A real military
I have yet to meet or serve with a Canadian soldier who failed to impress me with his professionalism and discipline. In my experience — in terms of individual, quality personnel — only Australian troops match Canadians on a one-for-one basis.Two years ago, I had the privilege of serving with Australian troops in Iraq. The Aussies are crack. In the mid-1970s, I had the privilege of working with the 4th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group in then-West Germany. In my opinion, the Canadian brigade was the best brigade in NATO, which probably meant at that moment in time it was the best brigade man-for-man in the world.
Today, Canada has too few of these fine troops, and the superior troops Canada does field are not supplied with the modern, first-rate weapons and equipment they deserve — at least, not in sufficient numbers.
The lack of military punch weakens Canada as a global political player, because Canada cannot act with a full spectrum of foreign policy options.
austin bay, tech central daily
While the CPC has made some of the right noises about increasing funding to the Canadian military, it was unable to articulate much of a strategic vision. (Other than the rather bizarre idea of the military in the High Artic - presumably to rattle the Danes.)
It seems pretty clear that the conflicts of the 21st century will be about good intelligence and highly skilled, very well equiped, small units able to deploy quickly and deliver serious force in a very concentrated way. This is not the same as peacekeeping.
It may make sense for Canada to recognize this and build what amounts to a dual capacity. On the one side we need to have a reasonably sized combat force trained up to Special Forces levels and fully equiped for the high intensity, hi tech missions we may find it in our national interest to undertake. On the other side, it would be very useful to have a somewhat larger peace keeping force which was designed from the ground up to be used in civil defence/civil order missions.
Both will cost money; but if we are serious about participating in wrld affairs that is the price of admission.
Written by jay on January 27th, 2006 with
1 comment.
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#1. January 27th, 2006, at 1:23 PM.
None of the parties are any good at providing a mission, because none of them will speak the unpalatable truth that there is only one nation that is a threat to us, and that our military should be set up to deter that nation.
(And no, it isn’t impossible at all in the modern age. But it does require not being PC, integrationist or wimpy.)