Report of the RMC Board of Governors By the Withers' Study Group
Balanced Excellence Leading Canada's Armed Forces In The New Millenium
4500-240 (ADM (HR-Mil))
24 September 1998
Cross-reference p. 7 of 63 of official printed copy of report
Canadian Forces officers will lead soldiers, sailors and airmen in a very different environment in the 21st Century than has been the case since 1945. Professional, intellectual, technical and ethical demands, placed on military officers by the policies, strategic paradigms, doctrine and force structure of the Cold War have all changed to one degree or another.
The Cold War caused a protracted hiatus in debate on defence policy in Canada. The Canadian public long ago became bored of arcane nuclear theories and has been reluctant to challenge the fiscal and political burdens imposed by the perceived need to deter superpower confrontation. Now, for the first time in 35 years, the Canadian public expresses genuine interest in defence issues. Influenced by an ubiquitous media, and free of direct threat to their well being, Canadians demand a full accounting of proposed deployments on ambiguous and dangerous missions.
The Canadian public, to be sure, continues to assign higher priority to issues such as unemployment, the deficit, health care and national unity, than to military affairs. At the same time Canadians want to be activists on the world stage. They are proud of our accomplishments in humanitarian efforts, international economic competition and, when necessary, military endeavours. All concerned would be wise to remember that the public's understanding of the concepts of responsibility, accountability, ethical behaviour and professional performance is reasonably well developed. These concepts, long applied to government and the business community, are now fully extended to the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces.
Leaders henceforth will need to be acutely sensitive to the society they represent, capable of sophisticated explanation for the necessary defence effort and professionally capable of outstanding performance while conducting operations. The highest professional and personal qualities, together with exemplary leadership skills are required both to lead highly trained elements of the CF and to satisfy public demands for world class service to country.
Internationally, the forces of globalisation and fragmentation have created a security environment of unprecedented complexity and uncertainty. Professor James Roseneau of Princeton University has observed that:
"Global life may have entered a period of turbulence the like of which it has not experienced since major shifts in all dimensions of world politics culminated in the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648".
The Canadian Government clearly recognised this new state of affairs. In its recent statement, Canada in the World, it concludes that the "foundation that supported security policy in the past has eroded; the old external military threat posed by the confrontation of superpowers has all but gone; ideology and religion do not unify; nor in many countries is ethnic identity held in common". The brief moment of euphoria after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when many hoped for a dawn of extended peace and prosperity, had quickly dissipated. A new sense of realism has returned; exemplified in the The Carnegie Corporation's Preventing Deadly Conflict (1997), which begins with the premise that the world has a long way to go before we can consign large scale deadly conflict to history.
It is certainly true that inter-state conflict has abated for the time being. However, intra-state conflict has been on the rise since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since 1989 over four million people have been killed in violent conflict. At the end of 1997 there was significant conflict in over two dozen locations around the globe. These conflicts resulted in the creation of over 35 million refugees and internal displaced persons (IDPs) around the world.
The forces of fragmentation; political, economic, ethical and religious have generated these wars, while the forces of globalisation have created a global awareness of their consequences and impact. In addition, globalisation has created publics conscious of intimate interdependencies and governments increasingly aware of the threat which conflict and instability pose for international security and national well being.
Today there are almost 200 sovereign nation states in the world. However, the legitimacy of many of these governments is seriously challenged by their indigenous populations. There are somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 "nations" or ethnic groups uneasily encompassed by today's increasingly porous national boundaries. In many cases, political grievances are severely exacerbated by economic deprivation. Presently the 50 poorest countries, home to 20% of the world's population, now account for less than 2% of global income. Their share continues to decrease in a world in which 35,000 transnational corporations conduct business, and over one trillion dollars changes hands everyday in the global marketplace. As the French international specialist, Pierre Dumas points out in The Rosy Future of War; "wars today are caused not by the strengths of states but by their weaknesses".
The situation is made worse by population trends. Demographers now predict that world population will increase by over 50% before the year 2050, to a total of 8 billion people. Population growth in the industrialised north is low; therefore, most of the increase will occur in countries where the state structures are already being undermined by the processes of globalisation and fragmentation.
Governments today, as they have historically, vigorously debate if, when, and where they will commit themselves militarily beyond their borders. However, now there is growing pressure to do so, not only when their territorial or economic security is directly threatened, but also in response to massive human rights violations and/or humanitarian disasters. These are viewed not only as unacceptable affronts to civility and humanity but also for the long term threats to national security which they frequently pose. Historical inhibitions against violating domestic jurisdictions and state sovereignty no longer preclude preventive or pre-emptive action.
Many governments provide ample evidence that they agree with the Commission on Global Governance which argued that:
"When people are subjected to massive suffering and disasters, there is a need to weigh a state's right of autonomy against its people's rights to security. Recent history shows that extreme circumstances can arise within countries when the security of people is so extensively imperilled that external collective action under international law becomes justified."
Canada emerged from the Second World War committed to the concept of collective security. The disappointing development of the Cold War soon convinced Canadian leaders that collective defence measures such as NATO and NORAD would also be required for the foreseeable future. However, Canada's middle power status then and her relatively modest status in today's G-7 (G-8 with Russia) means that reliance on traditional balance of power politics and unrestrained use of military force is never in the national interest. International law, stable economic structures and international regimes covering such varied matters as the environment, arms control and human rights are all essential to Canadian well being on the global stage. In short, multilateralism has been a cornerstone of Canadian foreign policy since 1945.
Canadian policy makers remain convinced, moreover, that the promotion of global peace as a key to protecting Canadian security remains a central element of foreign policy. In the future this new environment will demand a broadening of the focus of security policy from its narrow orientation of managing state-to-state relationships, to one that recognises the importance of the individual rights and societal and economic forces for our shared security. Collective security and multilateralism remain discernible elements of a broad conception of common or co-operative security.
In the strategic context evolving out of the end of the Cold War, Canada's foreign policy objectives were concisely stated in the 1995 Governmental Statement, Canada in the World. These are:
- the promotion of prosperity and employment;
- the protection of our security, within a stable global framework;
- the projection of Canadian values and cultures.
This policy statement explicitly outlined Canadian interests not only in Europe and the Commonwealth, but also our rapidly growing ties with the Asian Pacific region, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. Canada's political and economic aspirations are clearly global although its military reach is not. Nonetheless, The Department of National Defence can expect to be continually called upon to act in support of national goals abroad.
Consequently, policy makers will continue to commit armed force to a wide range of operations in pursuit of Canada's security. These will normally be under the direct authority of the UN or as part of "coalitions of the willing". Such operations however, will differ significantly from traditional roles such as our NATO experience to 1989 and UN Peacekeeping to 1988.
The experience since the end of the Cold War has been of military operations to bring about conditions for the achievement of more complex and subtle political objectives. The military requirements have been more demanding, calling for larger numbers of more capable and flexible forces. As Berel Rodal points out in The Somalia Experience in Strategic Perspective, "increasingly, situations involve operations which are neither war nor peacekeeping, but which combine elements of both, and which have to do with asserting and protecting an international order, geared to broadened applications of national interests and human rights".
Such operations have not negated the possibility of conventional warfare, whose potential outbreak, however remote, must continue to be monitored. Its early strategic detection will generate large scale operational and tactical preparations. In the meantime, and in most likely scenarios, mid to long term planning will focus on "operations short of war". These missions are often nearly indistinguishable from war at the tactical and even operational levels.
The new strategic setting is made substantially more challenging by the emergence of what many knowledgeable observers are calling a revolution in military affairs (RMA). The post-industrial transition from the machine age to the information age is transforming the nature of war. The world of information based warfare is a world where logic bombs, computer viruses, Trojan horses, precision guided munitions, stealth designs, radio-electronic combat systems, new techniques for intelligence gathering and deception, micro-wave weapons, space-based weapons and robotic warfare are being designed, developed and deployed.
The new warfare is altering conventional conceptions of offence and defence and irrevocably blurring the distinction between war and peace, conflict and comity. These techniques and systems are applied, as in the past, in state to state confrontations such as the UN Coalition-Iraq conflict. They are, however, also applicable to intra-state conflict, terrorist programs and a variety of non-state organisations pursuing geopolitical-economic objectives.
Operations taking place in this new strategic setting create enormous challenges in the education and training of future officers for the Canadian Forces. In addition to the obvious requirement for exceptional technical competence, CF officers will need to understand international affairs, the formulation of Canadian foreign policy, a diversity of cultures in every major region of the world, evolving international organisations, international law and the growing number of arms control and human rights initiatives around the world.
CF officers now require a unique combination of techno-scientific and politico-military knowledge to effectively prosecute government policy in an uncertain, complex international system.