Unification is a child of the 1960s, so who is looking backward?

[old medic]

Globe and Mail Opinion
By C.P. Champion 
06 May 2010
What’s in a name? Not the navy’s rightful title

Clinging to the adolescent anti-imperial nomenclature of the 1960s is the real backward option

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/whats-in-a-name-not-the-navys-rightful-title/article1558116/

Diehard adherents of the status quo claim that giving Canadian Forces Maritime Command back its rightful title – the Royal Canadian Navy – would be a step backward.

Those who oppose the traditional name venerate armed forces unification as the source of all that is best and “Canadian” about our military. But unification is a child of the 1960s, so who is looking backward?

In fact, Canadianization was happening long before unification. The RCN was christening vessels in honour of Canadian rivers, towns and native peoples in the 1940s. In 1959, several years before unification, the RCN decided to give submarines “Eskimo names which are readily pronounceable.”

Almost everyone agrees that Canada’s sea, land, and air commands should continue to be integrated. Indeed, most people agreed on that in the 1960s; the Diefenbaker government had already begun integration when the Liberals returned to power. But unification was about something else: merging three proud and historically distinct services (the Royal Canadian Navy, the Canadian Army and the Royal Canadian Air Force) into what proponents called “one mobile national task force.”

Whatever the operational merits, it was a disaster for morale. All personnel were required to wear the same neutral dark-green uniform – which remains, today, the uniform of the Land Force (the official name of the army). Unification was a deliberate attempt to purge the identity of the three services. It was only partially successful, thanks to regimental associations and veterans who stepped up to fund traditional activities from their own pockets.

Unification was a buzzword of the 1960s. It was sold to Parliament as the way to a utopian future. “A single, distinctively Canadian uniform is designed to meet the problems of a modern world – a scientific world which is growing away beyond the barriers of the past at a speed that cannot stand the slow pace of yesterday,” said Jean-Victor Allard, the general who became the unified service’s first chief of defence staff.

“Unification is on its way because it makes sense to the new generation, in or out of uniform, on the grounds of economy and efficiency in 1966 and the age of science,” said the CBC’s Ron Collister. John Matheson, a Liberal MP speaking for the government, said unification was among “the recommendations of some of the most prophetic and knowledgeable people in the military field known to our times.”

Paul Hellyer, the minister responsible, said in 1966: “We are becoming leaders in defence organization thinking, not just followers. It is something an independent Canada can do which other countries with more powerful vested interests and more powerful lobbies could not do.”

But no other country followed Canada’s “lead” by abolishing distinct navy and air force identities. They knew better.

Some of Mr. Hellyer’s legacy has come unravelled over the years. It took until 1985 to roll back the green uniform, when defence minister Bob Coates partially restored the traditional uniforms. But even that job is only half complete – many proud distinctions continue to be discouraged by an older generation fighting imaginary anti-colonial battles.

This is a generation wedded to 1960s concepts, harbouring a warmed-over anti-imperialism from decades ago. Integration was sound, but integration and unification were apples and oranges.

Lester Pearson’s government confused matters from the beginning. “We have had no definition of what the minister means when he uses the terms ‘integration’ and ‘unification,’ ” NDP House leader H.W. Herridge said in 1966. “I am not interested in semantics,” Mr. Matheson snapped. Another government spokesman, John Reid, said: “Unification or integration – call it what you will.” Apparently, the difference did not matter because the government had decided to proceed regardless.

Those fights are over. Giving Maritime Command its proper name would undo neither integration nor what’s left of unification. As historian Michael Hadley has written, “We have come a long way since then.” But clinging to the icons of the 1960s, which represent an adolescent anti-British nationalism, would be silly indeed.

C.P. Champion is the author of The Strange Demise of British Canada, to be published next month.

 

[Kat Stevens]

Too bad it's not up to the Canadian government to restore the Royal name.  It is an honorific bestowed by the sovereign.  It was discarded by Canada.  HRM may be disinclined to give it back.

 

[ModlrMike]

Too bad it's not up to the Canadian government to restore the Royal name.  It is an honorific bestowed by the sovereign.  It was discarded by Canada.  HRM may be disinclined to give it back.

Maybe so, but now would be the right time to ask.

 

[pbi]

Unification was a terrible mistake, foisted off on the country by dressing up penny-pinching in buzzwords. It subscribed to the worst of the 1950's "efficiency" thinking, as well as swallowing whole some of the snake-oil McNamara and his "whizz kids" were peddling to the US.  It should have gone on the same junkpile as the "pentomic" division and the Davy Crockett nuclear mortar. What we badly needed was  jointness: what we got was an aimless mess, with the same number of rats fighting over an even smaller cheese. The people who perpetrated Unification had very little understanding of the nature of a professional military force, or of  the realities of operations. (or, if they did, they were only too willing to ignore it and jump on the bandwagon.)  The damage done by Unification was pervasive and insidious, and IMHO has only really begun to recede in the last decade. The fact that no other significant military in the world followed our example should say something.

Cheers

 

[Dennis Ruhl]

Too bad it's not up to the Canadian government to restore the Royal name.  It is an honorific bestowed by the sovereign.  It was discarded by Canada.  HRM may be disinclined to give it back.

Should the Queen refuse a request from her Prime Minister we would have what is known as a constitutional crisis.  Her Majesty does not like constitutional crises.

Other countries, the US included, have essentially integrated their armed forces without destroying anyone's identity.  They simply use common kit and use common procedures so they can work together more or less seamlessly.  Hellyer was right about the stupidity of having to redo basic training when switching forces but it really had nothing to do with the names Canadian Army, RCN, and RCAF.

As everyone tells me and I tell them, names are just names.  Calling the airforce the RCAF won't mean losing aircraft and calling the navy the RCN won't actually lead to less ships.  However it is a nice straw man argument.

 

[Kat Stevens]

Hardly a constitutional crisis, the honour was bestowed once and discarded.  Do you usually give the same gift twice after the first one was pissed on?  I don't.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Unification was a terrible mistake, foisted off on the country by dressing up penny-pinching in buzzwords. It subscribed to the worst of the 1950's "efficiency" thinking, as well as swallowing whole some of the snake-oil McNamara and his "whizz kids" were peddling to the US.  What we needed was  jointness: what we got was an aimless mess, with the same number of rats fighting over an even smaller cheese. The damage done by Unification was pervasive and insidious, and IMHO has only begun to recede in the last decade. The fact that no other significant military in the world followed our example should say something.

Cheers

Further to that:

• We, DND and the CF (RCN, Canadian Army and RCAF as they were then), were just beginning to come to grips with the huge impact of runaway inflation on defence specific material – something which continues to be a serious problem in 2010. That’s the primary reason Diefenbaker killed the CF-105 Avro Arrow – continuing the programme would have eaten too much of the defence budget, effectively killing plans to modernize the army and most of the RCAF. It is also the primary reason Pearson told Hellyer to seek drastic means to make DND do more with less;

• Hellyer (and Group Captain Bill Lee his principle aide and PR guru) got sidetracked and appear to have come back from a major US tour/briefing with unification (which, in the US, gives you joint forces) and integration (which, in the US parlance, meant purple suiting) all back-asswards. The Americans said: “Unification is good; integration is bad.”  So Hellyer and Lee returned and integrated the CF but called it unification;

• Careers were made and destroyed by supporting or opposing Hellyer and, through him, Mike Pearson and the Liberal political machine that had, deep, deep hooks into the political centre in Ottawa (Privy Council Office, Finance, Treasury and, in those days, Foreign Affairs);

• Trudeau came along and took the focus off “misorganization” by making deep, drastic even deadly cuts in the combat strength of the CF;

• Mulroney promised a lot and delivered next to nothing;

• Chrétien cut more and more and more;

• It is only under Martin and Harper that the DND/CF leadership and senior management have been able to consider organization. 

 

[Old Sweat]

Unification was a terrible mistake, foisted off on the country by dressing up penny-pinching in buzzwords. It subscribed to the worst of the 1950's "efficiency" thinking, as well as swallowing whole some of the snake-oil McNamara and his "whizz kids" were peddling to the US.  What we needed was  jointness: what we got was an aimless mess, with the same number of rats fighting over an even smaller cheese. The damage done by Unification was pervasive and insidious, and IMHO has only begun to recede in the last decade. The fact that no other significant military in the world followed our example should say something.

Cheers

As one who lived through it, and its dreary decades of aftermath, you have understated the case. No one would have seriously opposed integration of the command structure and the logistics and administrative organizations. In fact we had already amalgamated the medical system, and the postal and dental services were provided by the army for all three services. What we got was a lowest common denominator driven organization which seemed quite incapable of rational decision making. Mind you, the MND may not have had too firm a grip on the reins; check his current firm belief in UFOs and Alien visitations. Back then he had hitched his wagon to the equally dubious science of management as the cure for all that ailed the modern military.

 

[jollyjacktar]

• Hellyer (and Group Captain Bill Lee his principle aide and PR guru) got sidetracked and appear to have come back from a major US tour/briefing with unification (which, in the US, gives you joint forces) and integration (which, in the US parlance, meant purple suiting) all back-asswards. The Americans said: “Unification is good; integration is bad.”  So Hellyer and Lee returned and integrated the CF but called it unification;

And this came from a man who believes Aliens have come here and gave us their technology from crashed UFO's and that Stephen Hawking is full of BS.  A nutcase now and then IMHO.  Indeed, the world did not copy our institutional suicide.  My Dad always agreed with Old Sweat, in that at NDHQ level it made sense but not to go whole hog.

 

[pbi]

Hellyer was right about the stupidity of having to redo basic training when switching forces but it really had nothing to do with the names Canadian Army, RCN, and RCAF.

And herein lay one of the many poison pills of Unification, dressed up with a shiny coat of "rationalism".  By going to a single basic training system, based on a spurious argument of "efficiency" (so often the enemy of "effectiveness") we were hellbound for the lowest common denominator, which we got.

One of the most laughable (and ill-informed) arguments advanced by the defenders of Unification is that is was based on the USMC.  Not quite. Rather, I would say, it was based on a very superficial impression of how the Marine system works. It utterly ignored the history of the evolution of the Marine Corps, or its overwhelming combat-driven ethos of "Every Marine a rifleman". The Marines were not an artificial combination of three services smashed together  in a hurry for financial and political expediency: they evolved over two centuries from companies of shipboard soldiers: they were always, always, an Infantry-centric force. The other branches of the Marines evolved naturally over  time to meet the needs of the Corps: thus they sprang from the same ethos, heritage and sense of identity. If you ask a Marine fighter pilot or AH pilot or tanker or logistician, they will all tell you that their job is the direct support of that Marine out at the sharp end. Unification tried to sell the idea that this was its end product: anybody who has served over the last three decades (a few of us on these boards) can attest that this was absolute BS.

Our system, because it was based in ignorance, misunderstanding and ulterior motives, actually produced the opposite: a military whose support personnel were trained and socialized as technicians first and soldiers, sailors or airmen second. The fact that so many support people adapted as well as they did to the demands of going from an airbase to an infantry battalion is a credit to them personally, not the flawed system. A system for training recruits, officer candidates and support personnel that did not answer to any of the primary force generators or any operational commander: a body without a head. And, despite the glitz and "tri-service" rhetoric, a military that was arguably far less capable of true joint operations that it had been during WWII.  We're still not there, although we've made some progress.

Unification should be recognized for what it was: failed experiment that, in good Canadian form, was "made to work". As we now officially use the terms Army, Navy and Airforce on a regular basis, and our recent wartime experiences have reminded us that everyone who serves in the Army must be a soldier first and a support person second, it's time we enacted the legislation to sweep away the remaining vestiges of this mess, and turn instead to a joint force model such as we see in the US or UK.

Cheers

 

[Old Sweat]

PBI

You are ruining my afternoon by causing flashbacks. The training system was based on cutting non-required training as an economy measure disguised as rationalization. Thus, for the first few years there was no, repeat no weapons training taught in the recruit schools. Basic training was no more than six or seven weeks long, and it took the FLQ crisis to get training on the C1 rifle into the course. Treatment of battle casualties was dropped and replaced by the St John's Ambulance First Aid package as industrial accidents were more likely that wounds in combat. And on and on it went. The number of trades were chopped and chopped because the Minister had stated the various three service trades could be reduced to 100. The army  - oops, excuse me, the land element - was directed to stop training two up (an operational requirement) because it was CF policy to train only for the next job. The artillery very nearly lost our Instructor in Gunnery and Assistant Instructor in Gunnery course because the air element commander of Training Command could not or would not accept that there was any difference between training officers and NCMs in one of the combat arms and teaching pipeline pilots to fly. He also suggested within my hearing that in his opinion the army had too many different weapons and this complicated training, as well as making it too long.

In the initial months of attempts to integrate the logistics world, a senior air element officer said that in his opinion there was no need for service battalions, as base technical services could do it better from fixed locations. This included, from his point of view, 4 CMBG in the event of war.

The ignorance level (or complicity for career purposes) of some officers of all three former services was appaling. These people went blissfully on, ruining what had been three extremely effective little fighting forces with real operational focus.

At least you were expected/allowed to drink in those days. I sometimes wish I would wake up back in my bed in the Brownfield Barracks Officers Quarters in Camp Gagetown in 1963 and realize it all has been a terrible nightmare caused by combining raw oysters and Moosehead Beer at Happy Hour.

 

[pbi]

Old Sweat: these days, I find getting drunk makes things worse, not better.

What's really amazing is how shamelessly the defenders of this misbegotten system could trot out their silly, superficial arguments, as though their listeners were idiots.  Many that I have heard over the years, ad nauseam, have reflected a mentality similar to the air force flag officer who made the silly comment about service battalions.

At least we have evolved a good deal: the distinct uniforms, the return  of Garrisons and Wings instead of the amorphous "CFB", and the ability to actually use the words "Army", "Navy" or "Air Force" in official correspondence (I remember quite clearly when we couldn"t...): each perhaps a small thing in itself, but cumulative.

The whole thing reflected a very 1950's "efficiency expert" utilitarianism that didn't really understand the human side of  a military force. Basic training, for example, is only partly about teaching physical skills or technical knowledge. More importantly, it's about taking somebody who thinks  " I am a civilian"  and shaping them into somebody who believes " I am a soldier/sailor/airman". Thus the argument about going to a single basic training might make eminent sense from a utilitarian, rationalist, process-oriented point of view, while from the "stewardship of the profession" point of view it was little short of corrosive.

I hope I live to see the back of it.

Cheers

 

[Old Sweat]

Old Sweat: these days, I find getting drunk makes things worse, not better.

What's really amazing is how shamelessly the defenders of this misbegotten system could trot out their silly, superficial arguments, as though their listeners were idiots.  Many that I have heard over the years, ad nauseam, have reflected a mentality similar to the air force flag officer who made the silly comment about service battalions.

At least we have evolved a good deal: the distinct uniforms, the return  of Garrisons and Wings instead of the amorphous "CFB", and the ability to actually use the words "Army", "Navy" or "Air Force" in official correspondence (I remember quite clearly when we couldn"t...): each perhaps a small thing in itself, but cumulative.

The whole thing reflected a very 1950's "efficiency expert" utilitarianism that didn't really understand the human side of  a military force. Basic training, for example, is only partly about teaching physical skills or technical knowledge. More importantly, it's about taking somebody who thinks  " I am a civilian"  and shaping them into somebody who believes " I am a soldier/sailor/airman". Thus the argument about going to a single basic training might make eminent sense from a utilitarian, rationalist, process-oriented point of view, while from the "stewardship of the profession" point of view it was little short of corrosive.

I hope I live to see the back of it.

Cheers

As do I.

For all its faults, if it had delivered the expected efficiencies I would have embraced it wholeheartedly. Instead, it was a miserable failure, like Custer's double envelopment at the Little Big Horn. It delivered none of its promises except savings to the Treasury, while almost destroying the profession I love. Fortunately through it all, things like officers going to the back of the meal line survived! I shudder at the concept of officers eating first because they are most important, and thus it is essential to keep them well nourished. (One of the little green people who ravished us would have applauded that bit of preverted logic.)

Sorry for the hijack. Bring back the service titles.

 

[rifleman]

I'd prefer to see some of the issues raised fixed than waste anymore time and energy on changing names and looking different.

:2c:

 

[Edward Campbell]

The big issues were cultural, as alluded to by Old Sweat and pbi.

There were, and still are, all manner of efficiencies that could, still can, be achieved by some organizational and management changes but the integrators went much, much father - they attacked and damaged the very fibre of naval and military service. Operations and operational requirements and the military operational ethos were forced into last place, behind a plethora of flavour of the month management techniques and organizational experiments.

Parts of the three services managed to retain their own operational ethos - pilots remained pilots, with all that entails, etc - but out support services suffered, and continue to suffer, mightily. And to the degree that their performance was degraded then our overall operational capability was reduced concomitantly.

 

[a_majoor]

Frankly, the CF is still a lab full of ill concieved experiments, from external forces like reporting to Parliament on how well we are recruiting people of different ethic backgrounds or SHARP training to internal initiatives like "Transformation" which has given us a new layer of .com headquarters without managing to streamline or eliminate any of the existing layers of headquarters....

If we want efficiency we need to bulldoze the existing structures of headquarters etc. and replace it with a flat management structure like WalMart (along with their internal logistic and HR tools) , but as noted the "culture" of WalMart would be quite alien to a military force. ("peacekeeping associates to the Congo please").

I'm not sure how this sort of structure could be grown organically from the existing "sharp end" as opposed to being imposed from above, but it seems to me the Marines had it right. Maybe the influx of Afghan veterans moving into the various staffs as their careers progress will have a positive effect.

 

[rifleman]

If we want efficiency we need to bulldoze the existing structures of headquarters etc. and replace it with a flat management structure like WalMart (along with their internal logistic and HR tools) , but as noted the "culture" of WalMart would be quite alien to a military force. ("peacekeeping associates to the Congo please").

Unfortunately that would only cause another "Greeter HQ" and all the advisors required resulting in one more task for units to accomplish ;D

 

[Edward Campbell]

One, but only one of the problems that faces the CF today, but which has its roots in the 1950s and ‘60s – the times of Paul T Hellyer –is the relationship of the soldier to society. What can and should each expect of the other?

In the late 1950s the noted political scientist Samuel P Huntington fuelled the current debate with his seminal work, The Soldier and the State. Huntington argued for “objective” civilian control of the military which was made possible by a highly professional military; essentially, the more professional the military the easier it is to control “objectively.” Huntington noted that Western militaries, on the one hand, and Western states and societies, on the other, diverge in their cultures. Societies (and states) were and remain essentially liberal – focused on the rights and productivity of individuals, while militaries are, perhaps increasingly, conservative – concerned with the collective. There was, and still is, a culture war between soldiers and the societies they serve. Huntington reckoned it (the clash of cultures) was harmless, perhaps even healthy and, given highly professional militaries and “objective” bureaucracies and governments/political institutions, easily managed.

(Please not that there is no correlation between liberal <-> conservative and political left <-> political right; liberal ≠ left and conservative ≠ right. There are many, many people, especially in the USA, who believe liberal = left etc but they, despite their PhDs and positions at the top of the media and blogosphere, are wrong, very wrong. )

Hellyer and his integration/unification project were, relatively, unconcerned with the culture wars but, in that, they were offside because society, at large, and Pierre Trudeau, in particular, were deeply invested in the issue. Trudeau replaced "objective" management with a highly "subjective" variant and management of defence was amongst the files most subjectively managed during his tenure. 

DND and the CF was seen by social activists as a vital tool in “moving” government – the rationale was, “If the CF are on board then no one else will have an excuse not to cooperate.” Some activists were, but should not have been, surprised by the relative ‘enthusiasm’ with which the CF embraced social change  – be it official languages, gender equality or gay rights. In fact the highly professional CF took, and still takes, great pride in being subservient to the civil power, to political control. If the government of the day says, “get on with it,” then the CF does just that, with vigor.

Some social change was necessary and desirable – for the whole country, including the CF.

But some changes, particularly in attitudes or the military culture were made ”en passant”, almost without any rationale simply because they could be made and because they seemed to make the military more reflective of the society it serves – even though no one has ever established that “reflecting society” is desirable or even necessary.

It appears to me that most social scientists (I hate that term) agree that most attitudinal and cultural issues can be measured on the famous bell curve.

Most Canadians and most Canadian socio-cultural values and attitudes are, probably, distributed pretty much as predicted under that curve. But it is not clear that good, much less the best, soldiers are found at or near the middle of the curve. Some observers have suggested, over the years, that most of the career, professional CF come from under the “shoulders” of the bell curve – not from the extreme ends but not from the middle, either. If that is the case, and my personal observations over about a half century (some of it spent ‘observing’ from retirement) suggest that it is, then some (many? most?) of the socio-cultural changes imposed on the CF since, say, 1965, have had deleterious effects and may need to be reconsidered.

Thus, in my opinion, Paul Hellyer and his integration/unification exercise, which did considerable damage to our national defence capabilities, is not the only, perhaps not even the main bête noir; the integration/unification exercise was coincidental with an era of social change and made it easier for activists to impose ‘foreign,’ liberal-individualistic, socio-cultural values on a previously healthily conservative military society. Some of the problem to which Old Sweat and pbi refer were not caused by Mr. Hellyer’s policy vandalism, but they were made easier by the C2 chaos that Helllyer and his minions and supporters created.

The ‘solution,’ such as there might be one, rests, I believe, on something that has been missing from Canadian politics and society for about 45 years: respect for the military.

Respect does not equal affection, yellow ribbons or red T-shirts. Respect is rooted in an understanding of why we need and have a military and why it needs to have its own norms and standards. I think Canadians began to lose ‘contact’ with the whys and wherefores of the military in 1960 – ten years after Korea and 15 years after the 2nd World War – when the nihilistic doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) became popular (see e.g. SLBMs and Robert McNamara, again, which/who made MAD possible and popular) replaced the popularly comprehensible trip wire and massive retaliation strategies. Nuclear fear replaced an understanding of what the Canadian and allied military forces were doing and why they were doing it. The fear made people ignore, even denigrate their own military forces – “we” became part of the problem, not part of the solution. Of course popular reaction to Viet Nam and Trudeau’s anti-nationalist leadership made matters worse and worse.

Two more cents …


Edit: typo

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

If we want efficiency we need to bulldoze the existing structures of headquarters etc. and replace it with a flat management structure like WalMart (along with their internal logistic and HR tools) , but as noted the "culture" of WalMart would be quite alien to a military force. ("peacekeeping associates to the Congo please").

This is the kind of thinking that got us into the mess of unification in the first place.  What works for WalMart may well not be appropriate for the military.

 

[ArmyRick]

Unification seem like a good intention with poor results. The road to hell is paved with good intentions...