“Lack of equipment and material. Undermanning of units. Overdeployment. Not enough time for family. Soldiers who are on food stamps, and soldiers who are poorly housed,” said one critic. “Extended peacekeeping detracts from our readiness,” wrote another. The Leader of the Opposition? A retired Chief of the Defence Staff? Hardly. The first speaker was Governor George W. Bush, campaigning for the White House in 2000. The second was Dr Condoleeza Rice, then Bush’s key adviser on security matters and now the National Security Advisor in the Bush Administration.
How can this be? Even before the war on terrorism, the United States planned to spend more than US$310 billion on its armed forces in 2002, and late in 2000 it had 257,800 men and women on overseas deployments. Surely the Americans are not feeling the pinch? But, of course, they are.
The British forces were also in contraction, making Britain “a demilitarised state,” wrote historian Niall Ferguson. “Italy with rockets,” said another. Force strength was about half what it was in 1968 at 208,600, and equipment was increasingly obsolescent. In Kosovo, radios didn’t work, so troops in the field had to rely on their personal cell phones, a direct consequence, Ferguson said, of a collapsed defence budget that, at 2.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product, was the lowest since 1934””and that was to be lowered further by the re-elected government of Tony Blair before the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, and the Afghan war changed matters.
The British Army, moreover, was putting women into combat units, except the infantry, and had been ordered to enlist the disabled. Even so, Britain was able to send 20,000 troops to train in Oman after September 11 and to provide substantial forces for the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Other NATO countries were also slashing their defence budgets before September 11. The Germans were spending 1.5 percent of GDP on defence and the Bundeswehr, one officer said, had “had the aggression bred out of it”””which may not be a wholly bad thing. The French, a few units aside, “are in process of disbandment,” historian John Keegan noted, “or will take a decade to disentangle from the enfeeblement of conscription.” None of the small European armies frightened anyone, he went on, and Poland probably had the best NATO army, although “it remains encumbered with Warsaw Pact doctrine and rusting Warsaw Pact equipment.” NATO nations, the US excepted, budget less than half of American defence spending, or about US$145 billion a year. The military goals NATO set for itself in 1999 have not been met, and will not be, the terrorist attacks notwithstanding, and the alliance’s ability to meet a crisis in the future is very much in doubt.
In light of the debility from which our friends are suffering, perhaps life is not much worse for the Canadian Forces, especially for the army. With a budget of just $11 billion or not much above 1.2 percent of GDP, with under 58,000 all ranks in the three environments in 2001, and with only 18,500 in the army, the CF have been suffering from underfunding, undermanning, a poor quality of life for their service families, and deployment burnout. The problems of the army are very real in any context, but they are more serious than those of the British or the Germans because our military has never been very big to begin with. The postwar peak was 50,000 for the army in a total military of 120,000, and, over the last three decades, the downward slide has been continuous. Our NATO allies can at least claim that the end of the Cold War accelerated their cutbacks. The Canadian budget cuts, in contrast, have been under way since the era of John Diefenbaker. And the disparity in 2001 between the US and the Canadian forces is huge. With a population about one-tenth that of the United States, Canada’s Regular Army is only 3.5 percent that of the United States and its Reserves are but 1.7 percent of the US National Guard and Reserve Army. The Canadian defence budget amounts to just 3 percent of the American.
What makes the Canadian Army’s situation most dangerous, however, is that the cuts in budgets and personnel have undermined army professionalism. The crisis of the 1990s, first made apparent to the public because of the Somalia incidents and confirmed through a succession of scandals and very public problems ranging from obsolete equipment to a poor quality of life for soldiers’ families, left the Land Forces in disarray. The junior ranks, with some reason, mistrusted the sense of honour and duty of their leaders, and the evident lack of discipline of the privates and corporals exposed the leaders to public embarrassment. Under General Maurice Baril, strenuous efforts were begun to restore professionalism and fix the army’s problems. But just what should military professionalism be?
Military professionals are experts with specialized and superior knowledge and skill, mastered through continuous study and practice and capable of being tested against measurable standards. Their task is the management of violence, the ordered application of force. In wartime, this expertise means learning how to apply technical skills on the battlefield, how to employ tactics and strategy to defeat the enemy. In peacetime, military expertise requires that soldiers study and draw the appropriate lessons from military history, identify and master the use of the weapons and equipment needed for future conflict, and prepare a doctrine based on those weapons and on the capabilities of likely enemies.
Military professionals belong to a corporate culture and believes that their members form a group separate and distinct from civil society. Just as doctors are trained to believe they have sacred obligations, so soldiers believe that only they are qualified to judge the competence of those in the military profession. The military has its own educational system and controls its content, it has its own regulations to govern promotion, and it has its own hierarchy and traditions. As a corporate body, soldiers also have their own code of ethical conduct, and they must follow it in their personal and military behaviour.
Finally, the military profession has a sense of responsibility to the state. As a responsible professional, the soldier serves the state and, because the soldier controls deadly force, this responsibility is all important. In a democracy like Canada, the soldier accepts, acknowledges, and understands that the political power has the supreme authority and the ultimate responsibility. The government lays down policy, and the soldier follows it. In return for this unquestioning obedience, which may involve risk to life, the government has the duty to produce sensible policies to ensure the nation’s security. The army can agree or disagree about these policies, but it has the responsibility to obey its political masters and not to assume that its judgment should supersede that of the elected leaders. A responsible soldier will offer advice, but will accept the decisions of the government; if the soldier cannot do so, the duty is to resign. Co-operation and trust are part and parcel of a responsible soldier’s role, in other words. Responsibility also implies that the military professional owes an obligation to offer selfless service and to care for the troops and the national interest.
The United States Military Academy summed up its concept of professionalism in its motto “Duty, Honor, Country.” The Royal Military College of Canada’s motto is “Truth, Duty, Valour,” and the present Canadian Forces’ watchwords are “Duty, Integrity, Discipline, Honour.” All these mottoes express much the same sentiments, though it is likely significant and disheartening that the Canadian formulations omitted “Country.” A Canadian military professional cannot share the public’s angst about Canadian identity and the internecine Quebec-Canada struggles. The professional’s task, the army’s task, is to serve Canada, first and last.
Military professionalism has not been a hardy perennial in Canada. Before the Great War, the concept scarcely existed within the Permanent Force, and it was scorned by the ministers and the people, both of whom believed devoutly in the Militia myth. During the 1914-18 war, professionalism gradually developed in the crucible of battle, and, by the time of the Hundred Days, the Canadian Corps was as efficient an army as existed anywhere. In the interwar years a few officers struggled to keep up with their profession, but the state did not keep its share of the bargain by providing the necessary tools to implement a sound defence policy. It took time and cost lives, therefore, before professionalism could develop again in the Second World War. By 1945, however, the First Canadian Army had become a superior and professional force, “the best little army in the world,” as Lieutenant-Colonel John English called it. The heyday of post-1945 professionalism unquestionably came in the period from the creation of NATO and the Korean War through to the mid-1960s. The army was well led, well trained, and well equipped, confident in its leaders and its prowess. But once again the government failed to keep its part of the bargain, and unification, budget cuts, personnel reductions, bilingualism, social engineering, and a failure to renew equipment gradually broke down morale and sapped professionalism. The crisis of the 1990s did not have to occur as a result of Somalia, but it was bound to happen.
The crisis affected the Land Forces Reserves too. If army professionalism has suffered, so too has the myth that the Militia can defend Canada. Left without a role, the Reserves have watched their strength dwindle to historic lows. With fewer than 15,000 army reservists in November 2001, no sensible person any longer believes that the citizenry can pick up a rifle and rally to defend the nation. The government’s bargain with the citizen soldier is less binding than that with the professional, but our politicians have failed to fulfil their obligation to provide a sensible policy and the funds to carry it out. The nation needs an Army Reserve to be the army’s footprint in communities large and small and to fill gaps in the Regular Force ranks on overseas and domestic deployments. It needs an Army Reserve to provide the units that will be necessary to make a future mobilization work, however unlikely that may seem today. The certainty is that, without a strong Reserve Force, no military mobilization can succeed.
Now Canada is across the threshold of a new millennium. The Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) is upon us and it is real. The RMA is, in National Defence Headquarters’ phrasing, “a major change in the nature of warfare brought about by the innovative application of new technologies which, combined with dramatic changes in military doctrine and operational and organizational concepts fundamentally alters the character and conduct of military operations.” The lethality of the battlefield has increased in quantum leaps, and some officers have suggested that, just as a Second World War Canadian division likely had more power than the entire Canadian Corps of 1918, so too did 4 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group of 1990 have the capacity to smash a Second World War division or even a corps. A Land Force battle group based around an infantry battalion today likely has the firepower and the intelligence-gathering and -processing capacity to defeat 4 CMBG. While unmeasurable and obviously hypothetical, the fact that senior officers believe in this capability is important in and of itself.
The presence of ever-increasing firepower on the battlefield is a reality. To achieve this level is expensive in equipment terms, demands continuous training, and requires a high standard of military professionalism. If errors are made, the result will be dreadful casualties. The carnage the United States””led coalition inflicted on the Iraqi army in 1991 during the Gulf War was horrific, but that outcome faces any army that treads on a present or a future battlefield without the capacities demanded by the Revolution in Military Affairs. The right weaponry, the right doctrine, and the right leadership are all more necessary than ever.
The most important requirement imposed by the RMA is intelligent leadership. For that reason, the Canadian Forces’ present efforts to ensure that they have an educated officer corps are critical. The problems in achieving a degreed leadership are substantial, particularly because the army has a long record as the most antiintellectual of the Canadian services. The financial costs and the time required to educate officers, pulled out for undergraduate or graduate work in the middle of their careers, are also major disincentives for presently serving officers. Still, a baccalaureate degree must be the minimum standard. Just as vital is the coming, if still unstated, requirement that a graduate degree will be a de facto qualification for officers of higher rank. Continuous learning, not something the Canadian Army has hitherto been noted for, will also become essential for all ranks, and non-commissioned members will want””and must be encouraged to acquire””certificates and degrees. The problems in achieving these goals are real, but they must be overcome if Canada is to have commanders and soldiers able to deal on an equal intellectual footing with our allies, especially the United States, which is investing heavily in military education. Welleducated soldiers will be needed if Canada’s military is to meet the requirement for “professional teams of innovative and highly skilled men and women dedicated to accomplishing the mission,” projected in the Canadian Forces’ paper “Canadian Officership in the 21st Century (Officership 2020).”
As David Bercuson has put it, “in the future, a Masters degree in Geomatics Engineering or GPS scanning may be as much a requirement for warfighting leadership as courage, charisma, an ability to think and act decisively, or even a broad right shoulder. It will not be good enough to possess the training required to lead an infantry company … unless that training has been integrated with a great deal of theoretical knowledge. The difference between a tradesperson, or a technician,” Bercuson adds, “and a professional is that the former uses tools without a comprehensive understanding of how those tools came to be, and why, whereas such knowledge is the key to the latter’s ability to adapt those tools for use in new and innovative ways or to modify them to meet unforeseen requirements.” It is not just technical knowledge that will be critical for future soldiers. Bercuson notes correctly that army leaders need to understand “the larger world around them and … to think critically about that world as a prerequisite to understand the human context of war.” In effect, officers will need a liberal arts background “because today’s societies are founded on liberal principles such as individual rights, the rule of law, the importance of safeguarding the civil society.” It is also beyond cavil that today’s soldiers reflect today’s society: relatively well educated, aware of the world, and conscious of their rights. “They cannot be driven like cattle,” Bercuson notes.
Most of the army’s efforts to educate its officers must be focused on the Regular Force. But a creative leadership would look to the universities for reservists, perhaps even by reviving the Canadian Officers Training Corps. The specialists Bercuson mentions, those holding graduate degrees in geomatics, for example, or those with advanced understanding of Somalian culture or Bosnian religions, might be COTC graduates attached to reserve units in their home towns. They could also be executives in large trucking firms or computer companies, medical specialists, or construction company executives on the rolls of the Supplementary Reserve, a paper list of men and women willing to serve in times of need that has long existed, but one that the Canadian Forces has allowed to fall into desuetude. Small nations with limited funds must be creative in marshalling their resources.
Most of the army’s efforts to train its soldiers must be focused on the regulars too. Training at anything above the battalion level has all but disappeared””and only four of the army’s twelve battle groups are trained to an operational level each year””a state of affairs that is, simply, unacceptable. However scarce, money must be found to stage regular exercises for the brigades at Valcartier, Petawawa, and Edmonton so that senior leaders, staff officers, and commanders down to section level can practise their tactics and test their capabilities. Only with such training can the army live up to the boast of Generals Baril and Jeffery that the Land Forces are more capable today than in the past.
The object in a tiny army has to be to prepare officers and non-commissioned members for higher responsibilities. The example may jar, but the Reichswehr of Germany during the 1920s is a perfect model for presentday Canada. Limited by the Versailles Treaty of 1919 to just 100,000, the Germans used their training to develop a leadership cadre with every officer made ready to take a position two or three ranks higher. A lieutenant trained to be a company or battalion commander; a corporal trained to be a sergeant-major. Unlike Weimar Germany, Canada is not barred by treaty from raising men above a fixed ceiling, but the realities of Canadian life make clear that the army will always be small in peacetime. Nothing says it cannot be efficient and effective, however, and nothing says that it cannot prepare its leaders to take on ever-higher responsibilities. Again, this demands that the government provide sufficient funds and the army leadership offer the necessary vision.
None of this will matter if the present dollar/personnel equation continues to force reductions in military strength. There have been suggestions that Canada might be able to get by with an army of ten thousand and that the new lethality of war might make this number a viable possibility””if the army has top-of-the-line equipment. Some first-class kit is in place or already on order””the Iris Tactical Command, Control and Communications System, the Athene System to keep battlefield commanders up to date, a Tactical Battlefield Command System, a Tactical Information Distribution Enhancement System, new armoured and softskinned vehicles, new clothing, and new simulators for training. The cost of this equipment is over $10 billion.
In the ideal circumstances, Canada’s army could be small but efficient and well equipped, able to fight with allies against all comers ranging from rogue states to serious land powers to terrorists. ViceAdmiral Gary Garnett, the Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff until mid-2001, forecast Canada having “lighter and more deployable digitized forces,” where the “multiplying effect of technological enablers” produces “modern forces that are smaller, yet many times more lethal.” But the ideal circumstances are unlikely to be achieved, and it is much more plausible to predict that, a decade from now, Canada will have a weak army of ten thousand or so men and women struggling to exist in a military backwater and so small as to be unable to contribute anything but token forces for allied coalitions or for the defence of Canada. Such a force will also be unable to provide the semblance of a career for anyone of talent and to act as a cadre for mobilization. The interwar Permanent Force with its 450 officers somehow produced officers of the calibre of Simonds, Burns, Foulkes, and Crerar. These men were proof that miracles can happen, but there is no reason to believe the miracle can occur twice in the same country.
What kind of army does Canada need for the world of the 21st century? As a bare minimum, this nation must be able to help defend North America, preserve domestic order if called on to do so, aid the civil power in times of emergency, participate effectively in the ongoing war against terrorism, serve the United Nations in its peace efforts, and fight alongside our allies when and wherever Western and democratic interests are at stake. To perform these roles, the army must have a minimum of 25,000 Regulars and an equal number of Reservists. It must be able to send a well-equipped vanguard brigade group of approximately 5000 all ranks overseas and to sustain it in action for at least six months. It must have a mobilization plan to provide for the sustainment (and expansion) of such a commitment for the longer term with main contingency forces. It must be able to provide wellequipped, well-trained battalionsized battle groups for UN and NATO peace-enforcement duties, and observers and specialists for other UN service. It must be able to provide superbly trained and well-equipped special forces and anti-terrorist units (such as the very small JTF-2 of under 350 personnel at present) to fight alongside other such forces. It must be capable of interoperability, able to work with our allies, and especially the United States. If we cannot, we must have no illusions: the government and people are turning the responsibility for defending Canada and its national interests over to the Americans. Almost as important, a force of this size can provide careers for its men and women and attract and hold intelligent, educated, capable officers.
It should also be clear that the air force and navy must be able to transport a brigade group to an operational theatre and support it there. It is no longer satisfactory, and never was, for the army, navy, and air force to exist as if the other services had no importance. The Chief of the Land Staff, General Mike Jeffery, put it this way to a parliamentary committee in May 2001: “We can no longer look at military operations only from a service or functional perspective. The operational environment increasingly demands all forces to work closely together and we are building that interoperability into our capability … whatever the environment, future operations must be considered as joint. That is to say conducted by all components from a common perspective.” Interoperability, in other words, also means having three services that can work together effectively.
If Canada is to have what it needs in an era of increasing global chaos, the government must recognize that it has the responsibility to provide the sinews of war. Modern equipment costs money, and so too do well-trained, well-educated soldiers. But unless one believes that war and attacks against civil society are no longer a possibility, and no one with the eyes to see the world today should think that, a Canadian Army is a national necessity. If we are to have an army, and we must, then it is a crime to send it into action without the equipment, training, and leadership it needs to fight well and prevail. This nation has done so far too often in the past, paying a high price in lives while the requisite professionalism developed.
The present state of the Canadian Forces shamefully suggests that Canadian governments are prepared to do so again in the future.
This attitude is sheer folly. An army is a national insurance policy. We pay the premiums to achieve the protection it can provide when needed. If there is any lesson in history, no one can doubt that a Canadian Army will be needed some day to fight for this nation again. Far better to have the skilled professionals on hand when that eventuality occurs than to try yet again to create them from nothing. On the new battlefield created by the Revolution in Military Affairs, nothing less will suffice.
Copyright, J.L. Granatstein, 2002, reprinted by permission of University of Toronto Press.
