Time to Reorient the CF?

 

 

 

Vincent J. Curtis 


27 Sept 12

 

With a new Chief of Defense Staff coming from the RCAF, who is committed to the purchase of the F-35, any dreams of the CF operating as a Joint Force are out the window.  For a generation, at least.

 

With the examples of blitzkrieg, the AirLand Battle concept, Maneuver Warfare, and the United States Marine Corps to look at, you would think that the highest strategic thinkers in NDHQ and in the MND’s office would gaining an inkling of Air – Land joint operations.  That has not happened.

 

Paul Hellyer’s idea of a single service never extended beyond the administrative.  He sought to eliminate the silly administrative barriers created by three legally separate services and inter-service rivalry.  Hellyer never thought about the three services actually working together and in harmony to defeat the enemy in a battle.

 

The purchase of the F-35 will eliminate for a generation the chance for a Canadian AirLand battle concept because nobody is going to use a stealth fighter to bust tanks, bunkers, or to shoot up enemy ground forces.  And there will be no money left over to buy something that can, after spending that wad on air superiority fighters.

 

So a new question appears: is the CF as currently constituted best suited to be “strategically relevant and tactically decisive” over the next thirty years?  Instead of a predominance of Land forces, should the CF be reoriented to favor air and/or naval power?

 

Over the past sixty years, Canada’s land contribution to international efforts has not been “tactically decisive.”  In Korea, in peacekeeping, and in Afghanistan, Canada’s contribution has been “strategically relevant” but can hardly be said to be “tactically decisive” because the size of the force we sent was too small.  We contributed troops to a largely U.S. led effort in Korea and Afghanistan.  The CF was “tactically decisive” in the small sphere assigned to it, and the “strategic relevance” of the CF derived from the bragging rights our government had from having troops in harm’s way.

 

Tactically, UN peacekeeping has been a failure.  So much so that Canada no longer has an interest in putting a large blue-bereted force in the field.  Peacekeeping is no longer of strategic relevance to the Canadian government.

 

The bragging rights from having troops in harm’s way is the strategic relevance the CF will likely have for the Federal government for the foreseeable future.

 

But is there not more than bragging rights in the way of strategic relevance that we can expect of the CF?  Does Canada not have interests independent of the United States, NATO, and the UN?

 

Many of those of isolationist persuasion (and with the election of a PQ government in Quebec of Separatist persuasion) would say no.  We live in a fire-proof house far from the sources of conflagration.  But a stronger air force and navy, and a correspondingly weaker army, has advantages of their own to those averse to admitting that we might have independent Canadian foreign interests.

 

A stronger and more capable air force and navy would enable a Canadian military contribution to international joint efforts more relevant and also less hazardous diplomatically than one involving putting large numbers of boots on the ground to make a recognized effort.  They would also give Canada an independent strategic capability.

 

The kinds of effort Canada would require from her Armed Forces in the foreseeable future involve the firing of missiles and the dropping of bombs from a stand-off distance.  Driving home Canadian diplomacy at the point of a bayonet is unlikely to be a requirement, and to have to do that involves some pretty serious political calculations here at home.

 

It is far easier - tactically, politically, and diplomatically - to be able to engage an enemy with sophisticated weapons at long range; and the RCAF and RCN are the services that can provide that kind of strategic relevance and capability.

 

The Canada First Defense Strategy is already in tatters because the government does not have the money it thought it would.  The major investments in the CFDS are not in equipment, but in people and infrastructure.  Perhaps, the CFDS should be reconsidered, with an emphasis on kitting out the RCAF and RCN at the expense of the Army, which will always be too small to be “tactically decisive”.

 

The RCAF and RCN are not arms of tactical decision.  But, the strategic relevance of the RCAF and RCN to the Canadian government domestically and diplomatically in future conflicts ought to outweigh this factor.

-          XXX –

 

Isolationism and the Canadian Forces

 

 

Vincent J. Curtis



7 Nov 12
 

 

With the re-election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, certain things will ensue.

 

The first is that Obama Administration will do its best to ignore the war of Islamic extremism against the west.  The scandal arising from the al Qaeda attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, in which the American Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed, is that the President left four Americans to die at the hands of terrorists because for him to have taken military action would have inconvenienced his re-election campaign.

 

The second is that American economic power and her military power will decline noticeably.  The American budget deficit is wildly out of control, and the political will to do something about it was decisively defeated in the November elections.  American borrowing madness cannot continue indefinitely, and no combination of tax increases and spending cuts elsewhere is going to spare the U.S. defense budget.

 

The power vacuum in the world thus created, combined with unchecked hostility towards western culture, will leave the western world less safe.  The question arises: what can Canada do to avoid being attacked and be able to deter misguided attacks against us?

 

The curious fact about Canadian military interventions abroad is that we have always done so not because we were threatened ourselves but to uphold an alliance.  In 1884, we sent voyageurs to Egypt to help a British expedition relieve General Charles Gordon, who was under siege in Khartoum.  Gordon was trying to hold out against the Dervishes, a 19^th century group of Islamic extremists.  Britain protected us against an American invasion, and with this we demonstrated the value of having Canada in the British Empire.

 

In World War I and II, Canada sent her armed forces to Europe not because she was herself threatened by Germany, but to protect what Canadians felt was near and dear to them.

 

Canada sent troops into harm’s way in Korea to demonstrate support both for the United Nations and also the United States, and then to Afghanistan to show solidarity with the United States, which had been attacked on 9/11.

 

Canada’s recent effort in Libya was made not because of the threat Gaddafi represented to us, but to help hold the NATO alliance together.

 

A survey of military threats to Canada and estimating the value of the NATO alliance to our security make one wonder whether Canada should change its foreign policy from one of robust engagement to one of cold, calculated isolationism.  The plain fact is that Canada is more likely to become involved in foreign wars because of our alliances than because of anything Canada herself represents to others.

 

A Canadian withdrawal from NATO and the decline of American military power mean that we would have to rely on our own strong right arm should the defense of our national interests require it.  Disengaging also from much of Asia,  Africa, and the of Muslim world would reduce risks of attack and lessen the need for a robust military capability.

 

 The nature of the military capability we keep would need to change in accordance with a foreign policy of selective isolationism.  Our standing military forces are designed as a microcosm of the expeditionary force that we would send to Europe in the event of World War III.  Its capacity to project power unaided is miniscule.  Fortunately, the nature of future conflict with rogue nations and transnational terrorist organizations do not require the raising and sending of a land army overseas to deal a decisive blow against the enemy.

 

The United States tried that in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the limits of the decisiveness of that method are now better understood than they were a decade ago.  If we dispense with the idea of decisiveness against terrorism, then we come to the realization that being able to strike powerful retaliatory blows from the sea and air is the kind of deterrence we can afford in a standing force.

 

Since Canada makes no pretense of being able to decisively defeat anyone, nothing is to be gained by picking on Canada.  And it would be awfully embarrassing for a strutting terror-master to have to explain to his supporters how he came to be staggering and bleeding from a bolt out of the blue delivered by a middle power like Canada.

 

A blue water navy is the arm that is able to strike these kinds of blows.

                                                            - XXX-

 

 

 

Is Decisiveness Possible in Future Wars?

 

 

 

Vincent J. Curtis


22 October 2012

 

 

The war in Afghanistan, the decade long battle against Islamic terrorism, and the resurgence of al-Qaeda in Libya raise the question of whether prolonged land wars and nation-building efforts will eventually bring lasting peace to a harassed western world.

 

In previous wars, the destruction of the enemy army, followed by the occupation of his country, and particularly of his capital, brought a decision to the war.  One side won, and the other side lost.  One side dictated terms, and the other accepted them.  Then, a form of peace reigned for a period of several decades.

 

This patterned followed even in existential wars, such as the American Civil war of 1861-65 and World War II.

 

The war in Afghanistan brought out a third distinction to the meaning of decisive: to the tactical and strategic we can now add grand strategic.

 

There is no question that the ejection of the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, the occupation of the country by US and NATO forces and the installation of a NATO supported regime in Kabul constituted a tactical and strategic decision.  Nowhere does a Taliban government or controlled area exist within the country.  All its bases are in Pakistan, and the reduction of these by conventional military forces represents “a bridge too far” in the grand strategic sense.  Yet, a war drags on and few are sanguine of the fate of the Kabul regime when NATO withdraws at the end of 2014.

 

After its Afghan and Iraq experience, the lead western country against al-Qaeda, the United States, has no interest in long term occupation of Islamic countries that have no strategic interest to or resources for the western world.  The wars the US military is preparing for is one against Iran and China, and both of these are seen primarily as Air and Sea affairs.

 

Canada too made a decade long commitment to nation-building and to counter-insurgency in Afghanistan.  Canada’s Regular Forces are designed as embryonic versions of the services that would be called into being in the event of a major land war in Europe.  But the wars likely to require a Canadian commitment in the next thirty years are not of a kind where a major decision can be expected by the effort of land forces.  Al-Qaeda cannot be stamped out by occupying its host country, for there are enough failed and failing states in the Islamic world that the number of hosts for al-Qaeda lies beyond what western land forces can reasonably occupy and control.

 

Since decisiveness itself is out of the question for a military effort against al-Qaeda terrorism, perhaps “decisiveness” should be stricken out of the lexicon of CF requirements.  Instead of dealing “decisive” blows against an enemy, the CF should be capable of delivering “punishing” blows against an enemy, anywhere in the world, at any time, and without the assistance of any other power.

 

The lead services in the delivery of “punishing” blows against and enemy are the Air and especially the Navy.

 

The RCAF would have to acquire a capacity to drop bombs or fire long-range missiles, which also requires an improved capacity for air-to-air refueling.  In other words, the RCAF needs to be able to fly all the way around the world, non-stop, with its combat aircraft.

 

The RCN is already capable of sailing all the way around the world, though the lack of a modern replenishment vessel may soon end this capacity.  With modern missile technology, naval ships would be capable of delivering a precision strike from littoral waters.

 

Of the two methods of attack, from the air and from the sea, the naval method seems the more cost effective.  The RCN already possesses ships capable of carrying and firing the missiles in question; and ships have a capacity to linger, which aircraft do not.  The RCAF would have to acquire new aircraft and train new crews in order to possess an offensive bombing capacity.

-30-