CDFAI DISPATCH: WINTER 2009 (VOLUME VII, ISSUE IV)

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IN THIS ISSUE

• Message from the President - Robert S. Millar

• Message from the Editor-in-Chief - David Bercuson

• Announcements

• G. Lindsey’s George Bell Award Speech

• Article: Canada in Afghanistan: Is it Working? - Gordon Smith?

• Article: Politicians, Officials and the Making of Foreign Policy: Has the Distribution of Influence Gone Wrong?- Denis Stairs

• Article: Industrial Regional Benefits: Interesting Time - George Macdonald

• Article: What Hath the Great Recession Wrought? - Brian Flemming

• Article: Réfléchir sur le concept de sécurité et ses multiples facettes : de la sécurité nationale classique à la sécurité civile - Dany Deschênes

• Article: Canada’s Will to Intervene in Mass Atrocities: Applying a New Planning Tool - Sarah Meharg

• Article: Might on Parade - Ralph Sawyer

• Article: The Competition for People – the Military’s Next Big Challenge - Mike Jeffery

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Message from the President - ROBERT S. MILLAR

As 2009 is winding down, the Board of Directors, Advisory Council, Fellows and staff at CDFAI wish everyone a safe and cheerful upcoming Christmas season and, if possible, a less tumultuous new year. Inside this edition you will find a variety of articles on current issues within Canadian defence and foreign affairs, as well as updates on our recently-concluded annual conference, our upcoming projects, and a special feature by Dr. George Lindsey, one of Canada’s foremost experts on strategic balance, nuclear balance and deterrence, and arms control and disarmament.
 

Article Summaries from the Assistant Editor

1. Canada in Afghanistan: Is it Working?: As a follow up to his article Canada in Afghanistan: Is it Working?, Gordon Smith investigates Canada’s current role in Afghanistan, the purpose of the mission, and what would happen if we pulled out.

2. Politicians, Officials and the Making of Foreign Policy: Has the Distribution of Influence Gone Wrong?: Denis Stairs investigates the importance of DFAIT within the current Canadian Government. He issues that foreign affairs maintains a special place within the departments of the government, and that DFAIT should not be allowed to decline out of neglect.

3. Industrial Regional Benefits: Interesting Times: George Macdonald explains the idea behind Industrial Regional Benefits (IRBs) and how it works to help and hinder Canadian industry with regards to defence procurements.

4. What Hath the Great Recession Wrought?: Brian Flemming calls for quick action and Canadian initiative in the wake of the Great Recession. This action is necessary to stabilize, and maintain the Canadian economy, as well as redevelop and strengthen trade agreements with the United States.

5. Réfléchir sur le concept de sécurité et ses multiples facettes : de la sécurité nationale classique à la sécurité civile: Since the end of the 1980s, the concept of security has changed from the traditional state-centric definition to incorporate the dimension of civil security. Dany Deschênes argues that this requires the creation of a culture of civil protection at the civilian level.

6. Canada’s Will to Intervene in Mass Atrocities: Applying a New Planning Tool: Sarah Jane Meharg explains the Mass Atrocities Response Operation (MARO) project as she puts forward the need to change the thought process, as it relates to situations of mass atrocities, from whether to intervene to how to intervene.

7. Might on Parade: Ralph Sawyer bring to the fore China’s rearmament strategy. With this he contemplates the security risks to Canada and the rest of the world with a well, and heavily, armed China on the horizon.

8. The Competition for People – the Military’s Next Big Challenge: Mike Jeffery stipulates that in the coming years the Canadian Forces will suffer in terms of strength and quality of new recruits. He offers some important recommendations to curb this growing threat.

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Message from the Editor-in-Chief - david bercuson

David Bercuson is the Director of Programs at CDFAI, the Director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary, and the Honorary Lieutenant Colonel of the 41 Combat Engineer Regiment.
 

Newspaper columnists, talking heads, academic experts – everybody who is assumed to be inside or near the magic circle of policymakers – is calling for a Canadian debate on our contribution to Afghanistan beyond 2011. Everyone should save their breath, at least for the moment.

Canada’s future in Afghanistan will be linked to a number of factors, some of them obvious, others less so.

The most important deciding factor is, what will President Obama do? He has been asked by his hand-picked commander in Afghanistan, General McCrystal, to send 40,000 more troops to wage a counterinsurgency struggle against the Taliban.

McCrystal’s strategy for dealing with the Taliban is really a strategy for dealing with Afghans in areas that are now – or could soon be – heavily infiltrated by the Taliban. The most important of those regions is where the Pashtuns live, mostly across the south but in some regions in the west and north. They are about 40% of the population. They are not all Taliban sympathizers, nor are all Taliban Pashtun. But there is a strong correlation.

McCrystal seems to believe that non-Pashtun areas of the country will resist Taliban rule and he is probably correct going on the recent past. So his strategy seems sound, except that it does not address the key issue of how to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear – clean up the thoroughly corrupt government of Hamid Karzai so that the Afghan people will have something they believe in - to fight for - who will not impose an extreme religious regime.

If President Obama commits a large number of new troops, he will no doubt do so only as part of McCrystal’s strategy but also with a workable plan to force Karzai to get serious about governmental reform. Such a plan should get serious attention in Ottawa because it might give a realistic and achievable direction to the current war. Right now there is no united direction, no single spirit underlying the military and development activity and there hasn’t been one since NATO expanded outside Kabul back in 2006.

However, even if Obama forges a new strategy (or adopts McCrystal + Karzai reform) Canada will still need to overcome the inertia that has settled in since the passage of the Parliamentary motion on the mission in 2008. That motion, carefully crafted by the two “governing” parties to get Afghanistan off the table before the next election, is a contradiction in terms. It calls for Canada to “redeploy out of Kandahar” only to be replaced by the Afghanistan National Army (ANA). In other words it left open the door for Canada to go somewhere else in Afghanistan but stipulated that it would be the ANA that would take over in Kandahar. Pigs will fly before the ANA can do that in 2011.

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announcements

Perspectives on Afghanistan: A Journalist, a Soldier, and a Filmmaker

This year CDFAI launched its first specialized Speaker Series focusing on Afghanistan. Canada has been involved in the counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan since 2003, pouring both blood and gold into the mission. There are many questions surrounding this part of the globe and each speaker in this series brings his or her own unique perspective to the debate. In September, award-winning journalist Matthew Fisher spoke on his experience in Afghanistan and in November, combat experienced Col. Ian Hope provided his insight into the conflict. In early March 2010 Nelofer Pazira, an Afghan filmmaker and journalist, will speak to this issue. These are private, limited seating dinners held at the Calgary Golf & Country Club and tickets are $500. Please contact Leanne Ejsymont at 403-231-7698 or at lejsymont@cdfai.org  if you are interested in attending the March dinner.

The Future of Peacekeeping
The second paper, “What Became of Peacekeeping? The Future of a Tradition” by Mr. Jocelyn Coulon, CDFAI Fellow and Director of the Francophone Research Network on Peace Operations at the Université de Montréal, and by Dr. Michel Liegeois, Professor of International Relations Theories and Diplomatic and Strategic Issues at the Université catholique de Louvain, will be published in late October. In this paper they stipulate that peacekeeping has evolved considerably since the days of classic "blue beret" missions; Canada may be well served by participating in some of today's variety of peacekeeping missions.This paper will be published in French and English.

CDFAI and CIC 2009 Conference: NATO & NORAD
This year’s annual conference, “Canada’s National Strategic Relations: NATO & NORAD,” was held in Ottawa on 2 November, and was a great success! We would like to thank everyone who attended and hope they found the presentations and discussions valuable. Panel and keynote presentations summaries, CPAC coverage, and conference photos are now available on our conference website at: www.cdfai.org/conf2009

Democracies and Asymmetric Warfare
This December, CDFAI will be releasing a major research paper by Dr. Barry Cooper: “Democracies and Small Wars”. Dr. Cooper is a CDFAI Fellow and Professor of Political Science at the University of Calgary. His paper analyses the characteristics of small wars and the reasons why democracies are relatively inept at fighting them. In light of the small war Canada is fighting in Afghanistan, and the small wars Canada will fight in the future, this paper is both very timely and relevant.

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Canada in Afghanistan: Is it Working?

by Gordon Smith

Gordon Smith is Director of the Centre for Global Studies, and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Victoria. He is a former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Canada and Ambassador to the European Union and NATO.

In March 2007 my report on Canada in Afghanistan: Is it Working? was published by CDFAI. My answer to the question then was “No”, Canadian policy was not working. I wish time had proved me wrong. It has not. The objectives have been scaled back. Our policy still isn’t working. What is to be done now?

The fact that developments have not gone well is certainly not the fault of the Canadian Forces (or the other foreign  militaries) that are fighting in Afghanistan. Canadians should be, and are, proud of what their soldiers have done. They are not invaders comparable to the British and Russians as sometimes asserted. But we have to be honest with ourselves. Victory, no matter how  defined, is not in sight. Many Pashtun, in particular, want to see the departure of foreign forces. The United States is not withdrawing and may well commit more forces before this brief is published. That is not say that there is not a major debate occurring in Washington as to US policy in Afghanistan. President Obama has made that this is his war. Britain has increased its force level on the understanding that others will not reduce; it seems highly unlikely that other countries will commit more forces. Public support for the war is declining in troop contributing countries everywhere. It is interesting, however, that repeated polls taken in Afghanistan do not suggest that, overall, Afghans want the foreign troops to leave. Indeed the contrary is the case. The exception are the Pashtuns.

The argument for continuing the engagement of Canada and other members of the coalition usually comes down to the risk that if, NATO disengages, the Afghan forces are not remotely up to the job of providing security, the Taliban will therefore be back in power at least in the south, and that the Taliban will again provide sanctuary for al-Qaeda. That in turn could  lead to increased conflict within Pakistan or even the collapse of government authority in that country. There is little doubt al-Qaeda is very worrying. One only has to look at the reports of the increasing activities of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the group that held Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler for four months. But what is al-Qaeda? To what extent is it managed by Osama bin Laden (or someone else) in the mountains of southern Afghanistan or northwestern Pakistan?

It would seem that al-Qaeda is at most (organizationally) a franchise operation and at least a copycat phenomenon. Al-Qaeda, in fact, means “the base”, but that does not mean that al-Qaeda has only one base. Rather it is a loose network in which there is a great deal of redundancy. Cut off a piece and a new entity grows somewhere else. The network, however, is for real. It is not “virtual”, although it is high tech - GPS, satellite phones, cell phones, well-produced DVDs, and laptops. Ambassador Fowler has described how new DVDs were regularly sent to his captors to watch in the evening. And they were not your usual rentals from Blockbusters.

In other words, while the threat is very real, the best conceivable outcome in Afghanistan does not mean the global threat would thereby be eliminated or even substantially reduced. “The base” al-Qaeda uses can and is being moved to other parts of the world with weak government. Al-Qaeda is not, of course, synonymous with the Taliban – quite the contrary. Al-Qaeda is a worldwide phenomenon with worldwide objectives. The Taliban may be soulmates in terms of many of their beliefs but their primary objective is local. They believe in the imposition of Sharia law with all that means in terms of women’s rights.

The original objective of the US and its allies in Afghanistan was to dislodge the Taliban and round-up al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden. The first happened. The second did not, significantly because of the inability to close the border with Pakistan and the unwillingness, at least until very recently, of the Pakistani government to go after the Taliban. Of course, the “diversion” of US energies to Iraq was the major reason. The objectives over time enlarged as the need to provide basic human rights to women and girls caught public attention. The stories of girls going to school for the first time, or back to school after a long period of absence, were compelling. Boys flying their kites again were the subject of books and movies. Imagine young boys being told by the government that they could not fly their kites.

While it is easy to conclude that Afghanistan is rather far removed from Canadian national interests given that it is not essential as a base for al-Qaeda, this is not true for Canadian “values”.

Then there was the objective of bringing democracy to Afghanistan. This was truly an  implausible objective, as we see once again in the wake of the most recent election. Afghanistan was a country that had never known either a strong central government or an orderly federal system that could have accommodated the realities of the customary dispersion of power in the country. Western models of democracy cannot be transplanted to Afghanistan. It has proven very difficult to eliminate corruption and to ensure the delivery of services throughout the country. Polling shows the increasing degree of frustration of Afghans with the governance of their country. This is a serious problem.

These are difficult issues. Yet the fact is that the quality of public debate in this country is appallingly superficial. The  level of political debate may even be worse. In Canada, Afghanistan is treated as such an incendiary issue that one cannot help but feel that the leaders of the Conservatives and Liberals want to avoid it at all cost. Afghanistan is not, however, going togo away as an issue in 2011.

The options for Canada would seem as follows:

1. Withdrawal now or 2011 – we have done our bit and it is time for others to pick up the slack. Graham Fuller makes a compelling case that the presence of foreign forces and the consequences of their activities in terms of civilian casualties creates more Taliban (and al-Qaeda) than are killed by NATO forces. 1
    

2. Withdrawal of the Canadian Forces now or 2011 while maintaining or even increasing development assistance – the time has come for others to pick up the military slack (we are after all members of an alliance) but we recognize the importance of Afghanistan and therefore will do even more in terms of development.
    

3. Maintaining a limited military presence focused on training (i.e. not combat) beyond 2011 while increasing development assistance – we accept that some military presence is still required and are prepared to do more in assistance.
    

4. Maintaining the current level of CF engagement and maintaining development assistance at current levels – the Government changes its position, perhaps as a result of “new circumstances”.

External factors, as always, play into a decision such as this. At the time of writing this brief, there is a major policy review taking place in the US. General Stanley McChrystal is publicly calling for more troops. At the  same time there are more people remembering Vietnam and the slow slide deeper and deeper that occurred in the 1960s. Robert McNamara, intimately involved in that war, has emphasized that the US didn’t know its enemy (North Vietnam) and that the domino theory was totally fallacious. Are there, it is being asked, analogies in Afghanistan?

While Canada can decide to provide more development assistance and less military force, the reality is that development assistance in an environment where there is no security will fail. One of the most discouraging developments of the last few years is that truly secure areas in Afghanistan are becoming rarer, not more common. Where could we provide useful development assistance where those providing and receiving it would be secure? And would that be a waste given the inevitable end result of more conflict.

I have a sense that we do not usually give sufficient weight to two important issues. The first is the commitment we have made, as a country, to women and young girls. To be seen to be walking away from this will, I believe, increasingly seem politically unacceptable. The second is the reaction of the families of those whose  lives have been lost in Afghanistan if it is being perceived that these deaths were in vain.

This takes us in to the deep question of the responsibilities and obligations incurred. They are very real. This is no longer all about pure national interest. Then there is the future of NATO. Maybe it doesn’t matter any longer. The change in NATO that has occurred since the end of the Cold War is remarkable. For an Alliance that was extremely reluctant to operate “out of area”, NATO is now all about out of area. Either that or the entire globe is its area – a frightening prospect. NATO’s reputation is on the line in Afghanistan. If such a large, rich Alliance cannot handle the Taliban, what could it handle? Then what about the United States? How will the US react if it feels its allies are no longer there for it? Could this lead to a new US unilateralism, based on the feeling the US is not really able to count on its friends? There are no obvious answers. Let us not fear a debate. We owe it to ourselves and I think to Afghans.

Endnote

[1] See e.g. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-e-fuller/global-viewpoint-obamasp_b_201355.html

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Politicians, Officials and the Making of Foreign Policy: Has the Distribution of Influence Gone Wrong?

by Denis Stairs

Denis Stairs is Professor Emeritus in Political Science and a Faculty Fellow in the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, Dalhousie University. He specializes in Canadian foreign and defence policy, Canada-US relations and similar subjects.
 

A fundamental change is taking place within world politics. It may be described as the decline of diplomacy. Or, better, as the deliquescence of diplomacy – deliquescence in its dictionary meaning of melting away into nothingness, fading away into limbo.

James Eayrs1

This arresting assessment by the leading scholar of Canadian foreign policy was first published in Saturday Night magazine just six months after Pierre Elliot Trudeau was initially elected to prime ministerial office more than 40 years ago. But it was then more prescient than influential. Academicians of the day were beginning, true enough, to cogitate on the implications for foreign ministries of the intensifying diffusion of the international agenda into the domains of rival departments of government. The new Prime Minister, moreover, was distrustful of the dead hand of bureaucratic power in general, which he thought was an obstacle to getting useful things done, and he regarded the Department of External Affairs in particular as intellectually rutted and hidebound if not functionally outmoded. He once famously observed that the information contained in its diplomatic despatches could be found “in a good newspaper,”2 and with the help of managerial, organizational and budgetary manoeuvres devised by his senior advisers, he sought, during his early years in office, to bring it to heel.3

But these sceptical perceptions of the foreign ministry and its diplomatic service, and the bureaucratic tinkering that flowed from them, were the preoccupations primarily of academic cognoscenti, practitioners of public administration and, on occasion, interest group activists with earnest policy preferences (disarmament, for example) in mind. They had little impact on the opinions of attentive citizens at large. Among the latter, the most deeply embedded view was that Canada’s representatives abroad, even if they were reputed to live too well and sometimes wore striped pants, were exceptionally adept at the ennobling art of conflict resolution through diplomacy, a characteristic implicitly assumed to be an outcome of the “Lets-get-along” amiability of Canadians in general. This assessment was habitually reinforced over the decades by politicians, who increasingly found the propagation of such comforting notions nicely supportive of both their electoral and their nation-building aspirations.

Nonetheless, inside the halls of government itself, Trudeau was not the only post-war Canadian politician of elevated status to be wary of the foreign service elite. Mackenzie King was convinced that External Affairs, if left on its own in pursuing diplomatic adventures abroad, would get him into no end of political trouble at home. John Diefenbaker was certain that the Department was a hive of Liberal aficionados, and was known to complain in scathing terms of the “Pearsonalities” by whom it was populated. Joe Clark’s foreign minister, Flora MacDonald, felt she was constantly being outflanked by her own foreign service advisers, whom she believed to be conspiring with officials in the Privy Council Office, and elsewhere, to block initiatives that she herself supported but of which they heartily disapproved.4 In response to financial stress, moreover, the External Affairs budget, like the budget of the Department of National Defence, has been mauled on more than one occasion by each of the governing political parties, the latter being secure in their knowledge that pain could be inflicted on the foreign ministry (as on DND and CIDA) without significant danger of retaliatory electoral punishment.

Having said that, the accumulation of budget cuts in the case of DND did ultimately generate considerable, albeit belated, public debate. The latter was led for the most part by a handful of independent academic observers and by representatives of organizations loyal in various ways to the Canadian Forces and the military enterprise; however, similar discussions have failed to materialize among the attentive citizenry at large in reaction to resource reductions in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade even in the face of occasional attempts to trigger them. Andrew Cohen, for example, found evidence in the recent history of the foreign ministry, as well as in the state of the armed forces and development assistance programming, to sustain a thesis of decline in his provocatively entitled and nostalgically argued 2003 volume, While Canada Slept: How We Lost Our Place in the World.5 Daryl Copeland, a senior and experienced foreign service officer, has written extensively, and critically, on the resource issue and other topics related to the diplomatic service and the foreign ministry in the journals of the diplomatic profession as well as in publications aimed at a somewhat wider audience.6 Again, Robert Wolfe has edited an excellent series of essays by practitioners and academics touching on similar themes under the title, Diplomatic Missions: The Ambassador in Canadian Foreign Policy.7 The literature has been enriched, as well, by memoirs and other book-length contributions written by retired diplomats and their biographers. Pertinent academic disquisitions have sometimes appeared, too, in the journals of Political Science and Public Administration. But it has to be conceded that not much discussion of DFAIT’s proper place in government has found its way into the general media as a result of these various ruminations.

The time for such a debate may now be overdue, if only because the Department is once again under siege. For this the hard evidence lies most obviously (and as usual) in the condition of its pocket book. Embassy magazine reported in late March 2009, that DFAIT’s budget was in the process of being slashed by some $639 million from its 2007-2008 level of approximately $2.6 billion. The budget anticipated for fiscal 2010-2011 was said to be $1.9 billion, a decline of 27% in a three-year time-frame. The complement of full-time staff was scheduled to drop from 12,975 in 2008 -9 to 12,301 in 2010-2011 (5.2% over two years), all in a context in which, even now, well under half of Canada’s foreign service officers are actually posted abroad.8

But the resource allocations hardly tell the whole story. DFAIT’s problem is compounded by signals (frequently reported in the press) that its policy advice is not highly valued by the political leadership, which is reputed to believe the Department’s views on foreign affairs are inadequately aligned with those espoused by the Office of the Prime Minister. If this is the case it bears repeating that the phenomenon is not peculiar to the government of Stephen Harper, nor even to governments of conservative disposition generally. We have seen it before. Nor is it peculiar to governments in Canada. The same phenomenon has erupted from time to time in other parliamentary democracies, too.9 It would be easy to conclude that the Department’s most recent round of misery is due entirely to an ideological tension between a conservative government, with moderately ‘neocon’ predilections and a muscular hard -nosed view of how to do foreign policy, on the one hand and a foreign service habitually dedicated to softer forms of ‘internationalism’ on the other. In the crushingly dismissive vocabulary often deployed in similar contexts by the former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, the PMO may think DFAIT is populated by hopeless “wets,” and hence that it will not, and cannot, serve the governing political leadership loyally, much less enthusiastically. Some of the commentators quoted in the Embassy magazine report cited above, reacting to the fact that the defence budget has been increasing while the foreign service budget has been falling, seem to take precisely this view, arguing, in essence, that the current government has emphasized hard power over soft and military deployments over diplomacy.

There is doubtless a grain of truth in these observations, and it is certainly possible that underlying policy differences between the political leadership and senior members of the foreign service, whether real, imagined or a combination of both, have played a role in the government’s apparent determination to shift the centre of gravity and influence away from the Department in favour of its own cadre of politically-appointed advisers.

But this is not by any means the whole story. The forces involved are far more complex than the argument from ideological difference alone allows, and the politicization process is taking place in a much wider context. It does not follow that the consequences of the process are benign, or that the balance in the distribution of policy-making influence is now the right one. Far from it. But it does mean that a useful assessment of the problem requires that attention be paid to the larger picture before conclusions are drawn and before we decide whether the conduct of foreign policy is, or is not, a ‘special case’ warranting special treatment.

Their personal policy preferences aside, political leaders are encouraged to engage directly in the foreign policy process for a number of reasons. A few of these are new. Others are simply more insistently intrusive than they have been in the past. Among the most important of them are the following:

First, the international agenda, and hence the foreign policy agenda, is now more crowded with issues than ever before, and more of them than ever before bear, or have the potential to bear, very directly on the daily lives of the citizenry at large. The preoccupations of classical international politics, war and peace, and the conduct of trade, have been vastly expanded by developments in science and technology and the challenges, as well as the rewards, they have generated. The over-consumption of energy and natural resources, the spread of disease, the pollution of land, water, and sea, the warming of the globe, the proliferation of transnational crime, the potentially disruptive migrations of peoples, the persistence (and the spillover) of ethnic, religious and other forms of human conflict – all these and more threaten to victimize us all with the tragedy of the commons, and seem never to go away. Politicians, knowing the problems to be intractable, sometimes wish they would. What Canadian leader, after all, really wants to tackle global warming? Which of them would be so bold as not to care very much if Alberta were seriously alienated by what the process would probably entail? But, sooner or later, they may find they have no choice. The matter is international. It is in our face. Inevitably, therefore, it is political. The problem cannot be left to officials to sort out.

Secondly, the politicizing impact of this expanded agenda of what is sometimes described as “global governance” is reinforced by the proliferation of increasingly competitive mass media, all of them busy around the clock, and all of them anxious to ensure that we are exposed to dramatic accounts of dramatic events as instantly and excitingly as possible. The “Gotcha” rule applies. The product is “infotainment.” The requirement is to keep it simple. In such a context, politicians cannot duck; therefore, they try to “manage” – to control the ‘spin’ and thereby limit the damage. If possible, they will try to do this before the fact rather than after it. The cynicism of the media thus begets the manipulations of political back rooms. The perception, not the reality, is what is thought to count most. Certainly it is what is thought to count now. This is a political game, not a game properly assigned to officials. The political staff would not, in any case, trust officials to play it well.

Thirdly, the interest of political leaders in the handling of foreign policy issues is strengthened by the diversity of the electorate and the domestic population. In countries inhabited by diasporas from everywhere, developments anywhere can have political salience at home. This is hardly new. Canadians campaigned in the South African War at the turn of the last century not because Ottawa urged them to do so, but because so many of those with roots in the British Isles thought it their duty to support the Imperial cause. The difference now is not that diasporas affect the domestic politics of foreign policy, but that the diasporas we have come from all over the map. Every political party wants to gain the allegiance of as many of them as possible. This has little to do with what the foreign service might regard as wise. It has everything to do with what political leaders regard as electorally helpful.

Fourthly, the presence in the polity of so many representatives of transnationalized populations is matched by an enormous proliferation of transnational pressure groups and public service interest groups, or “NGOs,” engaged in the pursuit of a multitude of international, and sometimes global, objectives. Such organizations often target, and even work with, public officials, and frequently they deliver services on government contract. But in their role as policy advocates they are naturally drawn to focussing on heads of government, not least of all when the latter are gathered in conference. Their tactics and strategies, facilitated by cheap Internet communications, can be orchestrated in tandem with those of their counterparts in other jurisdictions and entail the transnational mobilization of domestic political pressures; pressures with which politicians ultimately have to deal, even if they can muster some public service help along the way.

The political potency of these various phenomena is reinforced, fifthly, by attitudinal changes in the attentive population at large. These may be related in some measure to the advance of higher education, as well as to the changes in communications media already discussed. Taken together, such developments undermine the mystique traditionally enjoyed by elites in general, the political and foreign service elites among them. That being so, citizens at large seem less prone to accommodating their own opinions to the judgments of those regarded by previous generations as better equipped than ordinary mortals to manage complex affairs of state. This change of attitude has been accompanied in many quarters by changes in expectations and political culture. More specifically, as the mystique of mandarins and the reputation of politicians have declined, the notion that interested publics should be consulted before decisions are made has gathered strength. Starting in the 1990s, although with precedents going back to the Trudeau era, Liberal governments responded by acceding to, and even encouraging, the demand, although the consultations themselves were carefully crafted with political purposes in view; to pre-empt criticism by disarming the critics, for example, or to ensure that the pertinent governing authorities would be told what they wanted to hear, thereby strengthening their hand in the policymaking process. The present government, notwithstanding its putatively populist roots, has been more selective in its use of the consultative approach, perhaps because it thinks it wasteful and difficult to control; however, both responses testify to the expectation itself, and to the perceived need to manage it.

This expectation is related to another, which is that those who make decisions and those who execute them will be held accountable for what they do, how they do it, and what they achieve by it. The cultural atmospherics here have been greatly stimulated by ‘freedom of information’ legislation; by the enhanced role of independent watch-dogs like the Auditor-General; by the perpetual “Gotcha” predilections of a press that is now under financial stress and desperate for readers, watchers and revenues; by the ever-present pursuit of partisan advantage in parliamentary proceedings rendered more volatile in the circumstances of minority government; and by a cynical public whose exasperation is easily reinforced by the spectacle of this entire interactive process taken as a whole. The controversy raging over detainees in Afghanistan as this is being written illustrates the phenomenon and demonstrates that it can easily have foreign policy content.

There are practical reasons, too, for the increasingly forceful intrusion of political leaders into the policymaking process. One of them comes from the recognition that ‘foreign policy’ often touches on the mandates of a multiplicity of government departments and agencies, and often requires the co-operation of public servants in command of rival turfs. Public Administration specialists speak generically of the need for “collaborative government” or “network government.” In the foreign policy community, there is talk of “whole of government” operations. The DND and the Canadian Forces use the language of the “three-block war;” however, no matter what the label may be the co-operation itself is hard to get. The bureaucratic incentives favour the independence of the silo. To overcome them, assuming the governing leadership really cares, the political leadership has to step in, stay in, and force the bureaucratic hand.

A second practical requirement comes from the enormous growth over the past two or three decades of summit diplomacy and the responsibilities that go with it. There was a time, particularly at the height of the Cold War, when meetings at the summit, particularly if adversaries were involved, were thought to be illadvised unless they were being staged only to lend high-level visibility to the signing of agreements already concluded through negotiations by officials. There were risks, after all, in summit-level encounters. They could raise public expectations, and if they then failed, the result would be a deepening, not a leavening, of the conflicts at issue. It was not always wise in any case to seat a ‘last-say decision-maker’ at the bargaining table, where errors might be made under circumstances in which remedial recourse to higher authority would not be available. The intrusion of “interpersonal variables” into the bargaining process, moreover, could result in serious interests of state being inappropriately sacrificed to idiosyncratic influences.

In the current international environment, however, summit meetings are scheduled with daunting frequency. Heads of government often show signs of enjoying them, but as Prime Minister Harper recently discovered in the case of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Trinidad and Tobago, they can be hard to avoid even when there is little desire to attend. In November/December alone, in addition to the Trinidad encounter, the Prime Minister joined the APEC summit in Singapore, and while in the region had a bilateral summit encounter with his Indian counterpart. At the time of writing, a visit to China is in the offing and the U.N.-sponsored summit on climate change is set to follow in Copenhagen later in December. Opportunities for several bilateral summit conversations are expected to flow from the 2010 Olympics in British Columbia, and Canada will host the G-8, and co-host the G-20, in the Spring. Even if he were so inclined, in short, the Prime Minister could hardly escape. And wherever he goes, there go politics, too.

It bears repeating that the concentration of so much policymaking at the political commanding heights is not confined to foreign policy. Students of public administration, Donald Savoie and Peter Aucoin prominently among them,10 have been commenting for some time on the growing concentration of power in the Prime Minister’s Office, and on the expansion in the numbers and influence of the political staff that are scattered throughout the government apparatus. Aucoin calls the phenomenon the “new political governance,” and he finds evidence of it in Britain, Australia and New Zealand as well as in Canada. He attributes it to political pressures that are ultimately rooted in the mass media; in the intensifying transparency and openness of government; in the role played by independent audit and review agencies; in the proliferation of interest groups, advocacy groups, lobbyists and think-tanks as active participants (in competition with political parties) in the policy development process; and in the political volatility and polarization that have accompanied the decline of citizen deference.11 Like Savoie, he believes there is reason to think that the quality of governance is not enhanced by the intensified politicization, especially within the civil service, of the administrative and policy-making process that results from these various developments, and has suggested institutional and procedural reforms that he feels would not only help to restore the distinction between the roles played respectively by the political and public service arms, but also bring them into a more appropriate balance.12

The question here, however, is whether there is cause for particular concern in relation specifically to the conduct of foreign affairs – a concern that goes beyond the need to ensure that public servants are not themselves made captive to purely partisan pressures in developing “evidence-based” policy advice for the political leadership.

There are at least three reasons for thinking that this may be the case. The first is that foreign policy, by definition, is concerned with politics abroad, as well as politics at home, and politics abroad is normally not a politics about which most politicians in Canada are likely to be well informed. During the Diefenbaker era, Peter C. Dobell left an impressive and promising career in the Department of External Affairs to establish the Parliamentary Centre for Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade precisely because of his concern that future prime ministers and foreign ministers would be drawn from the parliamentary ranks, and MP’s were, therefore, in need of assistance in developing some sophisticated background in the field. It was an important initiative, but by itself it could hardly solve the problem, particularly given the exceptionally high rate of turnover of members of the Canadian House of Commons. All that being so, it might be expected that newly appointed ministers in the pertinent portfolios would be particularly careful to seek the advice of foreign service professionals before making important decisions, even in cases where domestic political considerations are likely to be the deciding factors in the end. If they fail to do so serious mistakes can be made unnecessarily. Arguably, Prime Minister Chretien and Prime Minister Harper both stumbled on Middle East issues, at least partly, for this reason. Mr. Chretien did the same over Zaire, and a case can be made that Mr. Harper, because of his own prior convictions, slipped similarly on the China file, a mistake he is now evidently attempting to rectify (it could take a long time).

The problem here is that a failure to pay attention to what the professionals have to say means that decisions will be based on inadequate information, and hence without reference to a nuanced understanding of the forces at work in the field. In the absence of genuine knowledge, we are all inclined to retreat to first principles, to general rules and sometimes to our most basic moral premises, as a guide to action. But the conduct of diplomacy is a contextual enterprise, and foreign policy itself is a utilitarian undertaking. Its calibre is measured less by the virtue of the intentions that underlie it than by the results it achieves. To have sound judgment in the international context requires a level of knowledge and analysis not easily available from the kinds of media summaries, and constituency representations, to which political leaders are normally exposed. They have no obligation, of course, to follow the advice the professionals can provide. But, with good governance and the public interest in mind, it can be argued that they do have an obligation to be at least attentive to it.

The second reason for suggesting that foreign policy may be a special case is a corollary of the first. In particular, the pursuit of foreign policy requires the development of responses, and more often than not, they are “responses,” to events that occur in environments that Canadian authorities do not, and cannot, control. This is often true at home, too, but not to the same degree, or in the same way. The conduct of foreign affairs is, as the cliché has it, the “art of the possible,” and if responsibly managed, it pays particular attention to the assessment of limits. The same can be said of policy at home, but in the domestic environment the limits will be easily recognized and understood by experienced politicians. In many cases they will be so familiar as to be ‘second nature,’ a part of the tacit rules of the game. By contrast, and except where the paths are very well worn, they will be much less clear in the international context, and such genuine opportunities for constructive action as they leave behind will be harder to identify. Here, too, the professionals will help. Even Lloyd Axworthy, renowned for his insistence on launching sometimes daunting initiatives abroad, knew this to be so.

The third reason why foreign policy might reasonably be regarded as a special case is that its stakes are sometimes very high. In the extreme, it can involve both the delivery and the absorption of death and destruction. Presumably neither of these should ever be taken lightly, and there is no reason to think they ever have. But it is possible nonetheless for them to be taken irresponsibly, and this possibility is enhanced whenever decisions are made without a proper canvassing of the full range of available advice – professional advice most of all. The stakes in, say, health care policy are very high, too, but no one would think of making major health care policy decisions without carefully consulting those who deliver, or knowledgeably represent those who deliver, health care. It is not entirely clear that the same is now routinely true of decisionmaking in foreign affairs.

In all this, it should be noted as well that the components of any organizational environment can be seriously demoralized if they are dismissively treated, so that complaints about them become self-fulfilling prophecies. Morale declines. Dedication suffers. Innovative proposals cease to appear, especially if those who might author them suspect they would not be welcome. “Truth” is no longer told to power. The focus instead is on what “power” wants to hear. The afflicted institution persists, but in dysfunctional condition. Policy development capacity having gone into decline, it concentrates its attention on proliferating managerial imperatives: pleasing the Treasury Board; avoiding the wrath of the Auditor-General and other accountability scrutineers; ensuring that human resources are managed in accordance with the rules; determining what will be sacrificed so that economies demanded by higher authorities can be achieved; and all the rest. In such circumstances, no great mystery is to be found in the fact that so little of Canada’s foreign service is actually serving in posts abroad.

In sum, it is not in the Canadian interest, nor is it in the real interest of the political leadership either, to allow DFAIT and its professional diplomatic service to decline through neglect. There may be a case for reviewing the Department’s modes of operation and for changing its priorities. But it cannot be expected to perform well, even at the minimal level of helping political leaders to avoid causing unnecessary damage, if it is held in contempt. The dangers posed by the “new political governance” are potentially much greater in the foreign policy context than elsewhere in the government apparatus. Political authorities may be reluctant to go so far as to turn the staffing of the most senior public service over to an independent authority, as Peter Aucoin has suggested, but they would be wise to give their foreign service a new lease on life.

Endnotes

[1] “Farewell to Diplomacy,” Saturday Night, Vol. 83, No. 2 (December 1968), p. 21.

[2] Bruce Thordarson, quoting a television interview as reported in the December 1969 issue of Maclean’s, in his Trudeau and Foreign Policy: a study in decisionmaking (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 91.

[3] How much impact these managerial initiatives really had over the longer term can be debated. Trudeau, preoccupied with domestic constitutional and national unity questions, generally paid little attention to foreign affairs, and on many of the more important issues he eventually returned to the policy premises of his predecessors. Hence the title of the comprehensive analysis by J.L. Granatstein and Robert Bothwell: Pirouette: Pierre Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990).

[4] MacDonald first went public with her concerns in an address to a meeting of political scientists. See Hon. Flora MacDonald, “Notes for Remarks to Annual Meeting,” Canadian Political Science Association, Université de Québec à Montréal, Tuesday, June 30, 1980. Some of the background context is described in Pirouette, p. 215 ff.

[5] Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.

[6] His most recent and comprehensive treatise is his Guerrilla Diplomacy: Rethinking International Relations (Boulder & London: Lynne Rienner, 2009). In the present context, see especially Ch. 9, “The Foreign Ministry: Relic or Renaissance”:, pp. 143-160.

[7] Kingston: School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University, 1998.

[8] Figures drawn from, or calculated from, Michelle Collins, “Foreign Affairs Hit with $639 Million in Cuts,” Embassy (March 18, 2009). <http:// www.embassymag.ca/page/printage/ foreign_affairs_cuts-3-18-2009>

[9] The American Congressional system operates very differently, not least because new Presidents appoint their own partisans to the most senior ranks of the public service when they take office. The ‘politicization’ of advice is thus fundamental to American practice. The results, it can be argued, have been decidedly mixed, particularly in foreign affairs.

[10] See, for example, Donald Savoie, Governing from the Centre: The Concentration of Power in Canadian Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); Breaking the Bargain: Public Servants, Ministers and Parliament (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003); and Court Government and the Collapse of Accountability in Canada and the United Kingdom (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). Peter Aucoin has addressed similar and related themes in The New Public Management: Canada in Comparative Perspective (Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1995); Modernizing Government Accountability: A Framework for Reform (Ottawa: Canada School of Public Service, 2005) (with Mark Jarvis); “The New Public Governance and the Public Service Commission” in optimum online: The Journal of Public Sector Management Vol. 36, Issue 1 (March 2006), pp. 1-13 <http:// www.optimumonline.ca/print.phtml? id=252>; and “New Public Management and the Quality of Government: Coping with the New Political Governance in Canada,” paper presented to Conference on “New Public Management and the Quality of Government” at the SOG and Quality of Government Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden (November 2008). The latter two articles provide, among other things, excellent surveys in short compass of the modern evolution of these issues in both theory and practice.

[11] Aucoin, “New Public Management and the Quality of Government,” pp. 7-10.

[12] Ibid., pp. 14-17.

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Industrial Regional Benefits: Interesting Times

by George Macdonald

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What Hath the Great Recession Wrought?

by Brian Flemming

If such a cyber-panel were able to complete its work well before the end of President Obama’s first term, in 2012, Canada may be able to act boldly by calling for the negotiation of a new trade agreement with the U.S., and Obama may, by then, want one as well. We cannot forget that Canada always does best with America when it initiates major policy changes such as free trade negotiations. Canada cannot wait for America to do this; that never happens. Waiting for either Godot or majority government before seriously researching our rapidly approaching, and fast changing, fate will not cut it any more.

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Réfléchir sur le concept de sécurité et ses multiples facettes : de la sécurité nationale classique à la sécurité civile

by Dany Deschênes and Vicky Chainey

L’effondrement du Mur de Berlin le 9 novembre 1989 annonçait une révision de la conception traditionnelle de la sécurité. Longtemps comprise à partir du postulat qu’une menace à la sécurité de l’État concerne avant tout le risque de l’invasion du territoire par une puissance étrangère, on remarque qu’après la fin de la guerre froide et pour première fois depuis l’apparition de l’État moderne, la sécurité du territoire national, en Occident, n’est plus remise en cause par la possibilité d’une invasion par un autre État.

Cette transformation est schématiquement illustrée par l’existence de menaces militaires traditionnelles, comme la prolifération des armes de destruction massive, et de menaces non militaires, comme le terrorisme, la criminalité transnationale ou les problèmes environnementaux. Le caractère particulier de ces menaces met en lumière un malaise dans la population vis-à-vis des réactions étatiques inappropriées ou discutables. Le problème est simple : les États ont plus de difficulté à affronter des acteurs qui ne sont pas d’autres États, d’où leur crainte grandissante des organisations non étatiques.1

Paradoxalement, ce nouveau cadre paradigmatique réaffirme la mission première de l’État : assurer la sécurité de ses citoyens. Il n’est donc pas surprenant que la sécurité fasse plus que jamais l’objet d’une attention particulière de la part des décideurs politiques. Pourtant, la définition de la sécurité, un concept multiforme, fait rarement l’objet d’un accord. En fait, les différents sens que l’on donne à ce terme peuvent varier en fonction des familles politiques, des facteurs culturels, des environnements sociaux, économiques et professionnels, pour n’en nommer que quelques-uns. Pour faire bref, et en prenant le cadre démocratique comme élément clé d’une définition de la sécurité, on peut considérer que la sécurité est un état dans lequel les citoyens peuvent disposer librement de leur personne et de leurs biens, sans courir de risques pour leur intégrité physique ni subir d’entraves dans la jouissance de libertés individuelles et collectives, si ce n’est à l’issue d’un processus judiciaire équitable. De plus, les citoyens doivent se sentir en confiance face à des menaces militaires et non militaires, qu’elles soient réelles ou appréhendées.2

Jusqu’à présent, notre approche de la sécurité reposait sur une prémisse rarement remise en cause : il y a un acteur (individu ou organisation) qui consciemment par son action est la cause d’une menace à la sécurité et il faut limiter (par la force policière) ou annihiler (par la force militaire) cette action pour assurer la sécurité des citoyens. En fait, le changement paradigmatique depuis la fin des années 1980 nécessite d’appréhender différemment cette prémisse. Plus précisément, il faut ajouter deux éléments. Premièrement, il y a un acteur (individu ou organisation) qui par son action devient une menace potentielle à la sécurité et l’État doit encadrer l’action de cet acteur pour assurer la sécurité des citoyens.3 Deuxièmement, il y a des phénomènes ou des situations qui sont des menaces potentielles à la sécurité en l’absence d’un acteur ou encore sans l’action consciente d’un acteur en vue de poser une menace à la sécurité et l’État doit prendre des mesures pour assurer la sécurité des citoyens.

Pour faire plus simple : il y a des phénomènes comme les risques sismiques, les virus, etc. qui existent ou peuvent exister indépendamment d’acteurs ou d’organisations humaines. On ne pas identifier ou personnifier ces risques sécuritaires qui deviennent de plus en plus importants. Ceglissement partiel, mais significatif nécessite une nouvelle posture intellectuelle. Il nécessite de considérer un nouveau champ sécuritaire de même importance que celui de la sécurité nationale : celui de la sécurité civile.

Les questions sécuritaires sont omniprésentes au Canada: Afghanistan, criminalité financière (Affaire Norbourg par exemple), terrorisme, ou encore le risque d’une pandémie de grippe A (H1N1). Ce dernier exemple relève de ce que l’on nomme de risque sanitaire.4 Or, ce risque s’insère dans l’action globale des acteurs en sécurité civile. Initialement, la sécurité civile est une conséquence du début de la guerre froide. C’est en 1948 que les premiers balbutiements en sécurité civile se développent au Canada par l’entremise du ministère de la Défense nationale qui, en fonction des risques d’une nouvelle guerre mondiale, met en place un comité de planification de la défense civile dont le mandat consiste à planifier l’évacuation des villes en cas de conflit, notamment nucléaire. À cette époque, les instances fédérales demandent aux provinces de mettre en place une législation sur la défense civile qui est l’ancêtre, des organisations de sécurité civile dans la plupart des provinces.

Aujourd’hui la sécurité civile représente une dimension essentielle dans la mission de l’État d’assurer la sécurité de ses citoyens. Les leçons des années 1990 et 2000 ont bien montré que pour répondre adéquatement à cet enjeu, la volonté politique est essentielle. Le problème est qu’il est impossible dans une société comme la nôtre – une société du risque pour reprendre l’expression du sociologue allemand Ulrick Beck – d’arriver à un risque zéro. Voilà pourquoi la sécurité civile est l’« [e]nsemble des actions et des moyens mis en place à tous les niveaux de la société dans le but de connaître les risques, d'éliminer ou de réduire les probabilités d'occurrence des aléas, d'atténuer leurs effets potentiels ou, pendant et après un sinistre, de limiter les conséquences néfastes sur le milieu ».5 L’État demeure l’acteur premier de la sécurité même s’il doit maintenant partager avec d’autres acteurs certaines facettes nécessaires à la bonne gouvernance de la sécurité. Son premier rôle : assurer une volonté politique de prendre en charge cette responsabilité (de la sécurité) qui se décline sous de nouveaux habits. Le deuxième est d’assurer le développement d’une culture de prévention en sécurité civile. Or, il faut certes utiliser la publicité, les dépliants, les rencontres d’information et autres moyens classiques, mais il existe aussi d’autres mécanismes qui semblent intéressants : la simulation. Généralement, la simulation des situations d’urgence se fait en vase clos. Elle concerne les intervenants et cherche à détecter les forces et les faiblesses d’une organisation en plus de préparer le plus adéquatement possible les responsables pour faire face à la crise.6 Or, la simulation est également un outil fort intéressant en pédagogie, car il permet dans un processus d’apprentissage une meilleure assimilation des enjeux.7

À cet égard, l’exemple du recyclage semble le démontrer, une sensibilisation à un enjeu passe par une conscientisation des plus jeunes. Pendant trois ans, le projet SOS: catastrophe a démontré que cette conscientisation est possible. En fait, cette activité, unique au Canada, a permis de réunir des intervenants en sécurité civile et des étudiants de différents niveaux académiques pour être témoins et acteurs, notamment de la mise en place d’un centre des opérations gouvernementales, du déploiement du plan national de sécurité civile du Québec et de l’ouverture d’un centre d’hébergement et de services d’urgence selon les protocoles de la Croix-Rouge. Ce projet unique permet aux intervenants publics et les organisations de la société civile impliquées en situation d’urgence, de voir se matérialiser une crise nationale fictive, mais inspirée de l’histoire récente, et de se questionner sur leurs moyens d’action et leurs défis.

Cette activité novatrice n’est qu’un exemple des outils nécessaires pour mieux responsabiliser les citoyens dans le cadre du nouveau paradigme sécuritaire qui émerge depuis la fin de la guerre froide. Bien sûr, les questions de sécurité traditionnelles demeurent importantes – il ne faut pas les oublier – mais il est impératif d’être en mesure de répondre adéquatement à ces nouveaux enjeux qui sont devenus si importants dans les sociétés occidentales. Les controverses sur les dangers d’une pandémie de grippe A (H1N1) et des moyens que souhaitent mettre de l’avant les gouvernements canadien, provinciaux et territoriaux, nécessitent de reconnaître ce contexte et de réfléchir autrement sur la sécurité.

Endnotes

[1] Sur ces différents aspects, voir Dany DESCHÊNES, « Les études de sécurité : approches et enjeux », dans Stéphane PAQUIN et Dany DESCHÊNES, Introduction aux relations internationales. Théories, pratiques et enjeux, Montréal, Chenelière Éducation, 2009, p. 51-76.

[2] Dany DESCHÊNES, « Les études de sécurité : approches et enjeux », dans Stéphane PAQUIN et Dany DESCHÊNES, Introduction aux relations internationales. Théories, pratiques et enjeux, Montréal, Chenelière Éducation, 2009, p. 74.

[3] Je reprends ici l’idée proposée par le criminologue Jean-Paul Brodeur sur la différence entre l’éthos militaire et l’éthos policière. Jean-Paul BRODEUR, « Force policière et force militaire », Éthique Publique: revue internationale d'éthique sociétale et gouvernementale, vol. 2 no .1, 2000, p.157-166.

[4] Dany DESCHÊNES et Vicky CHAINEY « Risks, disasters and crisis: for a better comprehension of the stakes in civil protection », CDFAI Dispatch, (winter), 2008-2009, p. 26-28.

[5] Ministère de la Sécurité publique, Québec,
http://www.msp.gouv.qc.ca/secivile/secivile.asp?txtSection=initier&
txtCategorie=definitions#secivile

[6] Christophe ROUX-DUFORT, Gérer et décider en situation de crise, Paris, Dunod, 2003. [7] Gilles CHAMBERLAND et Guy PROVOST, Jeu, simulation et jeu de rôles, Québec, Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1996.

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Canada’s Will to Intervene in Mass Atrocities: Applying a New Planning Tool

by Sarah Meharg

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Might on Parade

by Ralph Sawyer

The much ballyhooed festivities on October first that marked the Sixtieth Anniversary of Communist rule in China, while ostensibly a celebration of the Party’s achievements, were fundamentally intended to reaffirm the nation’s new international predominance. Orchestrated to stimulate patriotic spirit, they were equally designed to foster confidence in the oligarchs who had nurtured China’s astonishing rise while, coincidentally, visibly punctuating the pride already derived from the Western economic debacle and U.S. consternation in being compelled to appeal to China to refrain from predatory actions that might trigger the collapse of the international fiscal system. However, despite the fireworks, copious bright red decorations, and prominence of “beauty brigades,” it was a comparatively somber selfcongratulatory orgy that might be viewed as a final paean to the forgotten millions who perished during the PLA’s seizure of power, in the early years of betrayal and reprisal, and under the draconian policies that culminated in the Cultural Revolution’s barbaric perversities.

The day’s events featured a widely anticipated military parade highly reminiscent of historic Kremlin excesses. Beginning in August, publicity had been carefully manipulated to stimulate worldwide interest and make certain that the local populace, now reeling from massive layoffs as well as increasingly pervaded by the discontent of a relatively hedonistic generation that disparages the outmoded Communist concepts of obedience and selfsacrifice, would enthusiastically embrace the event. A seductively secretive atmosphere was created by cloaking the preparations and closing off Tiananmen’s infamous square; high government officials boldly announcing that the numerous complex weapons being featured would provide evidence that China had achieved parity with Western nations; and proclamations on official websites and frequent “spontaneous” postings among discussion groups stressed their indigenous character, proudly concluding that Chinese ingenuity would ensure the production of innovative and late generation realizations guaranteed to surpass foreign offerings. In addition, the importance of new tanks and other ponderous armaments was further enhanced through deliberate leaks that were dramatically augmented by the conspicuous arrest of a few of the many foreign cameramen who ventured to provide surreptitious photos of the preparations.

However, for twenty-five hundred years Chinese military doctrine has not only stressed manipulation and deception, “feinting east and attacking west,” but also the importance of being formless and unfathomable. Moreover, the inherently plastic nature of these manifestations should not be forgotten, particularly as Russia’s tightly controlled displays frequently included singular examples, dummies, and weapons that were still highly flawed. Nevertheless, since secrecy preserves advantage and grounds the possibility of confrontational surprise, another explanation must be sought for China’s self-proclaimed willingness to unveil what is purported to be its latest weaponry.

In accord with its quest to modernize its capabilities and professionalize its military forces, China has long, but futilely, sought to acquire the latest European weapons. Barred from most foreign sources due to the now increasingly nominal embargo instituted in the aftermath of Tiananmen, it was compelled to turn to the Soviet block for advanced weapons, complex systems, and lethal platforms ranging from fighter aircraft and missiles to submarines. At the same time the PRC has been striving to develop an indigenous defense capability based on the massive manufacturing and technological transfers fundamental to the plastics, electronics, and other industries that have proliferated over the past three decades coupled with knowledge gained through conscious study and illicit acquisition; however, rather than limited to simply copying foreign weapons through reverse engineering or confined to modifying and improving foreign designs, from the outset this effort has been oriented to developing new “weapons with unique Chinese characteristics” that might be employed in accord with the emphasis of PLA military science on exploiting wisdom and unorthodox measures to counter superior military power.

A desire to overawe contiguous states and cower them into ongoing compliance with Beijing’s directives was certainly a major motivation for unveiling these new defense components; however, nationalistic pride fueled by ongoing frustration at worldwide prejudice that somehow continues to deem China incapable of substantial innovation despite their historically attested innovation of the crossbow and perfection of gunpowder and the comparatively advanced nature of their science and technology until recent centuries may have partially prompted this unexpected willingness to prominently parade many unexpected weapons. Although several rumored and otherwise highly anticipated items were not shown, battle tanks, helicopters, the J-11 fighter-bomber based upon the Soviet Su-27, and the indigenous J-10B fighter were openly displayed together with a number of weapons intended to control the battle space at some remove including torpedoes, advanced radar, potent missiles (in huge numbers) such as the Dongfeng 21 and 31A, and a highly lethal phalanx gun system. New versions of overland cruise missiles and various naval developments including the ZBD2000 Amphibious Infantry Fighting Vehicle, fast littoral craft, and nuclear submarines capable of launching ICBMs with multiple warheads that, unlike in Russia, were not flat-bedded for participation, had previously been exposed. However, reportedly 90% of the weapons shown were previously concealed or entirely new, including the 108 missiles identifiable as five different types.

Although many questions might be raised, including whether they can be operationally integrated and will prove reliable under adverse conditions, the PRC’s determination to develop and field advanced weaponry was emphatically manifest; however, innovation is not simply a matter of conception, but also fabrication, the result of successfully adapting a myriad of individual skills. Fortunately for China, hundreds of foreign firms have been vigorously competing to provide the necessary manufacturing methods, whether legally or by circumventing trade and export barriers, irrespective of the long term worldwide consequences. Furthermore, apart from the technology transfers inherent to the numerous Russian weapons systems acquired over the past decade, thousands of unemployed Russian and Ukrainian weapons specialists have worked in China, though surprisingly not India, since the collapse of the Soviet Union’s military -industrial complex, bringing knowledge of inestimable value.

Unintentionally coincident with the ancient Chinese military saying that “knowing intention is better than knowing capability,” China’s purpose in developing and deploying these weapons systems is being increasingly questioned. Despite power projection capabilities that are beginning to cower nearby states and give rise to concern in India, and even the United States where military developments are invariably marginalized in order to facilitate “economic interests” and “Chinese friendship,” the PRC continues to claim they are being manufactured purely for defensive purposes.

However, it should be recalled that the PLA’s concept of what constitutes “defensive” actions – not to be confused with the now outmoded idea of mounting an active defense in the case of foreign attack – formerly encompassed the “pre-emptive” invasions of India and Vietnam and the “preventive” subjugation of Tibet. Moreover, many of these new weapons systems are clearly designed not just to dominate littoral waters out to the first island chain, but also project power throughout the South China Sea, deep into Southeast Asia, and even around into the Indian Ocean. Coupled with an emphasis upon the revolutionary character of cyber warfare and space dominance, the oft-mentioned doctrine of unrestricted conflict is perturbing to its age-old nemesis, Japan, prompting increasingly heated agitation there to undertake a similar military expansion and adopt nuclear weapons. Strategists in India, which is itself already capable of deploying a nuclear strike force based on intermediate range ICBMs and overland cruise missiles, have similarly reacted by calling for greatly expanded defense expenditures and urgent measures to ensure near space dominance.

Apart from a few mumblings of consternation among its other nearby neighbors and occasional dire warnings, the greater international community has generally maintained an astonishingly nonchalant attitude, even justified the deployment of these modern weapons as commensurate with the rights of a great world power. Insofar as the Western nations and Japan, India, and Russia all maintain major military forces, it certainly seems unrealistic to berate China for inexorably moving toward parity. Others, noting the increasingly aggressive nature of the weapons in the context of PRC doctrinal and policy reformulations, are troubled by China’s new power projection capabilities and its focus upon defeating carrier groups, both of which reduce the possibility of containing a regional conflict. Given the U.S. preoccupation with the war on terror and the severe enervation of its military forces over nearly a decade of conflict, it is feared the PRC will soon be able to absorb nearby countries, uncontested, or that these now dwarfed states will be corrupted and subverted from within, voluntarily becoming serf -like entities within the greater sphere of the so-called Beijing consensus.

Other than the cyberwarfare capabilities that have recently been glimpsed, it is the specter of increasingly powerful, solid fueled Dongfeng 31 ICBMs with multiple warheads and nuclear missile submarines, all capable of targeting Canada’s major cities, that looms ominously. Canadians have perhaps been too sanguine about the viability of their remoteness and the benign nature of PRC intentions, particularly in the absence of any proximate cause for enmity or aggressiveness. However, in addition to the broad competitive threat posed to Canadian industries by the vast Chinese research and manufacturing sector, Canada’s close economic and security entanglements with the U.S. almost ensure it will become enmired in any future PRC-U.S. conflict and that the oil and gas pipelines to the south will be targeted for either subversive or overt destruction.

China’s oligarchs may still be focused, with some trepidation, on nation building, but many PRC hardliners have been vociferously clamoring for a far more aggressive worldwide stance and China’s younger generation might well choose to violently exploit China’s growing economic dominance and military might. Even PRC apologists who confidently attribute a benign pragmatism to contemporary Chinese leadership might note that the indominatable Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s virtual progenitor and longtime leader, recently wondered aloud about the intentions of their successors.

If Prime Minister Harper reaches out the PRC, Canada should still be cautious of China’s future intent. Passive military build-ups and ostentatious military parades are not a good portent for Chinese-Western relations.

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The Competition for People – the Military’s Next Big Challenge

by Mike Jeffery

A colleague recently asked “what needs to be done to relieve the current strain on the CF and its people”? The question presumes a simple response, which belies the complexity of the challenge the Canadian Forces (CF) face. Despite many improvements in the resourcing and operations of the CF, the shortage of people remains a persistent problem. While some observers forecast improvements the likelihood is that, given the growing competition for personnel, the CF will face continuing shortages.

The strain on the CF, caused by the lack of personnel relative to its commitments, is not a recent phenomenon. The CF has been facing a high tempo of operations since the mid 1990’s and senior officers have made it clear they face serious challenges in meeting all of the demands placed on them. Fundamentally, the CF is not large enough to sustain the size and complexity of its committed operations and to meet its many other organizational demands. In part this is a reflection of the tempo of operations, but it includes the strain imposed by operating a large complex organization, and the requirement to develop new capabilities to meet the changing demands of the international and domestic security environment.

This problem is exacerbated by a growing shortage of experienced officers and NCOs. This is the consequence of an internal demographic imbalance caused by the massive personnel cuts required by government austerity measures in the 1990’s. The result is an increasingly hollow military, necessitating the almost constant re-tasking of people in a kind of organizational game of “whac-a-mole.”1 Many are asking how long it can be sustained.

The problem has been recognized and the government has committed to increasing the size of the military. In turn, the CF has placed significant effort on recruiting and training to meet these levels; however, progress has been slow, as successful recruiting is offset by higher attrition, and the current forecasts indicate target personnel levels will not be achieved quickly. Indeed, the most recent reports state it could be as late as 2027 before the targets are reached.2 This slow growth is in part a resource issue, as personnel is one of the most expensive aspects of military capability. But it is also indicative of a much more serious issue: the decline in potential recruits.

Canada in the 21st Century

Today Canada has a population of approximately 33 million that is forecasted to grow to around 39 million by 2031.3 It would seem logical that such a population would have little difficulty in growing and maintaining a military strength of 100,000; however, those figures belie some demographic trends that will create serious challenges for the country.

While Canada’s population will grow, it will also get significantly older. The over 65 population will grow considerably and by 2031 is expected to double.4 Even more significant the decline in the birth rate will mean fewer youth will be available for the work force. Indeed it is forecast that, within 5 years, more Canadians will be over age 65 than under age 15.5 So while the population is increasing the size of the “labour force” will remain relatively constant.6 The result of this will be a growing competition for labour, as every sector of the Canadian economy works to replace retiring baby boomers.

Also significant is the changing complexion of the population. Immigration now accounts for a large part of population growth, the majority of it from non-European cultures.7 These cultures also tend to have higher birth rates, which mean they supply an increasingly large part of the youth coming onto the labour market. Similarly, the Aboriginal population growth is greater than the non aboriginal population: nationally the aboriginal birthrate is approximately one and a half times that of non natives.8 The consequence of these changes is that “Canada will be increasingly reliant on both Aboriginal and visible minority groups to fill labour force requirements”.9 These are Canadians who historically have been neither embraced by society nor developed to fully participate in the work force.

Governments have been slow to address these demographic shifts, but there are clear signs of change with new policies published to ease the transition into the work force for new Canadians and to improve the employment opportunities for young aboriginals. But these policies are still in development or early implementation and have, to date, had limited effect.

The CF Challenge

Given the changing national demographic, the CF is facing a major competition for young Canadians entering the workforce. The CF’s recruiting focuses on the “youth” cohort, the 15-29 age group that is not growing, as it seeks young energetic Canadians interested in a military career. Recent policy changes have increased the recruitment of “older” candidates, and have even extended service to age 60, but the reality is that the military is a young persons business and it requires plenty of young soldiers to keep it healthy.

On the surface it would appear there is no immediate problem. The CF is meeting its recruiting targets and, given the current economic downturn, is unlikely to have any difficulty attracting volunteers; however, there are indications that the CF has seen a reduction in the numbers visiting the recruiting office, relative to its requirements. This may very well indicate it is being less selective in who it accepts. With a smaller pool from which to draw its people, the CF faces a real danger that the quality of recruits will also decline.

However, there are other demographic challenges. Historically the majority of recruits are white and from a European cultural background. With a greater proportion of the youth cohort consisting of visible minorities and aboriginals, the CF needs to attract these Canadians to maintain its work force. But, despite a number of CF initiatives, marginal gains have been made in increasing diversity within the military. The reality is the CF is not seen as attractive by visible minorities and aboriginals.

In summary, the problem is that the CF’s traditional recruitment base is shrinking, as the size of the youth cohort in Canada plateaus and a greater proportion is composed of visible minorities and aboriginals. Consequently, the CF faces a significant challenge in maintaining its strength, which could have serious implications for the nation. Without an adequate supply of intelligent, energetic, young talent the CF will not be able to maintain the capabilities essential to ensuring security of the nation.

The Need for a National Strategy

As all parts of the Canadian economy seek to replace aging baby boomers, the CF will face a competition for people that historically it has not been able to win. The CF must find the means to maintain the flow of young Canadians into its ranks if it is to remain an effective force; however, this is not just a problem for the CF, for the Government faces the same competition across the public sector. It is also not a problem the CF alone can resolve, but one requiring a concerted, long term government effort to better shape the national workforce.

The Federal Government needs to develop a strategic framework of human resource policies that will set the conditions for maintaining the health of the work force in the public sector. One of its objectives must be to make the CF more attractive to young Canadians and, in particular, to allow the military to establish effective long term recruiting and retention programmes. Such policy shifts should include the following:

The government must improve its competitiveness for talent. It needs to increase the profile service and to reverse decades of decline in its stature. It must highlight the value of the different aspects of service to the public, one of which is the military, and establish the conditions that will see young Canadians perceiving public sector service as an attractive career and an honourable calling.

The government needs to seek greater inclusiveness for visible minorities and aboriginals in all aspects of Canadian society. This should see programmes developed that specifically target these communities for greater involvement in public sector service, but equally adapt the Public Service to be more attractive to these groups. In the same way that the Public Service was used as a means to lead bilingualism, it should be the leader in creating a national culture of inclusion.

The government should leverage the strengths of the CF as an organization capable of integrating Canadians from all walks of life. It should view the military as one of the most effective means of institutionalizing diversity in public life, seek practical means of bringing more visible minorities and aboriginals into the CF and provide them with skills and experiences that enhance their potential. The outcome should be a military more reflective of the reality of the nation and an institution that genuinely brings the various cultures of the nation together.

The Canadian Forces must develop specific programmes to meet the government’s policy objectives in an effective and timely manner. Such programmes would require far more effort than just bringing in new recruits. It would mean the creation of new training regimes, more accepting of the various cultures and genuinely reflective of them. It would also require programmes that offer real opportunities for education and advancement. For example, introducing or broadening apprenticeship programmes that attract young Canadians with potential to undertake advanced technical training and education.

The government must be realistic in any such undertaking as this is not an initiative that can easily be absorbed into the CF as it is today. Rather, it is a strategy that demands political will and proper resourcing to ensure effective implementation of the policies, but with commitment and determination it can be achieved. The nation’s future is in its demography and we can predict with considerable accuracy the challenges we will face. The real question is whether we will make the adjustments critical to ensuring a smooth transition to that future. While the ultimate demographic outcome is unlikely to change, a “laissezfaire” approach will ensure a more serious competition for labour that the public sector will be ill-equipped to win. The CF will continue to recruit Canadians to meet its needs, primarily from its traditional base, but with the result that it will increasingly suffer in terms of strength and quality of people; however, a more proactive strategy, focused on creating a national culture of inclusion and increasing the value of public sector service, has the potential to significantly strengthen the nation and the CF. In the final analysis, the competition for people is a matter of national security.

Endnotes

[1] A game based on hitting a mole emerging from one of a number of holes on the game board necessitating increased speed to win.

[2] Under the CFDS, the CF will expand to 100,000 (70,000 Regular Force and 30,000 Primary Reserve) by fiscal year 2027- 28

[3] Canada Census 2001 & 2006

[4] Ibid

[5] Ibid

[6] This supposes the retention of the historical retirement age.

[7] Ibid

[8] 2001 Census - Aboriginal Peoples of Canada

[9] Canada’s Visible Minority Population: 1967-2017, Andrew Cardozo and Ravi Pendakur, Metropolis British Columbia Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Diversity, Working Paper Series No. 08 – 05 August 2008.

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February 2010
Emulating Obama? Should the Prime Minister Visit the Liberal Caucus?

  by Jack Granatstein

Now Available:
Winter 2009 Edition of
"The Dispatch"