http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1086732611154&call_pageid=971358637177 Jun. 9, 2004. 01:00 AM
Old peace model is dead
Rosie DiManno
It is understandable that Canada, the nation that introduced to the world the very concept of peacekeeping, would be so reluctant to let it go. On the campaign trail, party leaders are dutifully paying lip service to the noble concept of the blue beret and the red maple leaf — whether they admire the military, abide the military, or abhor the military. All have laid claim to the legacy of Canada's peacekeeping tradition and somehow couch their policy platforms on defence within the framework of this country's respected soldiering.
The Liberals, fond of deflective euphemisms, eschew military language in favour of a "Peace and Nation Building Initiative,'' where a Canadian Forces expanded by 5,000 would do, oh, good things, nothing that might offend the electorate's combat-averse sensibilities; the Tories portray the military as "a guardian of our sovereignty, a tool for peacekeeping and a vital contributor to national security,'' (Stephen Harper's words, a week ago, at CFB Trenton), ruinously starved by 10 years of Liberal budget slashing, a situation they would reverse to the tune of $1.2 billion, building up the forces to 80,000 and delivering all sorts of big-ticket goodies; the NDP, which has always tried to trademark the very notion of peace, carefully commits itself to asserting "our role in the world by working as an effective, trained peacemaker,'' and improving housing (naturally) for members of the armed forces.
In the wake of last weekend's 60th anniversary of D-Day, when Canadians temporarily put aside their distaste for war-waging by honouring old soldiers who did exactly that, we return now to the over-arching view of Canada as benign peacekeeper, securing beachheads of calm in a storm-tossed sea of global turmoil. "The mythology of Canada as peacekeeper is deeply ingrained,'' says Douglas Bland, a retired lieutenant colonel who now chairs the Defence Management Studies Program at Queen's University. "But in 2004, that peacekeeping model is passé. It's like the parrot in the Monty Python skit — dead.''
Canada's political leaders, specifically those contending for the Prime Minister's job, can't quite bring themselves to speak honestly about this matter with the public, even when, like incumbent Paul Martin, they acknowledge that the reality has changed and the demands put on Canada's forces — far too onerous and ambitious for their size at present — have shifted. "The Liberals still are leery about proclaiming that the world is a dangerous and nasty place and that we need force to back up foreign policy,'' says Bland. "They're trying to explain defence spending in a cautionary way that links it completely to generally benign peace operations. "In fact, peacekeeping today means imposing order on people. Our troops are saying: `Stop fighting. And if you don't, we're going to shoot you.'''
Peacekeeping, as a formal concept, was a creation of the Cold War: Multilateral missions standing in for combat, on the assumption that belligerent factions could be separated and sent to their respective corners, allowing diplomats to step in and resolve the conflict. In practice, resolutions remained stubbornly elusive and the peace was kept only so long as all parties accepted the continuing presence of a neutralizing authority, one that claimed not to take sides.
In what now feels like the halcyon days of the Cold War, there was actually very little old-fashioned soldiering required. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, everyone envisioned a new world order, marked by international harmony, a universe where the rule of law and consensual authority would be respected. Surely, the day was not so far off when countries might even eliminate their standing armies, put those monies and skill to a better use.
Canada, with its peacekeeping ideology, set itself on this very course. Under Jean Chrétien, the military shrank from 72,363 in 1994 to 62,086 a decade later. Defence budgets shrivelled and expenditures bottomed out at 1.1 per cent of gross domestic product (from 5.5 per cent at the height of the Cold War and 2.2 per cent during the Trudeau years). But the world did not unfold as it should. Indeed, the new world order turned out to be a new world disorder. Increasingly, Western leaders found themselves forced to respond rapidly, with force, and taking sides in combustible situations: The French in the Congo, the British in Sierra Leone, the Australians in East Timor. Multilaterally, there were massive missions in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan. There were not, and are not, peacekeeping missions. They are interventions — the vernacular is "stability campaigns'' — that required aggressive military operations, whether to remove cruel governing regimes or disarm and arrest lawless factions.
When this has been attempted timidly (when, for example, the UN denied its "peacekeeping'' troops the authority and the manpower to properly tackle the task), the results were catastrophic — as in Rwanda. Similar dithering cost thousands of lives in East Timor, before the Australians chased marauding militias back over the border. There is no Cold War anymore and arguably only two enterprises — Cyprus and the Golan Heights — where the old, refereeing model of peacekeeping still applies.
But there are plenty of regional hot wars, asymmetrical wars, resistant to conflict resolution and UN mediation. The human cost of failing to impose order in those wretched places cannot be underestimated. Entire populations have been displaced, youngsters dragooned into kiddie-armies, women raped by brutes deliberately spreading their particular ethnic seed, and genocide inflicted by tribal "thug-ocracies.'' Add to this the ever-present spectre of Islamic terrorism and, oh my, the world is a bloody mess.
Canada, a civilized country with deep-held convictions about its moral obligations, wants to do its part. Prime ministers basking in the reflected glow of soldiers who acquit themselves well on foreign missions continue committing troops hither and yon — Bosnia, Afghanistan, Haiti, the Persian Gulf — exhausting the over-extended forces. We equip them poorly, don't have the means to transport them overseas, can't even dress them properly. But off they go, because they are very good soldiers, as combat-fit as any fighting force on earth.
But the Canadian military has been robbing Peter to pay Paul for years, cannibalizing its capitals budget to maintain essential capabilities, endlessly doing "more with less.'' And that's caught up with us — helicopters that can't fly, grounded jets and insufficient pilots, ships held together with baling wire, submarines that leak, junky and dangerous jeeps, not even enough rifles to go around. The erosion — degradation — of the Canadian army has reached critical mass. Left to decay, the forces in this country will drift into irrelevance, no longer able to meet even basic international commitments, much less the pride-generating stabilizing assignments.
Governments stumble from one foreign crisis requiring urgent intervention to another, slapping together deployments, putting insupportable strain on an army that's sinking to its knees. Scrambling to deal with the here-and-now, there's no cogent plan for the future, no sober consideration of how the army should look, its purpose, it composition, even whether there should be an army. The last White Paper on defence was 10 years ago, and that one never envisioned the world in which we're now living.
The military needs money. But cash injections are one thing; facing up to what our troops are doing, must do, on these far-flung missions, is another. Canadians still have a dreamy notion about peacekeeping.
Political leaders need to disabuse the public of this, replace the mythology with the hard-slogging reality.
A peacekeeper, more than at any time since the early 1960s, is an infantryman: One pair of boots on the ground, with a rifle, and the authority to use it.
Don't pretend otherwise.
Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday\