Why Buck-Passing Beats Token Posturing
The return of great-power competition has renewed an old dynamic: revisionism triggers balancing. In the western Pacific, China’s effort to bend the regional order has been met by a thickening counter-architecture—an allied, networked “archipelago kill web” that makes large PLAN surface groups continuously targetable along, and thus contained within, the First Island Chain. That web is being woven and maintained by states that are proximate, invested, capable, and already integrated. Canada is none of those things in the Western Pacific. Ottawa has no unique military-strategic role to play in that regional denial grid—and it should stop pretending otherwise. The prudent course is a conscious strategy of buck-passing: allowing better-positioned allies to shoulder the Western Pacific’s frontline burdens while Canada concentrates finite resources on North American and North Atlantic security, where it can actually move the balance.
The coalition’s web is no longer conceptual. It now rests on forward, land-based anti-ship fires and interoperable logistics nested inside regional legal frameworks. The United States has demonstrated rapid “lift-and-plug” deployments of the Typhon launcher—capable of SM-6 and Tomahawk—from Northern Luzon in 2024 to Japan in 2025, explicitly rehearsing maritime strike along the First Island Chain. The Philippines has fielded BrahMos coastal batteries on Western Luzon oriented toward the very waters where coercion has been most acute. Japan has stood up a permanent Joint Operations Command and is modifying destroyers to fire Tomahawks, while Tokyo, Canberra, and Washington have added a trilateral naval logistics arrangement that emphasizes refueling and missile reloads. This is the backbone of balance-restoration in the theater: proximate fires tied to resilient backstage support and permissive host-nation frameworks.
Critically, the legal-political sinews are regional. The Japan–Philippines Reciprocal Access Agreement took effect on September 11, 2025, streamlining deployments, exercises, and sustainment across two of the web’s most important nodes. None of this requires Canadian platforms, much less Canadian land-based missiles on allied soil. The coalition now possesses the geometry, authorities, and logistics to deter China day after day without Ottawa’s help.
What can Canada add that is not already available in greater quantity and at lower opportunity cost from allies closer to the fight? Not forward fires: Ottawa has no coastal missile units, no basing rights in the First Island Chain, and no practical pathway to emplace such systems in Japan or the Philippines. Not decisive naval mass: the Royal Canadian Navy’s Halifax-class frigates still center on upgraded Harpoon and point-defense missiles; they can integrate into exercises and presence missions, but they do not alter the web’s deterrent calculus. Even the recent rearming of a Canadian frigate with Harpoons in northern Australia was procedural and symbolic, not structural.
Nor can Canada meaningfully strengthen the web’s endurance in the near term. The new A330-based CC-330 tanker fleet—essential for sustained long-range air operations—will not deliver initial operational refueling capability until 2028–29, with full operational capability projected for the 2032–33 window. The Royal Canadian Air Force’s F-35s will begin training at Luke AFB in 2026, with initial aircraft arriving in Canada starting in 2028; these jets will be vital for continental defense and allied interoperability, but they will not supply a unique Western Pacific capability that the United States and Japan do not already field in far greater numbers.
Longer-term fleet modernization also argues against dispersing effort. The Canadian Surface Combatant program will not deliver its first ship until the early 2030s—a schedule that already strains shipyards and budgets. Meanwhile, Ottawa has signaled an intention to acquire up to a dozen conventionally powered submarines, a generational investment aimed—sensibly—at Arctic and North Atlantic deterrence. Each of these projects will demand funding, industrial focus, crews, and munitions stocks that cannot be in two places at once. The logic is unforgiving: the more Canada chases marginal presence in the Western Pacific, the less it can consolidate credible mass in the theaters that actually define its security.
Some will counter that “showing up” has diplomatic value. It does, to a point. Canada’s recurring Indo-Pacific deployments under Operation HORIZON and sanctions monitoring under NEON signal alignment with allies and a commitment to a rules-based order. But symbolism has diminishing returns when measured against hard trade-offs in maintenance, munitions, and readiness. A frigate cycling through presence patrols does not create the time-sensitive, land-based targetability that anchors the kill web. Nor does it fix Canada’s most immediate strategic deficits at home—aging Arctic infrastructure, under-resourced NORAD modernization, and shallow munitions inventories.
Buck-passing is not abandonment; it is prioritization inside a balance-of-power framework. In classical terms, the coalition closest to the revisionist power supplies the holding function—proximity, mass, and persistence—while a distant ally like Canada contributes by shoring up the wider system where it has comparative advantage. For Canada, that means three things.
First, finish what matters for continental defense. Deliver F-35s on the published timeline; field the CC-330 tanker fleet to close refueling gaps as it reaches initial capability in 2028–29; and accelerate radar, command-and-control, and munitions buys tied to NORAD. The credibility of North American defense is the foundation of every other Canadian commitment.
Second, restore genuine naval combat power where it counts. Keep the Canadian Surface Combatant program on track and resist boutique add-ons that delay delivery; move quickly on the submarine recapitalization with under-ice-capable designs; and build magazine depth for real contingencies in the Arctic and North Atlantic. These are the seas where Canadian forces can deny adversaries, complicate Russian naval movements, and add tangible weight to NATO.
Third, add value to the Western Pacific indirectly—through industrial, intelligence, cyber, and training contributions that do not siphon scarce platforms. Ottawa’s potential participation in advanced-capabilities projects with close allies points toward the right division of labor: help partners harden networks and accelerate technology pipelines while the theater states handle forward lethality.
The Western Pacific does not need another distant flag; it needs a stable balance. That balance is being restored by those with the geography, authorities, and stockpiles to keep the PLAN continuously at risk along the First Island Chain. Canada’s attempt to graft itself onto that web would be costly, performative, and strategically beside the point. In an era when resources, industrial capacity, and political focus are finite, prudence is power. Let the states nearest the revisionist carry the spear where they are strongest; let Canada fortify the rest of the shield where it can actually matter. That is how a middle power sustains an order worth defending—by resisting the urge to be everywhere and choosing instead to be decisive somewhere.
Andrew Latham, Ph.D., a tenured professor at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is also a Senior Washington Fellow with the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy in Ottawa and a non-resident fellow with Defense Priorities, a think tank in Washington, D.C.
