You Can Meet Your Heroes: Inclusion Edition

 Last night, I had the privilege of attending the Vimy Gala to watch a truly outstanding person be recognized for a lifetime of making a difference.  Michelle Douglas has spent her life fighting for the inclusion and dignity of LGBTQ2S+ people after being kicked out of the Canadian Armed Forces for being a lesbian back when such folks were purged.  Her lawsuit ended the purge.  I want to share how this all happened and how Michelle did a great job of using her platform as Vimy Award winner to continue her fight.

The Conference on Defence Associations Institute is an interesting organization as the CDA part of it is essentially a combination of all of the veterans associations of Canada, with each one tied to a specifc speciality.  The Institute does some research, much engagement, and public education (and perhaps a smidge of lobbying?) on defence issues.  The CDAI is a partner of the CDSN, and I have been meeting up with its leaders long before the CDSN got going.  The gala is timed to coincide with the days leading up to Remembrance Day, and Vimy is a big hunk of Canadian history/nationalism/identity that someone else can explain better than I.  At each Vimy Gala they give a lifetime achievement award to someone who made a difference in Canadian defence.  Awardees have mostly been generals and admirals with some senior public servants and politicians.  Michelle very much is exceptional in every way including not being any of those folks.  

Gaëlle Rivard Piché is
in her first year as Executive
Director of CDAI and 
a NPSIA PhD!

I was asked to nominate someone as they were looking to get as broad a pool of candidates as possible.  I nominated Michelle with the help of several people: Artur Wilczynski (who did most of the writing of the nomination letter), Charlotte Duval-Lantoine, Luke Schleusener, Stéfanie von Hlatkly, and Jean-Christophe Boucher.  I was asked last night why I nominated her, and the answer was simply: I know of no one else who made such a big difference on the Canadian Armed Forces and beyond.  Her lawsuit and subsequent activism reshaped one's imagination of who can serve in the CAF: anyone, no matter their background, their sexuality, whatever.  As a civ-mil scholar, I can't help but note that militaries are more effective if they reflect the country they seek to defend and if those soldiers/sailors/aviators are included and treated well.  Michelle played a major role in making that happen in Canada.  

 

 

The biggest benefit for me in this process was getting to know Michelle better.  We had several conversations since she learned of the award, so I learned more about her, her history, and, most impressively, her positive attitude towards Canada and the CAF.  You will see below, where I transcribe some of her speech, that she has not turned to hate or resentment for her poor treatment, the upending of her career and her life.  Instead, she has dedicated her life to making things better, and she's still hard at work doing so.  So, yes, you can meet your heroes.

Hanging out with terrific people 
is a key part of the Gala

Michelle's award comes at a key moment in time. The backlash against culture change (efforts to make the CAF more inclusive, especially for women) is on, and, indeed, a previous gala was used by a Vimy Award winner as the platform for an attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion.  Candidates for office in the US and Canada (and elsewhere) have attacked the military as being too woke and have sought to exclude trans people from not just bathrooms but also from the military, from other careers, and, yes, from existence.  So, Michelle's fight is not over, and this speech gave her the chance to not just tell her story but to remind us of the cruelty of the past and the need to fight to keep those policies in the past.

Enough of me, what did Michelle say?  I will just list some of the highlights with some of my reactions:

•  She graduated at the top of her military courses, "my merit was obvious."  Note that those who argue against diversity, equity, and inclusion always falsely suggest there is a tradeoff between merit and efforts to improve diversity and inclusion.  By excluding her and others like her, the CAF was actually not promoting people by merit but discriminating against many qualified people for something that had nothing to do with their ability to shoot a gun, to fly a plane, to steer a ship, or to be an effective leader.
• Her discussion of her time in the Special Investigations Military Police unit which sought to root out espionage, sabotage, and ... homosexuals.  And, yes, this did remind me of Jack Reacher--Michelle is much smaller but also much mightier.
• The purge was not just about the CAF but also the RCMP and the federal public service: "the purge was cruel and traumatizing, was designed to harass us, sometimes criminalize us, institutionalize us, and always diminish us."
• The Canadian Museum for Human Rights: "the LGBT purge was Canada's longest running, largest scale violation of human rights of any workforce in Canadian history."  
• "The losses of the victims and survivors are tragic, the losses to Canada incalculable."
• "These were people who put up their hands to serve."
• "Never was one LGBT spy found. Not one.  The purge must surely be the most costly, least effective police investigation in Canadian history."
• She invoked Frederick Hardy, a gay soldier who died in World War I.  There have always been gays and lesbians and bisexuals and trans people in the armed forces (and in the world)--we just didn't know how many because these people were forced to hide their identities.  It is not that there are more LGBTQ people these days, just that they are freer to be their true selves ... for now.
• Re formal apology by PM Justin Trudeau: "Some say that Canada gives too many apologies, that they are empty gestures, signs of frailty.*  I can say that for those who experienced egregious injustice, having their pain acknowledged and hearing the commitment to change is deeply meaningful and is essential to reconciliation and healing. That formal apology helped many of us move on."
• "For thousands of survivors, justice delayed is still meaningful justice."
• "Ending discrimination by policy does not mean the end of discrimination in practice...."
• "Currently, in Canada and around the world, we see attempts to weaponize and politicize gender not unlike we saw in the past.  The purge should be seen as a cautionary tale."  She cited an international LGBT association: "that the purge should serve as a universal warning ... fear disguised as national security can become a tool to persecute minorities."
• "Supporting diversity isn't about wokeness or weakness, it is about dignity, fairness, respect, and strength."
• "As someone who worked for Canada, served Canada, sometimes criticized Canada, sometimes sued Canada, I have always loved Canada.  Canada is worth fighting for, our values, our democracy are treasured, special. ... So many have sacrificed everything in protection of these values and our democracy."
• "Quitting was not something I learned in the CAF."
• "We are better when we place respect, dignity, justice, and equality at the heart of all we do."
• "As I look around, I know I am not alone.  You think I am dreamer, I am not on the only one."

 Her conclusion with Imagine really hit home.  Michelle is more than a dreamer, she is a doer.  She made a huge difference.  I knew her speech would be terrific (she did talk to me about it ahead of time), and she delivered it so very well. I am guessing the tape will go online at the CDAI website.  It is worth a watch and a listen, as my list here does not do her speech justice.

I didn't do much besides organize a group of people to put her name forward, but still this is and will be one of things I have done that I am proudest of.  Her recognition, like the justice she poke of, is delayed, but very, very much earned.  And the timing is great given the forces at work to unravel what she and others have done.  

 

*  I had to explain to Michelle what subtweeting is.   

 

Still Reeling: Guns And Butter

 Last weekend, I was conferencing, so I am catching up this weekend on the baking.  So, I posted two reels of my baking and IR experiment.  This first focuses on humility and King Arthur apple cider snickerdoodles.  The second one focuses on Venezuela and gingerbread crinkle cookies.

 

Let me know what you think in the comments below or on the reels themselves.   

Cutting Edge Civil-Military Relations Amid the Carnage

 This weekend, I was in Reston, Virginia for my second IUS--the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society.  Founded by one of the biggest names in the earliest civ-mil era, Morris Janowitz, the IUS is the premiere American gathering of civ-mil scholars.  It ultimately led to IUS-Canada and I think the European Research Group on Armed Forces and Society--ERGOMAS--and maybe a few others. Folks were surprised it was only my second, but I started doing civ-mil halfway through my career and it took me a while to figure out the landscape.

And I am glad I did.  The civ-mil community and IUS in particular is just a hive of kindness, generosity, and insight.   Usually, when I go to a conference, I skip more than a few panel sessions as there are often timeslots where there isn't anything that engages me that much.  At IUS, I go to nearly all of the panels I can, and I get a bit frustrated when stuff is cross-scheduled.  This year, there were fewer conflicts in the schedule because, alas, far fewer folks attended.  Many scholars from outside the US were deterred because of Trump's border madness.  Most scholars from American professional military education places--the military academies, war colleges, etc--were either prevented from attending due to the shutdown or Hegseth's anti-academic engagement policies.  Some folks from outside the US and from PME places showed up anyway and brought a heap of insight and, yes, fun.

I participated in two panels--the first where I presented my paper about how joining NATO shaped Swedish and Finnish civil-military relations differently--and the second I will discuss further below.  I had a lot of fave presentations, but a few stick out.  Polina Beliakova of American University is simply one of the sharpest of the next gen of civ-mil scholars.  She presented a devastating bit of work--that many scholars keep citing that 3/4s of democracies have been felled by coups but if you take democracy seriously as more than just elections, that finding goes away.  Specifically, she focuses on a different coding of democracies, focusing not just on elections but on freedoms of press/association/speech and developed civil societies.  This is important because these might be the democratic equivalent of coup-proofing (we study more autocracies and how they coup proof by altering the ethnic balance of the armed forces, by setting up paramilitary organizations, by promoting due to loyalty and not merit, positioning party loyalists [commissars] next to senior military leaders] institutions/strategies dynamics.  Polina showed that if you include those kinds of measures, suddenly most of the places counted as democracies drop out, leaving very, very few (2) democracies being felled by coups.  Which means we need to look elsewhere for what might cause democracy to end.  Insert foreshadowing music here.

The second paper on that panel was by private citizen Lindsay Cohn, who has spent much time myth-busting Posse Comitatus.  She discussed the origins of PC and showed that it did not really reduce the use of US military forces in the US in law enforcement--it just moved it outside of the South.  That is, it was aimed at reducing the enforcement of Reconstruction against the racist people who wanted to deny civil rights to the newly freed Black people.  Her larger point is that using the military domestically is a political problem that the courts will not solve for us. I felt for Lindsay and Polina as both were doing vital myth busting that was compared to killing Zombies--that the arguments they were confronting have been attacked multiple times but are hard to kill.  Kind of like Huntington's stuff that has done a heap of damage both to civilian control of the military and to the study of civ-mil.  I pointed out after the panel that it is not that hard to kill individual Zombies, but it is hard to eradicate the Zombie virus.  

As a Brooksian, I should note that Risa Brooks presented a number of papers that all were super insightful and pushed me to think harder about stuff including one on accountability: 
 

 

 

 

 

 

The Kori Schake book panel was a heap of fun because Heidi Urben and Peter Feaver and Kori know each other well and like to give each other plenty of friendly grief.  Kori's book is a selected history of American civil-military relations (I haven't read it yet as the mail in Canada has been disrupted by strikes and always moves by ox-cart).  Heidi gave an incredibly sharp assessment of what the book adds to our understanding and what the book could have addressed better.  Peter asked a series of questions, many of which Kori claimed where poli sci and she's an historian (her degree is in Poli Sci).  It was just a delightful roundtable that raised a bunch of interesting questions.

The last panel I will highlight was one of the last of the conference: I was on a roundtable on what can we learn about American civ-mil from the comparativists and vice versa.  I was the chair and I started the conversation with a few slides.  I raised the question of whether the US example is relevant for the rest of the world:

Yes:

• Most folks including most militaries still rely on Huntington
• Most militaries want a heap of autonomy and think the civilians are amateurs
• Military effectiveness is hard to measure
• Principal-agency theory applies everywhere, and all militaries hate it despite the fact that they apply it every single day.

No

• The US model doesn't apply everywhere
• 
  It doesn't apply to the US
• I self-promoted by invoking our recent book 

I then suggested that the classic phrase of comparison being the thief joy is wrong. Envy is bad but comparison is joy.

I took inconsistent notes for the rest of the panel (sorry), but some of the key points:

Will the American troops fire on Americans?  Maybe, as it depends on such stuff as the ratio of protestors to troops (the bigger the protests, the less likely troops will fire); non-violence begets a non-violent mil response, is the crowd's composition (ethnic/racial) similar to the troops (maybe best for white folks to do the protesting?).   They also spoke on how Trump/Hegseth are trying to get an obedient military via ethnic stacking (making the military whiter), loyalty tests, counterbalancing by building up ICE, paying the military when no one else is getting paid, etc.

One scholar focused on militia-state relationships--borrowing from Staniland's work--will Trump's regime suppress the far right militias, contain them, collude, or incorporate.  We all voted on incorporating.  They also pointed out that we need to look at beyond the military to the ecology of the security sector--the balance of power among the various actors. Maybe the military will be left out of internal security stuff to marginalize it.  They reminded us that we civ-mil folks tend to ignore the National Guard (as does the regular military), so we need to think about them.  

Another scholar pointed out several lessons/warnings and a question: 

1. to deal with illegal acts is to take it to court, but this is a political problem, courts won’t save us, need political actors to take political steps—dems in Congress
2. how quickly norms can erode, failure of imagination about this regime, envision worst case scenario and then think worse than that
3. we focus so much on norms governing the military, we have not thought much about civilian norms, US case shows when civilians violate norms
4. we have to have correct concepts on the US case—Posse Comitatus for example.  We have to get this stuff straight, duty as a community to ensure that we are not spreading misinformation

Their question: have we lost the thread as a community of civ-mil scholars?  What are civ-mil norms for in democracies?  The norms serve a political outcome, at what point does the military become complicit for the fall of the republic by hiding behind norms?  

Which led to a conversation about what the military should be doing: the senior officers should be talking about what the oath means, that retired officers now have a reason to speak , don't comply in advance, governors should be getting legal advice about their national guard units and tlaking to them.

 The entire weekend was full of insight and camaraderie.  I am not going to say this community is more supportive, kind, and generous because it has more women in it than other parts of International Security, but I am going to imply that it does...  I am lucky to have found this field, mostly by accident. The work is fascinating and relevant, and the people are terrific.  It has made the second half of my career not just more interesting and more successful, but much fun as well.  The only downside is that IUS is biannual, so the next one is in 2027.

   

 

Yet More Social Media? I Am Reeling at the Thought

 Friends have been suggesting that I combine by two obsessions of baking and international relations by recording short videos, where I talk about international security/defence/etc while baking.  The challenge is that baking takes a fair amount of time, so I will have to be succinct and only narrate a part of the baking process.  And, I also will have to get my ideas together ahead of time as I don't want to do much/any video-editing.

 So, here's my second attempt and the first one that I put out into the world: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQAOI1wju1-/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D.

The next question is what to call it.  One person on threads suggested Guns And Butter, and I really like that is no tradeoff in this Reel--we get both baking and international relations stuff.  Half-Baked was also suggested and that goes nicely with the Semi-Spew and the reality that I will not be crafting perfect videos.  Any suggestions for names?

 Right now, I think the topics will be, well, topical--whatever is on my mind as I bake.  

The timing is both good and bad.  Good in that this is prime baking season as I plan to bake pretty much every weekend to create the many, many cookies I will be delivering at the start of Winterfest.  On the other hand, not great timing as I will not be baking next weekend as I will be in the DC area for a civ-mil conference.

And, yes, I am now eyeing the ads I have been fed that feature phone holders so that I can better tape myself mid-bake.  

Anyhow, let me know if you have a suggestion for a name for this thing.  And, yes, I need to go to Social Media Anonymous as I am aware I have a problem.  Since that is next door to Bakers Anonymous, I should be able to squeeze it in. 

Look for more reels of me baking and pontificating at my instragram account or on bluesky account or maybe here as well.  Ciao. 

 

 

NoKings in Ottawa? Sort of.

Canadians are polite, 
but the US Amb is a dick

 Tricky to keep the American name for an event about royalty when, yes, Canada remains a Constitutional monarchy.  Yet no one was too fussed yesterday about calling the protest NoKings.  King Chuck is not that popular here.  They called it No Tyrants in the UK and in other places with more popular kings (Sweden, etc).  Anyhow, I joined the festivities yesterday.  I haven't been to too many protests, and protesting Trump in Canada seems a bit silly.  But given that the US Ambassador to Canada is a relentless dick and that we live in the darkest of times and my vaccine side-effects hadn't kicked in yet, I went downtown to join the protestors.

Despite having no art skills and lousy handwriting, I managed to make a legible sign (at least on one side).  I tried to invoke the spirit of John Oliver on the other side--F.U., Make Me--but it didn't look that good and it didn't fit with most of the positivity of the rest of the signs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perfectly anticipated 
Trump's post last night.

The protest started at 2pm next to the US embassy, and I'd guess there were a couple hundred of us.  We eventually walked around the building and block.  For a while, we were stuck on the next street and it kind of felt like we were protesting the stylish restaurant across the street called Social. The signs were a mix of Canadian nationalism, fraternity with Americans in their time of plight, hate for Trump, and miscellaneous causes.  

We got a lot of cars passing by to honk at us, although Ford F-150s tended not to.  And notably, the pickup. from New York (NY plates) did not seem pleased to see us. 

 

 

The organizers had a weak speaker and didn't really have the best speaking voices, so I didn't listen to them much.  The most popular music of the day was Green Day's American Idiot. 

Canadians do very much feel anger and empathy at this moment in time.  While a defining characteristic of Canadian identity is not being Americans, it really is not an anti-American country.  But it is definitely an anti-Trump country, as the leader of the Conservative Party found out last spring (but continues to forget as he keeps plagiarizing Trump's rhetoric).  

At this moment  in time, Canadians can't do much besides boycott American products and refuse to travel to the US (well, except me, I am headed south for a conference later this week and then to family for Thanksgiving in late November).  So, what they can and did do is march in solidarity.  Again, very positive spirits among the crowd mixed with sadness and anger for all of the unnecessary cruelty and suffering.  Oh, and I don't think Trump is coming back anytime soon, as the protests for that would be ar larger. And he is such a fragile person. 

So, here are some pics I took below.

The walk around the embassy

One of several Star Wars-related signs.

We had a couple of frogs, one unicorn, one baby shark, and a triceratops.

More than a few Epstein references

Some aforementioned Canadian Nationalism.

He ain't wrong.

A common spirit--hey, neighbors, what is wrong with you?
We'd like to go back to our quiet contempt about your health care system 
as well as resentment for your domination of Stanley Cups.

Triceratops.  They might be extinct, but democracy isn't.... yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Faux Civ-Mil Conflict Can Become Real: Canadian Edition.

 Twice in the past week, I have been asked by the Canadian media about a seeming split between the civilians at the top of the Canadian government and the military.  Last week, it was about how the military seemed to be moving ahead with Golden Dome and the civilians not committing to it.  This week, it is about the military moving ahead to be ready to receive a heap of F-35s while the civilians are still thinking about it.

To be clear this is mostly a comms problem, but politics is about comms and comms shapes politics.  The basic reality on these two things is that the military is doing what it is supposed to be doing--implementing past decisions.  The CAF is modernizing NORAD--the sensors Canada has to warn the US and Canada about incoming attacks--just as successive governments have promised and funded.  The CAF is preparing for the delivery of the first batch of F-35s, which the government of the day (the previous one) purchased.  In both cases, the preparation/work is for both the present day and the future deployments, and if the government changes its mind, then that future stuff will be wasted effort.  BUT the work has to be done and the military is not doing more than it is supposed to be doing.

 The challenge is the civilians are mostly trying to avoid making major decisions or announcing them about the future of Canada's contribution to American missile defense (called Golden Dome by the brand-focused President) and the future of the F-35 program.  Why avoid such announcements?  To not upset voters who wanted a more Elbow's up policy?  To hold onto some bargaining chips vis-a-vis the US?  Or just crappy comms?  That last one seems to be consistent with Liberal defence policy past and present. 

Alas, the media seeks the military seemingly ahead of the civilians and wants to catch them in a conflict.  This might have the impact of the military being less forthcoming when they are essentially doing their job, and that's bad for everyone.  It might also increase distrust between the civilians and the military, which is also not good.  

There are plenty of real civ-mil crises going around or in the future that we don't need to whip one up.  The bigger US-related one is that the military may be reluctant to follow the civilians' preferences of distancing from the US in other ways (see Phil's great piece).  Plus I do wonder how much oversight the new MinDef is doing.  

The larger point remains--the two big procurement projects of the moment (until the subs happen) are not causing tremendous friction between civilians at the top of government and the military... yet.  If the civs cancelled the F-35, then sure.  But the military is not doing anything inappropriate at this moment on these issues.  Sorry.   

 

 

 

Golden Dome and NORAD: Not Quite Time to Panic

 

 With PM Carney meeting with Trump, perfectly timed for my US Foreign and Security Policy class which meets tonight to discuss US-Canada relations, it is, of course, time to panic about Canada joining Golden Dome.  See the headline to the piece at the Globe and Mail:

 

The substance of the article eventually gets to the reality: Canada has long had a commitment to helping the US defend North America via NORAD.  We provide much of the sensors so that the Americans can be alerted to incoming missiles.  That's it.  But Trump confuses things (demented people are often confused as are ignorant people who are untethered from reality).

 

So, here are some key facts about all of this:

1.  Golden Dome is mostly a branding exercise by Trump with a bit of self-deception.  The US has been investing a shit-ton of money on defenses on ballistic missiles [ABM] since Ronald Reagan's self-deception dream of the Strategic Defense Initiative.  Every 20 years or so, a Republican administration gets hot for ABM and very little actual progress is made on protecting all of the US from ballistic missiles or even a significant chunk (this stuff is very hard).  Oh, and engaging in an arms race here is incredibly dumb as it is super costly, that defense is always more expensive than offense.  Iron Dome's success in Israel is very deceptive--smaller target, many layers of stuff besides the one weapon system named Iron Dome, and mistakes/misses don't do that much damage.  Any missile attack on the US (or Canada) will be viewed as a nuclear attack, and that means the stakes are so much higher.  Even if the system could get 95% of the incoming weapons (which is pretty unrealistic), 5% of the incoming nukes will ruin a lot of people's day.  Still, we all want better situational awareness about what is going on in the high north, and this is the cost of doing business.

2.  Canada has been a key part of these missile defense efforts because we are in the way--that the missiles will come over the country on their way to the US.   So, the sensors are either in or above Canada to a large degree.  And with our warning systems getting old and with new technologies for attacking (hypersonic missiles [we die faster], cruise missiles, etc), we need to update the warning systems.  That promise has been made by both major parties and by multiple administrations and that money is being spent now and into the future.  So, Canada is not doing anything new or unexpected in this area.  Indeed, selling NORAD modernization has been a major priority of the governments the past several years.   Staying out of the ABM system has meant that Canada has no guarantee that the US will shoot down, say, an errant North Korean missile.  Getting inside of the system will give Canada a bit more influence and assurance that the very unlikely missile would get whatever opposition NORAD could muster.

3. We really don't know where Trump is coming up with $61b or $71b.  If he is ok with Canada spending its own money on components of the system--the stuff we are already spending, then things will be ok.  If he is asking for Canada to give $60-70b to the US Treasury to subsidize the US project, well, then the relationship is screwed.  That would be the equivalent of more than a year's worth of Canadian defence spending.  Politically and economically, it is impossible.  

So, please, let's not panic about Canada "already" planning on being part of Golden Dome.  It is already planning on continuing to be part of NORAD.  Even as we want to be more economically independent from the US, there is no way we can be militarily independent when it comes to the defense of North America.  Canada needs US help protecting its high north (the US has many more tankers and these have longer ranges, the US has many more fighters and better air to air fighters--F-22s), and the US needs to have info about what is doing in and beyond Canadian airspace.  NORAD has been working for quite some time, and the big concern is if Trump breaks it because he sees it as unfair.  If Trump can be convinced that Canada is keeping its promise to give the US what it needs, then it should be ok.

 

Who Is Captured By Identity Politics?

 The right wing doth project too much, episode 2342397.  I saw this and I couldn't help but wonder is this bad faith or someone being so captured that they don't see what they are doing:

 The comeback by WeatherWatcher430 is brilliant.  But I want to take this seriously for a moment.

The idea here is that tweeter thinks that all left wing folks should support Jewish women and Black men regardless of the content of their ideas or, dare I say it, the content of their character.  The right inverts MLK Jr's dictum, as they believe that the left does not believe in merit, that the left just supports people due to their identities.  It apparently breaks their brains when the left folks can distinguish between Jewish women and Black men who have ideas and arguments that make sense to them and support their larger values and those Jewish women and Black men whose ideas are counter to the left's values.

Generalizing about an entire group, whether it is progressives having a unitary view about other people's identities or it is all women or Black americans or whatever, is actually really problematic and is the road to racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and the other horsepeople of hate.  And, yes, I am guilty of generalizing about the right wing, but I think that makes more sense because the right wing tends to be authoritarian in nature, producing ultimately far greater message (and thought) discipline than the left.  I will try harder in the future to distinguish those on the right who are not captured by hate, those who are not fans of autocracy, those who are not willing to go along with the autocratization of the US (or of Canada, as Pierre Poilievre is borrowing much of Trump's script, having learned nothing from the most recent election).  

All I ask the right wing is: get your bad faith characterizations of the left consistent--either the left betrays their kind by not being sufficiently focused on identities uber all OR they are focused on identities uber alles.  Choose a stereotype and stick with it, FFS. 

 

 

Addressing the Mandatory National Service Question and, yes, the Guy Recommending It

 I have accused LtG (ret). Michel Maionneueve of having me live me live rent-free in his head, as he ended up featuring me (the unnamed Liberal-funded academic who was seeking to cancel him) in the origin story in his memoir.  By responding to his latest piece, this time at Macleans, I have to admit he is living rent-free in my head just a bit.  Before I get to that new piece, just a couple of thoughts of this whole thing.

First, when I find myself not being able to resist responding to a specific individual's online musings, I try to avoid their stuff.  I am trolled easily, so the best way to avoid that is to avoid the bait.  This is why I don't read the blog posts of Walt/Mearsheimer or else this blog would spend way too much time on them. And this is why I don't read MM's regular columns in the National Post.

Second, as we approach the anniversary of MM's emergence as a pundit of some kind thanks to his awful speech at the Vimy Gala (the gala is always near and before Remembrance Day),  I marvel at how he started the speech by saying he was cancelled, that he managed to turn the controversy that I helped to generate (oops) about it into a perch at the National Post.  It also reminds me that there aren't too many people who are Canadian experts on civil-military relations to comment on this stuff, so my value over replacement pundit is still positive.  

Third, tonight's class is on the politicization of the armed forces in democracies around the world, and, well, MM is very much a part of that dynamic/effort--retired GOFOs playing upon their military service to suggest that the military is supporting the partisan stance that the speakers are advocating.  So, writing here is a way to sharpen my thinking before tonight's class. 

On to the show, Maisonneuve is arguing that "Canada Needs a Mandatory National Service."  I am not going to grade this piece like I graded his response to my op-ed about the Conservative Party ought not to platform retired senior military leaders.  But he entirely omits Canada's history of draft riots, so that this essay would not get a decent grade. How would Quebec react to a new draft?  Nothing on this. 

MM starts by talking about meeting his wife in the service, and I have to ask, since no one else has, is whether she was his subordinate at the time.  I have long wondered if is his pique about culture change is driven by the damage done to his identity as a part of a generation of senior officers who preyed upon subordinate women to sate their sexual appetites.  I simply do not know if Maisonneuve is another Jon Vance or not.  And to be clear, I do not mean this as the ad hominen attack it might appear to be (see his op-ed targeting me for some great examples), but as a real question for journalists--is this guy taking controversial stances because he was a perpetrator of the abuse of power that caused so much damage to the CAF?  Ok, sorry for that tangent, but he mentions his wife at the top of the post.   

My biggest gripe with piece is not that he is making a factless argument about something that has been well-researched, but that he starts off by talking about the decline of confidence in public institutions with no self-awareness.  A key dynamic around the world including Canada has been
for right-wing populists to denigrate public institutions.  His Vimy Speech was exactly that--an effort to reduce trust in government, in the media, and in the military.  And so I must post a meme a student created for tonight's class to illustrate the dynamic so very well (I have the the students create memes to push them to think creatively about the readings ... and to compel them to do the readings).  

 

Anyhow, Maisonneuve makes the usual arguments that having a draft including a variety of forms of national service--it would give the kids a sense of purpose, improve their discipline, teach them about Canada and importance of defending it (well, that last one only for those who don't opt for all of the other forms of service that aren't military), and so on.  He cites a bunch of countries that have drafts, but does not cite anything about how those have worked out.  Do the youth in those countries have a higher sense of national purpose? Do they have a better command of civics and identify more with their fellow citizens than democracies sans drafts? Sweden would be a great experiment--they had a male-only draft, got rid of it just before Russia got especially aggressive, and brought it back for men and women fairly recently--did all this stuff about national identity and such swing with these changes. We social scientists love variation as it gives us leverage over the question.  

I frankly do not have time to read the literature on this, but he should have.  However, I have bumped into conscription during my research for both the recent book and the next project.  I was not asking about national unity or how it improves the discipline of Gen Z folks, but rather oversight and such.  Conscription came up in South Korea and Finland.  I wonder what we should take from the South Korean case--that their military was asked to suppress its parliament and resisted--was that due to conscription? If so, a point for Maisonneuve.  In Finland, conscription, despite its vaunted role in national unity, was a sore spot in civil-military relations, as the civilians keep asking the Finnish military for data on what activities cause conscripts the most injuries, and the military has resisted sharing that info.  So, no, I don't really know if conscription is a magical exilir fostering unity, discipline, and such.  But then again, MM presents no evidence.

MM does not address any of the tradeoffs involved (just as he didn't mention Canada's troublesome draft history).  For instance, if you draft, say, 20k people, where are you going to put them?  Who is going to train them?  Doing conscription does not automatically solve personnel shortage problems--it complicates them.  The CAF has had trouble training the soldiers/aviators/sailors it gets in, this is a key source of the recruitment problem because it does not have enough trainers, that it did until very recently incentive people to be trainers, and the regiments tended to send their crappiest people to be trainers or recruiters.  If you dedicate significant personnel to train the temporary members of the CAF, who will train those who are joining to make the military a career?  The newly trained reservists, who had been drafted, can't/won't be the new trainers.  There are probably ways to finesse this and figure out how to do both--train the professionals and train the drafted future reservists--but it is a real problem and should be addressed by anyone advocating conscription.

Another funky implementation problem is that MM includes in his proposal "Those selected would enter training and take courses on civics and Canadian history."   Who would be doing that?  Pointy headed profs who are stuck in ivory towers?  If not them, then who?  And what material do they use?  Given that Maisonneuve has denigrated scholarship in his past writings, I am unclear about where the civics/history would come from.  What would count as the good and necessary history that would be taught?  Would it be the anti-critical, Canada did everything great, we have nothing to apologize for stuff that he mentioned during his Vimy Gala speech?

A pet peeve: he also joins the chorus of threat inflation: "If anyone wanted to come into the North and seize our natural wealth right now, there would be little we could do to stop them, short of a strongly worded diplomatic protest."  Please.  There is no risk of that because it is really, really hard to operate up there.  If the Russians can't get the logistics right for invading a country right next door, how are they going to do it over the Arctic?  I learned this summer at our Institute that this threat inflation, while handy for getting the Canadian public to be willing to spend more on defence, is really scary to the people of the North.  We aren't doing them any favors with this threat inflation. 

Finally, MM is wildly exaggerating the impact of a draft.  He mentions a lottery along the way, but then concludes by saying:  "Once every young Canadian has worn a maple leaf on their shoulder, I think they’ll feel pride for their country [my emphasis]."  This ignores the fact that his proposal actually would only bring in a small percentage of the youth into the military as (a) many would choose other forms of national service that probably wouldn't involve uniforms with flags on the shoulders and (b) the lottery would mean that only a portion of the population would serve at all. It also ignores the fact that more than a few people might hate their experiences as a draftee.  But a flowery ending is probably best for an op-ed, rather than something that is internally consistent.

We are left with only one question: who edits these things at Macleans?  I am not saying that Maisonneuve can't submit stuff to Canada's various publishing outlets.  I am not even saying that Macleans shouldn't publish his stuff even though he has been essentially a far-right actor pushing out mis and disinformation.  I am saying that someone should have edited the piece so that it had more facts, less unsupported generalizations, and greater consistency.