| HOME | ABOUT US | CAMPAIGNS | MEDIA | PUBLICATIONS | CHAPTERS | JOIN US | FRANÇAIS |
|
Marching Orders Broken promisesIn that meeting room in Ottawa back in March 2005, where former prime minister Paul Martin and his senior defence and foreign policy leaders determined the nature of Canada’s intervention in Afghanistan, Martin asked the military leaders for a promise. Eugene Lang, chief of staff to Defence Minister Bill Graham, and John McCallum, who was in the room at the time, told the CBC that Martin was concerned about the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Darfur, Sudan, as well as the peace process in Haiti.37 Martin wanted to maintain the flexibility to send significant numbers of troops to those regions, even if he agreed to send more than 2,000 troops to Kandahar, as the military wanted. According to Lang, the reply from the military was, “yes,” Canada would be able to send troops in support of a UN mission to those, or any other countries. But today, the military and the Conservative government say the mission to Afghanistan has tapped out the military and there are no troops left for other missions. The deal has been broken. Is this is a case of “can’t do it,” or “won’t do it?” The government says its military is overstretched, but documents released to the New Democratic Party through Access to Information requests confirm that the military predicted it would have enough troops for a second mission.38 This seems reasonable since, after all, in 2003 Canada maintained 2,000 troops in Kabul, Afghanistan, while 1,300 troops were still deployed in Bosnia. Now, Paul Martin is crying foul. “Rick Hillier told me he would,” Martin says. “That was what we agreed on.”39 The Conservatives are largely implementing plans that were laid out by the Martin Liberals before them. The only difference is that they are pushing the Canadian Forces into the arms of the U.S.-led War on Terror with more enthusiasm. Several years after its implementation, the so-called “transformation agenda” within the Canadian military has proven to be incredibly expensive. Achieving the level of interoperability – or integration – with the United States that is desired by the military leadership requires billions of dollars not just for more troops, but also for expensive, high-tech and frequently U.S.-built weaponry. In April 2003, Liberal then-defence minister John McCallum appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs. Bloc Québécois MP Claude Bachand criticized DND’s plans, commenting that, “to my mind, interoperability [with the U.S. military] is a costly proposition in so far as sovereignty is concerned and also from a materials standpoint.”40 McCallum replied, “As far as costs are concerned, I recall my British counterpart saying the very same thing, even though his budget is much larger than mine. He stated that there were major problems associated with interoperability because the US spends twice as much as all other NATO countries combined. Keeping pace with the US represents an enormous challenge.” But 2005 was the turning point. In January, Paul Martin appointed Rick Hillier as the new Chief of Defence Staff, over other candidates who were next in line for the job. Hillier brought with him experience in Afghanistan, but most importantly experience working as an embedded officer in the U.S. military: he served as the first Canadian Deputy Commanding General of III Corps, U.S. Army in Fort Hood, Texas. Hillier was committed to bringing into Canada U.S. military concepts and priorities. In February, the Martin government was experiencing a political crisis over missile defence. Faced with growing public opposition, a divided caucus and a minority government, Paul Martin refused to participate in the United States’ missile shield. However, the decision was made to provide a “significant” increase to Canadian military spending – the lifeblood of the “transformation agenda” – in part to offset potential U.S. anger over the BMD decision.41 Also in January, the 2005 Federal Budget announced another $12.8 billion in military spending over five years, an increase of 35 per cent. The government described it as the largest increase in 20 years, while the Conference of Defence Associations, a defence lobby group, declared the increase “staggering.”42 By March, General Hillier had convinced Martin’s government that the best way to impress the Bush administration would be to take on the dangerous redeployment of Canadian Forces, including a battle group for counter-insurgency operations, in Kandahar province for one year, ending February 2007. Later that year, the Martin government produced a long-awaited International Policy Statement. Foreign policy experts noted that the new statement, intended to guide Canada’s role in the world, barely mentioned United Nations peacekeeping. The statement devotes a whole section to the military’s “transformation agenda,” noting, “the military will acquire new technologies and equipment in order to operate effectively in today’s challenging security environment alongside our allies and other government and non-governmental agencies. The government has provided significant new resources that will, among other things, improve the Canadian Forces’ deployability, their surveillance and weapons systems, and their ability to lead and sustain operations.”43 The statement calls on the Forces to adopt a “three-block war” concept that blurs the distinction between combat, police and humanitarian operations by soldiers. Based on a Pentagon strategy, which has yet to be proven successful in either Afghanistan or Iraq, the term describes three distinct operations occurring within a three-block urban environment, presumably in the context of forces operating within a “failed or failing state.” These sweeping changes in approach are disquieting. But what is most troubling is this quotation from the statement: “transformation, however, is not just about technology and equipment modernization. It will require a fundamental change to the culture of our military to ensure a fully integrated and unified approach to [military] operations.”44 It is precisely this issue of the changing culture in the Canadian Forces that is alarming, even to some people working within the military. Professor Walter Dorn, a civilian instructor with the Canadian Forces College, laments Canada’s abandonment of peacekeeping. In the Globe and Mail earlier this year, he wrote:
Dorn, in raising the alarm over the changing military culture, is undercutting the enthusiasm over the “transformation agenda” within the Canadian Forces – an agenda that is moving away from UN peacekeeping toward more combat-oriented, “enemy-centric” fighting – often under U.S. command. “Operationally, the Canadian Forces have decided on an almost exclusive focus on Afghanistan, in a partnership with the United States, whose priority is offensive operations,” observed Dorn. Reaction within the Canadian Forces to Dorn has been strong, as was expected. Professor James Finan and Major Michael Boire, both of the Royal Military College of Canada, launched their own academic counter-offensive:
Taking up a position on Dorn’s flank is Dr. Lawrence McDonough, also from the Royal Military College of Canada:
Dorn quite expected this kind of response from his military colleagues. In a recent article, he offers this observation:
Moreover, as we have seen, these concerns apply to the outstanding military perception of peacekeeping, which has been replaced by the modern, multi-dimensional peacekeeping operation. In places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, no Canadian soldier would ever describe the situation as unchallenging. As Walter Dorn’s research shows, it’s tragically ironic that Canada’s contributions are at a historic low, just as the UN’s need is reaching a historic high. |
||||
MARCHING ORDERS
|
|||||
 |
updated
November 4, 2006
|
||||
