W301 - National Security & Intelligence: Debates in Canadian National Security
Date: Jun 12 | Heure: 08:30am to 10:00am | Salle: McGill College 2001 461
Chair/Président/Présidente : Bessma Momani (University of Waterloo)
Smoking Guns: Qualitative evaluation of Canadian firearm policy.: Noah Schwartz (University of the Fraser Valley), Claire Kitsul (University of the Fraser Valley)
Abstract: The Liberal government has made significant changes to Canada’s gun laws since 2019 with the promise of improving public safety. But while there are strong incentives for politicians to pass gun control laws, research from the United States has demonstrated that the incentives to implement, enforce, and evaluate these policies are weaker. As a result, the public does not get the safety benefits promised by legislation. Public support for gun control in Canada is high, and anecdotal comparisons with the United States suggest Canada’s system works well. That being said, quantitative evaluations of Canada’s gun control laws often present contradictory results. New challenges, like 3D-printed firearms and increasingly sophisticated smuggling networks, also undermine Canada’s efforts at reducing gun violence.
In this presentation, we present initial results from our SSHRC-funded project conducting a qualitative evaluation of Canada’s gun control laws. This project draws on interviews with public safety officials, law enforcement, and key stakeholders like community groups.
Gun control has been increasingly incorporated into narratives around culture war wedge politics. Evaluating gun control policies helps hold politicians accountable for the promises they make and ensures that gun control policy contributes to public safety, rather than party fundraising.
The Weaponization of Disinformation: A Threat to Canadian National Security: Bessma Momani (University of Waterloo), Shelly Ghai Bajaj (University of Waterloo)
Abstract: The shifting global balance of power, characterized by growing multipolarity, is occurring alongside the rapid expansion of tools, strategies, and spaces for adversarial states to expand their spheres of influence, disrupt multilateral diplomacy, undermine internationalism, and threaten liberal democratic norms and values that underpin our national security. The information space is a growing operational domain for threat actors with digital disinformation as a salient feature of global politics that impacts national security. Moreover, adversarial states are growing increasingly adept in their weaponization of digital disinformation by using new techniques to exploit and influence the global information environment as well as to harm other states (Moore, 2018). This paper examines the weaponization of digital disinformation by adversarial states for Canadian national security by examining its impacts on social cohesion and social resiliency.
Although the weaponization of digital disinformation falls below the threshold of conventional inter-state conflict, it contains a range of malignant and malicious activities as a low-cost and high-yield strategy for threat actors. Disinformation strategies can range from the dissemination of deep fakes, fabricated content, foreign interference, and coordinated propaganda campaigns to a more subtle exercise of information operations by states in which disinformation feeds into a broader, more sophisticated, and carefully managed narrative structure. This paper examines the wide range of ways that digital disinformation may be weaponized by adversarial states like Russia, China, and Iran, known to engage in ‘information warfare’ tactics while exploring how other states, like India, can engage in more subtle and indirect forms of digital subversion through the domestic spread of disinformation that subsequently spreads outside of its borders. Understanding the connection between global political volatility, the weaponization of digital disinformation, its implications, and how it may be effectively countered is imperative given its destabilizing potential to Canada’s national security.
Synergy as integrative theory: Eric Dion (École nationale d'administration publique)
Abstract: In light of increasing complexities of the many contemporary challenges in multiple dimensions, idiosyncratic theories do not cut it anymore; there arises the need for an integrative theory that transcends academic disciplines with the aim of fostering synergy between theory and practice. And indeed, according to Kurt Lewin (c. 1943): “There is nothing as practical as a good theory”! But is the field of political science ready to lead such a constructive and yet pragmatic renewal?
Employing mixed methods within a grounded theory design, Synergy as integrative theory, was developed as theoretical model in order to explain Canada’s (past) engagement in Afghanistan, with a view on the comprehensive approach and the need for a multi-dimensional collaboration. However, what has been underappreciated is that a constructive, yet pragmatic epistemological perspective becomes fundamental that transcends traditional academic or political science silos. Based on six fundamental dimensions, namely: The situational context, the societal culture, the organisational structure, the systemic process, the strategic policy, and the synergy dynamic; this paper will thus argue that Synergy, as integrative theory, offers an intellectual way forward.
Of course, a challenge lays in its ‘incommensurability’ of which our adversaries make little case, hence our reflexive and critical thinking must evolve toward a more integrated holistic approach, one embracing diversity of thought to build on all respective strengths and counter weaknesses. To confront so many contemporary challenges in multiple dimensions, Synergy is quintessential.
The perils of history: why states repeat past intelligence Mistakes?: Ariel Reichard (Charles University, Prague), Or Honig (Hampden-Sydney College)
Abstract: Why do states find it so hard to learn from their own history, often preferring to look at others' real-time experience for strategic lessons? Conversely, why do so many states seemingly forget past lessons, repeating past mistakes that lead to repeated disaster?
We examine why small states fail to learn by examining the recent Hamas attack on Israel. This case is paradigmatic not simply because as a threatened country with vast military experience, Israel has a strong incentive and optimal conditions to apply successful learning (indeed, its experience is often a source for learning by others!). In reality, the Hamas attack was made possible because Israel repeated several mistakes that caused it to suffer a devastating intelligence surprise before the 1973 war (another well documented and researched case that was commemorated the days before the fatal Hamas attack). While Israeli leaders routinely claim to have learned the lessons of 1973, they clearly did not.
This article argues that this is not coincidental. In reality, history is far less useful as a field of learning strategic lessons than many historians and political scientists seem to believe. In fact, trying to learn from the Past can sometimes be misleading and lead to new failures. While nations sometimes fail because they tragically forget past lessons, more frequently nations draw or apply the wrong lessons to new situations, failing to make the proper adjustments. We describe how history (one's own and others') can mislead strategists, and caution against the wholesale adoption of accepted "lessons of the past" as a basis for national security policy making.