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Canada was more than a blue helmet

By: Stéphane Guevremont

Posted: 03/6/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

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On Tuesday, the Calgary-based Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute released a research paper in Ottawa entitled Whatever Happened to Peacekeeping? The Future of a Tradition. The report strongly emphasized that modern-day UN missions have changed considerably from the disasters of the 1990s, like Rwanda and Bosnia, and that Canada's best interests now lay in this approach.

Its two authors highlighted the growing imbalance between Canada's commitment of troops to NATO operations versus UN peacekeeping missions. They raised awareness and defended a possible option concerning future military interventions.

Yet, this study failed to properly demonstrate the importance of Canada's past military involvement with NATO, including the relatively weak Canadian peacekeeping "tradition" that the report valued. The cherished legacy of Lester B. Pearson is always commendable, yes, but the mandate of the Canadian Forces never was about peacekeeping, even less a tradition.

The historical record speaks differently. From 1951 to 1993, the bulk of the Canadian military served under a NATO umbrella in Europe and peacekeeping operations paled in comparison. Canada maintained a NATO mechanized brigade in Germany with some 5,000 members, including tanks, self-propelled guns and armoured fighting vehicles.

In 1978, it boosted this contingent with the purchase of 128 heavy Leopard tanks, considered then the best and most potent weapon in the world. Canadians are unfamiliar today with the vital role played by this forgotten brigade, but its importance and might would have been known by all if the Warsaw Pact had just once invaded Western Europe.

In addition, from 1951 to 1992, a Canadian Air Division operated first from French, and later from German bases with an initial contingent of 12 jet fighter squadrons, totalling almost 150 aircraft in Europe. In Canada, the air force devoted almost all of its resources to NORAD and the protection of North America from a Russian air attack.

Canada also became a nuclear power when it decided to deploy fighter-bombers in Europe laden with tactical nuclear weapons. If the Soviet Union had invaded Germany between 1962 and 1972, Canada would have been the first nation to retaliate against enemy land forces with atomic results.

Thus, until 1971, this Canadian presence in Europe consisted of more than 10,000 troops, a number that was later cut in half by the Trudeau government. Nevertheless, Canadian peacekeeping commitments during the Cold War probably never added to more than 15 per cent of the total deployment of Canadian military personnel.

Why then should anyone be surprised today that Canada continues to incorporate much of its armed forces into the same military alliance? Ottawa traditionally aligned itself with a Western coalition and put its army, navy and air force to the task dictated by NATO commitments.

The study is a clever attempt by some vested interests to realign public opinion on a preferred option for the Canadian Forces. It focused mainly on the post-Cold War period when nobody knew how to react militarily to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and to the dismemberment of its former empire.

Since then, Canadian peacekeeping missions have become grossly overestimated. With the upcoming decision about Canada's withdrawal from Afghanistan, many want to find ways to sustain the DND budget.

However, the more important aspect of the report is the need for a national debate on this crucial issue: what kind of mandate Canadians want to assign to their armed forces? It is a discussion that never took place since the Pearson era. Various governments in Ottawa repeatedly failed to tell the Canadian Forces what their main task was.

Each fiscal year brought changes, while crisis situations and political interests dictated responses to the military. In 2010, as the research paper clearly pointed out, Canadians still don't understand the current mission in Afghanistan and obviously fail to recognize that peacekeeping was never a Canadian tradition.

Stephane Guevremont is a military historian at the humanities department of Mount Royal University.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 6, 2010 H6

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