The Failure of Civilian Control: Canadian Edition

 As a scholar of civil-military relations, I have been watching the Canadian scene closely for a few years.  I was not closely following the Deschamps report and its implementation, but as I learn more about it and listen to experts on gender and the Canadian Armed Forces, I realize that civilian control of the military in Canada is really lacking.  No, this is not about the possibility of a coup, it is about whether the CAF will do what the civilians want.  Whenever I talked about civilian control in Canada and how lame the Parliament is in this process, pointing out that the only two civilians that matter are the Prime Minister and the Minister of National Defence, folks would point to the Department of National Defence and the Deputy Minister.  I would respond that those civilians are not elected, limiting democratic control of the armed forces. But now, I have to go a bit further.

I have been thinking about this since Stéfanie von Hlatky and I interviewed Deputy Minister Jody Thomas and Acting Chief of Defence Staff Wayne Eyre for the BattleRhythm podcast.  For me, the most striking part of the podcast was at the 43:20 mark (or thereabouts) when Thomas says that her views on the Deschamps report were not welcome and that nothing structural was done to implement Deschamps's recommendations.  This is most striking because the DM and the CDS have overlapping responsibilities but are supposed to work as a team.  This interview suggests that Vance and his team left the civilians entirely out of it.  

This does not absolve the civilians of blame or responsibility, but points again to the most relevant civilians--the Prime Minister and the Minister of National Defence.  I have been harping away for a few months that Harjit Sajjan does not understand the job of the Minister of National Defence, mostly because of how he responded to questions from the Defence Committee about how to deal with allegations about the Chief of Defence Staff.  But the sexual misconduct/abuse of power scandal is deeper than that.  For me, the big question is: why weren't some of the Deschamps recommendations implemented and why was Operation Honour so focused on an element, Duty to Report, that was the exact opposite of what Deschamp recommended?

So, before I get back to civilian control, let me remind myself and whoever reads this what Deschamps recommended and what was implemented (blue) or not (red) or maybe/sort of (purple):

1. Acknowledge that inappropriate sexual conduct is a serious problem that exists in the CAF and undertake to address it.
2. Establish a strategy to effect cultural change to eliminate the sexualized environment and to better integrate women, including by conducting a gender-based analysis of CAF policies. [Op Honour really did not aim to change the culture of the CAF, and, as I will discuss further below, the way GBA+ was applied, it really didn't hit lots of core of the sexualized environment.]
3. Create an independent center for accountability for sexual assault and harassment outside of the CAF with the responsibility for receiving reports of inappropriate sexual conduct, as well as prevention, coordination and monitoring of training, victim support, monitoring of accountability, and research, and to act as a central authority for the collection of data. [Not sure how independent the Sexual Misconduct Response Centre is, but Thomas says in the interview that the data collection remains a problem.]
4. Allow members to report incidents of sexual harassment and sexual assault to the center for accountability for sexual assault and harassment, or simply to request support services without the obligation to trigger a formal complaint process. [Duty to report contradicted this directly, requiring anyone who experienced, witnessed, or heard about sexual misconduct to report.  The experts argue that "Duty to Respond" is a better way to go--to require agencies and personnel to respond to a situation as the survivor wants, as some want treatment/help but not prosecution of the perpetrator.  In the US, one can do a restricted report which focuses on care of the survivor and then later change to unrestricted which brings in the legal process (h/t to Megan Mackenzie for pointing this out to me)].  
5. With the participation of the center for accountability for sexual assault and harassment: Develop a simple, broad definition of sexual harassment that effectively captures all dimensions of the member's relationship with the CAF.  [Not sure about all of this but the stories of the past three months indicate that the consent issue is hardly clear or well worked out within the CAF--this is something that Stef vH has focused on in her testimony before the Defence Committee and in our podcasts]
   
6.  With the participation of the center for accountability for sexual assault and harassment, develop a unified policy approach to address inappropriate sexual conduct and include as many aspects as possible of inappropriate sexual conduct in a single policy using plain language. [Given that there seemed to be different rules for the CDS and other double standards, nope.]

There were more recommendations, but you get the idea.  The point here is that Vance's Operation Honour really didn't follow through on what Deschamps recommended.  Of course, there is no obligation by the government to implement fully an independent report, even if they asked for it.  But this government said they were putting personnel first and put the personnel section of the Defence Review in the front of the Strong, Secure, Engaged document to demonstrate that commitment.  So, one might have reasonably expected that the one person above the Chief of Defence Staff would check in from time to time and see how things were going.  By 2018, there were folks raising questions about Operation Honour and the Duty to Report.  Shouldn't Sajjan have looked at what Vance and his team had done and raised questions?  

 

A more specific question: the CDS is the one who promotes people within the CAF, such as the Chief of Military Personnel, but if personnel is such an important issue, shouldn't the MND give advice and lean hard on the CDS to pick an individual who might not have had a record of sexual misconduct?  Vice Admiral Edmundson had earned the nickname "Mulligan man" for getting second chances.  That was Vance's decision, but the Minister's job was to oversee the CDS, especially on priority issues.  And not to exaggerate things too much, but Personnel Chief may not be seen as an important job--it is not as attractive as Chief of the Navy or head of CJOC--but Lenin and Trostsky gave personnel stuff to Stalin because they found it boring and look what happened to them.  For the priority issue?  So, again, Sajjan didn't do his job and does not seem to understand his job.

Which gets us back to civilian control of the CAF.  Which civilians are making sure the CAF does what the civilians want?  Not the Minister of National Defence.  Not the Prime Minister who keeps an incompetent MND in place because Sajjan matters a lot for votes and campaign contributions.  Not the House of Commons.  Yes, the Defence Committee did do some work on this the past few months, but tended to stray into mindless point-scoring rather than asking why the CAF did not implement the Deschamps report.  The Status of Women Committee is doing a better job, but the problem, of course, is that neither of these committees nor the Parliament itself have much power to shift money or affect promotions.  They can legislate, sort of.  And they must in order to have not just independent reporting but prosecution of perpetrators.  

 

The only civilians who have really played the role they are supposed to in Canada's civil-military dynamics are: the media and the outsiders.  Mercedes Stephenson, Amanda Connolly, and those elsewhere who followed up on the story of abuse of power and sexual misconduct have pulled the fire alarm, by providing survivors with a chance to tell their stories and by putting the collective feet of the government, DND, and the CAF to the fire [two fire metaphors, Steve?].  Similarly, those who have been working on this for years--Megan Mackenzie of Simon Fraser; Linna Tam-Seto who is the CDSN's first post-doc; Maya Eichler of Mount Saint Vincent; Stéfanie von Hlatky of Queens, the CDSN, and RSA; Alan Okros of Canadian Forces College; Charlotte Duval-Lantoine of CGAI; Allan English of Queens'; and many others.  They have talked to the media, appeared before the various committees, and been on social media.  But all they can do is speak and write.  

 

The responsibility for the Canadian Armed Forces falls squarely on just two civilians.  One has delegated the job to the other, and the other does not know what the job is.  Which suggests that the former does not really care that much about this issue.  Justin Trudeau may be a feminist in some areas, but certainly not here.  He has been PM long enough that he owns all of this even if Vance was appointed by his predecessor.  Trudeau kept Vance around even though Vance shirked in the classic principal-agent language--that he did not do what the civilians wanted when it came to the Deschamps report.  And it is on those civilians who failed to oversee, to incentivize, and, if necessary (and it was necessary), find a better agent to do the job.

 

So, yeah, I am not sure there has been civilian control of the CAF under Trudeau.  And, yes, with that level of commitment, I don't know if the Arbour recommendations, whatever they are, will have more of an impact than those of the previous retired female supreme court justice.

 

The CAF Learns that Poor Optics is Bad Policy and Vice Versa

 Today was a learning experience for the new Chief of Defence Staff.  He sent out this tweet with a picture that was, well, problematic.

 Conversations on diversity, inclusion, and culture change are not incompatible with our thirst for operational excellence. I count on my senior leaders to champion culture change. Diversity makes us stronger, inclusion improves our institution. We are #StrongerTogether - ArtMcD pic.twitter.com/y4piRhtW3N

— Admiral/Amiral Art McDonald (@CDS_Canada_CEMD) February 11, 2021

 The group of officers are the Canadian Armed Forces [CAF] command team--the CDS, the Vice Chief, the heads of the Navy, Air Force, Army, etc.  All white dudes.  So, not really a diverse group.  So, what is the message that they are trying to convey and what is the message they are actually conveying?

The attempt: that the senior leadership is serious about fostering diversity and inclusion.  That they are champions.  One thing that they have been doing is assigning senior leaders (white dudes) to be champions of different less-well represented groups with the idea in mind that white men have to be part of the solution, that the work of improving diversity and inclusion and dismantling racism is not a job for only Black Canadians, for Indigenous Canadians, for Women, for LGBTQ2S+.  

The message they are actually conveying: the CAF is an institution that seem to only promote white dudes to the highest levels.  Yes, there have been and are a few women who have gotten to the rank of Lieutenant General and Vice Admiral, but not in that picture.  I don't know if there have been any people from racialized communities that have served near the top of the CAF--this picture suggests not so much.  The picture illustrates much that the CDS may not have intended but is there for all to see.  It is a picture that does not look like Canada but does look like Canadian power structures but perhaps more so.

The CDS could have taken this picture and admitted the reality: "The current command group is committed to making sure that this is one of the last pictures that looks like this."  A little self-awareness would have been handy.

The picture/tweet combo was awful, but it gets to a thorny problem that I have been facing with the CDSN.  Some say the best way to improve diversity and inclusion is to do the hard work silently and let the results speak for themselves.  Others say that in order to attract people from less well represented communities to one's efforts, one should show how such people are included.  That doing good is not sufficient, that one should show that one is doing good.  I am struggling to figure out which way to proceed.  I will, of course, focus on the substance--how to do better.  But the comms side of things is important, and it is not straightforward.  So, I am consulting folks to get a broader set of perspectives to figure out the way ahead.  

While there are far more eyes on the CAF, the CAF also has far more resources to get this right.  Do better on the substance and maybe the optics will follow. 

 

 

 

 

 

Army Training, Sir!

 I am sore but pretty thrilled today.  Why?  Because yesterday, I got to participate in Operation Collaborative Spirit--a military exercise at a base two hours from Ottawa.  Petawawa is the base for the Second Combined Mechanized Brigade of the Canadian Armed Forces (if I am remembering the briefing right).  So, the combined and mechanized means they have light armored vehicles, artillery, engineers, medics, and, yes, infantry.  Each year, for about a week, they hold exercises where the participants are various kinds of "stakeholders": politicians, foreign military officers, businesspeople, government employees, and random academics.  For my day, it was mostly business people, DND employees, and one random academic.  Below, I will run through what happened, then a few things I learned, and some reactions (besides Woot!) with heaps of pictures and some video along the way.

We met at 0600 near City Hall (the parking lot was convenient in the morning, much less so when all of us returned at the same time and tried to leave at 2200), and we got on a set of buses.  While waiting, I met some of my company-mates (a company is roughly 100 soldiers, and we had 108 or so people going) including young policy officers serving at DND including at least one NPSIA student  and one #BattleRhythm fan, one head of CDAI (a CDSN partner), and many others.  At the end of the bus ride, we met in a very large room that had a big map of the exercise on the floor, a very efficient set of soldiers who gave us bags containing our gear (we had given our sizes ahead of time) and took our valuables for safe-keeping.  We were to change in tents set up inside the building, and I was surprised but pleased to see a gender-neutral tent in addition to the male and female tents.




I got into my gear--they gave us pants, t-shirt (the one item we could keep), overshirt, protective vest or whatever it is called, and then the external harness to carry our magazines and other stuff (I used the spare pockets to carry my camera and my notebook).  Yes, I had the full battle-rattle.  In addition to the helmet, they gave us a soft cover (floppy hat), but we never had much use for it.






They then briefed (we got heaps of briefings) about the day ahead.  We were to get basic training, then take the urban area, and then invade a beach.

The premise was that a country invaded an ally, had been pushed back by the coalition (there was no interactions with allied forces, so I couldn't ask about caveats), and our job was to mop up the folks who remained in our friend's town and then disrupt their use of a beach for shipping arms/people/drugs/etc.

Part of  the tech display

Yeah, the 155mm gun is pretty big,
even bigger than my head.

The basic training consisted of three parts: shooting stuff, a display of equipment, and brief training on firing our guns (we had blank-shooting rifles). The display included a drone, one of the boats we were going to use later, radar systems for detecting incoming arty, anti-tank systems, cluster bombs and mines and the detection equipment for finding that stuff, recon vehicle, a 155mm artillery piece, etc.  The training also included room-clearing procedures, which we needed for later.

Room clearing training

The shooting stuff was, of course, the best part.  They had a sniper rifle setup, LAVs for firing 20mm guns and 40mm projectiles, heavy and not so heavy machine guns, shotgun, rifle, and pistol (they also had a grenade launcher display but they didn't trust us to try that).  Due to the lines in front of each, I only got to do a few of these things: machine gun, shotgun, pistol.  I was so good with shotgun, I destroyed one of the targets.  I know now that in a zombie apocalypse, I will arm myself with a shotgun and a spear (I learned at an axe throwing place in Vegas that I am better with a spear than an axe).

Holy Sandtable

We then received a more detailed briefing about how we would assault the town and then the beach.  Yellow platoon (note the yellow on my equipment in the pics) would move second, after Red took the first set of building s with Blue providing suppressing fire.  Then Blue would go next with Red taking the hq of the enemy.  From there, we would go to the beach, get in our boats, cross the Ottawa River, and Yellow would take the beach with Blue and Red following by sweeping around with us providing suppressing fire.  That was the plan, and it mostly survived first contact with the adversary (the adversary was most cooperative).

 

The village we were to attack

This is the room we cleared--no adversaries present so no shots fired. No, I did not take any pics during the attack. 












We then met for an after-action review.  The commander asked each platoon as well as the enemy what they did well and what they did poorly, so we could sustain the former and improve on the latter.  Definitely something to borrow perhaps as the last session of CDSN events.





 

The next step was the beach invasion.  We got mighty wet as we were positioned with one foot inside the rubber boat and one outside.  It was most unrealistic in that we had to connect our rifle slings to the boat so we didn't lose the guns, and we had to wear life vests. Which meant as our boat landed, we had to undo that stuff, making us sitting ducks.  I ended up grabbing my backpack (full of snacks since I didn't trust the Canadian version of MRE's--IMPs--good for pre-colonoscopy prep) and throwing it ahead of me as I hit the beach, then ran to behind a tree, and the up to a fallen log that I used as both cover and to prop up my rifle.  In the proces

I tried to take a pic of the beach-post invasion

My battle buddy (the master corporal) and firefighter Mike.
We were a very good fireteam.

Waiting to get the next Chinook

Ugly helo looks pretty in the right scenery

Former NPSIA student (2nd from left) and his fellow DND
policy officer (newbies, I think) next to him

Are we having fun yet?  Hells yeah

What did I notice and/or learn:

• No mention of peacekeeping except for a streetsign on the way in.  The Army wants to make clear to all of the "stakeholders" that they are warriors doing war stuff.  
• The participants included DND officials from a variety of offices and defence contractors but also folks much more distant from the event.  I wonder if the organizers will do a survey to figure out which folks are better transmitters
• Because, hell, yeah, this is an information operation campaign to educate the Canadian public about how wonderful the Army is.  And, yeah, it is pretty damned wonderful.  BUT we can still be critical when they do stuff that is wrong.  On the other hand, doing public engagement is a good thing, and the Canadians should know what their military is doing (they kept emphasizing this is not our (the Army's) army but your (Canada's) army.  
• I do wonder about the cost/benefit calculation--can they measure whether this stuff makes a difference because it was not cheap.  Given the usual studies that show that the public does not understand the armed forces, efforts like this to create contact and some understanding are well worth it, I think. 
• That the equipment we carried was mighty heavy and restricted our movement and our vision to  a degree and we were not carrying half the load that these soldiers do under much harsher conditions (Kandahar) did build a healthy amount of respect.  I was tired and sore after a half-day without any long marches.  I can't imagine what the soldiers go through.
• It was pretty cool to see women in a variety of army positions--Master Corporals, Sergeants, Officers of all kinds.  Definitely far from the 25% goal the Liberals set with the Defence Policy Review, but all these women would not have been in a similar brigade in the US not that long ago.   
• Speaking of the Defence Policy Review, it was interesting to see at the starting briefing reference to that and then how the brigade saw itself in that larger context.
• Oh and some Hobbes:
  

Overall, I learned a great deal about the Canadian Army, how it operates, who is in it, where they have been (Latvia), and what they do most of the time.  Oh, and I learned a bit about my own limits.  And it was a heap of fun.


PS  I disappointed my wife by failing to respond at some point during the day with a Bill Murray-esque "Army Training, Sir!"

Maybe I Am Not Critical Enough?

One of the challenges of building the Canadian Defence and Security Network has been that scholars want to produce policy relevant info and have a sense of what the government is thinking and doing without having their independence compromised.  Becoming partners with government agencies, units of the CAF, non-governmental organizations in Ottawa and far away might cause some to wonder if we are just the mouthpiece for the CAF and DND.

Today, I was painted with that brush as I had criticized an article written by one of the three or four folks in Canada who cover defence stuff on a regular basis--David Pugliese:

Maybe Stephen Saideman and retired Lt.-Gen. Day would just prefer I ask the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and their cronies in the Canadian military/DND for approval for future articles I write…

— David Pugliese (@davidpugliese) July 2, 2019

Ah, I am a crony.  Pugliese seems to ignore that the CGAI folks (who are a partner to the CDSN and host our #BattleRhythm podcast) often publish stuff that is critical of the armed forces.  He apparently has forgotten or missed all of the times I used his pieces to launch my own criticisms of the CAF and DND.  For instance, see this piece I wrote based on Pugliese's reporting.

There is always a concern that folks who need access will be quiet about their criticisms for fear of losing access.  I am sometimes worried that the broader network I am helping to lead might suffer from the times I take shots at folks in the military or in DND.  But those who follow me on twitter or have read enough spews here, I don't think restrained or compromised would be a word they would use.

I try to be self-aware enough as I do this stuff to make sure that I don't end up getting played by the government.  When DND took a bunch of academics to Afghanistan as part of their information operations campaign (propaganda) aimed at the Canadian public, I wondered about the wisdom of this--that we tend to be quite pesky.  The military makes it harder than most because they do a really good job of working the refs.  But I wonder, if journalists rely entirely on leaks that come to them, aren't they at risk of getting played?  Just a thought.

Governing in the Twitter Age

Not sure if it is the internet, if it is specifically twitter, or if it is just after nine years of Conservative government, but, damn, people are impatient.  They seem to expect Justin Trudeau and his new team to do everything NOW.  Yes, he made a bunch of promises, and he may not need to have Parliament to formally approve many of the elements of the platform.  But it has been less than a week.

Probably not. Everybody is too damned impatient expecting insta-change. https://t.co/aSqroh783v

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) November 8, 2015

Yes, Trudeau will pull the Canadian fighter planes out of Iraq/Syria (well, based in Kuwait but you know).  But that decision, already discussed/announced via phone call with Obama, is not that simple. The question remains: which assets will stay in theatre, which ones will come home, and if the promise to do more training means something, then what the package of trainers will look like.

There may be some more strikes the past week or so as the planes are deployed in reaction to events on the ground and available targets can be identified.  Until the CF commander in the field, BG Lise Bourgon, gets new orders, she will keep on ordering strikes as long as the coalition asks her to contribute.


So, give it some damned time. 

Hyena Road: Surprisingly Realistic

Mrs. Spew and I watched Hyena Road last night.  It is a Canadian movie depicting the Canadian effort in Kandahar.  Having spent all of four days at the Kandahar Air Field and at Camp Nathan Smith (the smaller base for the provincial reconstruction team in the middle of Kandahar City), I can say that the movie was quite realistic, especially noting the dust that is on everything.

The movie had at its center stuff that may not have been realistic: a desire to bring back an old big name Mujhadeen "the Ghost" to offset the power of the local big man.  But the local big man in the movie was very much drawn to parallel Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was the local power broker getting big bags of cash from the CIA AND the brother of the President.  I am not sure AWK was so willing to play with the Taliban as this movie's bad guy was.  AWK did more to create the Taliban via reacting to his alienation of key tribes rather than actually helping them directly.  He definitely did benefit from an insecure environment, which led to more contracts for the provision of security and such--that the movie got right.

The big glaring mistake, in my eyes, was the portrayal of the Canadian general running the larger effort.  Played by Homicide's Clark Johnson, this general was a bit more brusque and prone to cursing than the generals I have met, and I have met nearly every officer who commanded the Canadian mission in Kandahar.  However, perhaps the language is a bit more salty down range. 

The road in the title was something quite real--that the Canadians spent a great deal of effort to build a road from Kandahar City into the hinterlands, as it would be far harder to put landmines (improvised explosive devices) into the asphalt.  This road would also improve the ability of Afghans to get to market and for the NATO troops to get out to the hinterlands quickly. 

The movie did a pretty good job of demonstrating the frustration with such a complex war, with unreliable allies and that the road to hell, indeed, is paved with good intentions.  Not a bad month for Canadian movies on the war with Kandahar Journals coming out a couple of weeks ago.

Besides being mostly realistic (hockey at both the big base and the smaller one!), it had good drama and tension.  So, I give it four and a half dusty helmets!

Measuring Progress is Difficult

It is often very hard to figure out what an event means.  Today, there is a report of Canadian Lt. Colonel being prosecuted for sexual assault.  But the assaults took place from 1998-2007.  So, is this delayed justice showing how slow, bureaucratic and broken the process is?  Or is it a sign of new times?  That the decision (or the announcement) happened very shortly after a new Chief of Defence Staff took over?   With a message of taking this stuff seriously?

The reality is it is probably a mix--something should have happened long before now, but a new boss with a clear priority on this might be pushing the case forward.  And yes, the CDS has a role in this because he has the job of enforcing discipline with the Canadian Armed Forces, not the Deputy Minister and not the Minister of Defence.  This is squarely in General Vance's area of responsibility. 

If we see more prosecutions in the next month or two (and announced via David Pugliese), then it will be clearly a sign that a change is underway.  

Vance and Sexual Harassment

There has been a fair amount written about the new Chief of Defence Staff General Jon Vance, including this, but people are overlooking a key episode: his career was upended slightly by sexual harassment.  After Vance completed his tour in Afghanistan, he came home and started a new job within the Canadian Forces.  After several months, he was compelled to return to Afghanistan because his successor, Daniel Menard, got fired for sleeping with his subordinates.  Because of the need to find someone who was already prepped to run that important job quickly, Vance was asked to go back.  He got to witness what happens to a command climate when a poor example is set. 

So, as Vance addresses this key issue in the Canadian Forces, he is even likelier to take it more seriously than his predecessor. 

Taking on Sexual Harassment in Canadian Armed Forces

This story suggests that there are divides within CAF over CDS Lawson's stance on harassment: "lack of leadership!"  That there are conflicting imperatives to fight sexual harassment but to be quiet.  The Chief of the Navy apparently has been much clearer to his sailors.  Given Lawson's initial reaction, his then bungled statement, and this apparent leadership division, I am not surprised that the top brass are "literally counting the days until he leaves."

I can speak to a bit of this as I have some junior officer friends who faced a real challenge: that the roll out of the report was met with no new instructions for how to communicate to the troops.  My friends chose to talk directly to their subordinates about the report, and then found themselves hanging out to dry as their superiors were like "hey, wait, we don't have guidance."

Given that this military, so proud of mission command in Afghanistan--delegating to the commanders on the ground, does not know how to operate when it comes to these issues, it is definitely time for some new leadership. While much can be structural/institutional/cultural, the reality of modern militaries is that the chain of command matters a great deal.  So, although real, quality leadership is not a magic elixir, it can produce far more change and reform than a change in bosses in other realms (such as academia).

General Jon Vance's job was always going to be tough.  It is up for debate whether it is now easier (easier to do better than his predecessor) or harder (more messes to clean up). I vote for harder.

A Mediocre Day for Women and Their Allies

Three events occurred yesterday that do not advance the cause of women at least in the short run:

• Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign
• Chief of Defence Staff Tom Lawson said that the sex assault problem in the Canadian Forces was due in part to biology
• I saw Jurassic World.

Spoilers (of the movie, not of Trump, who comes pre-spoiled) below:

Working with Neo-Nazis? Nyet

Congresspeople have imposed restrictions on training Ukrainian soldiers--that those associated with a Neo-Nazi unit would be prohibited from engaging in mil to mil efforts.  This raises questions in Canada where members of parliament have limited means to slap amendments onto bills that would impose such restrictions. 

This is causing some deja vu for me, as this kind of legislation is old news in the US.  In my year on the Joint Staff, whenever we worked on the possibility of engaging the local militaries in Bosnia, which we did as a major effort to try to build a single Bosnian military from three militaries (Bosniak, Serb, Croatian) we had to consider whether our efforts met the requirements set forth by the Leahy Amendment.  Senator Leahy of Vermont added an amendment that required any US funding for training to be conditional on vetting--that those who engaged in human rights abuses would be excluded. 

Since most of the Ukrainian army is not in the unit that is getting heaps of attention, it is unlikely that the small Canadian training effort will end up working with the Neo-Nazis.  Moreover, if the Canadians train at the same place as the Americans and train mostly the same people, it is likely that the American attention to this challenge will do the work for the Canadians--that the relevant unit will be left out of all of the reindeer games Western training.

One could call the US restriction a caveat, which goes to show that not all caveats are really so problematic.  Some are actually lined up well with the intent of policies and might actually foster the national interest.  Something to think about.

Some Thoughts on Canadian Forces Sexual Misconduct Report

There is much to think about in the aftermath of the report on the challenges women encounter in the Canadian Forces.  The striking piece, of course, is the finding that there is a culture of misogyny in the CF--not because we are surprised it exists but because it so completely wipes away the denials of the past year or two.

Still, the military is resisting: that most of the report's recommendations were met with "accept in principle" which really means: "we don't want to do it, and perhaps will find a way to evade as the spotlight shifts elsewhere."  That might be a smidge unfair, but there really has been an incredible lack of leadership here.  As Stefanie Von Hlatky asked, where are the defence minister and prime minister on this?   The Prime Minister is Iraq!  Well, isn't that convenient?  The defence minister deferred to the military: "Kenney’s spokeswoman said the issue was better left to military leaders to deal with."  Yeah, because that has worked so far.

The timing was not just convenient for Harper, but for the military.  The outgoing Chief of Defence Staff Tom Lawson has handled this problem poorly, but he is going away.  The new CDS, Jon Vance, can point to this report and the problems as being something that he inherited.  Which suggests something else about timing--there was a long gap between when the decision to pick Vance was leaked and when it was announced.  Which might be due to many things, but having this report come out before he takes the job is probably very much a blessing for the new CDS.

Anyway, back to the response with the typical first Canadian instinct--don't compare us to the Americans:

“Additionally, the American and Canadian processes are not parallel or identical,” Armstrong [DND spokesperson] said. “Canada’s military has taken an independent approach to investigating sexual misconduct within its ranks and is now implementing its action plan in response. The government supports that effort.”

How about Australia instead:


Instead,

"I was struck by the lack of comment from the prime minister and defence minister,” said Stefanie von Hlatky, who specializes on gender in the military at Queen’s University. “It signals that it’s not a priority, and it would feed some doubts in my mind about the government’s seriousness.”

In the days, weeks, and months ahead, we need to keep a focus on this.  How to do that?  Follow @svhlatky.

Tales Finally Told: Canada and D-Day

When I was at a conference in New Brunswick, Marc Milner, one of the hosts and a military historian, chatted briefly about his new book: Stopping the Panzers: the Untold Story of D-Day.  It turns out that historians have slighted the Canadian contribution in June in France 1944.  We should not be surprised by this since most of this history was written by Brits and Americans who focused on their own forces.  This book fills a big gap, explaining that the Canadian army did exactly what they were supposed to do, even though it was very, very hard.

The traditional history has the Canadians stumbling around Caen, failing to take that city early.  As it turns out, the planners of the invasion identified the key threat to the invasion--a German counter-attack through the most tank-friendly country.  They built a largely Canadian unit to occupy that space, giving it more much anti-tank capability than any other unit that landed on June 6th.  This unit was trained and equipped to stop the likely Panzer assault.

As it turned out, the planners knew what they were doing--they predicted quite well what the Germans were going to try to do--run the tanks up through the allied beachhead to the sea.  But they failed due to the actions of the Canadians.  So rather than being stuck in place, the actual story is really more of the Canadians doing exactly what they were supposed to do and do it quite well.  And the cost was higher than it should be as they faced SS and Hitler Youth units that executed a larger number of POWs.

In this case, not losing was very much winning.  The Canadians protected the beachhead so that the allies could land the units and materiel that would eventually be used to break out of Normandy.  The book may overplay sometimes the Canadian contribution--when it focuses on the Canadian units in the fake army that was used by the allies to persuade the Germans that Normandy was a feint and that the real attack was coming at Pas de Calais.  Yes, that disception was important, but I am not so sure that the Germans were convinced by the apparent presence of the Canadian units in that effort.  It might have mattered but not that much.

I am not a military historian and for good reason.  This research was far more thorough in the getting all the details lined up to tell a very interesting story about this overlooked part of the most studied military campaign.  it was a good read that also taught me the importance of artillery in tank warfare. 

Canada and Success in Iraq

I was on CBC's The Current radio program today, and among three experts talking about Canada, Iraq, and what success might look like.  As I had to wake up early for the taping, I had to scramble to think about success.  The answer: multiple audiences means multiple definitions of success.

In the short term, the standards are lower and clearer: stopping the expansion of ISIS in Iraq.  Check.  That is, the bombing campaign, enabled by CANSOF (Canadian Special Operations Forces) and perhaps others, has helped the troops on the ground (Kurdish and Iraqi forces) to hold the line against ISIS.  Given that ISIS's key narrative was about the inevitability of its momentum, just stopping ISIS's expansion is important and not just for protecting those who had not fallen in the hands of the truly bad guys.
Also, short term success: Canada once again showing that it is a reliable ally to the US and the other advanced democracies.  Given how short term American political memory is, Canada has to keep showing up rather than just pointing to the time in Kandahar.

Two other key measures of success for Canadian politicians looking more at the home crowd: no casualties (successful so far) and no discordant messaging from the field (successful until last week, now quite the failure).  As long as the costs of the mission are measured in dollars, it is hard to see it resonate that much domestically.  Unless the government looks like a bunch of liars.  In the past week, I have blogged much about the mismanaged messaging.  Trying to say that there would be no combat by Canadian ground forces has been a mistake, given that SOF doing advising and assisting will do stuff that looks like fighting to most observers.  Again, the line should have been drawn between conventional military operations and SOF mentoring, which could involve painting targets for the air campaign.

Long term?  That depends on politics in Baghdad over which Canada has no influence.  If Canada's aid on/near the front lines gives the Iraqis the breathing space to develop political deals that allow the Sunnis and Shia to live together in relative peace, then there would be long term success.  But, to be clear, the US had limited leverage on the Shia to be inclusive with the Sunnis when the US had 100k troops in Iraq, so it really is about the domestic stuff there over which the outsiders have minimal influence. 

One of the speakers focused on the UN.  I snorted.  Why?  Because the UN cannot get the Sunnis and Shia to come to an agreement.  Because who would provide the peacekeepers in Iraq?  Because the example of Bosnia is actually a lousy example of peace keeping/enforcing--that it was the US and NATO that ended the Bosnian war, not the UN which probably prolonged it. 

One of the things I have been consistently pushing lately is humility--that outsiders have had limited success in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc.  Canadians have to be particularly humble given that it has a relatively small military and it makes relatively small commitments.  Again, if the US cannot get the Shia and Sunnis together, it is silly to expect Canada to bring them together.

Anyhow, it was an interesting conversation, one that will be continuing as Canada continues to try to figure out what it can do in the Mideast and elsewhere.