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Canada's best hope of remaining a viable independent country is to revitalize its Armed Forces and be an indispensable partner to the U.S. military and NATO, says a leading American expert on Canadian issues.

Military capacity, not culture, is the true measure of sovereignty for nation-states, said Thomas Barnes, a professor of Canadian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

"If culture were the true measure of sovereignty, Quebec and 13 U.S. states would have become independent decades ago," he said.

In a presentation to the annual conference of the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States, which opened Friday at the University of Ottawa, Mr. Barnes said Canada spends a lot of energy defending its cultural sovereignty, about which it feels much anxiety, especially with respect to the United States. While he does not dismiss these concerns, he said it blinds Canadians to the importance of creating and maintaining sufficient military capacity to play the full role of a nation-state.

Canadian identity, confidence and, by extension, sovereignty were always buoyed by Canada's military exploits in the Boer War, the two world wars and in Korea, he maintained. Yet in every case, Canadians soldiers were part of a larger integrated fighting force. Mr. Barnes said interoperability with the U.S. military will not erode Canada's sovereignty, it will enhance it.

"Collaboration within such a system does not diminish sovereignty provided each nation-state can contribute something valuable to that capacity," he said. "If it cannot, (then) its sovereignty is jeopardized."

Without sufficient military might, Canada will become increasingly irrelevant in significant international matters, he argued.