Canada’s government has eagerly embraced NATO’s new strategic concept. The plan is astonishingly frank in its calls for renewed military readiness — it is a return to more explicit Cold War–era principles of “deterrence” through confrontation. In a purported effort to “contribute to a more peaceful world,” NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept promises a “360-degree” extension of military force.

The proposal compels Canada and other NATO members to prepare to engage “regions of strategic interest” now and in the future. It aims to project NATO power in order to more boldly surround powers it identifies as aggressive.

While denouncing “aggressive” governments such as China and Iran, NATO’s new strategy tasks members with preparing for “high-intensity, multi-domain warfighting” across “all domains.” The strategic concept promises to “deter and defend forward with robust in-place, multi-domain, combat-ready forces, enhanced command and control arrangements, prepositioned ammunition and equipment and improved capacity and infrastructure to rapidly reinforce any Ally.” In the short term, this means increasing NATO’s Rapid Reaction Force to forty thousand troops, “pre-position[ing]” more ammunition in Eastern Europe, and expanding NATO’s “integrated air and missile defense.”