Does Canada need a Military?

[Old Sweat]

At the risk of having my membership in cynics anonymous revealed, we were stuck in the trap created by commitment based planning. Thus, if the bill for all the tasks we had been given were added up, it exceeded the number of available troops and equipment by quite a large amount. Circa 1989-1990 the decision was made to adopt capability based planning (much easier said than done) and that in turn led to a major reduction in tasks. (The end of the cold war certainly helped.) This was not exclusively an army 'problem,' but we were the horrible example of allowing the can do attitude to be carried well past the ridiculous, let alone the sublime.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

By that definition would 4CMBG also be a non-essential task in that it never fired a shot in anger.  It was there to prevent the Russians invading.  The Russians never invaded. Therefore it was unnecessary. 

The CAST brigade fell into the same form of deterrence with the additional problem for the Norwegians, who are the only NATO country to actually share a border with Russia.  Their border is only 100 km by land from Murmansk - home of Russia's North Atlantic/Arctic fleet and its ICBM subs.  The Norwegians thought having a permanent NATO garrison in Norway might be unduly provocative.  I believe the Russians concurred.

The Norwegian's other border, the long one, was occupied by neutral Sweden.  The best they could hope for was that escalation of tensions would happen slowly enough to allow NATO to demonstrate solidarity by deploying troops and the Russians would take their time thinking about consequences....... Then again the Russians might have considered all of that in advance. That being the case, I would guess "more" always equals "better"...?

It all makes sense, but I think the question of deterrence is certainly an intangible - ie would the Russians be more frightened of 13 Canadian battalions than 10? I suppose the question goes deeper than just the mere number of troops deployed to questions of national will and what in fact the numbers represented aside from combat power. That being the case, I guess "more" always equals "better"?

 

[Kirkhill]

Michael, I think Old Sweat has it right, as might be expected from someone who lived through it.

Canada committed units, not troops, so that it could stick Flags into Mapboards.  This kept Canada's profile high, demonstrated verbally an intent but given a lack of troops to supply capability probably didn't give our allies a warm and fuzzy feeling that our acts would match our words.

But we got invited to a lot of meetings and got to join a lot of clubs so it couldn't have been all bad.  Good business for the canape vendors.

 

[Loachman]

And we met that commitment with 4 CMBG in West Germany.  I think our victory in the Cold War came more from Ronald Reagan's sense of humour than Canada's standing army in Europe.  "We start the bombing in five minutes" probably said a lot more to the die-hard Commies than our results in the Canadian Army Trophy competitions.

Don't discount the value that 4 CMBG had. As the CENTAG reserve, a lot of espionage and subversive activity was directed our way - probably much more than at any other comparable-sized formation. On slow days during Fallexes I used to go looking for TIR trucks and could usually find a couple fairly easily. I may also have been the target of subversion once near the end of my tour, although I didn't realize it for several months afterwards. It was very subtle, so that I cannot be certain, but I still wonder. I don't think that too many of us took those threats seriously enough - we were only Canadian, undermanned, and under-equipped, so why would the Russians have any interest in us?

As for Northern Norway, I was only ever there twice (1983) but I figured that it would be an interesting place to fight if we had to. It was all mountain and valley, with only two main roads leading down south - not enough to cram more than a couple of Motor Rifle Divisions down at the best of times. Off-road movement was rather dodgy for much of the year - rocky, boggy, or fairly deep snow. Weather could be very unpredictable. I spent a fair amount of time wandering the valleys on either side of the road looking for the inevitable ski patrols attempting to find OP positions - the only time that I ever thought that the MiniTAT on the Kiowa had any value (no E-Bay then). It was probably some of the best defensive (and Kiowa) terrain anywhere, which is why the Russians didn't seem terribly interested given the relatively small and low-pri forces that they kept available on their side, although I cannot recall specifics two decades on.

Yes, getting there would probably have been way more than half of the fun, but if we were to have made it in time I don't think that we would have been a push-over.

And the locals were fun to party with, too.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Interesting comments, Loachman, thanks.

 

[Cloud Cover]

Could we at least get something straight here? 

Canada does not need a Miltiary

Canada does need a military.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

Anything else, my friend?? :cheers:

 

[ReadyandWilling]

Canada Does need a military, and we need someone in charge of this country willing to beef it up enough to allow us to do something with it. No I am not saying we should be starting random wars, kinda like a certain neighbour of ours , but we should have up to date equipment.

Now we have some of the best d*** soldiers in the world. My best friends dad is a major, and he had a very funny, and true analogy. "If you were to describe war as washing a car(please dont go off on that one, I am quoting) a canadian soldier will be able to wash the hole car himself, and then drive away to get it dirty again, but most other militarys have overly specialised armys. They need one man to wash the rims, and one man to polich the crome, and one man to to wax etc." So i think that with the soldiers we have, that we have a great army, we just need the equipment to back them up.

Our soldiers deserve everything we can give them on the battle field, and the fact that civilians disagree with that absolutly drives me crazy. I would like to see them go a whole month without you guys, lets see what they say when another country decides they want a peice of this land, just like the jerks who complain about the RCMP, You guys are there to protect people, I, for one am very grateful.

RAW

Sorry that the rant hit so many different topic.

 

[Red 6]

I would like to share my perspective on this topic as an American. Having spent about 22 years in the service, I have seen some places  and come in contact with military forces from quite a few different parts of the world. In my experience, the Canadian Forces are professional, well-trained and capable of accomplishing missions in a broad spectrum. Every nation needs a military force, and Canada is no exception. You have paid too high a price in blood to not maintain a credible military presence, especially in NATO.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

 

[Leonidio]

Nice one Mr Dorosh! Gave me a good laugh.

 

[Acadian10]

This is a question with an obvious answer, yes we do need a military, it's one of the main institutions that gives us our independence... you can learn this in politics 101

 

[Koenigsegg]

The soldier pretty much got us every right we in Western society take for granted today.  It was the other professions (lawyer) that simply followed up.  Do we need a military?  Uhh, Do we need police?  YES.

 

[17thRecceSgt]

No.  We don't need a military.  We have the nothing to worry about.  Nor did we from 1939-1945.  ;D

 

[Koenigsegg]

Of course not, they were just misunderstood.

So was Saddam.  He said he invaded Kuwait for fun, no harm in that for sure!
And the Soviet Union was just a group of countries wanting to give everyone a big hug, and handouts...

 

[Cabose]

Hey and Vietnam was just a giant orgy and one person forgot to get tested.

 

[Fiji]

To be a sovereign state, you must be a geographically bound entity that sets rules and regulations, and governs with a monopoly of force. Kind of hard to be a country that stands on its own two feet, without a strong military as its backbone. 

 

[Koenigsegg]

Exactamundo.

with out a military force, even the "good" countries may take advantage of you. 
With no promise of force, what is the incentive to stay out?

 

[aesop081]

To be a sovereign state, you must be a geographically bound entity that sets rules and regulations, and governs with a monopoly of force. Kind of hard to be a country that stands on its own two feet, without a strong military as its backbone. 

Legal definition of state:

An entity that p[osses the following qualifications ;

1- Permanent population
2- Defined territory
3- Governement
4- The capacity to enter into relations with other states

Source : Montevideo Convention on the rights and duties of states.

This is what is used in international law and the standard required for entrance to the UN. Nothing about monopoly of force or having a military. 

 

[xmarcx]

Legal definition of state:

An entity that p[osses the following qualifications ;

1- Permanent population
2- Defined territory
3- Governement
4- The capacity to enter into relations with other states

Source : Montevideo Convention on the rights and duties of states.

This is what is used in international law and the standard required for entrance to the UN. Nothing about monopoly of force or having a military. 

While you are certainly correct on the UN definition, the concept of a legitimate monopoly on the use of force both within and outside of the state has long been a requirement for sovereign statehood in the academic field of international relations, since Max Weber introduced it in 1918.

It's going to become far more important in the future since that criteria is  part of a cosmopolitan ideal of 'just cause' for military intervention. That is to say, if a state no longer holds a monopoly on the use of force within their borders and this is leading to destabilization, civil war, gang rule, massacres of civilians, etc, the international community has a right if not a moral duty to invade this now failed state.

In the near future, Canadian soldiers could very well be part of an invasion of a foreign state because it either lost control of force internally, or it could no longer prevent domestic forces, i.e. terrorists, from launching attacks outside of the state. If the global order becomes dominated by an international liberal legalist paradigm, then it'd be a pretty dangerous idea for a state to not have a military because there is legal precedent for an interested foreign power to seize control of your country following some domestic disturbance in the pretext of generating stability.