National Defence Committee on Oct. 4th, 2018

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

It intrigued me.

[Richard Gowan]

That was not in the context of peacekeeping. What I was arguing was that you have a lot of very fancy talk about the evolution of global governance today. I was emphasizing that the core of the UN remains the Security Council, and the core task of the Security Council is in fact to act as a clearing house for the big powers, including the U.S., Russia and China, to sort out their differences.

Over the last few years we've clearly seen a breakdown in Security Council diplomacy over Syria. That is a shame on the organization. Conversely, we've seen a surprisingly good level of co-operation between China and the U.S. over North Korea—not perfect but actually pretty impressive.

What I was arguing in the piece that you referred to is that in an era of growing great power competition, we will need the Security Council to play that big power deconfliction role much more than we have over the last 30 years where, in a sense, the UN has been relieved of its geostrategic purpose during the post-Cold War peace.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Actually, you're getting to the crux of the problem: the players that have the veto that sit on the UN Security Council. You mentioned possible peacekeeping in the Donbass region of Ukraine and Crimea. These are things this committee has also considered. Something that I personally support is having a peacekeeping force in Donbass to separate the sides and get the Russians back over the border. What's the likelihood of that ever happening with Russia holding the veto?

If you look at the big conflicts in the world today, such as Syria, the meltdowns we're seeing across the Middle East and the Russian aggression in eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine and Georgia and possibly Moldova, what role will the UN play if Russia keeps exercising a veto to any diplomacy or peacekeeping in the future in these regions? Are they just going to let us try to settle long-standing jihadist-type disputes in Africa?

[Richard Gowan]

There is a very real risk that if relations with Russia deteriorate further, the Security Council will become more blocked. However, it is worth noting that, for Russia, the seat on the Security Council is a standing source of prestige and Moscow does not want the organization to collapse completely.

In the specific case of the Donbass, this is something that I have worked on quite a lot over the last year. Russia is carrying quite a significant cost, frankly, for maintaining its forces in eastern Ukraine. I believe it is possible after the upcoming Ukrainian elections that Moscow might be willing to compromise on some type of peacekeeping settlement so as to extract itself from costly conflict.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Next is MP Spengemann.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and gentlemen, thank you for being with us.

I want to take advantage of your presence as policy researchers to help us direct the thoughts towards the preparation of our report. I'm looking at our amazing analysts as I do that to maybe flag what you're about to tell us.

You're talking to a defence committee on the question of UN peacekeeping, which is incredibly complex and interdisciplinary. What I'd like to ask you about is the connection points, the tentacles that this committee has to be mindful of to make sure that we do peace operations well. I'm looking at the humanitarian agenda and also at the governance post-conflict reconstruction agenda.

In a lot of scenarios, we'll have chapter VII resolutions, peace operations presence on the ground, but at the same time, a need to rebuild a recently torn-down state. If we don't do that quickly and we don't do it well, we're going to have rogue elements come in and take over the distribution and provision of public goods and services and thereby gain legitimacy along the lines of ISIS. This is complex stuff. How can the committee identify those things that are strictly military operational in nature and all those things that we should, if we don't answer them ourselves, at least flag as questions for others to consider to look at the interdisciplinarity of this problem?

[Adam Day]

I think you've served in some of these places, too, so thank you for this perspective.

For me, there is nothing dividing the military from the other aspects of things. The starting point, I think, and what the Secretary-General has talked about when he designed these reforms for the UN, is to build an architecture where the immediate operational work is linked to the longer-term peace-building.

I think one of your entry points is going to be the new peace and security architecture here in New York, which is meant to have peace-building aligned with the political processes a bit more, and also with regional desks that sit above them looking at regional strategies. That's an important entry point for your understanding of how the UN may be responding to these things.

The UN development system reform, currently in the final stages, I suppose, is also meant to make non-mission settings and development-oriented agencies more oriented toward preventing conflicts before they break out. That's another one for your analysts to be thinking about: how we can, in the whole panoply of other development settings, be better at preventing the outbreak.

There has been a lot of work in connecting the UN and the World Bank more closely together around conflict prevention and management. There are some very good entry points we can flag for your analysts in terms of understanding how we can work better with those agencies, connecting the short-term with the long-term interventions.

Richard, do you have a follow-up?

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you.

Perhaps I could take you more to the operational side, to the ground-level perspective, in terms of who is doing the peace operations. How do we do civ-mil planning and coordination? Co-operation is often raised, but it should really be coordination. You're going to have a plethora of UN agencies, each with different interests in the reconstruction agenda, all wanting to do good, all having various degrees of legitimacy or lack thereof in the country being assisted.

What kind of frameworks should we have on the ground for civ-mil planning, or are we already doing it well enough in your assessment?

[Adam Day]

There is a lot of inter-agency planning work done on the ground. In a place like eastern Congo, OCHA, UNDP and the missions sit together very regularly. I think there are tensions, though, that could be explored around the issue of humanitarian space and peace operations, and really understanding the extent to which a large peace operation is actually supporting humanitarian work, and not seen as interfering with it. That's one of the key questions in a deployment. Direct contact with OCHA on the ground is very important.

Another point to make is that a lot of member states have very good capacities in understanding how these dynamics are playing out on the ground. Connect with them, particularly in a place like Mali. They are some of our best sources of information as well.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

I have a very quick question with a yes or no answer. You probably don't have time to elaborate.

Is it fair to say that leaving gaps in the provision of goods and services, unaddressed gaps that rogue elements could walk into and take over, is a lesson learned that we have to take very seriously, if you look at Iraq and ISIS and that scenario?

[Adam Day]

Yes. It's not only tangible gaps, but political gaps as well, absolutely.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for being so disciplined at that end.

The last formal question, round two, will go to MP Garrison.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

Canada faces, obviously, limited resources. We have the choice to make of how much we put into regional organizations or alliances like NATO, how much we put into United Nations peacekeeping and how much we do independently or bilaterally. Mr. Gowan raised this tangentially in his talks about the benefit of the UN over regional intervention. In terms of the interests of peacekeeping, can you talk about which of those are the most effective strategies?

[Adam Day]

That's you, Richard.

[Richard Gowan]

The first thing I would say is that, clearly, there is a difference between comparing NATO and UN missions for Canada, but we're also talking about comparing UN and African Union missions, for example, in Africa.

I think the development of the African Union peace and security architecture over the last decade has been impressive and is something to celebrate, but when you're looking at running big, multi-dimensional missions, the UN is still better at managing a lot of the technicalities and the administration of those. For the time being, in Africa, the UN remains best placed to run large-scale multi-dimensional peace operations. What's very notable is that African countries themselves have massively expanded their contributions to UN peace operations. That is another positive development.

I think you can support both the AU and the UN, but in operational terms, the UN is still the market leader on the African continent. In terms of the balance between UN missions and NATO missions for a country like Canada, clearly there are a lot of complex choices there that go beyond peacekeeping policy.

What we do see in Mali is a positive development of a number of NATO countries coming together to work through the UN, and despite some friction, discovering that the UN framework is one they're comfortable in. As I said in my opening remarks, for the French and a number of other European countries, having an effective mission in Mali is an important national security interest, so perhaps the NATO-UN dichotomy is not quite as extreme as it once was.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You'll get another opportunity.

There's a significant amount of interest in more questions. We have about 25 minutes left on the clock. We can hear from members again. It will be four minutes each.

I'll give the first question to MP Bezan.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Day, in your comments earlier you talked about the need for more interoperability.

Mr. Gowan, you talked about the challenges of working beside Chinese military peacekeepers, as they are potential spies and their reputation so far in peacekeeping hasn't been great.

I have a bit of a concern, as many do in Canada, about who we serve alongside when we're on UN missions. Despite the issue of needing to break down some of those barriers between us and other countries, I'm not sure I'd want to have our troops serving side by side with the Chinese or other countries that have had a history of sexual violence while they're serving on UN missions.

Despite the need for more interoperability, wouldn't we be better off serving alongside those who show up and are trusted versus some of the other players sitting on these UN missions?

[Adam Day]

We can both take a stab at that one.

Just to address the Chinese question, they actually came with very well-prepared and equipped troops to do the tasks that I saw them doing. That was in Darfur. My experience with them has been relatively positive.

There is an obvious concern about who is going to have your back in some of these settings. I think the set-up they have in Mali is probably one in which most of the European troops are very comfortable with who has their back. That would be something you would have to decide among yourselves.

As Richard pointed out, the vast majority of casualties are of the troops that aren't coming from Europe. I think they've had 99 in MINUSMA and a very small number were western troops. I think the set-up there isn't exactly serving immediately alongside troops that you'd be worried about.

On the SEA front, I'll just make one point. The more we can get troops like yours closer to troops that are higher risk, hopefully the better they will behave. I think there's a lot to be gained from high-quality, well-trained troops in setting a good example and in having extra eyes out there. To be frank and very pragmatic from a peacekeeping perspective, there's a huge value to be added with Canadian deployment on that issue.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Mr. Gowan.

[Richard Gowan]

I understand these concerns. I would simply respond with one anecdote.

I was talking to a Swedish counterpart about the Nordic experience in Mali, and he said that initially they had gone in feeling very arrogant toward the non-western troops because they don't meet all NATO standards. He said that by the end, a lot of respect had emerged and it was actually the Swedes who recognized that troops—I think they were Mauritanian, although I'm not sure of that—alongside them had a vastly better understanding of what was going on and vastly better local intelligence because of their cultural affinity with the Malians.

We have a lot to teach the UN, but I think we also sometimes have something to learn from people we're not used to serving alongside.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

I just want to follow up on one of your opening comments, Mr. Gowan.

You've written about this in the past, about how successful you've had it in Liberia and other countries, but we're not going to see that same success. You actually said all of the big five...today, I think, you actually said the chances of success on these UN missions is nil. What's the long game here? How do we get to a successful resolution, or is this all for naught?

[Richard Gowan]

It's not all for naught, but I think we have to recognize that we're not going to turn the Congo or South Sudan into Quebec or Ontario anytime soon.

We are going to be leaving behind countries that, at best, will achieve a minimum of stability and will take a long time to develop further, but that is better than having them in a state of complete conflict or regional wars, as we saw in central Africa in the 1990s.