DEFENCE AND POLITICS IN CANADA

These are interesting times for defence policy in Canada. For the first period in fifty years, Canadians are involved in shooting, which we call a war, whereas in Croatia during the 1990s Canadians fought, but named it peace. Our casualties are recognised and honoured. The faces of the dead flash across the television and computer screens of the country, and their names are printed in every paper. Issues of defence are front page news, and also matters of high politics. Meanwhile, we are governed by the oddest of arrangements. In terms of the numbers and distribution of Parliamentary seats, the Harper government should be one of the most fragile minority governments in Canadian history, trembling daily on the edge of overthrow. Instead, it governs like it had a majority. The government seems secure in office for this calendar year, likely to fall only if it collaborates actively in its self-destruction. The opposition parties fear a new election far more than it does. In practice, the Harper government has firm control over policy, especially over defence, where its aims are clear, and unusual by the standards of recent Canadian history. It wants to make Canada a normal country. Defence policy and politics are intertwined in ways which are rare north of the 49th Parallel.

What does politics mean for Canadian defence policy? In practice, so far the Harper government has done little except continue the declared policy of the Martin administration. Granted, it is acting, where many observers doubted the Liberals ever would, but the Conservatives really not have added much to the last Liberal defence budget, or to the procurement of men and kit. In tone, the changes are remarkable. The government speaks loudly, and claims to be carrying a big stick. It purports to be following an absolutely new, and distinct, policy in Afghanistan, which will make Canada matter again in the world. Allied to this is a clear change in the rhetoric of foreign policy, a turn from bashing the United States to picking prestige battles with China, and claiming to be uniquely pro-Israeli. Underlying all of this talk are political calculations. Stephen Harper wants to seize the right and centre-right voting blocs for the Conservatives, and drive the other parties to fight, like scorpions in a bottle, over the rest. More fundamentally, he wishes to break the Liberal hegemony over the definition of what it is to be Canadian. In order to do so, he is reforging old Anglo-Canadian traditions and the Pearsonian legacy into a new instrument. Whether he will succeed in this effort is unclear, but it is the most interesting and daring effort in Canadian politics for over a generation.

This effort has produced open controversy in one area, Afghanistan. Much of it is political in the most superficial of senses. Does anyone seriously think that a Liberal government will withdraw from Afghanistan in 2009? Or that the Conservatives are not working hard to get other NATO countries more thoroughly involved in the country? Or that NATO does not understand that any solution to the struggle must involve a political agreement between the Karzai administration and some sections of the Taliban? In practice, Canadian political parties agree more on policy toward Afghanistan than they differ. But precisely the small scale of these differences drives the public debate on the issue—the more they are alike, the more they have to proclaim themselves distinct. In purely political terms, Harper has used Afghanistan well – to force the Liberals into in-coherence and onto the left side of the political spectrum, and to split the Opposition. The Liberals and the NDP are fighting each other over Afghanistan far more than they are the government. At the same time, Harper has tied his fate to Afghanistan. So far, so good, politically, but he might remember Kipling’s refrain,

“When you’re wounded and lying on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”.

More significant to defence policy is the reestablishment of Canadian military ca-pabilities. So far, Harper’s government simply has continued the efforts of previous Lib-eral governments to improve problems of manpower and equipment slowly. These is-sues have not aroused fundamental objection, because no mainstream party believes they are wrong, though one may doubt that any of the others would treat them as a priority if in office. Hence, despite the slow rate of rebuilding personnel and kit, in the aggregate conditions have improved notably since 2001. If nothing changes in the next two years, probably the Canadian Forces will be within reach of establishing a 70,000 man force with real Expeditionary Force capability. It will be at that stage that Canadians really will have to ask themselves what sort of country they want to be, and what they will do with their power (which will not be inconsiderable in world terms).

Meanwhile, defence is shaping politics. Canada is waiting to see how Quebecois will react to the looming involvement of Francophone units in Afghanistan, and to the inevitable casualties which will occur among them. Most commentators expect this experience to turn Quebecois actively against involvement in Central Asia, and the Harper government. The latter is gambling that the conventional wisdom is wrong—that their potential voters in Quebec will react to this experience as have their equivalents in the rest of Canada. Among Canadians, so far, across not just the right but the centre, this experience has inspired a surprisingly old-fashioned sense of pride in country and military. The mere fact of sacrifices in Afghanistan leads many people to think they must be worthwhile. Stephen Harper sincerely believes that the commitment in Afghanistan is a good thing for Canada, but beyond that, he also hoped it would be a symbolic and cultural means to rekindle support to make Canada a different country. The remarkable public displays of support for the military, and the extraordinary development of the cult of the fallen soldier, from rampside ceremony in Kandahar to graveside in Canada, and the public displays of stoicism, all carried live and in detail, suggest he is achieving his aims. Whatever its result, the outcome of this relationship between defence policy and politics will matter to Canada.

What sort of outcome might this lead to? Peacekeeping of the sort espoused by some of Harper's opponents only existed at best in fits and starts, and has been in-creasingly unable to describe the realities of many UN operations since the early 1990s. And we are in Afghanistan under UN and NATO imprimatur, in an odd mix of collective defence, collective security and armed humanitarian intervention. As the world has moved on from the mythologized glory days of Canadian peacekeeping, so must we, or slip into an illusory but comforting boy-scoutism. The greater question arises from the simple fact that Canada, however it acts, cannot act militarily by itself in the international sphere: we are fated to be members -- lesser or greater -- of some joint effort. If we choose to be more active in a more muscular fashion internationally, we can choose as well our partners, our reasons, and our ground. That we are in Afghanistan in one set of circumstances, and not in Iraq in another, may be a telling point, and one that makes this involvement somewhat more acceptable to Canadians. This shifting policy may yet be both more complex and less total than it might first appear, and not, perhaps, quite as far as some opponents might fear.
 

By James F. Keeley and John R. Ferris, Co-Editors, JMSS