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I often enjoy Peter Worthington columns - I hope you enjoy this one:
The case for a bigger army
By PETER WORTHINGTON -- Toronto Sun
A recent report in the National Post quoted Maj.-Gen. Lew MacKenzie bewailing the depleted state of the Canadian military and noting that increasingly it is unable to meet combat roles.
He was responding to an observation by Britain‘s top soldier, Gen. Sir Charles Guthrie, who says too many "humanitarian" roles have reduced the British Army‘s capabilities to fight a real war - which is the prime purpose of the military, if the need arises.
Maintaining a strong military is a form of insurance against war, deterring any surprise attack. Military preparedness led to "peace" and an uneasy balance of power when the Soviet Union was waging the Cold War. This is conveniently ignored by a succession of myopic Canadian governments which regard the military as a way to save money by cutting personnel, training and equipment while expanding its roles.
MacKenzie and Guthrie are both right, but nothing is likely to change. The Post quoted retired Gen. MacKenzie - our most experienced peacekeeping soldier - as saying Canada had only about 16,000 effective combat soldiers.
I doubt MacKenzie intended to say this. Perhaps the reporter misheard. With an army of some 20,000 soldiers - nine under-strength infantry battalions and three depleted armoured regiments, plus minimum artillery - it‘s unlikely we have more than 7,000 "fighting" troops. We can‘t even maintain one brigade (5,000 troops) in action.
In World War II, the ratio of actual combat troops to support troops in our army was something like 20:1. The Soviet Red Army was around 12:1, while the Chinese in Korea were 6:1. So the idea that 16,000 (80%) of Canada‘s puny 20,000-member army is "combat effective" is wishful thinking.
Politicians tend to ignore what they don‘t want to hear - like the need for military training in order to be effective. Instead, we cut training to save costs, restrict flying to save fuel, keep ships in drydock to save expenses, limit firing range time to save ammunition costs, risk lives in obsolete helicopters to save buying new ones, barter for cheap equipment instead of buying the best. And so on.
Instead of command exercises and field training, our troops are resting up or preparing for the next UN or NATO mission.
When he was deputy commander for operations in Bosnia, Britain‘s Lt.-Gen. Sir Hew Pike, remarked the Canadian military had "surrendered any claim to be a war-fighting force ... is now really just a peacekeeping force." In order to win wars "you must allow us (the military) to generate a sense of duty, self-sacrifice and selflessness and to discriminate, where necessary, between men and women."
Women combat troops
This was disputed by the government and the Department of National Defence, whose policy was to have women comprise 25% of combat troops. DND denies this is a "quota." Now DND wants women in submarines.
U.S. military historian T.R. Ferrenbach (This Kind of War), has noted that democracies are best at fighting "holy wars" when the nation‘s survival is at stake, but lousy at maintaining a military to pursue national interests. In order to effectively defend the human rights and liberties of the nation, an army must forgo some democratic rights and liberties.
By necessity, the military is disciplined and authoritarian. It requires that members put their lives at risk in the name of duty. The military is not a debating society when it comes to orders - the complaint of a French general during Algeria‘s war for independence.
In NATO‘s recent air war against Yugoslavia, our side was not prepared to accept casualties, with the result that one perceived oppressor was replaced by another oppressor with fewer restraints and less civility. Mostly civilians were victims.
The irony today is that democracies are going to need armies more than they did in the Cold War. The U.S. saved the civilized world from Soviet tyranny between 1950 and 1990, but as the likelihood of World War III recedes into the realm of the inconceivable, countries like Canada need larger, not smaller, armies capable of imposing peace on renegade parts of the world on behalf of the UN.
The zenith of Canada‘s peacekeeping efforts were the years when we had an army that was essentially preparing for World War III. The analogy in those days was that a firehose could be turned down to water the garden, but a garden hose couldn‘t be turned up to put out a fire.
There you have it. Canada has made its army into a garden hose, complete with a recruiting policy designed to limit our capacity to fight a war.
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The case for a bigger army
By PETER WORTHINGTON -- Toronto Sun
A recent report in the National Post quoted Maj.-Gen. Lew MacKenzie bewailing the depleted state of the Canadian military and noting that increasingly it is unable to meet combat roles.
He was responding to an observation by Britain‘s top soldier, Gen. Sir Charles Guthrie, who says too many "humanitarian" roles have reduced the British Army‘s capabilities to fight a real war - which is the prime purpose of the military, if the need arises.
Maintaining a strong military is a form of insurance against war, deterring any surprise attack. Military preparedness led to "peace" and an uneasy balance of power when the Soviet Union was waging the Cold War. This is conveniently ignored by a succession of myopic Canadian governments which regard the military as a way to save money by cutting personnel, training and equipment while expanding its roles.
MacKenzie and Guthrie are both right, but nothing is likely to change. The Post quoted retired Gen. MacKenzie - our most experienced peacekeeping soldier - as saying Canada had only about 16,000 effective combat soldiers.
I doubt MacKenzie intended to say this. Perhaps the reporter misheard. With an army of some 20,000 soldiers - nine under-strength infantry battalions and three depleted armoured regiments, plus minimum artillery - it‘s unlikely we have more than 7,000 "fighting" troops. We can‘t even maintain one brigade (5,000 troops) in action.
In World War II, the ratio of actual combat troops to support troops in our army was something like 20:1. The Soviet Red Army was around 12:1, while the Chinese in Korea were 6:1. So the idea that 16,000 (80%) of Canada‘s puny 20,000-member army is "combat effective" is wishful thinking.
Politicians tend to ignore what they don‘t want to hear - like the need for military training in order to be effective. Instead, we cut training to save costs, restrict flying to save fuel, keep ships in drydock to save expenses, limit firing range time to save ammunition costs, risk lives in obsolete helicopters to save buying new ones, barter for cheap equipment instead of buying the best. And so on.
Instead of command exercises and field training, our troops are resting up or preparing for the next UN or NATO mission.
When he was deputy commander for operations in Bosnia, Britain‘s Lt.-Gen. Sir Hew Pike, remarked the Canadian military had "surrendered any claim to be a war-fighting force ... is now really just a peacekeeping force." In order to win wars "you must allow us (the military) to generate a sense of duty, self-sacrifice and selflessness and to discriminate, where necessary, between men and women."
Women combat troops
This was disputed by the government and the Department of National Defence, whose policy was to have women comprise 25% of combat troops. DND denies this is a "quota." Now DND wants women in submarines.
U.S. military historian T.R. Ferrenbach (This Kind of War), has noted that democracies are best at fighting "holy wars" when the nation‘s survival is at stake, but lousy at maintaining a military to pursue national interests. In order to effectively defend the human rights and liberties of the nation, an army must forgo some democratic rights and liberties.
By necessity, the military is disciplined and authoritarian. It requires that members put their lives at risk in the name of duty. The military is not a debating society when it comes to orders - the complaint of a French general during Algeria‘s war for independence.
In NATO‘s recent air war against Yugoslavia, our side was not prepared to accept casualties, with the result that one perceived oppressor was replaced by another oppressor with fewer restraints and less civility. Mostly civilians were victims.
The irony today is that democracies are going to need armies more than they did in the Cold War. The U.S. saved the civilized world from Soviet tyranny between 1950 and 1990, but as the likelihood of World War III recedes into the realm of the inconceivable, countries like Canada need larger, not smaller, armies capable of imposing peace on renegade parts of the world on behalf of the UN.
The zenith of Canada‘s peacekeeping efforts were the years when we had an army that was essentially preparing for World War III. The analogy in those days was that a firehose could be turned down to water the garden, but a garden hose couldn‘t be turned up to put out a fire.
There you have it. Canada has made its army into a garden hose, complete with a recruiting policy designed to limit our capacity to fight a war.
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