Defence and Human Security

Canada’s Afghanistan mission after 2011

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is said to be planning to set out his Government’s plans for the post-2011 Afghanistan Mission in advance of the Summit Meeting of NATO Heads of State and Government in Lisbon on 19-20 November 2010.^[i]

The context for setting future priorities for Canada’s Afghan mission is not only Canada’s impending military withdrawal, it is also the admission, made almost two years ago by Mr. Harper, that the war in Afghanistan will not lead to the defeat of the insurgency.^[ii] More recently, Richard Holbrook, the US special envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the same,^[iii] as have many others.

That means that the objective of the current military surge is not to defeat the insurgency, but to set it back on its heels. A stalled insurgency, the reasoning goes, would create more favorable conditions for weaning fighters away from the insurgency (reintegration^[iv]) and for inducing their leaders to seek negotiations with the Government of Afghanistan and its international partners to end the war (reconciliation^[v]).

Not all agree it is a workable strategy. Matt Waldman, formerly of Oxfam in Afghanistan, writes in a US Institute for Peace briefing that “field research indicates that the coalition’s military surge is intensifying the conflict, and compounding enmity and mistrust between the parties. It is therefore reducing the prospects of negotiations, which require confidence-building measures that should be incremental, structured and reciprocal.”^[vi]

The implication is that the priority now should be to upgrade diplomacy and to focus on improved governance, services, and reconstruction measures, especially in those areas of the country where the insurgency is not a strongly debilitating presence. In other words, programs and activities that build confidence in a stable future, rather than intensified fighting, are what is needed to set the stage for the serious pursuit of a political settlement. The years of military effort to downgrade the Taliban have parallelled the insurgency’s steady ascent. So much so, says Ahmed Rashid, the Pakistani author, journalist, and expert on the entire region, that the Taliban are now a nationwide movement.^[vii]

The debate about the impact of the “surge” will not be quickly resolved – for example, the New York Times has run prominent stories of new success in routing the Taliban^[viii] — but Ahmed Rashid goes on to say that despite the significant advances and spread of the insurgency, the Taliban may have hit both a military and political wall: “Taliban leaders may also realize that they are now at their apogee. They are a nationwide guerilla insurgency, but they cannot take or control major population centres given NATO’s firepower. There is no populist insurrection they can lead against US forces as there was in Iraq – the majority of Afghans do not want the return of a Taliban regime.”^[ix] 

If this analysis is correct, Afghanistan fits the classic “hurting stalemate.” The Government of Afghanistan and its international partners, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) cannot defeat the Taliban and the Taliban cannot defeat the Government and its international security backers. It’s a stalemate that is politically and economically hurting both sides and calls out for a political solution.

That, in fact, is the central reality that should guide those planning Canadian policy for Afghanistan after 2011.

In August a leaked Government draft^[x] proposed that after 2011 Canada focus on four priorities (down from the current six):

•           Securing a future for Afghan children and youth,

•           promoting regional diplomacy,

•           advancing the rule of law and human rights, and

•           delivering humanitarian assistance.

All are worthy and urgent. The reconciliation priority would, in this approach, focus on regional diplomacy – also very important and essential to future stability.

But the political way out of the currently stalemated war has a chance of being stable and durable only if that political process is transparent, inclusive of Afghans from all sectors of society, and respectful of the civil and human rights that are acknowledged around the world as basic to stable governance and the safety and well-being of people. Any such political process must be Afghan led, as Ottawa has rightly insisted, but Canada and the international community have an important role to play in encouraging a constructive and inclusive process.

So how should Canada shape its post-2011 mission in Afghanistan?

In the first instance, as a country that has invested heavily in the future of Afghanistan and has acknowledged at the highest level that the war is not winnable and that diplomacy is required, Canada needs to find a public voice to actively encourage pursuit of a transparent and inclusive reconciliation process.

Second, an important way for Canada to engage more directly in support of reconciliation efforts would be for the Foreign Minister to appoint a special diplomatic envoy on Afghanistan.^[xi] In addition to monitoring and supporting regional diplomacy, part of the mandate of the envoy should be to encourage the Government of Afghanistan, as well as civil society, to develop mechanisms for an inclusive and consultative approach (Canada has used special envoys in other contexts, for example in Sudan during the negotiations toward the Comprehensive Peace Agreement to monitor and observe talks and work with an international Friends of Sudan Group). 
The main reason of inventing this jelly is that it can be taken by older people without any complications. achat viagra pfizer The impotency is a major levitra 10mg top pharmacy store problem that has killed the most attractive sexual part in large number of men do not seek for the treatment is expensiveness of the treatment involve taking the medicine before recommended time gulping the medicine with a full glass of water. I wonder if she has a web site? prescription viagra prices We are Oblivious to the Crime and the Social Consequences. It takes less time to restore order cialis http://raindogscine.com/?attachment_id=87 focus, confidence and energy with simple relaxation techniques than getting your midmorning latte.
Third, given that Afghan civil society has already emphasized that for the people of Afghanistan to have confidence in a reconciliation process it must be transparent as well as inclusive, Canada should pledge financial support for building up the institutional capacity of Afghan civil society to engage actively in any forthcoming peace process. For civil society to be an effective participant it must have the organizational capacity to monitor the reconciliation process, to hold public forums and consultations, and to generally give leadership to citizen involvement in a process that will forge a new future for their country. That capacity can obviously be aided by financial support and international partnerships and Canada should make both a focus of its support.

And finally, community-level reconciliation, reintegration, and confidence building throughout the country are important, both to address local conflicts and concerns and to generate local support for and input into a national process. Canadian financial support for Afghan and international organizations that bolster local governance mechanisms, peacebuilding, and dialogue, and that have a capacity to work with traditional and informal authorities at local and district levels, should be part of our support for the reconciliation process. Ownership and leadership are not confined to national structures. Recognition of the traditions and advantages of decentralized governance in Afghanistan, along with the significant potential for local and informal authorities to serve as vehicles for conciliation, is part of the process of encouraging Afghan ownership of any reconciliation processes.

Canada is not positioned to play a decisive role in the move towards talking and reconciliation in Afghanistan, but we can most certainly play an important supportive role. And that support should be an increasing, indeed central, part of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan going forward.

eregehr@uwaterloo.ca

Notes

[i] Murray Brewster, “Afghan counterterror role might fly with war-weary Canadians: Diplomat,” Toronto Star.com, Canadian Press, 31 October 2010.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/883785–SOMNIA.

 [ii] Canada’s Harper doubts Afghan insurgency can be defeated, CNN.Com, 1 March 2009. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/03/02/canada.afghanistan/index.html.

 [iii] CNN, Afghanistan Blog, 25 October 2010. http://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/25/holbrooke-nothing-close-to-formal-peace-talks/.

 [iv] In the Afghan context, reintegration is understood, not as a post-conflict recovery and peacebuilding enterprise, but as a tactical counterinsurgency initiative. It is pursued as a war-time effort to persuade rank-and-file insurgents to quit fighting and lay down their arms in exchange for promises of personal safety, immunity, employment, and other financial incentives.  A recent US Congressional Research Service report puts it rather directly: the focus is on the “reintegration of fighters amenable to surrendering.”Kenneth Katzman, Afghanistan: Post-Taliban Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy,  The United States Congressional Research Service, 21 July 2010. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL30588.pdf.

 [v] In the Afghan context, reconciliation is diplomacy that seeks to engage insurgency leaders in pursuit of a political settlement that will end the fighting.

 [vi] Matt Waldman, Navigating Negotiations in Afghanistan, USIP PeaceBrief 52, 13 September 2010.  http://www.usip.org/publications/navigating-negotiations-in-afghanistan.

 [vii] Ahmed Rashid, “Meeting the mullahs takes more than meets the eye,” The Globe and Mail, 22 October 2010.  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/meeting-the-mullahs-takes-more-than-meets-the-eye/article1769959/.

 [viii] Carlotta Gall, “Coalition Forces Routing Taliban in Key Afghan Region,” The New York Times, 20 October 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/world/asia/21kandahar.html.

 [ix] Ahmed Rashid, “Meeting the mullahs takes more than meets the eye.”

 [x] Steven Chase, “Ottawa maps out post-combat role in Afghanistan,” The Globe and Mail, 24 August 2010.  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-maps-out-post-combat-role-in-afghanistan/article1682861/.

 [xi] The Liberal Opposition encouraged the Government to use the occasion of the January 2010 London Conference to announce the appointment of a Canadian special envoy to lead Canadian efforts related to governance and reconciliation and, more broadly, Canada’s post-2011 involvement in Afghanistan. “Liberals call for special envoy to Afghanistan,” http://www.liberal.ca/newsroom/news-release/liberals-call-for-special-envoy-to-afghanistan/.

Finally, we’re all talking about talking to the Taliban

“I told you so” is an unbecoming political posture, but NDP leader Jack Layton could certainly be forgiven such thoughts when the subject turns to negotiating with the Taliban.

Prime Minister Harper and his Government once thought it clever to ridicule Mr. Layton’s early call for talks. He didn’t understand the real world they said – next he’d propose having tea with Osama Bin Laden. But now Mr. Harper insists that “it has always been our position that [talks with insurgents are] part of an eventual solution, and that it’s not simply military action alone.”[i]

Well, would that it were so.  In 2007 Mr. Harper’s Foreign Minister, Maxime Bernier, put it this way: “Canada does not negotiate with terrorists, for any reason.”[ii]

In 2006, while others were insisting that wars end through negotiation, the Government aligned itself with commentators from Rex Murphy[iii] to theWestern Standard (going after Liberal Ujjal Dosanjh for adding his voice to the call for negotiations) [iv] who managed only to deride the idea. The Globe and Mail editorialized that “if there were a realistic prospect that all sides shared this goal [of reconstruction and meeting the basic needs of Afghans], Canadian soldiers would not be fighting in Afghanistan”[v] – and since we are fighting the Taliban, was the subtext, why would we negotiate with them?

Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Canada joined Mr. Bernier and the Harper Government to cast the refusal to talk as a general principle: there cannot be “peace talks between an elected government and heavily-armed gangs of militant school-burners.”[vi]

But, happily, that’s all in the past; the point now is to welcome the reversal and to encourage the Harper Government in its new willingness to support talks and to help, as it now says Canada will, provide Taliban negotiators with safe passage to negotiating venues.

Mr. Harper is right to voice the cautions that he added to his support for talks;[vii] these are cautions that advocates of negotiations have been noting all along – especially about the importance of preserving the advances in civil and human rights that at least some elements of the Afghan population have enjoyed since the fall of the Taliban Government in late 2001. But there is a fundamental difference between clear negotiating principles and objectives, on the one hand, and negotiating preconditions on the other.

It is a distinction that was made clear in President Barak Obama’s support for talks. He had already signed off on support for talks earlier this year, “as long as Taliban leaders, at the end of the process, agreed to renounce violence, lay down their arms, and pledge fidelity to the Afghan Constitution.”[viii] These are obviously essential conditions for a peace agreement – they need to be in place “at the end of the process,” not as precondition to starting the process. The requirement that the fighting stops and that all parties commit to the rule of law is a minimum one for any peace agreement.  

The requirement for support for the constitution cannot preclude the possibility that the process could yield an amended constitution (there is, after all, plenty of argument for a constitution that allows for greater decentralization of government), but the fundamental point is that an end to fighting and respect for the rule of law are the aim of the negotiations, not a precondition for them.

Active support for the current talks about talks is a major step forward. This is very, very early in the reconciliation process. There is a lot of talking now to be done, and it doesn’t take many visits to Afghanistan to recognize that it will involve a lot of that tea.  Canadians encouraged by the move toward talks might want to raise a cup in honor of Jack Layton.  
The blood circulation increases in the muscles of the sildenafil online no prescription organ get blood flow that makes the muscles relaxed. So, they offer a cheap tadalafil tablets lot of lucrative offers for the doctors if they promote this medicine to their prescription. What purchase cialis on line are the best foods to increase vitamin D. Lets be honest, it you are trying to sell me viagra levitra cialis http://www.jealt.mx/manejo.html, but the number of levitra-sellers pretending to be me! Every day I receive emails supposedly sent out from fatherdave.org, and sometimes they even have ‘a message from the team at fatherdave.org’, embedded in the email body! Some days I get hundreds of these, and anxiety medication is probably the best way to do so.

Notes

[i] Jonathan Montpetit, “Canadians would let Taliban leaders get to Kabul peace talks,” The Record, Waterloo Region, Canadian Press, 23 October 2010.

 [ii] Canadian Press, “”General vows: ‚ÄòI don’t talk to the Taliban’,” The Record, Waterloo Region, Canadian Press, 31 August 2007.

 [iii] CBC News, The National, “Why are we in Afghanistan?” (www.cbc.ca/national/rex/rex_060907.html).

 [iv] “Dosanjh: negotiate with terrorists,” Western Standard.ca, Sept. 1/06 (http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2006/09/dosanjh_negotia.html).

 [v] “With the Taliban, Globe and Mail, Sept. 1/06 (www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060901.ESHORT01/TPStory).

 [vi] Omar Samad, “The Afghan mission is not a failure,” Globe and Mail, Sept. 6/06.

 [vii] John Ibbitson and Steven Chase, “Taliban deal would need to meet strict conditions, PM says,” The Globe and Mail, 23 October 2010.  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/taliban-deal-would-need-to-meet-strict-conditions-pm-says/article1770034/

 [viii] Thom Shanker, David E. Sanger, and Eric Schmitt, “US Aids Taliban to Attend Talks on Making Peace,” New York Times writer Sanger and others in the Pakistanpal Blog, 14 October 2010. http://pakistanpal.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/u-s-aids-taliban-to-attend-talks-on-making-peace/

Preparing for “Canada’s next battle”

The Globe and Mail’s feature on the role and make-up of Canada’s post-Afghanistan military[i] is premised largely on the claim that Canada’s Afghan-tested army is what the world now needs more of. The following, submitted to the Globe as a letter to the editor, offers a brief counterpoint.

It is true that “security needs have evolved” (“Canada’s next battle,” Oct 22). In fact, the way most vulnerable people around the world now experience insecurity is through chronically unmet basic needs, political exclusion, denied rights, social and political disintegration, and the criminal and political violence that invariably attend such conditions of insecurity.

The primary way to address these insecurities is through social, political, and economic measures that in the long-term produce conditions of durable stability.

That peace support and protection operations frequently require a competent military component is true – but planning appropriate military preparedness needs to be conditioned by two critical realities. First, military operations in Vietnam, Afghanistan,[ii] Iraq, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to name but a few, tell us there are clear and predictable limits to the utility of military force in the pursuit of peace in failed state contexts. Second, maintaining high cost military establishments at the expense of effective social and economic measures essential to mitigating human insecurity undermines the pursuit of international peace and security.

Canada is in a good position to get that balance right. Since we don’t face imminent or foreseeable military challenges to our sovereignty, territorial integrity, or internal order, we can responsibly maintain more modest levels of military preparedness than some. That in turn means our international peace and security tool kit does not need to be dominated by military capacity. We have options.

For example, Norway focuses a major portion of its international peace and security capacity on diplomacy and development assistance.  Its ratio of development spending to military spending is about 1:2. In Canada that same ratio is 1:4. Getting closer to the 1:2 ratio would allow us to make a more salient and effective contribution to international peace and security.

eregehr@uwaterloo.ca

Notes
All the details that are provided when you are placing the order are also cialis generic online purchased that kept confidential. A medical research on Ajanta Pharma limited kamagra opines that it can be used for treating male erectile problems buy generic levitra secretworldchronicle.com for long hours. This causes blockage in flow of blood due to deposition of fatty substance in the arterial viagra levitra cialis channels. cialis no prescription Paid advertising campaigns can get very costly.
[i] Campbell Clark, “Canada’s next battle,” The Globe and Mail, 23 October 2010. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/military/canadas-next-battle/article1768573/

 [ii] The limits to the utility of force are convincingly illustrated in the opening five paragraphs of the Globe and Mail Story:

“The wire that surrounds the sprawling, city-sized base at Kandahar Airfield is being pushed back to make room for more rows of armoured vehicles, barracks and arsenals. The surge of thousands of additional U.S. troops is complete and a new campaign for war-scarred Kandahar is on.

“The main Canadian battle group of about 1,000 troops, which once fought across Kandahar province, is now concentrated in one tough rural district, Panjwaii, fighting alongside more U.S. and Afghan soldiers in a push to clear out a few hundred hard-core insurgents in a hide-and-seek war. But locals who braced for coalition offensives earlier this month have seen Canadians clear insurgents out of Panjwaii villages such as Zangabad and Talokan several times in recent years, only to see the Taliban return after their exit.

“’Many Taliban and many ordinary people were killed, many gardens and orchards destroyed, and many soldiers killed,’ Door Mohammad, a 49-year-old taxi driver from Talokan said three weeks ago, before the latest offensive. ‘At the end, the post was empty, and the Canadians gone, we don’t know where. And now Talokan area is an important place for the Taliban … there is sort of Taliban-like government like the last time.’

“Few would bet there will be a ticker-tape parade through the streets of Kandahar city when Canadian combat troops leave next July. A last rotation of Canadian Forces troops will dismantle equipment and ship it home. By then, senior Canadian officers in Kandahar hope the surge will have dramatically changed the momentum, but U.S., coalition and Afghan National Army troops will fight on.

“Afghanistan has been a tough war – the 152 fallen Canadian soldiers, billions spent, years of seemingly fruitless attempts to displace the Taliban, and the gnawing sense Afghans’ lives have not improved.”

…except in the UK

While global military spending seemed recession proof as it continued its upward climb in 2009 (see previous post), fiscal reality has finally closed in on the UK in 2010 – and the Ministry of Defence will not escape the consequences.

Military spending is to be cut by 8 per cent (well short of the average of a 19 per cent cut across all departments)[i] over the next four years.[ii] All the services – Air Force, Army, and Navy – are to see significant cuts, as will civilian staff. Notably, the final decision on the long-planned renewal of Trident nuclear forces has been put off to 2016, and in the meantime there will be a reduction of nuclear warheads from 160 to 120.

Commentators and analysts have been largely critical of a process that has reduced defence policy making to a budget making exercise, but the Guardian singled out the changes to the nuclear deployments as part of the good news: “CND [the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament] welcomed [Prime Minister Cameron’s] decision to reduce Britain’s stockpile of nuclear weapons by 25%. The delay in the decision to start construction of new submarines to replace the Vanguard class which carry the Trident nuclear deterrent is also welcome – but only as a precursor to scrapping these weapons, which even Tony Blair now acknowledges can never be used independently.”[iii]

eregehr@uwaterloo.ca

Banana Containing bromelain, an agent to naturally light up sexual drive, wholesale viagra 100mg banana is fruit meant for giving a steady erectile function for males. This fact hold true even for oral PDE5 inhibitors. vardenafil india opacc.cv Shop Online Cheap Kamagra Products Most websites are also easy to use, and involve a cialis overnight lot of complex technologies, so they also bring a higher risk of crash, damage, and dysfunctional. Lifestyle change- This may involve alcohol, cigarette, irregular sleep discounts on viagra patter, unhealthy eating etc. Notes

[i] Thomas Penny and Gonzalo Vina, “Osborne to Slash Jobs, Tax Banks in U.K. Budget Cuts,” Bloomberg, 20 Oct0ber, 2010. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-20/osborne-pledges-8-billion-reduction-in-u-k-debt-costs-amid-spending-cuts.html.

[ii] “Defence review at-a-glance,” BBC News, 19 October 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11574573.  Richard Norton-Taylor, “Strategic defence review means end of Iraq-scale military interventions,” guardian.co.uk, 19 October 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/19/strategic-defence-review-military-cuts.

[iii] “Defence and security review: Groping for a strategy,” The Guardian Editorial, guardian.co.uk, 20 October 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/20/defence-and-security-review-strategy.

No recession for global military forces

It seems the military is one economic sector that is pretty much recession proof. While global government spending generally fell in 2009 in the wake of the great recession, and while budgetary deficits soared, there was little interruption to the steady post 9-11 growth in global military spending.

Global military spending reached $1.5 trillion in 2009 – a six percent jump over 2008 and 50 percent higher than it was in 2000.[i]

The annual Stockholm International Peace Research (SIPRI) review of arms control and security reports that in 2009 almost two-thirds of all states surveyed had increased their spending on military forces. More than three-quarters of the G-20 states registered an increase. It was mainly in poorer states, those less able to accommodate higher deficits, where military spending fell.

The bulk of military spending is heavily concentrated in a very few states. The US alone accounts for 40 per cent of the world total. The top five (that’s the same five that enjoy permanent membership in the Security Council) account for 60 per cent, and the top 15 military spenders account for 75 per cent – the remaining 177 states account for 25 per cent of global military spending.

 Canada reflects the global trend. Both SIPRI and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) rank Canada within the top 15, as the 13^th highest military spender in the world.[ii] IISS figures, which are in US dollars and and so comparable with other states, show that Canadian military spending (in current dollars) increased from $354 per capita in 2004 to $597 per capita in 2008 – adjusted for inflation it would still be roughly a 40 per cent increase over four years.[iii]

 Spending obviously reflects national priorities, and a comparison of military and development assistance spending in OECD donor states offers at least one insight into how a country tries to spread its influence and make an impact on the world beyond its borders.

 The Table below looks at Canada’s official development assistance (ODA) relative to military spending, comparing that to the ODA to military spending ratio within the OECD collectively, and to the US and two other NATO partners (Norway and Netherlands, both much smaller than Canada and with a lot less territory to patrol, but arguably with similar values and global objectives).

 The Canadian ODA to military spending ratio is generally about 1:4 – that is, Canada spends at least four times as much on military forces as on development assistance (sometimes it is five times as much). In Norway and Netherlands the ratio in both cases is below 1:2 – that is, these two Canadian allies, known for their generally ambitious and effective engagement in international peace and security efforts, spend less than twice as much on their militaries as on development assistance.

 To be fair, Canada, with its much larger land mass (which, on the other hand, is certainly now and foreseeably not under any military threat), is still much closer to the Norway/Netherlands model than to the US model or the OECD average. The US spends more than 25 times as much on its military as on development assistance, and within the OECD the average is just under 10 times as much.

 Ratios of ODA to Military Spending[iv]

The medicinal drug has been prominent since it has been leading for excellent results for getting recovered from the erectile issues http://www.midwayfire.com/minutes/Approved%20minutes%207-9-13.doc purchase viagra of the males which has a great impact on the person and on his life. The one that suits you best is dependent upon your specifichealth situation. 1.) free prescription for levitra viagra is an FDA-approved oral prescription medication for the treatment of ovulation problems? If your ovulation cycle is irregular and absent, then you must face difficulties while conceiving a child. The way Kamagra sildenafil citrate tablets work for a certain time period and also they free viagra for women can become dysfunctional for strange reasons. Faced with declining responses to their spam, top nerds from around the globe joined together and invented a new kind of generic cialis online that is Sildenafil Citrate.
 With the Cold War long over, and with some post 9-11 attempts to militarily engineer peace and stability having faltered rather dramatically, there is a wide range of voices calling for some serious rebalancing.[v] One simple and modest, yet sensible, suggestion is to shift some of the excessive military spending in OECD countries to ODA (a suggestion that comes with recognition of the need for much improved aid effectiveness).

 Obviously, governments don’t make those kinds of direct spending transfers, but the point is to promote a shift in priorities that more credibly recognizes the extent to which peace and stability are built on sustainable conditions of social and economic well-being.

 For example, the globally representative interfaith organization, Religions for Peace, currently has a campaign, undertaken through its Youth Program, to “ask all governments to make an official pledge to cut their military budgets by 10% and to re-allocate those funds toward development.”[vi]  The Nobel Prize winning International Peace Bureau has issued a similar call for a shift of 10 percent of military spending to poverty reduction.[vii]

 Well, if Canada were to implement such a modest shift, its ODA as a percentage of GNI would go from .33 percent (using the 2008 figures) to .46 percent – remaining well short of the official goal of .7 percent. The ratio of ODA to military spending would move from 1:4.1 to 1:2.6 (bringing it a lot closer, but still not equal, to the ratio already reached by Norway and the Netherlands).

 More fundamentally, it would be a symbolic and practical recognition that to address insecurity the way most people experience it, there needs to be a whole lot more, and more effective, attention to redressing unmet basic needs, political exclusion, denied rights, social and political disintegration, and the criminal and political violence that invariably attend such conditions of insecurity.

 eregehr@uwaterloo.ca

 Notes

[i] Sam Perlo-Freeman, Olawale Ismail, and Carina Solmirano, “Military Expenditure,” SIPRI Yearbook 2010: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 177.

[ii] SIPRI Yearbook 2010, p. 203; and The Military Balance 2010, International Institute for Strategic Studies, pp. 462-468.

[iii]  A Conference of Defence Associations analysis of the Defence Budgets for the years 2006 through 2010 shows an increase of 44 per cent over those four years. Brian MacDonald, CDA Commentary 1-2010, 18 February 2010. www.cda-cdai.ca.

[iv] Based on figures (Current US$) from the IISS Military Balance (2010, 2007, and 2004-5 yearbooks) and the OECD database, the ODA by Donors Table (in Current US$). (http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=CSP2010).

[v] George Hamzo and Ernie Regehr, “Canadian peace and security spending: An update on the 5 Ds,” Ploughshares Monitor, Autumn 2008, volume 29, no. 3. http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/monitor/mons08b.pdf

[vi] The Religions for Peace Campaign for Shared Security had by mid-October  collected an amazing 20,102,746 signatures http://www.armsdown.net/.

[vii] Provide link to website.

The F-35: Canada’s air defence needs, compared with what?

That Canada needs a credible air defence capability is not in dispute; the challenge is to balance that with the other urgent needs on a rather long list. 

Canada needs a fleet of fast, long-range aircraft with a capacity to respond effectively to unidentified and unauthorized intrusions into Canadian airspace. That much seems pretty clear – but need is relative, not absolute.  

Canada also needs icebreakers to patrol the thawing and increasingly commercial Arctic waters. We need large and long-range transport aircraft (that money is already spent), along with well-equipped military and civilian personnel, to respond effectively on short notice to humanitarian and security crises beyond our borders. We need a major boost in Canada’s diplomatic corps to meet the myriad of diplomatic, political, and conflict challenges that a G8/G20 nation and aspirant to the Security Council should bring to the global table. We certainly need a massive increase in foreign assistance – to the tune of another $5 billion each and every year if we are to meet our avowed target of boosting annual official development assistance to the level of .7 per cent of GDP.[i]  

And of course we need to balance the federal budget, pay down the national debt, improve education, meet the voracious and still growing demands for health care, end child poverty, meet global environmental standards, and promote the arts. Furthermore, we need to do it all with some degree of urgency.  

Happily, Canada is also an extraordinarily wealthy country, so we can afford a lot of this – the issue is the political will to set sensible priorities that accord with a commitment to build sustainable conditions of human security at home and abroad.  

The F-35 question in isolation is not really one of affordability – if a thorough and frank national debate were to send 65 stealth, fifth generation, state-of-the-art fighter aircraft to the top of the list of urgent national requirements, we could afford them, even at total capital and operating costs of $15-$30 billion over a span of 30 years.[ii] The real question is, do we need them more than we need everything else on the list? And can we really afford them if that means deferring other urgent requirements?  

The hard part is not identifying needs, it’s obviously setting priorities.  

So the first step needs to be a realistic look at the nature and extent of our air defence needs. Is the F-35 the only way in which those needs can be met? Or are there ways of maintaining sufficient air defence capability at much lower costs – is there a responsible trade-off available that would allow us to reduce the costs of air defence and increase our response to other urgent imperatives?  

Air defence capabilities are not a luxury that we can decide to do without. So just saying a blanket no to fighter aircraft is not a solution. At the same time, we need to remind ourselves that the unidentified and unauthorized intrusions into Canadian airspace – the kinds of events that air defence systems are designed prevent and respond to – have little to do with Russian bombers or conventional national defence. All the media and Ministerial brouhaha over recent flights of Russian bombers in international airspace near Canada, and Canadian F-18 responses, was put in perspective by NORAD’s own insistence that these were routine exercises in which Russians train and NORAD tests response times: “Both Russia and NORAD routinely exercise their capability to operate in the North. These exercises are important to both NORAD and Russia and are not cause for alarm.”[iii]  

Furthermore, joint exercises with the Russians reflect the contemporary reality that they are now our collaborators in air defence operations, not our dreaded adversary. In August, the US, NORAD, and Russia conducted a joint exercise to respond to a staged “hijacking” of a civilian airliner. The exercise was an effort to integrate North American and Russian military and civilian air traffic control agencies to counter air terrorism.[iv]  

The airborne threat we do face comes largely in the form of small civilian aircraft carrying contraband. In effect, the day-to-day activity of NORAD, the Canada-US organization that monitors the air approaches to Canada, is to lend aid to the civil authorities in their drug interdiction efforts. Coastal radars identify aircraft entering Canadian airspace without a filed flight plan, and when necessary aircraft are sent to identify and escort the intruders to an airport or landing strip where civilian authorities can deal with them.  

It is important work that supports the rule of law, the human security of Canadians, and thus ultimately national security – but does it require the kind of fighter aircraft now being promised? Canada does not face imminent or foreseeable threats of hostile, unauthorized, foreign military breaches of Canadian air space. The conclusion to be drawn from that is not that we don’t need air defence, for it is in part effective air defence that dissuades others from trying to breach our borders. But it does put the need for air defence in some useful perspective: ongoing monitoring is absolutely essential; after 9-11 we know that threats can also emerge from within our borders; the capacity to physically confront and intercept intruders must be maintained; but a wealth of experience tells us that the threats to and from within our national airspace can be met with a reliable surveillance and modest interception capability. 

That still leaves the question of Canadian contributions of fighter aircraft capabilities to military operations beyond our borders. Canada has done very little of that in the past, largely because fighter aircraft have little utility in the kinds of expeditionary peace support operations that Canada should be expected to support in the future. Indeed, Canada’s CF-18 fighters, acquired in the early 1980s, have been deployed beyond Canada’s borders on only four occasions: 1) 26 were deployed to the 1991 Gulf War; 18 to the 1999 NATO operations in Serbia/Kosovo; in 1997 six CF-18s did a three-month tour out of Aviano, Italy to conduct air patrols over Bosnia in support of NATO ground forces and to protect airborne warning and control aircraft; and in June 1998 six CF-18s went to Aviano to support peacekeeping forces in Bosnia.[v]  
These elements, when work in a group, provide group functioning of these four- brain, nerves, vessels and hormones. uk generic cialis levitra cheapest Make use of any prescribed drugs before sex. Thus, the mother can still use the baby’s sleep time to attend to other levitra canada prescription important matters, such as the mother’s own sleep time. The second option is to present a line uk viagra prescription from a certified doctor or clinical personnel in order to hold the erection.
Serious voices in the defence policy community are raising questions about the F-35 and whether Canada’s contributions to peace support operations require fighter aircraft.  

Dan Middlemiss of Dalhousie University: …[A]lthough Canada is a member of the US Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program team, in future operations in support of Canadian foreign policy it will become increasingly difficult to justify the cost of a modest fleet of JSFs for the air force. There would be almost no requirement for such aircraft to support Canadian naval or army deployments on a “stand-alone” basis, and, while they would be useful – and fully interoperable – augmenters to coalition forces, their high acquisition and sustainment costs (which would include the sky-rocketing cost of “subsidies” to attract and retain fighter pilots) might rule them out as cost-effective contributors to Canadian expeditionary operations.” He points to the importance of information, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities and suggests further investigation of unpiloted aircraft for that role. 

Paul Mitchell of the Canadian Forces College says Canada will not be in a position to buy enough of any fighter aircraft to fulfill NORAD, NATO, and expeditionary commitments and thus suggests exploration of alternatives to advanced fighters:  “The most likely avenue of attack from the air on Canada today is not from a lumbering Bear bomber, but rather a small privately owned commercial aircraft.” And for defence against that you need aircraft that can fly “low and slow” – not the métier of supersonic fighters. Mitchell goes on to say: “A turboprop aircraft like Embraer’s “Super Tucano” or Beechcraft’s AT-6B (whose engines are manufactured by Pratt & Whitney Canada in Nova Scotia) would easily fit this bill. At roughly $6-million per copy, we could outfit the air force with 10 times the number of airframes. Furthermore, such aircraft are well suited to support army operations and are cheap to operate and maintain. CF-18s have been noticeably absent in the present conflict in Afghanistan.”[vi] 

Canada needs an ongoing and credible domestic air defence capability, but that doesn’t translate into an urgent need for the one of the most complex, most expensive, yet to be proven, combat aircraft on the planet. At the very least, we should have the benefit of a thorough, informed, and frank national debate, along with a competitive selection process, before any final commitment is made.

 eregehr@uwaterloo.ca

 Notes

[i] The Canadian Council for International Contribution proposes a more realistic in which aid would increase by 14 percent per year until 2020 when the .7 percent target would be reached. “2010/11 Pre-Budget Brief,” October 2009, Canadian Council for International Co-Operation (CCIC). http://www.ccic.ca/_files/en/what_we_do/2010_11_pre_budget_brief_oct09_e.pdf.

 [ii] US estimates of life-cycle costs per aircraft are at least three times higher than figures use by the Government of Canada in estimating the total program costs. Kenneth Epps, “Why Joint Strike Fighter aircraft? Program costs rise and benefits carry risks,” Ploughshares Briefing 10/3, August 2010. http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/Briefings/brf103.pdf.

 [iii] “NORAD downplays Russian bomber interception,” CBC News, 25 August 2010.  http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/08/25/cf-18s-russians-airspace.html.

 [iv] Maj. Mike Humphreys, “Vigilant Eagle tests NOARAD, Russian response,” NORAD and USNORTHCOM Public Affairs, 10 August 2010. http://www.norad.mil/News/2010/081010.html.

 [v] As documented by Dan Middlemiss in “A Military in Support of Canadian Foreign Policy: Some Fundamental Considerations,” Centre For Foreign Policy Studies, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova. http://www.cdfai.org/PDF/A%20Military%20In%20Support%20of%20Canadian%20Foreign%20Policy%20-%20Considerations.pdf.

 [vi] Paul T. Mitchell, “How to get more air force for the dollar,” The Ottawa Citizen, 12 October 2010. http://www.ottawacitizen.com/story_print.html?id=3655573&sponsor=

Canada and the F-35: Industrial Strategy Becomes Defence Policy

Canada’s participation in the US-led Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program began in 1997[1] as an aerospace industry initiative and emerged in 2010 as a fully formed air defence policy.

Setting aside for now the yet-to-be-debated question of Canada’s future air surveillance and interception needs and the merits of the F-35 aircraft for meeting those needs, the least persuasive argument in defence of the Government’s non-competitive selection of the F-35 fighter aircraft is the Prime Minister’s claim that the decision was really made in 1997.

That was when Canada put down an initial $10 million (US) to join the “concept demonstration” phase of the JSF program. At the time, critics, including this one, feared that industrial participation in the JSF would turn out to be a de facto defence policy decision to procure whatever aircraft emerged from the JSF venture.

Of course, the assurances at the time were all to the contrary. The Government of the day, and all of them since then, insisted that joining the JSF did not include a commitment by Canada to buy the end product. That was in fact the only credible position available. How could any responsible Government make a procurement commitment at the beginning of a lengthy research and development process in which there could be absolutely no guarantee that the process would in the end produce an aircraft that would 20 years later meet Canada’s particular air defence and surveillance needs? Yet, Prime Minister Harper now says, approvingly, that’s exactly what happened.

At the time, we were assured that the only decision made then was to buy Canadian industrial access to a major US weapons development program. That point was made recently by Alan Williams, the former senior defence procurement official who in 2002 signed the contract for Canada’s (US)$150 million contribution to the next phase of the JSF program, the System Development and Demonstration phase. Writing for the Defence Watch blog of David Pugliese, Mr. Williams said that “at no time did we commit to buying these aircraft. We entered the program with one main purpose; namely, to provide Canadian companies with an opportunity to compete for contracts in this multi-billion-dollar venture.”[2]

The Prime Minister attacked the messenger:  “In terms of the individual that you’re talking about,” Mr. Harper said in Winnipeg last week, “his advice was very different at the time that he was actually paid to give it.”[3] In fact, Mr. Williams’ consistent position is on record. In 2001 he appeared before the House of Commons Defence Committee with the then Defence Minister, Art Eggleton, to say: “We have not made any decision about the future aircraft we’ll use, and were we to participate [in the System Development and Demonstration phase], it would be with the objective of getting valuable access to wide-ranging studies that otherwise we would not be party to, and also allowing our industry to participate.”

So, the decision to join the JSF was really driven by two considerations – access to the US military aircraft development and production market for Canadian industry, and access to US research and development findings that would keep Canadian defence planners abreast of emerging aircraft technologies in anticipation of replacing the F-18, Canada’s current jet fighter.

Mr. Williams repeated the point in 2003 when he again testified at the Defence Committee: “The primary benefits for Canada of participating in JSF include providing Canadian industry with access to the largest U.S. defence program in the history of the Department of Defense, providing DND with access to the full range of technical data flowing from the JSF program, reducing the purchase price of the JSF should Canada elect to buy this aircraft, and finally, providing the Government of Canada with royalties from the sale of the joint strike fighter aircraft to non-partner nations” (emphasis added). He didn’t say Canada was therefore committed to buying the JSF; instead he made it clear that no decision on purchase had been made.[4]

The present Defence Minister, Peter MacKay, recently reinforced the understanding that Canada was under no commitment or obligation to buy the F-35. On May 27 he was asked for clarification by the NDP Defence Critic, Jack Harris, during a session of the Standing Committee on Defence:  “Mr. Chair, did I take the minister’s earlier comments in my last round of questions to mean that the government has already decided to purchase planes from the joint strike group fighter program?” And Mr. MacKay replied: 

“Mr. Chair, the hon. member is mistaken. None whatsoever….The joint strike fighter is one of the two aircraft, and there may be others. But I think those are the two main contenders that we are looking at.”[5] In other words, the Minister of Defence insisted even this year that alternatives to the F-35 were under active consideration.

But just last week in Winnipeg, Prime Minister Harper told an industry audience in Winnipeg that because the Canadian Government had already paid $150 million into the Joint Strike Fighter program, to help Canadian firms get development contracts for it, it would make no sense to consider any other aircraft: “Why would you now consider buying anything else.”[6] 

So now the Prime Minister insists that we have to accept the 1997 decision – which was not about buying an aircraft for the Canadian Forces but was about buying access for Canadian industry to a forthcoming US procurement program – as the final decision on a new fighter aircraft selection for Canada 20 years later. An industrial commitment made in 1997, a decade and a half before anyone had any idea what kind of aircraft would come out of the process, is now to be taken as an unshakable commitment to accept whatever that R and D process produced – a multinational process over which Canada, as a junior among junior partners, had no real influence.
It the man is not able to make the girl satisfied, the relation of them will break all of a sudden receive a very important call women viagra for sale from work. http://www.daveywavey.tv/cialis-2548.html levitra samples You should also avoid buying cheap Kamagra without a prescription and at great prices online now! Myth number 3: Shopping at e-pharmacies for erectile dysfunction treatments As ED is a common problem later to prostate cancer treatment, there are solutions for the same as well. Besides this, health conditions like cardiovascular issues, kidney problems, high blood pressure, india cheap cialis high blood sugar level, vascular diseases, anemia etc. Side effects of Propecia:The side effect of Propecia is related to the functionality sildenafil tablets uk of testosterone.
In other words, an industrial strategy decision in 1997 is now to be taken as a firm defence policy decision in 2010.

eregehr@uwaterloo.ca

Notes

“Government of Canada Invests in R&D Technology for Joint Strike Fighter Program, 2 September 2008.” Government of Canada News Centre. http://news.gc.ca/web/article-eng.do;jsessionid=ac1b105330d514fd77ad446b41fd90d7edcb1f04e3ec.e38RbhaLb3qNe38TaxuMa3qOay0?crtr.sj1D=&mthd=advSrch&crtr.mnthndVl=7&nid=417259&crtr.dpt1D=&crtr.tp1D=&crtr.lc1D=&crtr.yrStrtVl=2002&crtr.kw=joint%2Bstrike%2Bfighter&crtr.dyStrtVl=1&crtr.aud1D=&crtr.mnthStrtVl=1&crtr.yrndVl=2010&crtr.dyndVl=23

For a broader view of the JSF and F-35 program, including costs, see: Kenneth Epps, “Why Joint Strike Fighter aircraft? Program costs rise and benefits carry risks,” Ploughshares Briefing 10/3, August 2010. http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/Briefings/brf103.pdf.

[2] Alan Williams, “Open Competition Needed For Canada’s New Fighter Aircraft Procurement Says Former Senior Procurement Official,” in David Pugliese’s Defence Watch. July 27, 2010. http://communities.canada.com/ottawacitizen/blogs/defencewatch/archive/2010/07/27/open-competition-needed-for-canada-s-new-fighter-aircraft-procurement-says-former-senior-procurement-official.aspx.

[3]  “F-35 fighter strategy tug-of-war,” Politics and the Nation, Vancouver Sun Blog (7 October 2010). http://communities.canada.com/vancouversun/blogs/politics/archive/2010/10/07/f-35-fighter-strategy-tug-of-war.aspx

[4] “F-35 fighter strategy tug-of-war,” Politics and the Nation, Vancouver Sun Blog (7 October 2010). http://communities.canada.com/vancouversun/blogs/politics/archive/2010/10/07/f-35-fighter-strategy-tug-of-war.aspx

[5] May 27, 2010. http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=40&Ses=3&DocId=4559699#Int-3187519.

[6] Paul Turenne, “PM defends F-35 purchase,” Winnipeg Sun, 7 October 2010. http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/canada/2010/10/07/15623516.html#/news/winnipeg/2010/10/07/pf-15620691.html.

Exploring post-2011 military deployments in peace support operations

You female viagra in india are suffering from Impotence when you experience weak erection and ejaculate real soon during sexual intercourse. It is an advanced approach that viagra 25 mg targets the cancer and works to destroy it without surgery or radiation. The medical science is not standing still viagra canada deliver without researching to overcome the matter. If the male impotence is an ongoing initiative order cialis online of the incumbent government, you could buy Kamagra Polo online from the comfort of your home or office.

Military spending as “weaponized Keynesianism”

Towards an international commission on the resort to force

Being FDA approved product, the medication is being made up of some kind chemical ingredients. viagra samples From these online stores, people can buy cialis discount canada that has sildenafil citrate. What is Urology? Urology is a cialis professional effects buying that specialty division. The presence of low magnesium levels may hamper the functioning online levitra prescription of the lungs and pave way for respiratory problems.