The new “seat at the table”: Sokolsky, Canada and collective security in a transformative technology age

Professor Joel Sokolsky’s scholarship on Canadian defence policy and collective security provides a compelling argument for how a middle power can secure influence within security arrangements dominated by larger states. His work on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), peacekeeping, and Canadian defence policy explores how military contributions and diplomatic engagement shaped Canada’s position within these arrangements. This article draws upon those insights to look at how the technological transformation of military capabilities and collective defence is changing the conditions under which states other than great powers can exercise influence within new security partnerships. This requires Canada to clarify what distinctive capabilities it can bring to alliances, which technological dependencies it can live with, and what rules governing shared technologies it can help shape. By revisiting Sokolsky’s “functionalism”, “Americanization of peacekeeping” and his “seat at the table” concepts – as well as his later work on Canada’s more economical approach to alliances, the article extends Sokolsky’s defence policy insights to these emerging dimensions of collective security and argues that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s emphasis on middle power coalitions and strategic autonomy provides a test for the Sokolsky proposition.