Opinion: Afghan war has altered Canada’s values
By Paul Robinson, The Ottawa Citizen
July 5, 2011
“Our country is so much better because of your efforts,” Defence Minister Peter MacKay told Canadian troops in Kandahar in a speech marking the coming end of the combat mission in Afghanistan. As the mission draws to a close, commentators are lining up to assess its success or failure, measured in terms of its effect on Afghanistan. But it is worth considering also what effect the Afghan campaign has had at home in Canada.
The most obvious impact has been the return of a militarism probably not seen in Canada in peacetime since before the First World War. The government’s announcement earlier this year that the military should be present at future citizenship ceremonies because the armed forces are one of Canada’s most notable institutions typifies the new climate of opinion. One might imagine that the ghost of Sam Hughes had returned to manage our military affairs a second time. The days when Canada prided itself on an unguarded border and a peaceful reputation seem far away.
“You are the best citizens of our country,” MacKay told the troops in Kandahar, tossing democratic equality to the wind. This is, of course, nonsense; but it is pernicious nonsense too. Such militarism has highly undesirable consequences.
First, it helps to legitimize the waging of war and to militarize foreign policy. In two votes on the war in Libya, after a minimum of discussion (less than one hour the first time around), Canada’s Parliament mustered all of one vote of dissent. This is both because war has become acceptable in a manner which would have been inconceivable a few years ago and because it has become near impossible to criticize any aspect of military operations without incurring shrieks of “Support the Troops.” Far from being something to avoid, war has become almost the option of first resort.
Second, the elevation of the military into a moral elite of super-citizens has damaged the structure of civil-military relations. Power in the Department of National Defence (DND) seems to have shifted from the hands of civilians into those of the generals. At the same time, power appears to have moved from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) into the hands of DND. Democratic control of the military has suffered as a result. When Peter MacKay is, as so often, praised for being popular with the troops, this is meant to imply that he is therefore a good defence minister. In fact this may merely show that he is a weak defence minister, unable or unwilling to stand up to the military and prone to grant its every wish. Armed forces have bureaucratic interests in the same way as every other organization, and firm control is needed to hold them in check, even if this means becoming unpopular.
The decision to purchase F-35 fighter planes is a case in point. F-35s are exactly the sort of toy generals always love; given a choice, they will always opt for the fanciest, newest, most expensive bit of equipment. It is the job of the civilian side of DND to restrain them. With the generals largely in control, this does not happen and money is spent badly.
The distorting pull of DND is also warping spending priorities elsewhere in government. Foreign aid, for instance, has been increasingly militarized, channelled away from long-term development, which might do the recipient countries some lasting good, and into short-term projects in war zones which are designed to support military operations — with, it must be said, a prominent lack of success.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower once remarked that “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” Contrary to much popular opinion, in the 20 years since the end of the Cold War, the world has become a dramatically safer place. The magnitude of wars worldwide has declined by 60 per cent, and there are few significant threats to Canadian security. We have an opportunity finally to avoid the problem Eisenhower identified and turn our resources to peaceful tasks.
However mythological Canada’s earlier peacekeeping image may have been, it was at least a noble myth to aspire to. The crass spectacle of the Canadian Foreign Minister, John Baird, writing a message on a bomb is, by contrast, shameful. Regardless of what our war in Afghanistan may have done for Afghans, it has eroded our civilized instincts. It has not left Canada a better place.
Paul Robinson is a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, and the author of Military Honour in the Conduct of War: From Ancient Greece to Iraq. He has served as an officer in both the British and Canadian armies.
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