#4. How could Canada, employing joint deployment of nonviolent and military defence, deter or win a conflict against a superior military aggressor?

Richard Sandbrook

Joint deployment, as outlined in #1 in this series, requires the geographical separation of the military from the nonviolent forces. The former would operate in the northern areas of Canada and on the oceans, while also providing intelligence to the decentralized nonviolent defenders and protection from drone arracks and cyberattacks. Nonviolent defence would hold sway in the populated southern band of the country.

The main goal of this coordinated action is to deter aggression. Aggression might take two forms. The least likely is an outright invasion of Canada on the Ukraine model. The more likely form involves hybrid attacks to transform Canada into a vassal state, thus providing the aggressor with access to our water, mineral and energy resources. The takeover of Venezuela provides a model of how to forge a neocolony. In Canada’s case, it would involve the shutdown of the Internet and communications, rapid detention of the federal leadership and its replacement with collaborators, a propaganda campaign to justify the actions and the threat of military intervention. Joint deployment must be prepared to counter both strategies of domination.

Deterrence, in the case of a middle or small power, depends on the perception of the regionally hegemonic power that the targeted country is able to deny the aggressor his goal of domination. Such a calculation depends partly on that country’s military strength, though the larger power would be able to prevail militarily against a non-nuclear opponent. The calculation will heavily rest on the degree of unity, organization, capabilities and determination of civilians to resist, together with the external support – within the aggressor’s own country as well as abroad – that Canada could muster. The most effective joint deployment is the one that is so well prepared that it never has to be used.

In the event of an invasion, the priority of the defenders is to make occupation hell. Symbolic protests, boycotts, blockades of bridges and roads, slow-downs, non-supply of services and fuel, stay-at-home strikes, refusal to socialize, ostracizing collaborators, and widespread noncompliance render the occupied country ungovernable. Counterattack by the unarmed civilians involves undermining the support base of the invader, including the occupation forces, the home population and foreign allies and international organizations.

Preventing the aggressor from realizing its goal of domination and shredding its pillars of support may motivate the invader to concoct a compromise to withdraw or even undergo a collapse of its regime.

The Venezuelan scenario requires a different approach. Canada differs from Venezuela in possessing a legitimate and popular central government and a strong civil society (especially if the local organization of civilian defence reinforces local networks of trust and cooperation). Nonviolent defence then shifts into civil resistance mode to overthrow the puppet regime in Ottawa. Nonviolent defence is equally effective against authoritarians as against invaders.

Neither the Ukraine model of aggression nor the Venezuelan model would be likely succeed in the case of joint deployment.

Richard Sandbrook is Vice-President of Science for Peace and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Toronto.