What is the Canadian Military For?

Steve Saideman | February 15, 2012

Minister of National Defence Peter MacKay is stubbornly sticking to the decision to purchase F-35s despite changing realities. The price Canada expected to pay – $75 million per plane – has increased significantly. In addition to the fact that the initial expectations were (wildly?) unrealistic, the changes in the plans of the U.S. and the rest of the coalition of purchasers also have implications for Canada.

The fiscal crises facing most advanced democracies have meant countries are having second and third thoughts. The U.S. is changing the pace of deliveries and probably the size of its order. Australia has already faced the music, deciding to buy planes that will be available sooner, and opting to purchase fewer F-35s down the road. Italy and Turkey have cut their buys, the U.K. is dithering, and the Dutch are pondering. Because the price per plane depends on how many are purchased, the decisions of these other countries impact the Canadian purchase. Yet MacKay (actually Prime Minister Stephen Harper) has refused to reconsider the decision.

It is almost as if thinking is weakness. This purchase is incredibly expensive and will ultimately crowd out spending on other defence systems since Canada has a limited taste for such spending. There are trade-offs that Canadian leaders seem to be ignoring. I have often challenged my students with the following question: If you can only afford two modern branches of the military – land, sea, or air – which ones do you choose? It is a tough question, but we must confront it at some point.

While there is much criticism in the U.S. for the choices the Obama administration is making in the face of spending restrictions, the U.S. government is at least giving some consideration to the threats that face the country, and the requirements to meet those threats. As a result, the U.S. is keeping most of its navy intact but cutting its army and the Marines since the country will be focusing on deterring wars with China and not so much on long, gruelling counter-insurgency campaigns.

The question for Canada today, tomorrow, and down the road is this: What are the Canadian Forces for? Militaries have two basic purposes for advanced democracies: security and influence. One buys armed forces to defend the country and/or to exert influence in the world. The difficult thing for Canada is that what is best for one purpose may not be best for the other. That is, as a country with a lot of coastline and only distant threats, modernizing the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Royal Canadian Navy makes a great deal of sense. If that is the priority, then Canada should significantly reduce its army. Funding a modern army at the same time it is funding the rest of the Forces is simply too expensive for Canada given current fiscal patterns.

On the other hand, whatever Canada buys to protect its seas and airspace is probably going to be insufficient to thwart the biggest threats – the U.S. or Russia. Obviously, the alliance with the U.S. will continue, so Canada could, and almost certainly will, rely upon the much larger U.S. capabilities to defend North America. Instead of focusing on threats, Canada could design an armed force to maximize its influence, by providing added value in multilateral military efforts (since Canada will not have enough of everything to operate on its own, except perhaps in the Caribbean).

What kind of Canadian Forces would provide the most influence in alliance or coalition efforts? The Libyan and Kosovo efforts suggest that having advanced, interoperable aircraft would give Canada an important role in allied efforts. Afghanistan demonstrated that the key capability for “punching above one’s weight” is a flexible, adaptable army. Canada’s willingness to serve and fight in the hardest parts of Afghanistan gave it influence not just over operations in Afghanistan, but also at NATO headquarters. Indeed, the Afghan effort almost certainly led to Canada having a leading role in the Libyan operation with Lt. General Bouchard as the operational commander.

Back to the trade-off: In the future, Canada can pay for either a major role in its own security via investing in the RCAF and RCN or it can exert influence when it provides a significant contribution to alliance efforts. But trying to do both will probably mean being inadequate at both, which is what happened in 2006 when Canada sent its land staff into Kandahar without any helicopters while its submarines remained in dry dock.

Canada is not locked into buying the F-35 despite its leadership’s assertions and behaviour. It is not too late to consider the trade-offs – that making this decision will mean that there will be less money for the land staff. That is OK as long as politicians realize this means Canada will be less able, or perhaps unable, to contribute to efforts where there must be boots on the ground. The choices of today will constrain the decision-makers of tomorrow.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

TAGS

Canadian Forces, defence, F-35

Comments 7 Comments

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=645997171 Ulrich Vom Hagen

Very good article regarding our military options, but I’m not sure about your evaluation of the F-35.
The F-35 Lightening is a bloated project, and the version we will receive will be the worst version of them all (the export version, of course). The price is a joke, especially since this thing won’t even have STOVL capability (which is really the only special feature of the F-35, but exclusive only to the marine variant; the F-35B is the short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) variant of the aircraft). In comparison, a Sukhoi 30MKI, a 4.5 generation fighter (one of the best ever deployed en masse) costs $35million a unit.

Canada needs to return to option 1: defend the country and its sovereignty.
To this end the Army needs to be re-transformed into a militia army with a small professional cadre. As you correctly pointed out we cannot afford an expensive intervention army and a high tech navy and air force. Until the 1960s the militia was the backbone of the CF. Since the Cold War, however, all Canadian governments have given preference to the occupational military/standing army in order to meet NATO pressure, but the Cold War is obver. Under the current conditions of service the future of Canada’s reserve forces is in crisis. The militia has been turned into a third class organisation due to lack of financing.
Militia forces,however, are a fundamental element of participative democracy and civic society. Let’s increase the monies for the militia and number of citizen soldiers. Decrease the numbers of full-time soldiers in the regular force.
J H Keess

If Canada were to focus on pure national sovereignty, you wouldn’t need a militia army – you’d need an insurgent one,possibly backed by nuclear weapons. There is simply no way that we could ever defend against a conventional war with the United States. This has been abundantly clear since 1865 and will be for the conventional future.

Canada must therefore rely on a reasonably stable international situation and play the long game of alliance-building, something which we;ve been very good at (and have been doing effectively since 1899 when we sent a contingent to the Second Anglo-Boer War.)

While the reserves are an important part of the defence establishment, cutting the regular force any further would result in complete operational ineffectiveness. Battalions in the Canadian Army are never at full strength and therefore must draw on other battalions to fill quotas when deploying soldiers. This means that every rotation affect two battalions. With some battalions earmarked for disaster response and other on recovery, the nine (barely) battalions of infantry that we do have would be completely incapable of really committing to anything internationally. Conversely, these nine under-strength battalions would be utterly incapable of even defending Canada.

You do point out that Canada’s was a militia-based army until the 1960s (sort of). A brief look at our history would show you just how bad an idea it is to negelct your regular force and just how poorly the idea of a small instructor cadre works. Canada’s greatest victories in the Great War only came after years of intense training and professional development ata cost of many thousands of lives. Furthermore, the Canadian Corps was riddled with political infighting whch hamstrung even basic needs like getting proper rifles, uniforms and boots. the Second World War saw a country completely unprepared and the Canadians had to work extremely hard to get up to snuff – so much so that we didn’t see much combat until 1943 save a disaster called Dieppe in 1942.

Modern warfare is such that you cannot simply take a hastily-mobilised citizen-solider and instruct them on the use of a modern tank with thermal vision,hunter-killer sights and computer-corrected targeting. Even a modern infantry private is expected to know how to operate a wide variety of systems,all of which take a lot of training. The point is that the Regular Force as it stands right now would be barely enough to train a citizen army in even the rudiments of modern warfare,and one night a week at an armoury with limited equipment simply won’t do as the backbone of national defence.

Civic duty aside, these concerns are practical ones as the author posed practical questions. Patriotism and good intentions do not save lives or win wars – well-trained and led soldiers do. Certainly we do need to strengthen the militia but this simply cannot come at the cost of a rapidly-deployable professional army.
Dartguard

It is interesting and so completely Canadian that the author asked the question “Which service do you choose ? “. Canada has had the luxury of living in the shadow of our benevolent American big brother for the last 67 years. Rome to our south has announced publically the reduction of both the Army and Marine Corps to pre 2003 levels. By default America is expecting her Allies to pick up some of the slack . What Nations will answer the call? Australia , South Korea, France ? Will Canada or do we do what we have for much of the last 4 decades. Will we continue to shamelessly mooch just because we can ? It is time we became an adult nation and not only choose all three services but swallow our propensity to bitch about the cost and “awwww do we have to “.

Has anyone really studied what it would take to properly maintain our soveriegnty as well as contribute to world stability ? 65 Fast jets are not enough to patrol the 15 Million square kilometre airspace that we have responsibility for . Nuke Subs are the best technology to patrol Canadian claimed waters but we also need enough Destroyers and Frigates to go anywhere in the world. Our Army has enough units on paper but is far too heavy in the officer corps and is about 9,000 people short to flesh out the units . We should implement an up or out policy for the officer corps, especially for the ones that have seen more of Ottawa than Petawawa , Halifax or Comox .

And how do we pay for these policies . Any way we want to . We spend less on Defence by proportion of G.D.P. than Denmark , Holland , Australia or New Zealand. The bills are coming due.
Anonymous

I think it more likely that Bouchard was given nominal command of the Libyan campaign because 1) he was already in Italy in a senior NATO post 2) he’s bilingual 3) he’s not a Brit, an American or French.

Whatever influence we got due to Kandahar must have been lost when we departed and cost us over $20 billion. Hardly a good deal.

We have the choice of doing nothing- not spending billions to guard against fantastic threats and not paying tens of billions to get a seat at the table. The real reasons for most defence spending are habit, business deals, careerism and domestic politics. Security is far down the list. We can pass on mimicking the US and be much better off.
Grube

Most folks commenting on the “Army” appear to have limited knowledge of its size and structure. It is one of the smallest in the world, whether one measures in real terms or by GDP. There are only 3 understrength brigades, all of which rely on a very understrength “Militia” brigades for reinforcement — both for overseas and domestic operations. That there are still people who actually believe we have an Army approaching anything near the adjectives “large” and “too big for its potential missions” absolutely amazes me.

Bottom line: there are very significant roles/missions/tasks in/out of this country for all three elements.
Note that in Kandahar, our fighting/deployable battle group was at about 1500 in strength (not counting all combat support, garrison, logistic units), handling a task that is now assigned to as many as nine US Army units of similar size. Our commitment was restricted to this size not only because it was originally assumed that such would be sufficient (events proved otherwise); but it was also because the Cdn Army’s strength, including reservists, would not allow any larger force to be deployed over a matter of years. If it had been just “in and out” mission for two years or less than perhaps we could have deployed a whole brigade. Doing so for the time we were actually there would have completely broken our small army.

This approach by the author and those that agree with him appears to be the standard old saw — cut one service to ensure the others survive. It is one of the reasons why Unification (that very poorly-planned and failed experiment) was imposed on the three Services as they existed in the 1960s.
There needs to be an improvement in the “informed” comment. For those that have not studied defence and security issues, I recommend doing so before commenting on which of the services be sacrificed. A little study of Cdn defence history might help as well.
http://www.facebook.com/john.keess John Keess

So you’d rather we completely unprepared when threats do come and have to rely on Americans to enforce our sovereignty?

Pure soft powr was tried and failed miserably. Let’s move on.
Jmgleclerc

This article is poorly considering domestic operations. Do not forget that in the US, each state has their national guard for Dom ops, something we do not have in Canada. Just on this aspect, it is relevant to keep an army that can respond efficiently.

What is the Canadian Military For?

About the Contributor

Steve Saideman

Canada and NATO, NATO and Canada

Towards A Grand Strategy for Canada, Part 2

Towards a Grand Strategy for Canada