At the onset of the First World War, Britain’s veritable foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, remarked that the lamps were going out all over Europe and “we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”
The metaphor has long been considered as the unofficial epitaph to what at the time was the longest run of peace and prosperity on the continent.
The retelling of that story has become commonplace since the invasion of Ukraine.
It was hard not to think of it this week when listening to both a former NATO secretary general and the man who was Lithuania’s foreign minister as they each delivered stark assessments of where the world is going and how it got here.
Neither Lord George Robertson, who led the Western military alliance from 1999 to 2003, nor Gabrielius Landsbergis, the Baltic nation’s top diplomat for years, argued that we’re on the cusp of war.
Rather, they both called for clear-eyed deterrence as they delivered separate, sobering messages at the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries annual gathering of defence contractors in Ottawa, known as CANSEC.
Even still.
The post-Cold War era where nations didn’t have to worry about their sovereignty and territorial defence is over, Robertson told the conference.
“That world has evaporated, and it will not return even in our children’s lifetime,” he said.
NATO’s Article 5 — the pledge of collective defence and that an attack on one was an attack on all — gets all of the attention, Robertson said. But he argued that the third article of the Washington Treaty, which established NATO in 1949, will get more and more attention in the coming months and years.
That clause says members must have the individual and collective capacity to resist an armed attack.
“In other words, there is an obligation to defend your own homeland, an obligation that was, too often in the past, overlooked as we’ve looked at the [terrorist] enemy abroad,” Robertson said.
“There’s no longer room for business as usual.”
It’s been that way for more than a decade, he said, following the Russian annexation of Crimea.
“As we see every day in the east of Ukraine, the threat of naked aggression and wonton violence in the Euro Atlantic region — it’s no longer theoretical, no longer just a remote possibility,” Robertson said.
“It’s real. It’s brutal and it’s very, very close to us.”
The challenge today for nations, including Canada, is to stop believing that some things, such as invasions, are impossible.
“We need to be alert and wide awake,” said Robertson, who admitted in a later interview to being frustrated with Canada’s anemic record of defence spending. But he added he’s encouraged to see promises to do more from Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government.
Canada is hoping to soon sign on to a major $1.25-trillion European Union defence-industrial plan known as ReArm Europe.
Landsbergis was intensely critical of European leaders, who he says have been hitting the snooze button on defence since the 2008 Russian invasion of neighbouring Georgia.
His reaction to the ReArm Europe plan could be summed up in two words: about time.
“We’re finally starting to see our leaders talk about serious money,” Landsbergis said. “The European ReArm plan might be the first step in the right direction.”
Landsbergis said Europe simply allowed the crisis to build following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, rather than taking decisive action. It has been, he said, a wasted decade.
“During that time, Europeans said all the right things, but unfortunately very little preparation,” Landsbergis said.
“After the 2022 [Ukraine] invasion, there was hope that the situation would change dramatically and European factories would start rolling out tanks, howitzers and ammunition. This happened, but not to the extent that one would have hoped.”
Canada is planning a major Arctic military expansion, boosting its presence by several months each year and inviting more NATO troops to join. The move aims to assert sovereignty and respond to pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump.
NATO does its best to put things in context, saying over the past decade, European allies and Canada have steadily increased their collective investment in defence — from 1.43 per cent of their combined gross domestic product in 2014, to 2.02 per cent in 2024. (Canada currently sits at 1.37 percent of GDP) The increase represents $485 billion US in defence, the alliance says.
Landsbergis’s criticism, however, was not restricted to the political establishment. He said defence contractors and the corporate world have been equally stuck on the notion of business as usual.
“Every conversation I had with defense industry representatives during the years of war would end with a phrase: ‘I’m not building anything until you show me the money,'” he said.
“And that was the crux of the problem. Europe would talk nice but spend little and business leaders, Putin or anyone who’s good at math would see right through it.”
The lack of urgency, Landsbergis said, was evident in Ukraine’s life-and-death fight to hold the line from the advancing Russian army.
As a Lithuanian who understands life under Russian occupation, the arming of Ukraine in fits and starts was painful to watch, he said.
“Whenever another baby step is taken, I must show gratitude and whisper to myself, ‘Better late than never,'” Landsbergis said.
“When another weapon system is donated late with insufficient ammo and with orders not to use it against Russia too much, I must have whispered to myself, ‘That is enough.'”
