Joint statement from the Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer, on defence financing
Press Release + Noah Note
"Canada and the United Kingdom recognise the shared challenge facing like-minded partners in scaling defence industrial capacity, strengthening resilience, and supporting deterrence and defence.
We welcome the growing interest among allies and partners in developing multilateral approaches to defence financing and procurement, including our ongoing initiatives.
These initiatives have the potential to support investment in defence industrial capacity, improve coordination across allies, and enhance the availability and interoperability of capabilities. They can operate in parallel to support collective defence and security.
The efforts of the countries supporting the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank and the Multilateral Defence Mechanism have a high degree of complementarity, and, taken together can serve to improve defence investment throughout the supply chain.
Canada and the UK will continue to engage closely to ensure our respective initiatives develop in a coherent and mutually supportive way. Where it is possible within their agreed mandates, we will seek opportunities to cooperate closely and ensure complementarity. We encourage like-minded partners to engage in these discussions."
Noah Note: This has been in the minor rumor mill the last few days. We talked a bit about MDM last week as a competitor to the DSRB. I should note that competition doesn't come from them being similar. In fact, both are more complementary to each other at furst glance. The DSRB is a bank, a financial instrument to utilize.
By comparison the MDM is a procurement vehicle. It is there to facilitate the rapid and joint procurement of common equipment. The includes through Direct grant funding and pooled buying, but explicitly removes itself from long-term financing as the DSRB would, same to supporting Industry.
Deapite those differences though, the two are competitors. Capital is always going to be a limiting factor, and the DSRB asks for a fairly hefty commitment out the gate. There is also a bit of an open debate to be had on eaither side about the value of the other. Certainly, certain UK officials have used MDM as an idealized model that they believe fits better than DSRB.
Funniest timeline is basically recreating SAFE through aligning both instruments. Sone people are talking about a merger, but I dont see that. These are two seperate, distinct things. They have different frameworks, goals, and setups. Perhaps there could be some sort of reciprocal membership down the line? Where members have an option to easily participate in both?
Either way its good to get soke alignment, especially if it means getting the UK involved. Belgium involvement in the DSRB, I hope, at least helps nudge the Netherlands into the conversation again after they gave a pretty cold response before. Getting all three into the DSRB would be a fsirly big boost to the walking start we have now.