The following op-ed piece which appears in the 28 March edition of the Toronto Star is reproduced under the fair comment provisions of the Copyright Act.
What next for Canada's tough new army? Canadian foreign policy appears to have no role for battle-hardened force after it leaves Afghanistan
Canadian soldiers deploy in Kandahar province March 19, 2009. Many troops are on their fifth or sixth rotations.
Eugene Lang
Eric Morse
Sometime in mid-2011, after nearly a decade during which the Canadian Forces have had several thousand boots planted firmly on Afghan firmament, our troops will come home.
While last week witnessed some media speculation to the effect the Americans might ask Canada to remain in Afghanistan beyond that date in a training capacity, the government continues to maintain a steadfast public stance to withdraw the forces entirely on schedule.
There are valid reasons for this – mainly that after four-plus years of unexpected combat in Kandahar, Canada's army is burnt out. Neither the politicians nor the generals contemplated anything like a five-year mission in Kandahar at the beginning of this adventure. Many soldiers of this volunteer army are now on their fifth and sixth rotations. They need a break.
Yet ironically the army will emerge from the Kandahar cauldron far stronger than when it went in. The ranks of the regular force have swelled to 24,000, up from 19,000. They have better and more equipment than they did at the beginning of the Afghan adventure. The soldiers have become highly proficient warriors, led by a battle-hardened corps of officers and NCOs.
They are particularly adept at counter-insurgency warfare, insurgencies being a central challenge to peace and security in the world today. And while the growth in defence spending will be reduced as Ottawa comes to grips with its deficit, the defence budget is on track to continue rising for years to come. There will be no "peace dividend," to borrow the phrase used to describe what many expected in the early 1990s at the end of the Cold War. That's because the world is far from a peaceful place.
This new fighting machine Canada possesses, along with its warrior image, is foreign to Canadians. It makes a good chunk of our population and many of our politicians uncomfortable. But whether we like it or not, Canada has a finely honed army, forged and funded over nearly a decade of war in Afghanistan.
Yet the big question remains. After the army pulls out of Kandahar, and once it has regenerated in a couple years' time, what do we do with it? This is the central unanswered – even unasked – question of Canadian foreign policy.
It should come as no surprise that there are more than enough uses and demands for an army like ours around the world. Indeed, if the post 9/11 Canadian conceit – "the world needs more Canada" – is true, surely that means Canadian boots on the ground in the world's failed, fragile and dissolving states, of which there are a growing number.
Yet while our army is envied and respected the world over, Canada lacks any semblance of a foreign policy framework that might suggest to Canadians and the world how, where and when we might employ that force in the future. Not to mention whether the army will even remain a central instrument of our foreign policy.
This has happened before – the history of the Canadian military is one of emerging from World Wars I and II and Korea with world-class fighting machines, only to have the political leadership let them crumble due to neglect – both financial and intellectual.
The defence staff is well aware of this. Some now talk of re-engaging with the UN in peacekeeping, but this is little more than an attempt to grapple toward a military raison d'être that aligns with majority Canadian public opinion, which tends to mythologize any mission with the UN prefix.
The problem is that a generation of Canadian officers has been imbued with a distrust of the UN, its ineffectualness, its impossible rules of engagement, and its high-profile failures in Rwanda and Somalia.
Moreover, the current government seems to have no use at all for the United Nations, which it seems to see as a liberal talk shop incapable of grasping the nettle of real world problems. There is some truth in that analysis.
But if not UN peacekeeping missions, and given the prospect of a humbled and shackled NATO as a result of its probable failure in Afghanistan, what is our framework for deploying force going to be? The reality is that Canada is incapable militarily, diplomatically and politically of acting outside a multilateral coalition of some description.
At a minimum, our political leadership owes Canadians a conversation about the military as an instrument of Canada's foreign policy. An honest conversation about the nature of our military today, the realities of the dangerous world in which we live, the imperfections of our international organizations, and how a Canadian contribution to international peace and security can fit with these realities.
None of this is happening in Ottawa today. We are just getting ourselves out of a war in Kandahar that we stumbled into. Yet it seems we still lack the foresight and planning to ensure we do not throw away what our taxpayers, our soldiers and our war dead have paid such a price to build, so that next time we might know what we are doing and why.
Eugene Lang, co-author of The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar, was chief of staff to two Liberal ministers of national defence.
Eric Morse, a former Canadian diplomat, is vice-chair of security studies at the Royal Canadian Military Institute in Toronto.
What next for Canada's tough new army? Canadian foreign policy appears to have no role for battle-hardened force after it leaves Afghanistan
Canadian soldiers deploy in Kandahar province March 19, 2009. Many troops are on their fifth or sixth rotations.
Eugene Lang
Eric Morse
Sometime in mid-2011, after nearly a decade during which the Canadian Forces have had several thousand boots planted firmly on Afghan firmament, our troops will come home.
While last week witnessed some media speculation to the effect the Americans might ask Canada to remain in Afghanistan beyond that date in a training capacity, the government continues to maintain a steadfast public stance to withdraw the forces entirely on schedule.
There are valid reasons for this – mainly that after four-plus years of unexpected combat in Kandahar, Canada's army is burnt out. Neither the politicians nor the generals contemplated anything like a five-year mission in Kandahar at the beginning of this adventure. Many soldiers of this volunteer army are now on their fifth and sixth rotations. They need a break.
Yet ironically the army will emerge from the Kandahar cauldron far stronger than when it went in. The ranks of the regular force have swelled to 24,000, up from 19,000. They have better and more equipment than they did at the beginning of the Afghan adventure. The soldiers have become highly proficient warriors, led by a battle-hardened corps of officers and NCOs.
They are particularly adept at counter-insurgency warfare, insurgencies being a central challenge to peace and security in the world today. And while the growth in defence spending will be reduced as Ottawa comes to grips with its deficit, the defence budget is on track to continue rising for years to come. There will be no "peace dividend," to borrow the phrase used to describe what many expected in the early 1990s at the end of the Cold War. That's because the world is far from a peaceful place.
This new fighting machine Canada possesses, along with its warrior image, is foreign to Canadians. It makes a good chunk of our population and many of our politicians uncomfortable. But whether we like it or not, Canada has a finely honed army, forged and funded over nearly a decade of war in Afghanistan.
Yet the big question remains. After the army pulls out of Kandahar, and once it has regenerated in a couple years' time, what do we do with it? This is the central unanswered – even unasked – question of Canadian foreign policy.
It should come as no surprise that there are more than enough uses and demands for an army like ours around the world. Indeed, if the post 9/11 Canadian conceit – "the world needs more Canada" – is true, surely that means Canadian boots on the ground in the world's failed, fragile and dissolving states, of which there are a growing number.
Yet while our army is envied and respected the world over, Canada lacks any semblance of a foreign policy framework that might suggest to Canadians and the world how, where and when we might employ that force in the future. Not to mention whether the army will even remain a central instrument of our foreign policy.
This has happened before – the history of the Canadian military is one of emerging from World Wars I and II and Korea with world-class fighting machines, only to have the political leadership let them crumble due to neglect – both financial and intellectual.
The defence staff is well aware of this. Some now talk of re-engaging with the UN in peacekeeping, but this is little more than an attempt to grapple toward a military raison d'être that aligns with majority Canadian public opinion, which tends to mythologize any mission with the UN prefix.
The problem is that a generation of Canadian officers has been imbued with a distrust of the UN, its ineffectualness, its impossible rules of engagement, and its high-profile failures in Rwanda and Somalia.
Moreover, the current government seems to have no use at all for the United Nations, which it seems to see as a liberal talk shop incapable of grasping the nettle of real world problems. There is some truth in that analysis.
But if not UN peacekeeping missions, and given the prospect of a humbled and shackled NATO as a result of its probable failure in Afghanistan, what is our framework for deploying force going to be? The reality is that Canada is incapable militarily, diplomatically and politically of acting outside a multilateral coalition of some description.
At a minimum, our political leadership owes Canadians a conversation about the military as an instrument of Canada's foreign policy. An honest conversation about the nature of our military today, the realities of the dangerous world in which we live, the imperfections of our international organizations, and how a Canadian contribution to international peace and security can fit with these realities.
None of this is happening in Ottawa today. We are just getting ourselves out of a war in Kandahar that we stumbled into. Yet it seems we still lack the foresight and planning to ensure we do not throw away what our taxpayers, our soldiers and our war dead have paid such a price to build, so that next time we might know what we are doing and why.
Eugene Lang, co-author of The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar, was chief of staff to two Liberal ministers of national defence.
Eric Morse, a former Canadian diplomat, is vice-chair of security studies at the Royal Canadian Military Institute in Toronto.
