power.

Depending on the perceived value of the resources that they wanted to protect the Canadians might find the money for this type of military expansion, if the US and other allies can't or won't help them.

I'd argue that once Canada acquired their Halifax class frigates and acquired maverick missiles for their CF18 fighter air craft that Canada more or less acquired this capability (at least to some extent) although I suspect there would be some gaps in their abilities to challenge a major fleet in their own waters. Getting a similar capability earlier would be more of a challenge but would not be impossible.
 
The one way you can have a post-ww2 Canadian military that is a significant force to be reckoned with is if Canada pursues nuclear weapons (likely in conjunction with the UK effort).

"Strikingly, Canada appears to have even refused an offer which would have seen the USA provide Canada with nuclear weapons. In 1951, an US official suggested to the head of Canada’s Defence Research Board that Canada might welcome some US nuclear bombs for its own control and use. 'As regards the possibility of bombs being stored in Canada, Dr Solandt reported that Mr Arneson had thrown out a suggestion which he might or might not have meant to be taken seriously, that the Canadian government might wish to have bombs stored in Canada for its own use.'32 Even if this offer was not serious, and whatever the details would have been, that it was apparently never explored is striking and suggests a genuine lack of interest.."
http://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/papers-2013/Urban.pdf

(The paper's basic argument summarized by its author: "Canada’s non-acquisition of an independent strategic nuclear arsenal (hereafter, nuclear weapons) presents a particularly intriguing enigma for scholars of International Relations (IR), a group who have heretofore neglected this puzzle. This is because in foregoing acquisition Canada abstained from exploiting an unprecedented opportunity to ameliorate the massive imbalance in military power that existed between it and the USA. Realist theories of IR would suggest that any rational state endowed with Canada’s capabilities and facing such a situation ought to have leapt at the opportunity that acquisition presented to reduce this imbalance. Yet, not only did acquisition not occur, it seems that it was never even considered by Canada’s primary decision-makers. Below I argue that this result can best be accounted for through the recognition of the role played by trust in the Canada-USA relationship...")
 
"Strikingly, Canada appears to have even refused an offer which would have seen the USA provide Canada with nuclear weapons.

There really was no public will at the time to purchase nuclear weapons in Canada. For a while in the Cold War Canada did host tactical nuclear weapons systems from the United States based on the ground and Canadian fighter plains were equipped with air-to-air missiles that were nuclear tipped (although I don't know how many actually carried the nuclear armed warheads on actual patrols), but there some tremendous backlash against this and eventually all the weapon systems were removed. The strategic thinking of the time was that in the event of a nuclear war between the US and USSR Canada was going to get destroyed n the crossfire one way or another just due to the fact that it was in between Northern Russia and the US. Even if the Soviets didn't directly target Canadian cities in the attack the close proximity of the major Canadian cities like Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Vancouver to major US strategic targets pretty much guaranteed that they would be wiped out anyway. Even if Canada did pursue a nuclear program it would be on a scale of that of the UK or France or smaller and in a nuclear exchange between the US and Russia a few extra Canadian nukes with warheads in the kiloton range added to the mass of thermonuclear weapons en route from the US isn't going to make any difference. "Incineration without representation" was a popular slogan at the time. A modest nuclear arsenal built in the Cold War would have been pretty costly and the strategic benefits would have been negligible and the political benefits of a nuclear program were much less then for countries like the UK or France (I believe Churchill said of the the UK nuclear program "This is the price we pay to sit at he top table"). Maybe the diplomatic pressure Canada could bring to bear at the UN would be greater but that's about it, as granting Canada a permanent seat on the Security Council with the other nuclear powers will likely be off the table just due to the comparatively small population and influence wielded by the country coupled with its colonial history. However if the Canadian population had wanted they definitely COULD have had a nuclear armed Canada as the country has the technical know-how and the necessary technological and industrial base to do so (likely even being able do so extra quickly using American technology), and a nuclear armed Canada would fulfill the OP's AHC, as a Canada with a nuclear arsenal (likely in the tens to 100 warhead range) would doubtlessly be more militarily powerful then Canada ever was in WW2 and it wouldn't strain Canadian resources the way an enormous standing conventional military would.

It is funny when the US is actually pressuring a foreign country to have nuclear arms :D and I have little doubt that had Canada wanted to take it a step further beyond just hosting US nuclear weapons and developing their own nuclear systems that the US would more than happy to include them in a similar deal as what they did with the UK where the US would share their advanced delivery systems allowing Canada to build its arsenal on the cheap (comparatively). The only thing Canada lacks for building nuclear weapons is a reason to do so.
 
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