The Other Side of the Ethnic Outbidding-Insecurity Dynamic

Last week, I discussed how surprised I was that the Islamophobic stances of the Conservative Party were working, because usually a context of insecurity needs to be required in order for people to follow the appeals of the politicians using the xenophobic appeals.

What I did not discuss is the other side of the dynamic--that the stances politicians take can cause insecurity, which leads to violence.  My omission is being corrected today because some Muslims in Canada have been assaulted in recent days as Canadians are now living in a more fearful/angry environment.

I tweeted thusly:

Leadership is really important, setting the mood, defining the limits. Harper's full on Islamophobia is now, dare I say it, dangerous.

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) October 6, 2015

That Stephen Harper is causing crime via inspiring the haters.  I don't this is hyperbole or exaggeration at all.  Leaders seek to inspire, using symbols, policies and stances to attract support.  To mobilize people to vote for themselves and against others.  Harper is clearly trying to drive a wedge between Mulcair and the Islamophobes, and it is working.  But that wedging also creates friction--encouraging haters to see their views as legitimate and worthy of more than just voting--worthy of action.  So, Muslims get targeted.

Any increase in hate crimes against Muslims in September-October of 2015 is clearly on Harper's hands.  The good news for him is that he can suppress the reports if he stays in office, because transparency is pretty much his enemy in all circumstances.

With the new stance of possibly kicking out of public service positions women wearing niqabs, my opinion of Harper now moves into the category of contempt.

Message Mismanagement FTW

The government of Canada has insisted in restricting access to the soldiers and pilots operating in and over Iraq (and now over Syria).  No pictures of faces as that would provide the bad guys with people they can target at home down the road.  Well, unless one is making a campaign video for the Prime Minister.

This is not just hypocrisy but an abuse of power.  That is, the government can violate its own rules as long as it is for promoting the Prime Minister.  This is part of a larger problem that has become my obsession lately--the ability for various folks in and out of the Canadian government to know what is going on so that they can evaluate the PM, his Minister of Defence and put pressure on these folks. 

Managing the messages is good for Harper's election chances but bad for democracy and civilian control of the military.  This one incident demonstrates all of this quite clearly: the PM has a big advantage--information.  And this is perhaps the least subtle and perhaps least relevant way that this advantage is deployed. 

I will be expressing some of my frustrations with this in Lessons Learned: The Politics of Canada's War in Afghanistan, my next book, due out of U of Toronto Press either late this year or early in 2016.  And this information problem is at the heart of my new project--comparing the roles played by legislatures in civil-military relations around the world.

Mission Creep: Overblown?

When Canadian politicians were debating the Iraq mission, the Liberals and NDP used fears of "mission creep" to justify their opposition.  While there are good reasons to oppose the international intervention in Iraq, I don't think mission creep is one of them.  Indeed, I was so annoyed with the use of mission creep as a way to scare people that I dressed up as Mission Creep for Halloween.

However, people that I respect, such as Roland Paris, were pushing back at me on this on twitter, so let me explain a bit more why I think "Mission Creep" is more of a canard than a real problem here.  Hint, the answer lies in domestic politics.

First, what is mission creep?  The media likes to think that extending a mission is mission creep--that if the current effort goes past 6 months, leading the government to renew the mission, that this counts.  No, it does not.  Extending and expanding are two different things.  If the mission is substantially expanded, with more troops/units doing more things, then it can be said to have crept.

Last night's twitter discussion focused not on Canadians doing heaps of combat, which is how most people think about and worry about creep, but whether Canadian soldiers, especially their Special Operations units, might start serving as Forward Air Controllers [FAC's].  That is, that they might serve near/at the front lines to help guide the air strikes.  Canada sent Auroras, which are maritime surveillance aircraft that have been re-fitted to do ground surveillance and coordination, which they did apparently quite well over Libya, to fill the gap created by the lack of FAC's.*  I can see how we might see Canada put some troops closer to harm's way to play this role.  Indeed, it may have already happened, since Canada has a small deployment of soldiers who are engaged in "directing, advising and assisting" the Iraqis.

* How can you tell the Chief of Defence Staff is an Air Force officer?  Maybe from the fact that nearly every non-helo deployable aircraft that the RCAF has is involved in Iraq--C-17s, CF-18s, Auroras, and Polaris.

So, to be fair to Roland, this small creep may have already happened and may happen if it has not.  It would entail more risks.  But this is not the creep that the Liberals and NDP raised as their fears.  Nor is it what the Canadian public and media seem to view as creep.  What they seem to worry about is "boots on the ground" in more than a marginal way--the deployment of conventional troops to do the fighting since the Iraqis do not seem that capable.  That would be mission creep in a big way, but I think it is most unlikely.

Yes, we need to be concerned about the capabilities of the Iraqis since the bombing campaign depends on the ground forces to the hard work.  This degrading of ISIL cannot be done from air alone.  But it is also clear that no one has any enthusiasm for putting troops into harm's way.

Why?  Well, for Harper, domestic politics and his priorities play a huge role.  The American calculus was that one soldier in Afghanistan for one year =$1 million.  Which meant that 1000 = $1 billion.  The Canadian calculus is different--Canada does not spend as much--but the point remains valid--that a ground deployment of 2000 troops or so would be very expensive.  This government cares far more about balancing the budget and then cutting taxes (to unbalance it?) than pretty much everything else.  So, any significant ground deployment will make this balancing much harder.

Harper's second priority (perhaps first) is to control the messaging.  Putting a battlegroup into harm's way significantly reduces his ability to control the messaging.  One cannot cut off a couple of thousand of young men and women in uniform from embedded reporters, so the message control that Harper has exerted pretty much everywhere else cannot be extended to the troops.  Thus, keep the troops behind the wire where there are few stories (the training mission in Afghanistan from 2011-14) or send some planes where only a few pilots can be questioned by the media (Libya/Mali) or send Special Operations units since they are covered in secret sauce (Canadian media are far more respectful of the secrecy involved with SOF).

The parallels that people like to draw to Afghanistan miss something critical--not only was the Kandahar decision a discrete choice so that Canada did not slip down a slippery slope, but that the domestic politics were different.  Back then, Paul Martin did not have to worry about domestic politics that much because the Conservatives would support the mission (and did so).  Now, Harper has to consider the domestic politics because his party is the only one supporting the mission.  Yes, he has a majority, but it is an election year and his party has been behind in the polls.  Sure, Canadians support this current mission, but ask them again if the topic of significant group forces come up as an option.

Can Harper say no to Obama, if the latter asks for more help?  Um, hell yes.  The two already have heaps of friction.  Moreover, Obama has been most reluctant to deploy American forces, so it would be very, very hard for him to ask anyone else to deploy ground forces. 

Thus, I cannot help but conclude that this supposedly slippery slope is not nearly as slick as some folks assert.  As always, I bet on domestic politics, which provide a heap of friction that will prevent Harper from slip-sliding in away.

I have to slip off to class, so let me know what I got wrong in my haste to post this.

Unintentional Comedy: Message Management Edition

I wrote a piece for CIC today on how the Harper government's efforts to create fear in Ottawa--do not talk to the media or else--leads to perhaps more messes than otherwise.  Yep, media is scary: boo!

Check it out and comment there or here.

Canada and Iraq: Good and Bad Arguments

Today is the day of the vote that expresses confidence (or not) in the government's decision.  Lots of arguments and spin.

• The government, as always, is muddying its message by trying to have it both ways: that the mission is only for six months but that it may last longer.  This just makes them look like liars.  The reality is obvious--this thing is going to last for more than six months.  Canada is lining up with Obama, who has said three years.  The Libyan air campaign lasted for eight months, and that was a far less complex effort (with a lousy aftermath).  Why can't the government say that this effort is likely to take some time but they will evaluate every six months (or year or whatever) progress? 
• Mission creep.  Watch out for the slippery slope!!! Boooooo!!!  I really want to dress up as Mission Creep for Halloween.  The opposition is correct that bombing will not be sufficient to defeat ISIS.  But Harper's rhetoric is a bit different from Obama's--tis about disrupting not destroying ISIS.  Anyhow, my real problem is that Canada has bombed before without engaging in ground combat (Libya, Kosovo--only peacekeeping in Kosovo), that there is a real distinction between air combat and ground combat in terms of risk, cost, and political consequences
• I am very confident that this government will not put infantry troops on the ground because this government cares far more about balancing budgets and message management than anything else.  Sending infantry troops would be very, very expensive and making the CF pay for it out of money already budgeted would be very controversial.  Putting one or two thousand young men and women on the ground in combat with embedded reporters would mean that the messaging of the war would be driven by events in the field and not by Harper's people in Ottawa.
• The votes that Harper schedules on these things, that are not required by the constitution, do serve to bind him just a bit.  If he were to decide to escalate, that would seem to require a vote--not legally but politically.  He would win that vote with his majority, but the opposition could use that opportunity to make far more credible arguments about the mission creeping.  Today's vote, thus, serves to bind the government to the current course of action.  Doing more will be costlier.

• The better criticisms can focus on what this bombing might do: empower Iran, empower Assad, and other stuff that happens on "the road paved with good intentions" as Elizabeth May put it.  To work well, this effort depends on the Iraqi government making a deal with the Sunnis that the Sunnis will find not just attractive but credible.  The Shia-dominated government has reneged before.  So, one could argue that we should make our bombing commitment contingent on an Iraqi deal.  Well, we cannot really since Canada has no leverage since its allies are already ahead of it--US, UK, France, Belgians, Danes and others are already there, engaging in airstrikes.

Meanwhile, Phil Lagassé and I will argue about what votes do in this wacky semi-democratic system that Canada has.

Harper the Consultative

People seem to be concerned a  little bit that Stephen Harper is not making a quick decision about the next steps for involvement in the ISIL/ISIS/IS campaign.  True, this is out of character.  In the past several deployments, it seemed as if Harper made the decisions without any real homework being done:

• the decision to send 900 troops to train Afghans from 2011-2014 was clearly made without much "inter-agency" discussions.  NATO did not ask for 900 trainers in Kabul, so Kabul became Kabul-centric, and Americans doing training in Kabul were directed to do other stuff.
• the decision to send a plane to help the French move stuff to Mali seemed pretty hasty.  The idea that it would take a week and then had to be extended again and again suggested a very small circle of people were consulted (anybody in uniform?)
• the decision to participate in the NATO reassurance efforts earlier this year. Announcements were made by the Canadian government, but then the planes ended up somewhere else--Romania.  Again, homework (vetting at home, working with NATO) seemed incomplete.
• the decision to send 69 trainers to Iraq.  As it turns out, only 29 were sent as there was no need for more.  We only learned of this number in the past few days.

So, this time, Harper takes his time.  He consults his cabinet (the Chief of Defence Staff was actually in the room!), he consults with his caucus in parliament and still no decision.  All in all, I think this is a good thing--that this is being taken seriously.  The mission is pretty vague in terms of length and in terms of objectives.  Degrading ISIL can mean blowing up the equipment that it got when the Iraqi army broke, or it could mean more than that.  How much degrading is enough?  Destroying is not going to be happening via air power. 

The good news is that we do not really need an exit plan for this particular intervention.  Canada can just say--we have run out of bombs, our planes are too stressed, or something like that and fly away.  No need to worry about pulling personnel and equipment from a landlocked battlefield (pretty sure Canada still has containers in Afghanistan waiting to go home). 

Why is Harper taking his time?  First, to be clear, given the length of this campaign, Canada does not have to rush there.  Other countries are already there--six more CF-18s are not going to mean a big swing right now. For Libya, things were moving fast.  Second, and perhaps more importantly, Harper is trying to figure out what it means to have a war (a bombing campaign) during election season.  Hence the need to consult the caucus.  Third, this is going to cost money, challenging either the budget balancing promise OR other spending priorities.  My guess is that other parts of the military are going to be asked to suck it up.  But that will lead to more negative stories in the papers.*

* Harper is in sharp contrast to Cameron on this, since the UK did this far more quickly.  But the situations are not quite so similar.  UK has a better idea of the role of parliament in all of this, there is not an election on the horizon (I think), UK did Iraq before, Harper has a secure majority, etc.  But an interesting question.

Some people would have complained if Harper followed his standard procedure and sent planes before we figured out where they would land.  This time, people are complaining that he is working the process.  He may be doing it because of the election, but even so, with life/death type decisions, a little thinking, a little consulting is not a bad thing.

Teaching Civ-Mil, Day 1

Today is the first day of the fall term of my Civ-Mil class to mostly M.A. students at NPSIA.  One of the basic questions for this class and for modern democracies is: what counts as a crisis in civil-military relations?  Luckily for me, I have a new example to play with: that apparently the Prime Minister did not let General Stu Beare, commander of all Canadian Forces operations (he is CJOC--Commander of Canadian Joint Operations Command), speak to the media a few weeks ago.

This story is nicely on the edge--that the media should have access to commanders to discuss operations and such, but that commanders should not be commenting on government policy.  Nice gray area.  Of course, if Harper trusted the military, he could have expected Beare to converse with the media without making any comments that might embarrass the government.  But either because Harper is distrustful in general (he is), because he distrusts the military (he does), or because the general in question is just about to retire and thus has nothing to lose (and might be as outspoken as the outgoing head of the army was--General Devlin), Harper and/or his Defence Minister apparently chose to pre-empt. 

Does a lack of trust = a crisis in civil-military relations?  That depends on your basis of comparison.  There is no threat of coup, so Pakistanis might say that Canada has no problem in civ-mil.  The Canadian officers will salute and carry on.  But in a democracy, proper civil-military relations requires mutual respect and that seem to be lacking here.  Harper has been burned by leaks--that the cuts to the military are affecting readiness.  On the other hand, the bait and switch budgetary politics--saying that x will be spent on the military but holding back a few billion--makes it very hard for the military to plan and operate effectively.  So, both sides have grievances. 

I have long argued here that the government is treating the military badly--that forcing them to keep the personnel numbers up while cutting the budget is good symbolic politics but bad policy, for instance.  Yet the military is supposed to suffer in silence.  The officers should give their feedback up through the chain of command and then let the civilians be wrong--that is how democratic control of the military is supposed to work.  Of course, democratic control in practice also means that leaks happen and the media ask officers inconvenient questions which they will either dodge or answer.

So, where does that leave us?  Well, since this is the first day of the semester, it leaves us confused. 

Harper Hypocrisy?

I got a call from a member of the Canadian media today asking me about a puzzle: after all of the hyperbole about the Russian threat, Stephen Harper committed the military resources of Canada to ... fighting the Islamic State movement in Iraq.  Canada is sending about 100 Special Operators (Canadian Special Operations Regiment) to train the Iraqis--with much (if not all) of the effort aimed at helping the Kurdish forces.  Thus far, Canada has not kicked in anything clear for the 4,000 NATO troops that are to be the very rapid reaction force to be based in Poland and the vicinity.

How can we make sense of this?  What distinguishes the East European mission from the Iraqi mission?  A few ideas come to mind:

• Harper is not a fan of NATO and prefers the bilateral/trilateral (US or UK and UK) option that minimizes working with a multilateral military organization that is tainted by past Liberal involvement. 
• If the choice is between putting the regular army in the spotlight and the special operations in the shadows, Harper would pick the latter every time.  Why?  Because the regular army has been a pain for Harper: it complains about budget cuts that hurt readiness, it defied efforts by Harper and his minions to manage them in Afghanistan, and so on.  The Special Operations folks?  They don't complain.  They also benefit from the Westminster tradition of the media respecting the secrecy stuff.  
• ISIS is a greater threat than Russia.  Wow, I was able to write that without spilling my beverage.  No, Russia is a greater threat to Canada's allies than ISIS.  However, the problem of people with Western citizenship fighting for ISIS is a real problem.  

Are there other explanations? 

Perhaps Canada will kick into the rapid reaction force once it becomes a bit less vague. 

Anyhow, I do appreciate Harper for giving social scientists a fun puzzle--variation is what we seek, and variation is what we get here.  Harper is discriminating, which is fine.  Why he is discriminating in this particular way after all of the anti-Russia rhetoric is not clear.  

If You Think Harper Is Two-Faced About NATO ...

If You Think Harper Is Two-Faced About NATO, you might be right.  We should not be surprised to see Canada blocking any effort to commit to higher defense spending for a couple of reasons.  First and foremost, the most important priority for the Harper government is to balance the budget (despite the fact that is fiscal situation is perhaps the best in the OECD).  So, cutting defense spending is the order of the day, not doubling it.  Second, as I wrote yesterday, it is what you do, not how much you buy that should matter.  Third, as David Pugliese documents quite well, this government has not been a huge fan of all NATO efforts.

Harper has dropped Canada from a series of NATO programs, including the AWACS program (one of the few truly NATO assets staffed by personnel from throughout the alliance) and the Alliance Ground Surveillance Program (shared drones).  Harper's stance on NATO becoming more involved in Arctic Security has been "no thanks."  This has led to the word on the street in Ottawa and at NATO headquarters that Harper is hostile to NATO. 

Yet Canada participates when the stakes are high: Afghanistan, Libya, and the reassurance effort this summer in Romania, Poland and the Baltics.  So, you should be confused about Harper's stance on NATO.  I am.  It is not so simple as: spending no; doing yes.   Because the doing is costly.  Afghanistan was incredibly costly although the government did manage to get out of the Kandahar commitment three years or so earlier than most NATO members.  Libya's mission was sold as being cheap but turned out to be more than $100 million.  The reassurance package is not expensive--but does cost more money than basing the troops/planes in Canada.  Participation in any longer-term basing would cost more money.  It simply is more expensive to put a battalion in Eastern Europe than keep it in Quebec or Alberta.  However, the costs of more reassurance to Eastern Europe are much less than Afghanistan.

On Ukraine, it is clear that Harper is quite committed, given his pro-Ukraine, anti-Russian rhetoric.  But on supporting a multilateral institution that was part of the Liberal body of work, not so much.  NATO is a product of past governments, mostly Liberal ones, from Harper's point of view, and his attempts to erase Liberal legacies from all over the Canadian landscape means an ambivalent attitude towards the organization.

The thing is, the US wants to keep NATO going, and it is the one way Canada can remain engaged and relevant in European security.  So, Harper rails and cuts, but ultimately he has discovered the same thing we find in our book: that NATO is the worst form of multilateral military cooperation except for all the others.  So, he will resist when he can and buy in entirely when it is really important. So, expect Canada to commit to the Rapid Reaction Force and/or basing in East Europe.  But don't expect him to fall in love with Brussels and all that it represents.

Poland-Centric and the Deja Vu of Stephen Harper's Deployments

I have no inside information about how decisions get made in Ottawa.  All I know is that when Canada announces NATO-related military deployments, NATO often goes: huh?

In 2010, Prime Minister Stephen Harper reversed his stance that the only Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan after July 2011 would be embassy guards to committing nine hundred or so soldiers to a three year training mission in Kabul.  The problem was that NATO did not ask for 900 trainers nor have space for 900 trainers in Kabul.  So, the mission became "Kabul-centric," which in practice meant anywhere but Kandahar.

In 2014, Harper announces that 6 CF-18s (Canadian F-18s) will be going to Eastern Europe, with the informal word that they would be headed to Poland.  Well, we just learned that these planes are going to Romania.

In the grand scheme of things, the change of basing does not matter much.  But this pattern does say something--that even when Harper does NATO stuff, he does not coordinate well or does not work the policy.  I do know that the 2010 decision was not so well worked through a normal process as the military was barely consulted.  I do wonder if the more recent announcement had been staffed through the Canadian Forces and Department of National Defence so that the basing part was worked out at all.

Again, not so consequential but it is suggestive of a broken decision-making process.  Which might matter when the decisions are bigger.

Exceeding My Expertise in the Cold

On a very cold day in Ottawa (subzero in all measures except Kelvin), it is probably appropriate that I got sucked into a discussion about the Arctic.  I got into a twitter conversation with @rolandparis* about the latest Canadian efforts up north.

*  The funny thing is that Roland is the bigger fan of IOs and of norms and of international law and I am the committed skeptic.  Holy role reversals, Batman!

That is, Canada, as other Arctic nations are doing so, are submitting claims to a UN organization.  The key basis for claims to territory up north is whether one's continental shelf extends--so one needs scientists to get data and draw up maps.  Canada's initial effort did not include the North Pole, which either has symbolic value due to Santa's presence or has material value as there is much oil and other stuff under the Arctic Ocean.  Anyhow, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the scientists to go back to the drawing board until they come up with results that allow Canada to claim the north pole.

My basic contention is this: by doing so, Harper has undermined the legitimacy of Canada's claims.  Why?  Because it is known to all that the non-politically driven work of the scientists was not good enough for Harper.  He has now asked them to work backwards from the endpoint--that Canada will claim the North Pole, so figure out some measures/data that support this conclusion.  This reminds me of a mantra I heard in the Pentagon--that intel should drive policy.  The original sin of Iraq was that policy drove intel.  That what we "knew" was driven by the desired outcome.  It is one thing for a journal or press to ask for a revise and resubmit to get a scientist to improve the quality of their work.  It is another thing entirely for politicians to do so--they are not looking for the best science but the science that is best for them.


Any observer of this will question the science behind Canada's revised bid because it is clearly being driven by an outcome that Harper has in mind, rather than what the geography will tell us.  I contend this is a big problem for Canada: countries that are smaller should support legal frameworks that provide them with fair decision-making procedures, such as those based on semi-objective science.  Stronger countries should prefer processes that rely on bargaining since stronger countries have more means with which to bargain--not just coercion via standing military forces but also a wide array of economic and other assets that one can play linkage politics with.  Canada is not unarmed in this--it can try to bargain with its oil riches and whatever else, but it is almost always going to be in a position of weakness relative to the US or Russia.  Sorry, but that is just the reality.

This whole debate makes me uncomfortable because I tend to be skeptical about international organizations and international law.*  But one thing I do get is this: international law is usually on the side of Canada when it has a conflict with the US or with Russia (except for that whole problem of wanting to regulate the northwest passage--law of the sea is on the US side on that one). 

* I am also uncomfortable because this stuff is way out of my expertise--law, arctic, etc.

I am not surprised that Harper is acting in this way, but I am rarely surprised when politicians do that which makes sense from short term domestic interests but is bad for the long term interests of the country.  Hence the title for my second book--For Kin or Country.

Canada and NATO: BFF's?

It used to be taken for granted that Canada and NATO were best friends forever, right?  Not so much anymore.  Despite tremendous sacrifices in and near Kandahar and the street cred Canada earned there and in the skies over Libya, NATO folks are pondering Canada's commitment.  Canada has pulled out of a few smaller NATO programs: the Airborne Warning and Control System and Alliance Ground Surveillance program. 

This topic arose today during the Q&A after my talk at the Conference of Defence Associations, which is a Canadian institution that represents defence contractors and holds roundtables to address foreign policy and defence issues.  I was presenting the findings and implications of the Dave and Steve book on NATO.  The topic of Canada's commitment to NATO came up a few times and perhaps most pointedly by a defence attache from one of Canada's best friends in NATO who noted that one has really read Canada's last defence white paper, the Canada First Defence Strategy, to see NATO mentioned anywhere.

I have heard whisperings that this government is not a big fan of NATO despite its decisions to extend the mission twice in Afghanistan (although readily agreeing to an early departure), the training mission (my reference to the Hotel California fell flat today), the Libyan mission, and so on.  There are other strangenesses over the past few years--justifying the F-35 based on Arctic Sovereignty makes far less sense than alliance interoperability, for example.

Why would Harper and his folks be less than fond of NATO?  I could not really explain why Canada was tossing away some of the credits it had won by pulling out of two relatively inexpensive NATO programs and not taking advantage of other opportunities (NATO centres of excellence).  Likely alternatives include:

• Harper just is opposed to multilateralism. Given other foreign policy stances (IRAN), this makes some sense.
• Harper opposes anything that the Liberals supported/built/identified with.  
• NATO is a pain in the ass, having to bargain with a bunch of whiners.  Well, yeah.

The thing is that the reason why Canada went to Afghanistan and fought and bled was not to help the Afghans but to fulfill Canada's obligations to ... NATO.  As a middle power, Canada cannot do much on its own in the realm of security.  It can either depend on the US or on NATO.  The safe bet is to work through both multilateral and bilateral channels.  Working solely with the elephant in the south means that any sneeze could leave one trampled.  Working through NATO means binding the elephant with some webs of institutional predictability.  It is not perfect, but a country with a small military can do only so much. 

NATO has been a force and diplomatic multiplier for Canada.  Despite the criticisms of NATO and its members that Dave and I raise in our book, we find that NATO is better than the alternatives.  This government does not have to salute everytime NATO calls, but it probably should not needlessly fritter away hard won credits either.  Sure, one can save a few dollars by opting out of a few NATO programs, but such cuts are mostly symbolic, kind of like the cuts made into academic research into defence issues.  At least that latter effort makes sense if one's focus is on message management (we academics are a pesky bunch).  But the former?  I am still kind of mystified.

The Ship Has Sailed

J.L. Granatstein has a strong piece arguing that Canada should not be resurrecting the long dead ship-building industry via the recapitalization of the Royal Canadian Navy and Coast Guard.  He is dead on, arguing both buying foreign-made ships will be far cheaper and that future governments are likely cancel expensive programs.  So, better to buy the cheaper foreign stuff and get good replacements now than spend years and billions of dollars on ships that may not be completed.

A key point he makes is that if Canada bought foreign ships, there would still be Canadian jobs to be had for putting into the ships various technologies.  The problem is it is one thing to say: new foreign-built ships with a few thousand domestic jobs.  It is another thing to say: let's cancel the contracts which have 15k jobs attached and then buy cheaper foreign ships with a few thousand domestic jobs.  Path dependence is a bitch, and reversing course now would be very costly politically. 

What makes sense for Canada does not make sense for the Conservative Party, alas.  So, while Granatstein is right in his analysis, it really does not matter.  Defence procurement as industrial policy--propping up Canadian industry--means more wasted tax dollars on less capability.  The government that claims to be careful stewards of Canadian tax dollars is going to make the choice that is best for them politically--getting votes in British Columbia and Nova Scotia--and bad for teh budgets of tomorrow.

Over-Reacting to the Obvious

Canadian newspapers have been suggesting that we should be shocked and surprised that: (a) the US put some pressure on the Canadians to stick around in Kandahar; and (b) that Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he'd think about it. I wonder what this says about US-Canadian relations that these "revelations" via wikileaks are the best they can do.  Let's unpack this, shall we?

First, of course the US did not want Canada to leave Kandahar in July 2011.  For one thing, the Canadians have proven to be among the most reliable and effective troops in Afghanistan.  That may or may not be saying that much, given how many other countries have not been willing to deploy to the hardest parts of Afghanistan.  Moreover, it is one thing for the Dutch to leave since they had a government fall over this issue, but it is another thing for a stalwart ally like Canada to be an early departer.  So, the US didn't want the Canadians start a stampede towards the door.  So, no one but no one should be surprised the US wanted Canada to stay.  Even so, I remember op-eds and letters to the editor over the past couple of years with Canadians being upset that the US was asking the Canadians to stick around.  They should have taken it as a compliment.

Second, the articles on this "news" seem to suggest that Harper was being two-faced with the Canadian people--that he was saying no to anymore combat to the public but thinking about it in conversations with the Americans.  Given the outcome, a non-combat mission in relatively safer parts of Afghanistan, it should be pretty clear that Harper was more honest with the Canadians than the Americans. 

His comments appeared to give hope to U.S. officials that "the minority government of Prime Minister Harper may not have actually ruled out extending Canada's 2,800-member military contingent, including combat forces, in Kandahar beyond 2011."

This gets to the larger points about wikileaks: (a) governments will soft-pedal their resistance to requests so that the relationships are not damaged; (b) the US diplomats reporting stuff back home may be wrong.  Harper told the Americans that he would think about it--that is hardly a commitment of any kind.  It was a way to put off the Americans without making any kind of commitment at all.  The Americans, guilty of wishful thinking, sent back reports that suggested that the Canadians would change their minds.  They should have (and probably did) sent back reports observing that domestic dynamics and Harper's lack of enthusiasm for the mission would make an extension highly unlikely.  Indeed, wikileaks does not put out a complete set of cables--just those that would be most embarrassing.  So, the ones where the US diplomats accurately gauge the Canadian stance have not been released, if they exist.

Which gets to a larger point--if this is the kind of stuff that they think is most embarrassing and potentially harmful to the relationship (since that does seem to be the goal of wikileaks--to sow discord), then US-Canadian relations are pretty healthy.  If this "controversy" is the best they got, then perhaps US-Canadian relations are extremely boring.   Not a bad thing.