Posted: April 16, 2008, 3:14 PM by Marni Soupcoff
Michael Ross
I left the now-disbanded Canadian Forces Special Service Force in 1982 for a variety of reasons. But primary among them was the fact that our government wasn’t living up to its end of the age-old bargain between a nation and its warriors. That bargain, roughly stated, went like this: “I am willing to die fighting for my country, but you had better provide me with the tools necessary to make that a difficult task for the enemy.”
I thought things could only improve. I believed that, unlike us, future Canadian military recruits would finally be provided with the tools they needed to do their jobs effectively. But I was wrong. With the end of the Cold War, the 1990s brought even more severe cutbacks for our forces.
In my view, Canada’s biggest mistake is more than a social-policy blunder or constitutional miscalculation. I believe our biggest mistake has been the systematic emasculation of our military since Lester B. Pearson accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957.
In Canada, we like to see ourselves as “peacekeepers” who insert themselves into other nation’s conflicts, and “honest brokers” in the realm of international relations. This conceit may have inflated out self-image, but it has weakened our position on the world stage. And — notwithstanding recent advances highlighted by our outgoing Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Rick Hillier — it has reduced our military might.
While the quality of our military personnel is excellent and held in high regard throughout the world, our role as peacekeepers is not as prominent, nor as central to conflict resolution on the international stage as many Canadians have been led to believe by former prime minister Jean Chrétien. (Paul Martin also gave our military short shrift. But I single out Chrétien because it was he who, in 1999, outrageously compared peacekeeping to boy-scouting — I wonder how the veterans of Medak Pocket or the Turkish invasion of Cyprus feel about that).
In fact, Canada ranks around 34th among nations in the provision of peacekeeping soldiers, trailing behind such military superpowers as Fiji and Bangladesh when it comes to putting forces on the ground in between warring parties.
The simple fact of the matter is that we opted for peacekeeping because it was cheap, carried little or no domestic political risk (because it was UN-sanctioned), and allowed us to smugly declare that our soldiers, sailors and airmen are more like aid-workers in uniform — unlike those nasty, blood-thirsty American warmongers.
But even peacekeeping is effective only if it is backed up by deadly force of the type that reminds all parties concerned that there are consequences to breaking the peace. One need only consider the Dutch peacekeepers’ shameful non-action in Srebrenica to understand that there is more at stake than just posing as “honest brokers.”
In today’s world, where Canada is an active combatant in the war on terror, our forces are facing difficult challenges in Afghanistan, fighting an enemy that is hard to identify (let alone locate), has no compunction hiding among the civilian population, and has mastered the art of attrition warfare. It’s a frustrating way to fight — even more so when you climb into a vehicle knowing it will not withstand an IED attack, or have to watch other NATO forces being transported over bandit country in helicopters that your nation doesn’t have.
When former Liberal foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy was peddling our advocacy for soft power in the 1990s, I sincerely doubt he considered that the Taliban and transnational terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda were diligently implementing the orthodoxies of hard power through the use of terrorism, repression and ideological indoctrination. Soft power in the modern age is seen by our foes as a byword for weakness. It is a disingenuous excuse for not providing our fighting forces with the equipment they require to do their crucial job.
In some cases, such “soft-power” policies have even cost some of our Canadian soldiers their lives. Case in point: On Oct. 2, 2003, two members of the Royal Canadian Regiment were killed in Afghanistan after their very lightly armoured Iltis Jeep ran over a landmine. The Iltis, a soft-skinned, under-powered Volkswagen built by Bombardier in Quebec for $27,200, provides the best example (or perhaps second best, after our Sea King helicopters) into how much the Liberal governments really cared about protecting our soldiers.
Essentially, the Liberals opted to buy cheap “coffins on wheels” as a means to keeping voters in Quebec happy. Why else would they have not purchased Humvees and other better armoured vehicles from our neighbours to the south?
The neglect of our Armed Forces is more than our biggest national mistake — it is our biggest national disgrace.
mr.ross@shaw.ca
— Michael Ross is a former Mossad officer. He is the co-author, with Jonathan Kay, of The Volunteer: A Canadian’s Secret Life in the Mossad, published by McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
