-Caveat Lector-
title The army that couldn't fight
[LINK]
COVER STORY
October 22, 2001 Issue Full Text
Despite Liberal denials, Canada's once-feared military machine may be
beyond repair
by Terry O'Neill
[INLINE] AT the end of his September 24 visit to Washington, D.C.,
Prime Minister Jean Chretien revealed that President George Bush had
told him Canada's armed forces were not needed in the looming war
against terrorism. "The President did not ask for any military help
from Canada at this time," Mr. Chretien disclosed to the media. "I
said to him that if there is a need, we'll be there to help."
Just 11 days later, Mr. Bush called in his marker. On October 5, the
U.S. asked Canada for assistance as it prepared to assault military
targets in Afghanistan. When those attacks were unleashed two days
later, Mr. Chretien confirmed that the Canadian Forces (CF) would be
making "certain contributions," but gave no details. Conservative
leader Joe Clark said later Canada's troops would provide only a
communications and support role. In truth, scarcely more could be
expected of the country's once-mighty military. The fact is, a
disturbing picture of Canada's armed forces has emerged in the days
since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. It suggests the
navy, air force and, especially, army are inadequately funded,
undermanned, ill-equipped and not even capable of defending Canada,
let alone participating in a major offensive against an overseas
enemy.
Indeed, while high-ranking Liberals such as Foreign Affairs Minister
John Manley have stated Canada will "stand shoulder to shoulder" with
the U.S. to battle terrorism--even if Canadian soldiers' lives are put
at risk--many independent analysts and former CF officers say the
pledge is hollow and misleading. "Stand shoulder to shoulder?"
observes Donald Ethell of Calgary, a retired colonel. "It really means
Chretien's shoulder is up against Bush's ankle."
In the weeks since the horror of September 11, Canada has been
revealed to have been utterly unprepared to counter the sort of threat
that now faces western democracies. The Liberal government eventually
moved to toughen anti-terrorism policies, harden border security and
more rigorously check incoming refugees. The prime minister, who soon
stood accused of dithering in reaction to the mass murders, eventually
appointed Mr. Manley to chair a powerful new cabinet committee to
fight terrorism.
But beefing up the military is not part of the minister's new mandate.
This omission is consistent with the ongoing Liberal position that the
Canadian military is, essentially, in good shape. In early October,
for example, Defence Minister Art Eggleton sent an opinion piece to
newspapers, stating, "I want to assure Canadians that the Canadian
Forces are ready and able to make a meaningful contribution--if that
is what we decide to do as a country." So far, however, only the U.S.,
France and Britain have been moving their forces into areas near
Afghanistan, where hostilities are expected to centre.
There is, in fact, no question Canadians want to join their cousins to
the south in battling radical Islamic terrorists; the question is
whether we are able to. A post-attack National Post/Compas poll
published on September 20 found that 81% of Canadians want the country
to be part of a military alliance to prepare for war. Noteworthy,
however, is the finding that 70% of those polled believe the armed
forces are underfunded.
This belief is well founded. Canada's defence spending declined 23%
over the past seven years of Liberal restraint, and the country's
current $11.4-billion annual defence budget represents just 1.2% of
economic output. Even though the Liberals' 2000 budget increased
Department of National Defence spending by $2.3 billion over four
years, most experts say the money is too little and too late.
Critics also point to the fact that Canada's spending is well below
the NATO average of 2.1% of gross domestic product. Only Luxembourg's
spending, at 0.9%, is lower. Mr. Eggleton has answered by pointing out
that while Greece, for example, spends 5% of its gross domestic
product on defence, the actual dollar value of this country's defence
expenditure is twice as great. Canadian Alliance defence critic Leon
Benoit is not buying that line of reasoning. "He makes it sound like
everything is just great with our military," says the MP, "but I
haven't heard any expert say anything but the opposite."
Indeed, critics such as retired generals Lewis Mackenzie, Romeo
Dallaire and Mike Jeffery have warned repeatedly of a looming crisis
within the military. On the budget issue, retired lieutenant-general
Charles Belzile, chairman of the Conference of Defence Associations
(CDA), an independent lobby group based in Ottawa, contends Canada's
defence spending is far too low. "One may appreciate Canada's
parsimonious approach to defence funding by noting that, on a per
capita basis, it allocates only US$265 to defence, while the NATO
average is US$589," he said recently.
A UN weapons report made public in late September shows what this
budgetary starvation means. The study, which surveyed 31 countries,
found Canada could send only 140 tanks into battle, while Belgium,
which has only one-third of this country's population, boasts 154.
Similarly, Sweden, which is home to only nine million people, compared
to Canada's 31 million, has twice as many combat planes. Moreover,
what equipment Canada does have in its arsenal is often antiquated.
"For all intents and purposes, Canada has opted out of the defence
business as a country and is sort of on a par with Denmark," says Dan
Goure, a defence analyst with the Washington-based Lexington
Institute. "It saddens me a bit, I suppose, but it doesn't surprise
me."
During the Second World War, Canada mustered the world's
third-most-powerful navy, fourth-strongest air force and
fifth-greatest army. Since then, however, the country has increasingly
relied on the U.S., NORAD and NATO for its defence, allowing the CF to
focus on foreign peacekeeping missions. Yet official Canadian policy,
as laid out in a 1994 White Paper, calls for the country to retain a
multi-purpose, combat-capable armed forces whose primary tasks are to
protect Canada, co-operate with the U.S. in mutual defence efforts and
contribute to international security. In a nutshell, the CF is
supposed to be able "to fight against the best and win."
But the CF must do that with far fewer soldiers, sailors and aviators
than in the past. In 1958, for example, Canada had 120,000 men and
women in uniform. Thirty years later, the number was down to 85,000.
Today, the figure is about 57,000--3,000 less than the bare minimum
needed to meet commitments. The reduction is a direct result of
Liberal cost-cutting measures. The Canadian Institute of Strategic
Studies recently predicted the number will fall to 42,000 within 30
months if the current trend continues.
"The main source of weakness of the CF originates from a significant
shortage of trained manpower, and this shortfall is most evident in
the army and in the logistics support services," concludes an
exhaustive new study prepared by the CDA. What this means is: the navy
cannot "deliver its mandated level of maritime defence capability";
the air force has "lost much of its flexibility, redundancy and
ability to surge"; and the army "is not sustainable under the current
circumstances."
As suggested above, the situation is most dire on the ground. Training
is lax, burnout is high and equipment inadequate. The CF's
1,800-soldier commitment to peacekeeping in Bosnia, for example, "is
not sustainable if the army is to be able to respond effectively to
other contingencies and to modernize," the CDA says. Evidence of the
CF's current weakness was Ottawa's decision to withdraw its
1,000-soldier peacekeeping force from Kosovo last year on the grounds
it could not sustain the involvement.
With that in mind, it is hard to imagine how Canada could help the
U.S. war effort by relieving U.S. peacekeepers so they could be
redeployed on the front lines of the war against terrorism, as
suggested in early October by Paul Cellucci, the U.S. ambassador to
Canada. The U.S. currently has 3,500 troops in Bosnia and 5,300 in
Kosovo--numbers Canada could not hope to replace, despite a promising
recruitment drive launched this past summer. In fact, there are now
only 9,700 actual troops in Canada's armed forces. As Gen. Lewis
Mackenzie has observed, you could fit all three arms of Canada's armed
forces quite comfortably inside Toronto's Sky Dome.
Not surprisingly, then, Canada's contribution to the war on terrorism
can be no more than minimal. Before the October 7 assault, Mr.
Eggleton said the country had chipped in with an unspecified number of
fighter planes to augment North American air defences. Canada has 122
CF-18 fighters, but only 83 are operational, and only a dozen carry
guided munitions. The defence minister also authorized the deployment
of about 100 Canadians, currently assigned to NATO, for use in
anti-terrorist operations. Mr. Eggleton said Canada has only "niche
capabilities" to fight terrorism.
The CF's mandate is to be able to field a combat-capable brigade
(defined in the White Paper as over 5,000 soldiers, plus support
workers) on three months' notice. However, under present
circumstances, this would not be possible "without an extended period
of training" lasting many months more, the CDA contends. Moreover, MP
Benoit points out that brigade-level training exercises have not been
held for nine years. This being so, the CDA says, "the most realistic
Canadian contribution would be a battalion group [1,200 soldiers], but
in light of current overseas commitments and lack of training in
conventional operations, it too would be of limited effectiveness."
The CDA concludes the armed forces need an additional $1 billion a
year simply to maintain the status quo; even more money is needed to
boost manpower to 75,000, a figure the CDA says is needed to properly
fulfill White Paper commitments. And, as the federal auditor general
recently reported, a further $5 billion to $6 billion is required over
the coming 10 to 15 years to replace old equipment.
The author of the CDA report, retired colonel Sean Henry, points out
that, despite Mr. Eggleton's contention that his critics are out of
touch with current military realities, he culled all information in
his study from Department of National Defence documents. "I would say
it would take a minimum of five years, probably five to 10 years, to
get the forces back to where you want them to be," he says. If no
action is forthcoming, however, "the risk is to pretty well
permanently damage the armed forces in terms of being able to operate
in the current security environment. And that is what worries
me...What's happened to the armed forces in the last 30 years is an
absolute tragedy."
Without new operating funds, might the forces be reorganized in a more
effective way? The Toronto-based Royal Canadian Military Institute
(CMI) thinks so. In a report released earlier this year, the group
proposed a radical revamping of the CF. Chief among its
recommendations is a plan to organize the three services of the
military into five regionally based joint commands. "Each command
would be responsible for providing a battlegroup of about 1,000
strong, on a sustainable basis," the CMI recommends. "Each battlegroup
would be comprised of an infantry battalion, a light armoured
squadron, an artillery battery, a combat engineer squadron, and
communication, medical and logistical support elements."
Furthermore, the CMI calls for the establishment of two amphibious
task forces, one based at Esquimalt, B.C., the other at Halifax, to
take a battlegroup and its equipment overseas. Four new logistics
ships are integral to this plan. Such a restructured military would
need operating funds of only about $12 billion a year, the CMI says,
but would require $8.6 billion in capital expenditures over five
years.
The institute's executive director, Robert Farrelly, rattles off a
long list of current CF shortcomings, from lack of training to
outdated equipment. "It's an utter mess," he says. "If this were a
private corporation, you'd go in and fire the top five executives.
It's a very sorry state." He also has harsh words for Defence Minister
Eggleton, specifically for his refusal to acknowledge the deplorable
state of Canadian military readiness. "It's almost the time to say
that Art Eggleton is now shifting the balance of truth, almost to the
point of lying. It's the impression he is giving," Mr. Farrelly says.
"I don't think the public realizes how close we've come to the bottom
of the barrel."
It may be that a light is finally going on in Ottawa, however. In a
frank interview with the National Post late last week, Foreign Affairs
Minister Manley conceded Canada faces a "glaring inadequacy" in its
capacity to: gather intelligence abroad; meet its overseas defence
commitments; and influence other countries through use of foreign aid.
"You can't just sit at the G8 table [the group of leading Western
economies] and then, when the bill comes, go to the washroom," said
Mr. Manley, whose forthright response to the events of September 11
must surely make him a leading contender to replace Mr. Chretien when
he finally retires. "If you want to play a role in the world, even as
a small member of the G8, there's a cost to do that."
[INLINE] Mr. Chretien made no reference to increased military spending
in his October 7 address, but it may make sense to direct more funds
to military units such as the CF's elite commando-like Joint Task
Forces II (JTF2). While its size and exact duties are secret, experts
say the force probably numbers no more than 350. This compares rather
poorly to the 46,000 special forces personnel the U.S. maintains in
the Green Berets, Delta Force and Navy SEALs. Nevertheless, JTF2 is
the sort of outfit that could contribute to counterterrorist efforts.
"This is exactly the kind of unit that should be used and the kind of
response that should be meted out in this case," observes Scott
Taylor, editor of Esprit de Corps magazine. Officials in Ottawa are
not saying exactly where JTF2 is currently deployed.
American analyst Goure believes it is in Canada's interests to ensure
its military is strong enough to meet the terrorist threat. "Canada
has an enormous stake in what happens," he points out. For example, as
an ally of the U.S., Canada could easily become a target of terrorist
violence itself. Canadians could also be caught up in violence against
U.S. companies and diplomatic outposts in this country. "The idea of
the U.S. standing alone against global terrorism, or with only Great
Britain, is unconscionable," he says. "If I were a Canadian, I would
be embarrassed. Those countries that can contribute neither forces,
geography [for forward bases] or intelligence are going to have damned
little to say about what happens."
In Calgary, retired colonel Ethell, now a member of the Canadian
Forces advisory council for veterans' issues, is blunt in his
assessment of the military's status. "It's disgraceful," says the
veteran of 14 peacekeeping tours. "We have absolutely no combat troops
to support any initiatives other than our current tasking." Noting
that he enlisted as a private and worked his way up the ranks, Mr.
Ethell says he feels sympathy for Canada's soldiers in the field.
"It's embarrassing for our troops to be overseas and to see what the
other countries are doing to support the latest threat...where we've
just had tokenism."
The Canadian military's problems are as numerous as they are
deep-rooted, he says. "And we have a government that has absolutely no
idea of what they are missing with regards to the decimation of
Canada's military." Even increasing the country's peacekeeping
commitment is out of the question. "The idea of sending additional
people over is absolutely ludicrous," he says. "We're not stretched.
We're broken."
It's time we learned, wars are won on the ground
[INLINE] FLIGHT Lieutenant Stewart Staudinger, 27, knows terrorism
first hand. Raised in the relative tranquility of a buffalo ranch near
Alix, 30 miles northeast of Red Deer, he is now serving as a Royal Air
Force helicopter pilot in Northern Ireland, "part of the effort to
bring an end to terrorism and a return to normality for the people
here." As a soldier and a Christian, as well as a military historian,
he believes that the two greatest problems in the Western world are an
unwillingness to accept casualties in war, and an overreliance on
"diplomatic pressures" such as sanctions and dialogue. In an e-mail
interview, he explains:
"Most people accept that [Iraqi leader] Saddam Hussein is an evil
dictator who has no respect for life or liberty, especially amongst
his own people. However, people in the 'civilized' world are far too
willing to sacrifice 500,000 innocent Iraqis dying from the effects of
sanctions in trying to dislodge him, instead of the couple of thousand
troops that would have done the job quite well in 1991; hardly
civilized, in my view. In the air force, the phenomenon is called 'the
morality of altitude.' From 30,000 feet, one can't see the people
being bombed and therefore they don't seem real. We would prefer to
kill a thousand unseen people than sacrifice one 'real' one. This is
how sanctions, dialogue and appeasement are turned into the greatest
tools of evil used by the western world. In our efforts to minimize
the effects of conflict, we simply maximize the long-term toll on
human life, much like avoiding the pain of surgery simply to die a
long and painful death from a cancer that should be cut out and
destroyed. We end up turning the people we are trying to help into a
population so desperate that they become the recruiting ground for
Osama bin Laden and others.
"The greatest danger to the human race has always been extremist
belief: the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, Nazi genocide in
Europe, Soviet Communist genocide in eastern Europe and Russia, and
the constant terrorist threat in Northern Ireland. Yet the civilized
world is hampered by having the tools to deal only with the criminal
element of a moderate population, which is completely inadequate for
dealing with extremist groups. The threat of trial and jail doesn't
begin to faze extremist Islamic groups, just as it didn't stop Hitler
killing six million Jews and four million unfortunate others, or
Stalin 80 million. And it won't stop bin Laden. Like Hitler and
Stalin, he enjoys the power to deal out death.
"The civilized world is only now learning, in the face of great
tragedy and after half a century of bashing British colonialism, that
despite its problems, it had some important lessons to teach. To
paraphrase an old British saying: 'For the civilized man or woman we
have democracy and the rule of law; for the savage we can offer only
the .577-450 Martini-Henry rifle.' When groups like bin Laden's or the
dissident Irish terrorists are willing to kill innocent people for no
greater reason than their hatred of those people's democratic process
and liberty, what else is available? They are an uncompromising threat
to decent--as in Britain's case, Christian, Jewish, Hindi and
Muslim--values. When Islamic extremists' only stated aim is to kill,
and they are willing to die in the process, dialogue and compromise
only get our own innocents killed. They don't have demands other than
that we either die or convert to their ideas. Like a doctor cuts out a
cancer and kills it, so the civilized world will have to do the same
to those groups who represent humanity's cancers.
"How do we win? Well, we need to be sneaky, devious, smart, vicious
and pray a lot, all at the appropriate times. We also need to invest
in ammunition production. Of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims, an
estimated 10% are militant. One hundred million militants with AK-47s
won't be stopped by a couple of guided bombs and a stealth bomber.
They will only be stopped by well-trained and motivated infantry. I
include in the 'infantry' people such as intelligence, police, aid
workers (who are helping to win the 'hearts and minds' of the
populace) and all the other 'foot soldiers' that have to get
up-close-and-personal with the problem. But no standing off and using
button-pushing warfare. An American general was once quoted as saying,
'The most dangerous weapon in the world is a small brown man, dressed
in sandals, pajamas and a straw hat and carrying an AK-47 and a bag of
rice. He's cheap to produce, hard to find, well-motivated and there
are an unlimited supply of him.' This American was a Vietnam vet and
knew a thing or two about the reality of pitting technology against
motivated and elusive infantry. The only true weapon against them are
better-trained troops.
"Unfortunately, the numbers of militant Muslims are a reality and
political correctness (a term invented in Canada) will be our downfall
if we hang onto it. If the number were significantly less than 10% to
15%, there wouldn't be the fear in many governments of the Middle East
that prevents them taking a stronger stand against militant activity.
I personally believe that the level of militancy found in these areas
of the world would be much less if the people weren't in such
desperate poverty and weren't kept in an ignorant, insular,
brainwashed state by the mullahs that head them. Survival instinct is,
out of necessity, an aggressive mechanism.
"People in the Western world are not calling for despotism to fight
despotism. They are calling upon their leaders to win a fight for the
survival of good values and liberty. My old neighbour, rancher Ray
McKibbin, would have known exactly what to do in a time like this. He
and his friends did it in 1939. They accepted that, in order for their
children and grandchildren to have freedom, justice and liberty, some
of them would have to give their lives in the fight against Nazi
oppression. We have fought the wars of the '90s as 'clean' wars where
nobody seems to get hurt. However, all it has proven to the evil
members of the human race is that we no longer consider our values
important enough to die for. If we have reached that stage, then we'll
run the risk of dying anyway--if not as individuals, then as whole
nations. Some say, 'Give peace a chance.' Peace had its chance and
this time around, more than 5,000 people paid for it with their lives.
War came to them whether they wanted it or not.
"For me, the prospect of relinquishing my freedom to follow my
Christian values is one where I can honestly say, 'I'd rather die.' If
I have to get my hands bloody, or even lose my life so that my
generation's children don't have to die in lots of 5,000 for no
greater crime than being free, then I guess that's the choice I'll
have to make.
"I'm a soldier and a Christian. I have to do as my government and
leaders decide. However, I believe that I should be used by my leaders
to help those who don't have what I have. If that requires more risk
to my own life, then I'm sure God will provide. No greater love can a
man have than to be willing to give up his life for a friend. It
should work between nations as well. That's why I believe in standing
up with the Americans now. We and the Americans should have had the
moral courage to do it years ago."
_________________________________________________________________
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