Transforming the military

Marching Orders
How Canada abandoned peacekeeping – and why the UN needs us now more than ever

Transforming the military

The mission in Afghanistan has spanned three prime ministers: Liberals Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, and Conservative Stephen Harper. Chrétien accepted Canada’s role in the original invasion and authorized the 2003 NATO mission in Kabul. Paul Martin’s government shifted Canada’s presence from Kabul to the southern and much more dangerous province of Kandahar until February 2007. Stephen Harper, after narrowly winning a nonbinding vote in Parliament in May 2006, extended Canada’s mission by two years, to February 2009.

Along with the mission to Afghanistan, the Liberal governments under both Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and Prime Minister Paul Martin authorized and funded a new military “transformation”, aimed at making Canada’s military more suitable for the U.S. War on Terror. In fact, Paul Martin hand-picked General Hillier precisely to bring about these changes.

In announcing General Hillier’s appointment as Chief of Defence Staff on January 14, 2005, the government trumpeted Hillier’s experience, most notably his former role in commanding U.S. troops as an exchange officer with the U.S. Army, stating “Lt-Gen Hillier’s leadership and experience will be invaluable as we move forward in this process to transform the Canadian Forces to meet the security challenges Canada faces. He has extensive experience serving in Canada, Europe, and the United States.”4

The Liberal government provided General Hillier with the authority to reshape the military, and wrote him a virtual blank cheque for the largest military spending increase in a generation in the 2005 budget: $12.8 billion over five years – an increase that will eventually take Canadian defence spending higher than any level since the Second World War.5

According to interviews conducted by the Toronto Star, the decision to ramp up Canada’s military involvement in Afghanistan was made at a meeting on March 21, 2005, a few weeks after General Hillier’s appointment. Prime Minister Paul Martin, his senior ministers and staff members were present to discuss the upcoming deployment of a 250-member Provincial Reconstruction Team to Kandahar – a mix of mostly military personnel along with development workers and diplomats who would carry out local reconstruction and training programs.

General Hillier arrived at the meeting with something much bigger in mind. He wanted to send a 1,000-strong battle group to Kandahar. The mission would change Canada’s role at the time from conducting NATO peace support roles in the north, to a combat, counter-insurgency role in the south. Such a large combat role for Canada would impress the Americans, who had been suffering heavy losses, and wanted to rotate out 4,000 troops from Afghanistan for duty in Iraq.

Hillier had to convince the Martin government to take on the dangerous mission. According to the Star,

A number of people in the process were uncomfortable with the fact that to go south to Kandahar, Canada was going to have to step outside of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), and once again sign up with the American-led Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).

ISAF was truly multilateral, led by an international organization. Its mandate was to assist the Afghan government . . . . By contrast, Operation Enduring Freedom was an American-led, counter-terrorism mission, aimed at rooting out and killing the Taliban.6

There was concern about the cost in lives as well. Those fears would turn out to be well founded, since 28 soldiers died within six months of redeploying to Kandahar, in contrast to the eight deaths suffered in the entire preceding four years.

But General Hillier won the room by appealing to the Martin government’s desire to be a global player, especially where it could assist the U.S. War on Terror.

Scott Reid, Martin’s communications director, told the Toronto Star that it was the U.S. factor that won the day: “There was a fairly strong trail of orthodoxy [in the Foreign Affairs department] that was based on an evaluation of strategic interests in terms of our relationship with the United States. A lot of times policy was put to us based on, ‘this matters to the White House.’ And things that matter to the White House can’t be taken lightly, because these guys take it personally . . . . So, we really have to evaluate the importance of making a decision that runs counter to the White House.’”7

But what was really driving Hillier? And why was Martin so eager to push forward what the U.S. military has called a “transformation agenda”?

A few weeks before the March 2005 meeting, Martin had announced that Canada would not participate in the U.S. ballistic missile defence system. The Bush administration was still stinging from this decision, as well as Canada’s earlier stance against participating in the Iraq war.

An official who attended the meeting told the Toronto Star that “There was what you might call inevitability about the [Afghanistan] decision . . . . No one would ever call Hillier ‘arrogant,’ but some say another prevailing view emerged in the room: that if you couldn’t embrace the new and more dangerous world order you were just ‘naïve.’”8

Concern about the mission and the blurring of the line between NATO’s peace support role and the U.S.’s counter-insurgency role was a concern not just in Ottawa, but also at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told the Globe and Mail in March 2006, “We’ll keep the [NATO] mission distinct from [the U.S.’s] Enduring Freedom. I do, we do, and the allies do consider this a NATO mission.”9

NATO members knew that the mission in the south would be dangerous and bloody. The alliance refused to take over command of the south until troops from Britain and the Netherlands had joined the Canadians. In those two countries, a debate raged about the role of British and Dutch forces, and whether victory was even possible. In the end, both countries decided to send troops to the south, but only after a thorough debate and vote in the Dutch Parliament. NATO took command of the south on August 1, 2006.

In interviews with the Globe and Mail, NATO officials were bemused by Canadian General Hillier’s seeming eagerness to take on the Kandahar mission. The Globe reported:

NATO officials pointed out that it was the Canadian military, under the leadership of General Rick Hillier, that insisted on sending troops to this most dangerous corner of Afghanistan.

Some NATO officials believe Gen. Hillier was attempting to overcome Canada’s weak military image in his decision to leave safer parts of Afghanistan to other members of the 30-nation coalition.10

General Hillier made some comments soon after taking on the role of Chief of Defence Staff that foreshadow the “get tough” attitude in his style of leadership and his perceptions of the military and the degree of threat faced by Canada.

In the wake of the London bombings by homegrown terrorists in July 2005, General Hillier declared the upcoming Afghan mission was needed because Canada had to “take a stand,” telling the Globe and Mail, “These are detestable murderers and scumbags . . . . We’re not going to let these radical murderers and killers rob from others and certainly we’re not going to let them rob from Canada.”11

The Globe and Mail went on to observe that “[Hillier] stressed the new face of the Canadian Forces, which he said are now focused on the first job at hand: protecting Canadian interests at home and abroad. ‘We’re not the public service of Canada; we’re not just another department. We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people.’”

That Canada was under no immediate, let alone long-term threat from the Taliban in Afghanistan seems not to have figured into the general’s reasoning.

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