February 12th, 2008
The Manley Panel seems to support, as does the Government resolution, the idea that, rather than concentrating only on counterinsurgency operations, Canadian forces should increasingly focus on training Afghan security forces. However, the Panel tends to define training as mentoring Afghan soldiers in counterinsurgency combat situations. Its report (p. 24) notes that the ISAF Operational […]
Read MoreFebruary 8th, 2008
The Government’s decision to ask Parliament to extend Canada’s current mission to 2011 (2) is linked to one of the more wrong-headed but still prominent complaints voiced in the current Canadian debate over Afghanistan. It is the charge that the Germans and others with forces in the more stable north are not doing any “heavy […]
Read MoreJanuary 23rd, 2008
It took only one paragraph in the President’s Abu Dhabi speech, the only major foreign policy speech of his Middle East tour, to display the bankruptcy of the Bush non-proliferation strategy. Opening with the familiar evils of terrorism, he quickly turned to Iran. Besides deploring its support for terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Palestine, […]
Read MoreJanuary 12th, 2008
“The nuclear powers could…expand the amount of information they publish about the size of their arsenals, stocks of fissile material and specific disarmament achievements. The lack of an authoritative estimate of the total number of nuclear weapons testifies to the need for greater transparency.” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon[i] To be sure, it is a modest […]
Read MoreJanuary 11th, 2008
India, Israel, and Pakistan remain outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and all three have nuclear weapons, so the international community still regularly calls on them “to accede to [the NPT] as non-nuclear-weapon States promptly and without conditions.”[i] For the three states to do that they would obviously first have to disarm, which they are […]
Read MoreJanuary 6th, 2008
Canada is helping to train the Afghan National Army (ANA) to become a disciplined security force that has the capacity to support Afghan stability and protect the people of Afghanistan. The political context in Afghanistan is still such that it remains rather a long way from reaching that goal, but it is important to prepare […]
Read MoreJanuary 3rd, 2008
Stephanie Nolen’s incisive New Years Day report in the Globe and Mail on Somalia[i] was a welcome and informative antidote to the dearth of attention to the ongoing tragedy there. One key assertion – that the current troubles are rooted in the 2004 peace deal that “produced a transitional government made up largely of warlords” – […]
Read MoreDecember 30th, 2007
Canada’s provision of helicopters to Pakistan’s military deserves the same kind of scrutiny that is finally raising serious questions in Washington[i] about the utility of showering President (and former General) Pervez Musharraf with cash and weapons to prosecute the “war on terror.” At least some US experts on South Asian political and military affairs were […]
Read MoreDecember 23rd, 2007
According to the just-released Foreign Affairs report on Canadian military exports (2003 through 2005),[i] Canada shipped $214 million worth of Canadian-built armored vehicles to Saudi Arabia in 2004. Indeed, Saudi Arabia was a consistent and prominent customer of Canadian-built armored vehicles for the better part of a decade, until 2005 when deliveries dropped sharply. In […]
Read MoreDecember 14th, 2007
Nobel Laureate Al Gore suggested to delegates to the UN climate change conference in Bali this week that they ought to emulate the play-making finesse of Bobby Hull or Wayne Gretzky – recalling Hull’s famous line: “I don’t pass the puck to where they are – I pass the puck to where they’re going to […]
Read More