Raquel Garbers has recently published the first of five papers for CIGI’s project on Canada at Economic War.

Here are a few key points to note according to Raquel:

1. At the end of the Cold War, the Western powers made two fateful errors: they opened their societies and economies to hostile states, and they allowed their militaries to fall into decline. This complacency has brought us right back to where we started, with war between the major powers no longer unimaginable (quite the opposite).

2. Securing our future means urgently changing our foreign policy mindset; getting serious about making our economy competitive; taking bold action to fix our military; and rebuilding our (defense) industrial base to amplify our strategic leverage (we have what the world wants- we need a savvy plan as allies and adversaries alike will increase pressure on us fast). Getting all of that right starts with recognizing the world AS IT IS (vs longing for a long gone era)= We need to understand that we are already in a global economic war, and that economic war is the first phase of full-scale war.

3. Folks keen on ideas for a Canadian Defense Industrial Strategy (CDIS) will find a description of the pillars we need to base it on at the end of the paper (they will be explored in Paper 5).

4. Policy wonks interested in some basic reforms we need to make more broadly to create an “enabling environment” for the CDIS will find an appendix of ideas at the end. (Note: the appendix grows with each Paper in the series, as I dive into different elements of the problem).

Read the full paper here.