Evidence of meeting #17 for National Defence in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was nato.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
Can we pacify Afghanistan without a military victory?
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
Realistically, probably not. Can we achieve a military victory? Realistically, probably not a complete victory. Can we achieve enough of a victory to force a political settlement? That seems to me to be a possibility, and that seems to me to be what we should be pushing for.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
You mentioned the UN, and you said that it's in a shambles, and really there's no political will to back up missions. Even though this may not be the case, we are still perceived as this peacekeeper by our citizens and others.
Should we not be trying to work harder to make the UN more effective? In your opinion, would it be possible to do? Would this mean a realignment of our equipment requisition if we were to take a different route? Specifically, to have a measure of success, what could we do to advance this at the UN level?
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
This country has tried repeatedly for generations now to try to make the UN more effective. We have consistently been good United Nations citizens. We have called for standing UN forces. We have called for rapid reaction forces. We had standby battalions for years that were at the beck and call of the UN, and we actually deployed them on occasion. Cyprus in 1964: we sent our standby battalion when that crisis blew up. But all the efforts that have been made to try to fix the UN have amounted to tinkering at the edges. And the idea that we should restructure our military in the hope and expectation that the UN will become more efficient somewhere down the road frankly doesn't make any sense to me. If the UN becomes more efficient, if world government becomes a reality, then we can restructure our forces. But it really isn't a chicken-and-egg thing. That chicken has to hatch before we do anything to do it.
We need a military force that is able to do UN work, blue-beret work, blue-helmet work, but we also need a military force that is able to do more robust operations, sometimes outside the UN. It seems to me that given the small size of our forces, that means we need a calibre of training and a quality of equipment that we can move from one type of role to another without great difficulty. It's a cliché, but it's one of those true clichés that a force that is only trained for UN duties can't do anything else, and we may want to do other things at other times.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
You're saying our priority should obviously be the defence of our country.
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
Yes.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
If that's the priority, as we look at new procurement options, should we be procuring more naval equipment, for example, and upgrading the surveying of our coastlines and ensuring that we have an effective navy to protect our coastal waters, as opposed to getting more tanks?
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
It's not tanks versus ships. It's how best we can defend our own territory. Most of the equipment we need to defend Canada against all contingencies can be used in any number of areas. The kinds of ships that we need to best defend the north are probably ships that can play a role in littoral regions of the world. They should be designed to do that. A small country can't afford to specialize too closely. It really must have flexibility.
Conservative
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Professor Granatstein, for being here.
I have a number of questions, maybe a little bit all over some topics here. You listed a whole bunch of things we should be willing to get in order to go someplace. Are any of those optional, or are they all mandatory before we go?
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
Ideally they are all mandatory before we go. Realistically, in some cases the urgency may be such that you cannot have everything in hand before you commit, but I think some things are absolutely critical.
There needs to be the political will of the United Nations. Without that, we are crazy to commit troops to any UN operation.
There needs to be money. We could probably swing that ourselves in a pinch. It's better if money has been committed first.
It's critical, unless we want to invade hostile territory, that we have a host government that is willing to receive us. There has been a lot of talk in the last month about going to the Congo. The President of the Congo is calling for UN troops to leave the Congo. Should we have ever wanted to get into a situation like that? It strikes me as madness, frankly, to even consider that.
We need to have an exit strategy. I don't think we should ever commit to an operation like Cyprus again, where we go in in 1964 and we leave in 1993. The Cyprus operation continues today. There's no political will to fix it, or there hasn't been. I know Joe Clark tried to become Lord Clark of Nicosia, but it didn't work. No fixes have been found for that kind of situation. It seems to me that it doesn't do the United Nations, or the Cypriots, frankly, any good to have an operation that goes on forever and allows them to pretend they're trying to achieve a settlement when they're not.
The key, however, is whether our military has the capabilities to do the job. If it doesn't have the capabilities--and there are some things we may not have the capabilities for--then we should absolutely not commit.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Thank you.
You talked about national interests, and I think you quite rightly said that national interests really don't change, but as we get into a mission that we have been in for seven, eight, nine, or ten years, obviously the mission will change, because frankly the enemy has a vote in that. I would like your view--and you may have stated it already--on the importance of our maintaining flexibility not in terms of national interests, but in how we react to what the enemy is doing as the situation evolves.
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
It's absolutely critical, of course.
We went into Afghanistan at the beginning of 2002. We're still there in 2010. We'll be there for another year at a minimum. That mission has changed in many ways. The nature of the enemy's operations has changed. The nature of our equipment, our tactics, and our strategy has changed. The nature of the force that we are part of has changed. Anything that lasts ten years is bound to have that process of change.
But why are we there? I would argue it's still because our national interests are involved. They don't change. The tactics or perhaps the strategy may change, but the national interest I think stays the same. If our national interest is not served by participating in Afghanistan tomorrow, then in my view we should get out.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Thank you.
You talked about Parliament approving all deployments. There's a role and responsibility for the executive of government. There's a role for Parliament, clearly, in debating, discussing, and being aware and having input, but the actual decision to deploy, I would suggest, is a role of the executive.
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
The decision is the role of the executive. But a wise executive will go to Parliament and seek a vote in support of a deployment. I'm not talking about three officers to an observer force. I'm talking about a substantial deployment of a battalion or a battle group to some serious operation.
If you run into difficulties, as we have done in Afghanistan, it certainly helps enormously to be able to say to the Canadian public that Parliament has supported this mission. If you deploy troops and don't seek that kind of approval from the elected representatives of Canadians, then you are open to people asking, “Why are we there? Why are we sustaining these casualties?” It's much better to have support.
I also think we should have fixed withdrawal dates for operations, on the clear understanding.... The reality is that Parliament is supreme. It can change the withdrawal date if it chooses, as of course we did on the Afghan mission. I think that's entirely appropriate.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
You talked about all members of NATO getting into all aspects of operation sharing. Ideally that would be true, but I think the reality is we all have different capabilities, we all have different abilities to project force. We're different from Croatia, obviously different from the U.S. I'd like your comments on the realities of the concept of equal sharing.
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
Sure. There's no doubt that's true. Not everyone can provide high-tech communications and not everyone can provide this or that. But all members of NATO can provide infantry. All members of NATO can provide a cash contribution if they cannot contribute. All members of NATO have to buy into the operations if the organization is going to go. It's an organization that works essentially on unanimity. If that is to mean anything, it must mean that you commit to an operation in real terms. If you're going to say you have these six caveats, then you say them at the time the decision is made to deploy. If there are 14 nations that have serious caveats, then it seems to me the organizations should say this is not for us.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
We had quite a large human intelligence capability during the Cold War. After the Cold War that has decreased. What is your view on the importance of that human intelligence capability, and where should we be going from here?
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
I'm no expert on intelligence, sir. I can't really speak with even the barest kind of authority on that subject.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Maxime Bernier
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Mr. Granatstein.
Now I will give the floor to Mr. Martin.
Liberal
Keith Martin Liberal Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC
Merci beaucoup, monsieur le président.
Dr. Granatstein, thank you for being here today.
We know that peacekeeping is war by another name, and we should have the ability for our troops to have constabulary work all the way to full combat operations and be equipped to do so.
If the conflicts of the 21st century are primarily internecine and intrastate, and we saw what happened in Rwanda and we said never again, what do we do in places like, to use your example, the Congo, where five million people perished over six years and today 1,100 people are dying every day?
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
I don't know what we do. It's extremely difficult to handle those situations, and to pretend otherwise is foolish.
The United Nations tries to fix the Congo. It produces forces that seem to be part of the problem as much as they are part of the solution there. They are hardly loved by the host nation, which wants to get rid of them. There have been far too many cases of corruption, rape, abuse of various kinds in the Congo by the UN forces that it does make one despair. These are clearly going to be the most difficult kinds of operations taking place in areas without the proper infrastructure, for the most part, in areas where our troops would stand out because our troops are primarily white, as opposed to the population in which they're operating. It's just exceedingly difficult for a country like ours to operate in those areas.
Liberal
Keith Martin Liberal Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC
Let me posit something to you and you can give us your expertise on it.
In regard to the standby high readiness brigade, coming out of the Brahimi report, if there was to be a SHIRBRIG that took place with the appropriate troops that were culturally congruent with the place they were being sent to, is that something you would agree to with the Security Council modernization process?