When I ranked “the world” as a higher military priority than the Arctic last week, I should have been clearer that I was talking about priorities, rather than suggesting that the Arctic should be disregarded. Roland Paris was right when he said that Canada cannot simply ignore its own defence. It must do enough to secure its airspace and sea lanes that the U.S. is comfortable with the ongoing deal that is most concretely embodied in the North American Aerospace Command Defense (NORAD) and the joint defence of North America. Finessing our relationship with the U.S. will always be the biggest concern for Canadian foreign policy, not because the U.S. is likely to invade, but because Canada’s security and economy depend on us having a good relationship with our only neighbouring country.

Second to Canada’s commitment to NORAD is its commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Canada joined NATO not just to defend Europe, but also because of the first part of the acronym – North Atlantic. The NATO alliance has resulted in Canadian expeditions to Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and, more recently, Libya, but it also has more direct security implications, organizing the defence of the North Atlantic, including Canada, and, just as importantly, fostering multilateral solutions to security challenges.

Unlike the U.S., with its far-flung series of alliances, treaties, and agreements, the list of Canadian defence commitments, as far as I can tell, really ends there. There is no Canadian role in the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS) agreement, for instance, and it is not clear how the ending of the Korean War in 1954 really obligates Canada now to the defense of South Korea. So, the core consideration of Canada’s grand strategy (i.e. balancing the country’s capabilities and commitments) really does focus on NORAD and NATO.

Sure, Canada is a member of the United Nations, but that does not imply any defence requirements in the same way that the other two commitments do. Canada can choose to participate, or refrain from participating, in any UN effort, with varying degrees of consequences. It cannot as easily opt out of NORAD and NATO efforts (it can opt out, but with significant costs). Moreover, given that the UN has relatively low standards for the contingents it deploys, the possibility of sending troops on UN missions does not really impose any kind of requirements on Canada, other than to maintain some infantry.

The interesting thing here is that what Canada might need for NORAD and North American defence and what it needs for NATO are not necessarily identical. The kinds of threats to Canada that Roland mentioned as reasons to keep an eye on the Arctic – “potentially dangerous ships, planes, and cargo” – do not necessarily require the most advanced weapons, such as submarines and stealth aircraft. On the other hand, the best argument to be made for Canadian acquisition of the F-35 is that it would facilitate Canadian participation in future alliance operations. (Those who argue that Canada should acquire the F-35 because we may one day need to counter a threat from China are unconvincing.) While Canada could participate in future operations by flying other planes alongside the F-35s flown by the U.S. and various allies, Canadian F-35s would be the most logical and efficient choice. For instance, since the planes would have the same communications systems, co-ordination amongst allies would be very straightforward.

Again, the idea of grand strategy is to connect one’s place in the world – particularly as it defines the relevant threats that you face – with commitments. Those threats and commitments determine the capabilities needed today and tomorrow. Because of its geography, and the resulting lack of existential threats that it faces, Canada has some choice about priorities: It can focus more on self-defence, and on what it takes to maintain NORAD, or it can focus more on NATO and future expeditions. To be clear, this is about focus and priorities, not about picking one at the exclusion of the other. Still, choices must be made, and trade-offs must be faced. Buying the F-35 is such a significant decision because it is so expensive – it will crowd out other defence spending. So, we need to be clear that choosing the F-35 is not really about disregarding the Arctic as a threat, but about making multilateral operations elsewhere the priority. The next move, then, is to figure out affordable (rather than optimal) means of addressing the lesser priority of the Arctic while the main effort is elsewhere.

This notion of focusing main efforts in one place and economies of force elsewhere is hardly foreign to the Canadian military or that of any other country. Such choices are hard to make because they mean that some people lose jobs (perhaps those who drive submarines and those who work near some bases), some politicians will get some heat, and, yes, less capabilities in other areas means assuming some risk. But it is better for a military to make a conscious decision and be aware of the risks associated with various trade-offs than to think it can get everything it wants and find out only later that there is no money for things like helicopters or improved armour.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

Yet, there is another reason – and one that is arguably more important – for Canada to prioritize continental defence. If we don’t secure our portion of North America, the Americans will do so on our behalf, whether we like it or not. This has been the implicit deal between our two countries at least since the Second World War. Maintaining this deal is a critical political interest for Canada, and, as I mentioned in my previous post, CF priorities should flow from an assessment of our broader foreign policy requirements.

The second priority for the CF, I believe, should be the ability to contribute ground forces to multilateral missions overseas. This, too, flows from our foreign-policy requirements – namely, Canada’s interest in a stable and just international order, particularly at a moment when existing international institutions and systems of rules are under strain.

The pace of global change, and problems arising from this change – from the environment to trade and finance – are outstripping the capacity of existing international institutions to cope with them. As an open country that’s particularly dependent on trade, Canada has benefited from these systems of rules. Just think about how Canada has profited from a measure of stability in the international economy for the past several decades.

Indeed, the greatest challenge we collectively face may be the transition from a U.S.-led international system to a multipolar one. This challenge is not just economic (how can Canada increase its trade with rising economies?), but is also political (how can Canada contribute to the adjustment of international systems of rule, such that these systems can peacefully accommodate the rise of new powers?).

This process of rule-building and institutional reform is primarily a diplomatic one that suits Canadians well. It’s no accident that Canadian leaders and diplomats have traditionally “punched above their weight” in building multilateral institutions, from the United Nations to the International Criminal Court: We have had to develop such skills to keep this fractious country together from the very start of our history. This quality has defined Canada and Canadians.

There are moments, however, when diplomacy isn’t enough and stakes are so high that upholding international rules requires the deployment of military forces to multilateral operations. This does not necessarily mean going to war. In fact, there is a range of possible roles for Canadian military personnel in multilateral operations – from monitoring ceasefires and providing training for national security forces (or to the peacekeeping troops of other countries) to counterinsurgency and combat.

To perform such varied and unpredictable tasks, however, we need ground forces that are capable of adapting quickly to new types of missions and deploying quickly. This means having highly skilled troops that can largely support themselves (with helicopters and vehicles, for example), and that Canada can deliver to the area of operations without having to rent or borrow transport.

A military policy rooted in these two priorities – the protection of our airspace and coastlines, and the ability to contribute skilled and adaptable ground forces to multilateral missions – would provide a strategically founded basis for making tough decisions about equipment purchases as budgets become tighter. For example, how big a blue-sea navy would we actually need if we adopted these priorities? Coastal patrol vessels, including those with the ability to operate in the Arctic, would seem more important than acquiring more destroyers and frigates. And would we really require stealth fighters if their primary task were to intercept threats to our continental airspace?

As you ponder these questions, consider this: F-35 stealth fighters and new ships (including destroyers and frigates) are the most expensive items on Canada’s current list of planned military purchases. What mission, exactly, will they perform?

Photo courtesy of Reuters

In my mind, Canada’s geographic position gives it two distinct options: Arctic or the world. 

Canada is way the hell away from everything except the United States and the Arctic. In the foreseeable future, the U.S. is not a threat, but a partner. Despite the fever dreams of some folks, the U.S. does not intend to invade Canada, and it does not have plans for domination. While they often take it for granted, Americans (especially policy-makers) see Canada as a reliable friend and ally in the world. Do not forget that as much as NORAD is a compromise of Canadian sovereignty, it is also a compromise of American sovereignty. So, the land borders of Canada are quite safe, except from the usual smugglers of booze, cigarettes, drugs, and the like. The main border issue, then, is one of co-operation, not defence.

So, the challenge is really the seas around Canada and the air nearby. Since Canada is pretty far away from the rest of the world’s countries, the air threat is mostly Russian.

The threat along the seas is where the Arctic comes in. Canada does have heaps of coastline along the other two oceans, but the biggest change in the future is going to be access to the stuff in the North. There are few conflicts (other than the border dispute over Hans Island) along the Pacific or Atlantic that have not been resolved. So, the Arctic is the question. 

The other priority would be dealing with the rest of the world – engaging in expeditionary efforts to peace-keep, to support allies, and to uphold the responsibility to protect (R2P). 

In Tuesday’s live chat, Roland Paris put the Arctic ahead of the world. Reflecting on the discussion, I think I put the world ahead of the Arctic. Why? Because I just don’t think that Canada can really thwart any of the threats to the Arctic (i.e. Russia or the U.S.) with military means. Canada simply cannot/will not invest enough in its military to have enough ships (subs?) and planes (F-35s?) to counter Russian capabilities. To address this threat, Canada will have to settle its Arctic differences with the U.S. and work with the U.S. to deal with the Russian challenge.

On the other hand, Canada does seek to make a difference in the world, and does have a commitment to multilateralism. As a middle power between two great powers, multilateral institutions help give Canada influence via agenda-setting, issue-framing, and issue-trading. This is another reason Canada will remain focused on NATO and not on the Pacific: There are no major security institutions in the Pacific to which Canada belongs. A series of bilateral arrangements is no way for Canada to shape anything. The point here is that Canada can make a difference as it has in the past – with peacekeeping, with the landmine treaty, and with R2P. It helped in Haiti, and it did make a contribution in Afghanistan, even if it was not sustainable.

So, under threats, we have the U.S. and Russia. Under commitments, we have NATO, NORAD, and other arrangements. These should then determine the capabilities Canada seeks. The live chat on Tuesday focused mostly on the capability question, but the questions of threats and commitments are logically prior. Before we ask, “Do we need subs and F-35s?”, we need to understand what they might be for.

Next week, I will delve into the means and big trade-offs that Canada must consider in light of these threats and commitments.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

This fits with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s stated view of Canadian history and world affairs. According to Harper, this history has been defined by a series of momentous struggles between forces of good and ill. He believes that these struggles have shaped the course of world history and defined Canada’s identity.

If Harper were correct, it might make sense for Canada to elevate war-fighting readiness to the very top of our foreign-policy priorities, to highlight looming international threats, and to encourage our allies to take a firm stand in the face of these dangers. It also wouldn’t hurt to remind Canadians about their nation’s history of military prowess – say, by earmarking $28 million to celebrate the anniversary of the War of 1812.

However, we have a problem if this is the premise for our discussion about the future of the CF, because Harper’s stylized rendition of Canadian history and global affairs is dubious. While Canadians have demonstrated bravery and valour in combat, and some of these conflicts have been turning points in our history, we also have a proud tradition as a nation that has learned to avert conflicts through diplomacy, abroad and at home. This is as much a part of our history and identity as martial glory or moral rectitude. Indeed, the ability to work through problems using the tools of diplomacy and multilateralism as opposed to violence may be most central to who we are as a people, and to what we do in the world. At the very least, these qualities have been instrumental in keeping this unlikely country together for the past 145 years.

So, before losing ourselves in debates about how best to equip the CF for the future, I would encourage the contributors in this series to consider the broader purposes of Canada’s foreign policy. Failure to question these purposes may be tantamount to accepting the current ones as given, which today means accepting the primacy of the military as a device for achieving our foreign-policy goals, and the corresponding pre-eminence of DND in Ottawa relative to the two other “international departments”: the beleaguered Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) and the much-maligned Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

This imbalance in our international policy instruments may simply be an artifact of the Afghan mission – where, by necessity, military personnel dramatically outnumbered civilian diplomats and aid officials – but I don’t think so. The elevation of Canada’s war-fighting military as a symbol of patriotism has been more than the result of the bravery or professionalism of Canadian troops in Afghanistan; it has also been a deliberate act of government policy.

The centrality of the CF and DND in Canada’s foreign policy, and in our foreign-policy machinery, is therefore unlikely to change, even as Canada’s military involvement in Afghanistan winds down.

I am not suggesting that we should neglect the CF. On the contrary, we need to maintain a multifunctional military that is capable of learning new methods quickly, because the only constant in war is that the next conflict is unlikely to look like the last. Happily, the CF demonstrated its adaptability in Afghanistan, where it implemented a complex strategy in an unfamiliar and very difficult environment. Moreover, although there were equipment gaps (from clothing to transport) at the beginning of the operation, Canada’s contingent in Kandahar arguably ended up being the best-equipped unit in the entire International Security Assistance Force.

No, my point is not that we should neglect the military. Rather, it is that we need to remember one thing before we embark on a discussion of the future of the Canadian Forces: Our military is an instrument of national policy, not the other way around – and it is but one instrument.

So, what did the Forces do right in its counter-insurgency fight that it will try to repeat next time?  First, the move to Kandahar occurred at the same time that a new command philosophy was put into place, giving the commanders in the field far more discretion than they previously had.  This, more than anything, reflected a generational change from the post-Somalia affair with the officers who had chafed under micro-management from Ottawa now in a position to delegate more to the field commanders.  This contrasted sharply not only with the CF’s past but with CIDA’s situation and largely that of DFAIT as well. 

Which leads to the second lesson learned from Afghanistan and parallels the U.S. playbook on counter-insurgency: to win a COIN campaign, you need to have close cooperation with the civilian efforts, and if they do not show up, you will have to do it yourselves.  The Canadian Forces did much more outside their traditional lanes than ever before—meeting with local elders, mentoring the series of governors (not matter how much they might have resisted), trying to get assistance dollars via alternative sources (USAID), and so on.  The reforms following the Manley Panel, including the creation of the Representative of Canada in Kandahar [RoCK] were meant to improve “Whole of Government” efforts so that the CF would be in synch with the DFAIT, CIDA, RCMP, Corrections.  While this did facilitate better cooperation, it was not very robust.  When General Jon Vance reacted to the US surge by concentrating efforts in a few model villages as the Canadian Forces no longer had to cover all of the province, this contradicted the plans of the civilian agencies that had drawn up maps of the schools that were to be built all over the province.  In the ensuing bureaucratic tussle, the higher ups in the military stood behind their guy in the field.  The lesson to draw: the military will be more responsive to changing situations in the field than the plans of the civilian agencies in Ottawa.

The third lesson would be, unfortunately, from Donald Rumsfeld: “As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want.”  With most of the future Canadian defence dollars to be spent on the F-35 and a bunch of ships, the army will once again find itself short of kit the next time it is sent somewhere dangerous.  While there were many jokes about wearing the wrong kind of camouflage uniforms at first, the shortage of helicopters was far more serious, leading to more convoys on the ground and more risk of casualties due to roadside bombs.  The CF adapted by leasing helos (and tanks) and by buying others via processes that Auditors-General do not love.  Expect more innovative acquisitions when the CF is sent into harm’s way without everything it wants.

In sum, the military’s leadership learned that the Forces could perform well on the battlefield and within the alliance if they give commanders room to make decisions, are willing to work with the civilians when the CIDA and DFAIT folks are cooperative and ignore if not, and are creative as they adjust to the inevitable shortfalls in equipment.  Expect the pattern of less micro-management to continue, but also expect the civilians to react by designing missions that restrict what the CF can do.  The two post-Kandahar missions limited what the CF can do: behind the wire training anywhere but Kandahar and air strikes with no boots on the ground in Libya.  Was this by design?  That a military that is less willing to micro-manage from Ottawa is one that politicians might be more reluctant to deploy?  That is a set of lessons that the civilians in charge of the government must ponder.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

Politicians are at least partly to blame. A litany of broken promises, financial scandals, and sexual improprieties, all amplified by a voracious media, has led to a collapse of trust between voters and the politicians they elect. Walter Bagehot, the great Victorian essayist, argued that governments need to maintain a degree of “mystery” in order to preserve their citizen’s respect. Today’s casual familiarity with politicians – promoted not least by politicians themselves through an endless parade of photo-ops, sound bites, and tweets – has only bred contempt. According to a recent Gallup poll, just 10 per cent of Americans have faith in their elected officials – down from 30 per cent a decade ago – and well below even bankers or big business. According to the World Economic Forum, people in Azerbaijan – a quasi-dictatorship and ex-Soviet Republic – trust their politicians more than Americans do.

But the problem goes deeper. For all of the partisan bickering and jockeying for power, there is striking unanimity among most politicians in most countries today about the policies that must inescapably be followed – more austerity, leaner social programs, improved competitiveness, ever deeper regional and global integration. The problem is that these views are not always shared by the man on the street, who’s still reeling from a weak economy, employment insecurity, stagnating incomes, and world seemingly rigged in favour of the richest and most powerful.  It is this growing divide between a discontented electorate – increasingly unhappy with the direction their countries are headed – and a political class – which has no credible alternative to offer – that explains the deep-seated malaise affecting almost every democracy today.

Democracies succeed, not just because political differences can be expressed, but because a deeper consensus makes such differences tolerable and acceptable. The recent French election is yet another sign that this basic consensus – or social contract – is in danger of unravelling. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel is right to call the result “alarming”.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

So, if the goal was to build a semi-stable Afghanistan, why hasn’t it worked?  In large part because the task was very, very hard.  Afghanistan does not have oil to fund both national and local governments.  The country was broken by the Soviet invasion, the ensuing civil war and the brutal Taliban regime, so the mission’s starting point was quite low.  There were few existing institutions to build on, generations of people with traumatic stress, and not much in the way of resources.

This is then combined with one of the toughest challenges of the 20th and 21st centuries: insurgency, as Bob Bothwell noted in his interview.  Yes, insurgents have been defeated, but most counter-insurgency efforts are long, costly and have low probabilities of success. In 2001, Afghanistan had all of the features that make an insurgency not only likely to occur but to also be quite successful: difficult terrain, abundance of illicit goods to fund the effort (poppies), poverty, inequality, corruption, bothersome neighbours and a weak government.  Fighting a successful counter-insurgency campaign requires many things that were in short supply: patience, cooperative neighbours, and strong indigenous leadership on which to build.

Patience was always going to be an issue given the abundance of democracies involved in the war, all of whom routinely had elections to contend with at home.  Unfortunately, much time was wasted in the war’s early years.  The Americans were distracted by Iraq, so they did not invest sufficient military or diplomatic resources early on, as Roland Paris noted in his interview.  Indeed, the mandate from Bush/Rumsfeld was to do as little as possible so that the forces and resources could be focused on Iraq.  The new ISAF mission, eventually taken up by NATO, only covered Kabul at first and was explicitly not a counter-insurgency effort until, well, very recently.  So, when people say “we have been doing this for 10 years, we should have something to show for it,” it ignores the reality that NATO has only being engaged in counter-insurgency since 2006 and only a properly resourced COIN campaign for about two or three years.

The second problem is Pakistan.  Not only did the Taliban and Haqqani networks find it safe to operate, recover, train, and plan within Pakistan, but NATO’s opponents also received significant material assistance from Pakistan.  Arms, supplies, information and more came from a country that is supposed to be an American ally.  As Bill Graham noted in his interview, the role of Pakistan is crucial here for giving the Taliban life when it was near death and then abetting the insurgents once they had recovered from the American intervention in 2001.  To be sure, neighbours often tolerate insurgents residing on their territory for a variety of reasons and Pakistan had limited control over these regions, but Pakistan went beyond tolerating and condoning the Taliban to fostering and facilitating them.

The third problem has been President Karzai.  To be fair, the man has long been in a difficult spot.  He had to rely on warlords across the country to have any influence outside of Kabul.  Corruption was a key means to keep these folks on board.  So, we cannot blame Karzai for every failure of the Afghan government.  What we can blame Karzai for is never owning the war.  Yes, the war was run by NATO and the Americans, but the war has been fought on behalf of his government.  Instead of standing in front and arguing why the war was necessary and why the mistakes made by the strangers must be tolerated, Karzai essentially used the international community for domestic political purposes.  His re-election campaign centered on NATO collateral damage rather than the folks causing the majority of destruction and harm – the Taliban.  Yes, he only did what it took to stay in power, but there were multiple ways to do that and Karzai seems to have chosen those that were most likely to endanger the war effort.  While the West is there for their interests, they are also fighting on his behalf, but he has rarely acted like it.

So, Canadians can and should criticize their government for falling short of expectations, but we need to be fair about what was expected.  NATO is failing in Afghanistan, not just Canada (whose departure from Kandahar did NATO no favors).  Why?  Because fighting an insurgency is damned difficult even if you do everything right.  But the U.S. burned a lot of time during the early stages of the war, making it even more difficult to build a government with leaders barely inclined to actually govern in a country where the neighbours are eager to undermine the international community. When we speak of mistakes, we refer to decisions that could have been made differently.  While fighting in Afghanistan would be hard under any circumstances, the three big bad decisions were for the U.S. to invade Iraq, for Pakistan to support the insurgents, and for Karzai to run against NATO and ISAF rather than with it.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

Second, one of the basic arguments about the cause and duration of civil war is the inability for one or both sides to genuinely and credibly commit to a peace accord. This is the problem du jour, and it is on both sides. And even saying “both sides” is problematic, because there is Assad and then there are various opponents to Assad. As the events in Libya have demonstrated since the fall of Gadhafi, there is often much less unity among the opposition than press accounts describe. Studies have shown that conflicts last longer when there are more than two sides in a civil war, and, given what we think we know about the Syrian opposition, it is unlikely that they can form a coherent single front against Assad, and at a bargaining table.

The other, more problematic, side of the credibility issue is Assad himself. There is not much that binds him to his commitments to cease fire. The problem here is largely the same as it was in Libya: When a dictator uses violence and then promises to stop, he either does not stop at all, or he does so but then escalates his use of violence again later. In such situations, the responsibility to protect implies regime change because the international community cannot bind dictators to their promises to behave. One can only protect such populations if the dictator is removed, and even that is not entirely sufficient, as violence in Libya reminds us.

Third, civil wars last longer when international intervention supports both sides or neither side. Only when the international community is relatively united in backing one side can the intervention end the conflict relatively quickly. In the case of Syria, the international community is hardly united. Russia has been supporting the Syrians with threatened vetoes of UN resolutions in New York, and with technical assistance to improve air defences in Syria. NATO is exhausted by the wars of the past 10 years, its members are cutting their militaries in the face of budget crises, and multiple leaders are facing elections where the pressure is to focus on home. As a result, NATO is not going to step up here, even if Turkey asks.

And it is possible that Turkey might ask, as it sees Syrian violence along its border, and aimed against refugees on Turkish territory, but the past few days of discussion about Turkey and Article V (which dictates that an attack upon one equals an attack upon all) overlooks the reality that NATO would need to get enough consensus within the organization to agree that Turkey has been attacked and that NATO should do something. Furthermore, people forget that Article V has an opt-out clause built in – each country is to respond as it deems necessary. So, even if NATO invoked Article V, it would not actually require any member of NATO to do anything at all.

Fourth, intervention would require war. Safe havens would not be safe, as the Bosnian Muslims learned at Srebrenica. One has to use force to create a safe zone, and then have a very credible threat in order to maintain such a zone. That would require using force against Syria and then backing it up with real capability and resolve. As of now, it doesn’t look like either of those things is likely to happen any time soon.

So, we can hope that Kofi Annan’s efforts will make a difference, but hope is not a plan. On the other hand, there are no attractive options given the challenges of fighting a war against Syria.  Maybe the only thing we can do is hope, since there is nothing to plan.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

The question capturing minds at present, of course, is whether Annan’s considerable skills and experience (as demonstrated in Kenya) can lead the rival sides in Syria to accept the peace plan – now dubbed the Annan Peace Plan. While plenty of observers, including U.S. Senator John McCain, want more forceful measures to kick into action, others would still like to give diplomacy a chance.

In analyzing why negotiations succeeded in Kenya, the Centre for International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University identified a number of more general factors (beyond Annan’s personal qualities) that were crucial to bringing about a peaceful resolution of the dispute: a single mediation process fully supported by the international community; strong engagement by civil society (whose various members came together under an umbrella movement called Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice); the division of issues into short-term and long-term categories; a well-planned media strategy; and an understanding of peace as a process rather than an event, among other things.

It’s not hard to see that few (if any) of these conditions are present in Syria. For example, while the international community is less divided than it was two months ago, it is still sending mixed signals to Syrian officials about whether/how the opposition groups in the country are being supported by the outside world. At a more fundamental level, however, the environment for negotiation is less hospitable in this crisis, making it harder to get people to sit around the proverbial “table.” As former British foreign office minister Lord Malloch Brown recently argued on the BBC, the international community is hamstrung by two trends that it has itself fuelled since the beginning of the 21st century. On the one hand, various western interventions have frequently tipped the balance in favour of opposition groups, leading them to think that as long as they have “right” on their side, the outside world will give them unqualified support. On the other hand, after 9/11, western governments encouraged the view that all opposition rebels were “terrorists” who had to be fought to the bitter end, since they could not be negotiated with. The latter narrative is precisely the one being propagated by the Syrian government. Added to these trends is the growing commitment to accountability for the commission of crimes, which makes it more challenging to create a negotiating strategy that disaggregates issues into “short” and “long” term.

Has the international community forgotten how negotiation works? At present, it seems to think that only one man can make it happen. But the problem in Syria may be too intractable – even for the world’s negotiator.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

I have been telling my students for the past few years that there is no parliamentary oversight over the Canadian military. I would normally say that procurement is the exception to that rule, but the F-35 fiasco suggests that is not even true. Why do I make such a claim?  Because parliamentarians lack the basic requirements for engaging in oversight over the Canadian Forces: interest, expertise, and clearances. Because of the nature of Canadian politics, there is really no incentive for any member of Parliament to dedicate much time and effort to learn about the Canadian military. MPs do not spend much time on the defence committee, so even defence critics lack real understanding of how things work. And even if they did understand, they cannot ask penetrating questions, or even know what questions to ask, since they lack security clearances. They cannot hold the feet of the generals and admirals to the fire, since the officers can say, “We cannot tell you.”

Worse still, the members of Parliament that I have talked to about this accept the situation and prefer to remain relatively ignorant critics rather than informed overseers. This contrasts sharply not just with representatives and senators in the U.S. Congress, but also with the parliaments in Europe. Sure, the Brits, Aussies, and New Zealanders have a similar legacy of ill-informed parliaments, with Question Period with the ministers serving as the only real forum for raising concerns. The problem, of course, is that this is public, and much of what might need to be discussed is private. The Dutch, the Germans, and the other continental European countries hold closed sessions so that their MPs can ask important questions and get real information from their ministers and their military officers. After the fiascos of the detainee investigations and the F-35, the members of Parliament might just consider opening up their imagination about what parliaments can do to supervise the military. Depending on the ministers to do the oversight for them does not seem to be working very well.

Civilian expertise is another important check on any military. The more that the non-uniformed people know about the military, the harder it is for the officers to fool the public.  Before the Second World War, there was relatively little civilian expertise about the military in any advanced democracy. After the war, scholars and experts became important alternative sources of information about modern militaries. In Canada, the Department of National Defence supported this development through two key mechanisms: its own educational institutions and the funding of civilian research.

DND operates the Royal Military College of Canada, the Canadian Forces College, and the Royal Military College of St. Jean. These schools not only educate military officers, but also employ academics who study the military. By providing jobs and funding to scholars who focus on the military, DND is helping to breed knowledge about the Canadian Forces (and militaries elsewhere). However, one-third of the professors working in these institutions are about to lose their jobs due to defence budget cuts. This will significantly weaken civilian expertise at a time when there seems to be a great need for understanding the Canadian Forces and the challenges they face.

The second mechanism, funding of civilian research, was largely done through the Security and Defence Forum (SDF), an agency within DND. SDF supported research by scholars throughout Canada, but is now facing the axe, apparently losing 80 per cent of its funding. This will mean that all the research centres throughout Canada will lose much of their revenue, and will thus be forced to close down or scale back their activities. These centres not only did research, but also transmitted their findings to the Canadian public via media, conferences, and education.

The decline in civilian expertise resulting from these budget cuts is not just bad for professors – it is also bad for Canada. The media will be less able to assess what is going on and communicate it to the public since they rely on experts to help them understand the meaning of ongoing events, the implications of various technologies, and the trade-offs of alternative strategies. It would not be so problematic if the military and current government were transparent, but that is not the case, as the auditor-general’s report demonstrates quite clearly.

I have a great deal of respect for the Canadian military, but the past several years indicate that the current government and military have a strong tendency to smooth over whatever happens rather than being upfront about it. I am convinced that the Canadian military behaved responsibly in difficult circumstances when it came to the challenge of transferring detainees in Afghanistan. But rather than being transparent and clear about the problem as it arose, its tendency seemed to be to deny, deny, deny. That angered the politicians, gave the media the sense that there was smoke and fire, and ultimately distracted everyone from focusing on the really important questions of the day, such as whether the mission was worthwhile and what it was for. The same dynamic has largely been true for the F-35s: Greater transparency would have meant less hostility. As usual, it is not so much the crime, but the cover-up, that is the problem. I don’t mean to say that something criminal has occurred, but rather that the instinct to pour secret sauce on any decision, event, or problem does not do anyone a service, as the truth often does get out, and then it is far more controversial. With the eventual decline in civilian expertise, we may find that the secret sauce gets thicker and penetrated far less often.

Photo courtesy of Reuters