Military cost-saving doesn't cut it in the big, bad world
By PAUL KORING
Friday, January 28, 2005 - Page A4
Making the army paramount and ordering the navy and air force to play supporting roles seems like a tidy solution to the government's messy military problems, especially if the army itself is reduced to a peacekeeping role.
Most usefully, such a policy would eliminate the need to spend massive amounts -- as much as twice the current level of about 1 per cent of GDP -- to restore the Canadian military's grossly degraded combat capability after decades of neglect.
The government has already decided against new tanks for the army, meaning it will lack the crucial sharp edge of the spear needed for the fighting of wars. If the already limited combat capabilities of the air force and the navy are to be sacrificed in favour of supporting roles to ground forces that are not intended for, or capable of, full-scale combat, then the entire Canadian military will be hobbled.
Meanwhile, casting the army as a handy, friendly force ready for quasi-military roles such as peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance around the globe should end the embarrassing headlines about missed charter flights, worn-out transport aircraft and dickering over leased ferries that have marred Canadian deployments.
Turning the air force into FedEx for Canadian peacekeepers and the navy into a fisheries protection force with a couple of nice new grey-painted roll-on, roll-off ships capable of delivering a 600-soldier battalion of peacekeepers and their thinly armoured jeeps anywhere on earth within a month or two, would save many, many billions.
"From a capital-L Liberal point of view, it makes perfect sense, it plays well to the humanitarian alphabet impulse and it's cheap," says Douglas Ross, a defence analyst and professor of political science at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.
Underplaying -- almost hiding -- the fact that the military's primary role is war-fighting, not orphanage-building or training new police forces in far-off places, has been an ongoing and successful Canadian political ruse.
Many in uniform still wince at the recruiting poster showing a brave soldier holding a terrified child clutching a teddy bear, but it aptly reflects the image many Canadians want their military to project.
Unspoken is a much nastier reality.
Wreaking havoc, destroying things and killing people are what military forces are supposed to do.
The capability to do it swiftly, effectively and efficiently while suffering minimal casualties requires sophisticated equipment that also has many secondary and useful capabilities, from search and rescue to rapid reaction for humanitarian assistance.
Stopping the next Rwandan genocide, shooting down a hijacked airliner bearing down on Place Ville Marie or leading a flotilla of allied warships all require serious and expensive weapons systems and an attitude toward defence far different from former prime minister Jean Chrétien's famous quip about "Boy Scouts with guns."
That quip may soon be true if the air force gets new transport planes but no replacements for its dwindling and aging supply of CF-18 fighter-bombers and if Canada's four elderly command-and-control destroyers are scrapped without replacement.
Such a move would perpetuate the myth that Canada's armed forces should only be peacekeepers, says Alain Pellerin, executive director of the pro-military Conference of Defence Associations. "Peacekeepers don't need tanks and submarines and fighter aircraft," he said, scornfully dismissing the notion.
For decades, while piling on the tasks but steadily cutting funds, successive governments have fed a military Chimera that Canada has a credible combat capability on land, sea and in the air.
Legions of generals and admirals have saluted the toothless monster, unwilling to sacrifice careers by pointing out that an officer-heavy, tradition-rich but shrunken service with insufficient and inadequate equipment didn't really pack much punch.
Adding a few thousand soldiers to the army isn't very expensive.
It will mean that Canada can keep 1,000, maybe even 2,000, soldiers scattered around the world in Kabul or Port-au-Prince or Bosnia as long as there is no fighting to be done and plenty of time to get them there. (And, most importantly, if some other country will save them if real fighting flares.) But it will also mean that anyone working in a skyscraper in Canada better hope there's a U.S. air national guard unit that can scramble quickly. Meanwhile, Canada's frigates won't be able to venture overseas unless protected by the U.S. Navy.
It may be long overdue to scrap the notion that Canada is willing to maintain a credible combat capacity in all three environments.
But replacing it with a policy that makes the army paramount -- and still unfit for war -- saves money without adding credibility.
