Issuu

CANADA AMONG NATIONS 2015

Elusive Pursuits: Lessons from Canada’s Interventions Abroad — the 29th volume of the influential Canada Among Nations series — examines Canada’s role in foreign military and security missions, including the country’s tendency to intervene under the auspices of international institutions. Canada is not just among nations in these efforts, but in nations on a regular basis. This book considers the longer-term impact of these interventions and draws the lessons to be learned from Canada’s past and current interventions, with the certainty that there will always be a next time.

Canada Among Nations 2015

Canada has been almost continuously involved in major international peace and security enforcement operations since the early 1990s, as part of multilateral efforts to stop wars, monitor peace, avert genocide, promote development or, occasionally, to topple dictators and even win wars. It has deployed anywhere from 1,000 to 4,000 personnel overseas annually since the Gulf War, and participated in missions in Afghanistan, Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Libya, East Timor, Iraq and Syria. This volume looks at Canada’s role as interventionist within three broad themes: the lessons learned from interventions in Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia and Haiti; the domestic side of intervention, including Canadian foreign aid and the gender equation in military interventions; and the responsibility to protect, addressing the larger principles and patterns that influence Canada’s engagements.

Canada Among Nations has been the premier source for critical insight into Canadian foreign policy issues since 1984. This edition continues that tradition by providing students, policy makers and practitioners with a timely compendium of expert opinion on how Canada’s past and present military and peacekeeping missions can provide guidance for engagement in the future. FEN OSLER HAMPSON is a distinguished fellow and the director of the Global Security and Politics Program at CIGI. He is also co-director of the Global Commission on Internet Governance, a joint project with CIGI and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. He is chancellor’s professor at Carleton University and a former Jennings Randolph Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace.

Published by the Centre for International Governance Innovation in partnership with the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.

L E S S O N S F R O M C A N A D A’ S I N T E RV E N T I O N S A B R O A D

Hampson / Saideman

STEPHEN M. SAIDEMAN is the Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University. His research interests focus on the causes and consequences of intervention into intra-state conflicts. He was a Canada Research Chair and a Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellow. His current work focuses on the role of legislatures in the civilian control of militaries in the world’s democracies.

Elusive Pursuits

ISBN 978-1-928096-11-5

www.cigionline.org

9 781928 096115

Edited by Fen Osler Hampson and Stephen M. Saideman

Canada Among Nations 2015

Canada Among Nations 2015 ELUSIVE PURSUITS Lessons from Canadaâ€™s Interventions Abroad Edited by Fen Osler Hampson and Stephen M. Saideman

Published by the Centre for International Governance Innovation in partnership with the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University

© 2015 the Centre for International Governance Innovation and Carleton University This book has been compiled from the contributions of the author(s) indicated in each chapter, and the copyright in respect of each chapter resides with the author(s) of each chapter. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher and the author, application for which should be addressed to the Centre for International Governance Innovation, 67 Erb Street West, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 6C2 or publications@cigionline.org.

ISBN 978-1-928096-11-5 (paper) ISBN 978-1-928096-12-2 (ebook) The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Centre for International Governance Innovation or its Operating Board of Directors or International Board of Governors. The Centre for International Governance Innovation and Carleton University gratefully acknowledge and thank the International Development Research Centre for its financial support of this publication.

Published by the Centre for International Governance Innovation in partnership with the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University. Printed and bound in Canada. Cover design: Sara Moore Cover photo: “Jump over Mt. Rainier” by Flickr user The U.S. Army used under CC Attribution 2.0. The photo has been flipped horizontally. A Canadian special operations soldier descends in front of Mt. Rainier onto Fort Lewis, Wash., after jumping with U.S. 1st Special Forces Group.

Centre for International Governance Innovation 67 Erb Street West Waterloo, ON Canada N2L 6C2 www.cigionline.org

Contents

Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Rohinton Medhora and Dane Rowlands Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Hugh Segal Acronyms and Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Introduction: Learning Lessons from Canada’s Interventions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Fen Osler Hampson and Stephen M. Saideman Part One — Interventions: Lessons Learned 1

Mandating Responsibility: International Legal Lessons from the Military Intervention in Libya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Christopher K. Penny

Navigating Troubled Waters: Canada in the Arab World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Marie-Joëlle Zahar

vi |

Lessons Learned?: Public Opinion and the Afghanistan Mission. . . . . . . . . . 59 Jean-Christophe Boucher and Kim Richard Nossal

Canada and Somalia: Learning from the Legacy of Failed Intervention . . . . 79 Aisha Ahmad

Living among the Population in Southern Afghanistan: A Canadian Approach to Counter-insurgency. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Caroline Leprince

Securing the Pearl of the Caribbean: The Canadian Contribution to Haiti’s Security and Stability, 2004–2014. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Gaëlle Rivard Piché

Part Two — The Domestic Side of Intervention 7

Canada’s Development Interventions: Unpacking Motives and Effectiveness in Canadian Foreign Aid. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Stephen Brown

The Gender Turn in Canadian Military Interventions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Stéfanie von Hlatky

Part Three — Responsibility to Protect 9

Syria and the Responsibility to Protect. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Jane Boulden

10 The Call of Duty: Harper’s Doctrine on Military Intervention. . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Derek Burney, Fen Osler Hampson and Simon Palamar 11 Geriatric Interventions: The Demographic Horizon of Collective Security. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 Christian Leuprecht Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

Preface Rohinton Medhora and Dane Rowlands

Canada Among Nations has been a fixture of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (NPSIA) and the Canadian foreign policy community since the mid-1980s. The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) has been a frequent partner in the publication, having first collaborated with the 2005 volume. This 29th edition is the third of a three-year partnership between NPSIA, CIGI and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). With IDRC’s generous assistance, we have produced volumes on Canada-Africa relations, the global financial crisis and now this year’s volume on intervention and peace enforcement. The case for choosing the topic for this year’s edition was compelling. Contributing to the maintenance and enforcement of peace and security has been part and parcel of contemporary Canadian foreign policy. Canada’s shift from the traditional blue-helmet peacekeeping of the Cold War period to its increasingly more forceful post-Cold War variant reflected the changing international security environment, and contributed to a debate about the role and capability of the Canadian military. There was also a simultaneous recognition of the importance of dealing with violent conflict within states as a prerequisite for meaningful and sustained development. For many Canadians, the mission to Afghanistan was the embodiment of this new intervention reality, and its formal end in 2014 triggered our choice of topic for this year’s edition. Not only is there enough of a record of missions long over or of long standing to undertake this assessment, but enough time has elapsed since the end of the Afghanistan mission, the key exemplar of robust Canadian intervention, to begin the search for emerging lessons.

vii

viii | Rohinton Medhora and Dane Rowlands

Spoiler alert: the editors of this volume conclude that while each situation is obviously different, there has been “a failure to study and script some useful lessons for the future.” This conclusion is both unsurprising and surprising at the same time. It is unsurprising because, as several chapters point out, many missions have been reactions to emergencies rather than the result of a coherent strategic vision, let alone being based on scholarly preparation for a complex problem. Moreover, as a small (and it should always be said, team) player, Canada has been a “strategy consumer” not a “strategy producer.” What is surprising about the conclusion and the absence of sustained analysis of intervention is that these missions have caught the public eye domestically, and consume large amounts of public resources and, at times, public emotion. While this attention is most apparent in the Afghanistan and Somalia missions, it is an undercurrent in them all. And, as the final chapter of this volume notes, there is an urgent need to use our understanding of past interventions to inform our future policies in the face of impending structural changes in Canadian society. For example, the changing demographic pattern in this country is likely to affect Canada’s future interventions abroad. An aging population values the present more than it does the future, and requires greater levels of public services. Both factors militate against expansive (and expensive) ventures abroad in the name of peacekeeping and nation building. Yet we know there will be a next time. Helping to resolve fiendish conditions overseas will always matter at home, either for self-interested motives or for allegedly nobler ones. All the more reason to have the sort of careful, sustained assessment of this subject that the editors and authors of this volume provide. By providing the scholarly analysis of a crucial current and future foreign policy problem for Canada, this volume continues the original mission of the Canada Among Nations series and of NPSIA. By examining a foreign policy problem that raises both challenges and opportunities for governing the global system, the volume speaks to one important facet of CIGI’s work. And by dealing extensively with security in fragile and failed states, the volume wrestles with some of the most difficult obstacles to sustained development that institutions such as IDRC have to face each day. In finding resonance among the three partners of this edition, we trust it will also inform, enlighten and provoke debate within the community of students, scholars, policy makers and other followers of Canadian foreign policy.

Foreword Hugh Segal

Over the past decade or so, I have always advanced the notion that there can be precious little meaning to a concept such as “the responsibility to protect” without the actual capacity to deploy. Whether what needs to be deployed is humanitarian aid, boots on the ground, observer teams, a diplomatic initiative, well-targeted development aid or investment, technical assistance in the face of a bacterial outbreak or air, land or sea combat capacity, not being able to deploy is the ultimate national abdication in the face of international exigencies. At a time when Canada has just come off a high-tempo, multiyear combat operation in Afghanistan replete with many rotations, domestic debate, controversy and more than our fair share of casualties, and now faces — with the rest of the world — new risks in Eastern Europe and marauding, well-organized mass terrorist inhumanity in Syria, Iraq, Northern Africa and elsewhere, reflecting on how we deploy, what resources and approaches are used, what we can learn from the recent past and what we need to master before deploying again has never mattered more. Elusive Pursuits is a timely and essential primer on how we have faced recent deployment challenges and a multi-variant analytical frame on decisions made, choices embraced and challenges ahead. While mid-term controversies on national security laws, procurement delays and snafus, and the usual histrionics of a general election may unwittingly conspire to obscure the real issues around foreign deployments for a modern, democratic and middle-power country, these issues cannot be ignored. Facing them squarely is what the monographs in this year’s Canada Among Nations clearly does. Learning from the legal challenges around the Libyan

x | Hugh Segal

deployment, understanding the context of Canada’s dynamic in the Arab world, reflecting on the public opinion backdrop of the Afghanistan mission or lessons learned from the Somali deployment, evaluating Canadian approaches to local security in Afghanistan and Haiti combined with a careful assessment of what did and did not happen in Syria, generates important questions and insights about how and why Canada has deployed abroad in recent times and for different purposes. The insights and questions raised in these analyses create a broad template for understanding the “operational” code through which a government can decide to deploy. Our four most recent prime ministers, Mulroney, Chrétien, Martin and Harper, all had differing approaches to the deployment question and the surrounding nuances that we are well-advised to understand. The drill-down inquiries into different aspects of Canada’s military deployments included in this volume serve one other compelling and important purpose. The end of the election season will occasion the need for both a fresh foreign policy and a defence policy review — even if the incumbent government is, perchance, returned. For those reviews to be meaningful, timely and well-informed, a rational comprehension of how and why Canada has deployed in recent times, the successes and setbacks, and the legal, foreign and domestic policy political contexts of those deployments need to be understood and assessed. In that goal, and toward that purpose, this volume makes a superb and very constructive contribution, and not a moment too soon.

Acronyms and Abbreviations

AMISOM African Union Mission to Somalia ANSF Afghan National Security Forces AU African Union BQ Bloc Québécois CAF Canadian Armed Forces CAR Canadian Airborne Regiment CFP Canadian foreign policy CIDA Canadian International Development Agency CIGI Centre for International Governance Innovation COIN counter-insurgency DFAIT Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade DFATD Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development DND Department of National Defence FAd’H Forces Armées d’Haïti FM 3-24 U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual 3-24 G8 Group of Eight GCC Gulf Corporation Council GFPS Global Peace and Security Fund ICC International Criminal Court ICHRDD International Center for Human Rights and Democracy Development ICISS International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty ICJ International Court of Justice

xii |

ICSC IDP IDRC ISAF ISIL ISIS LFTDS LOAC MIF MINUSTAH MNCH MP NAP NATO NDP NFZ NGO NPSIA OCC-D ODA OECD OEF OUP PNH R2P RCMP RCD SNA START SWINTER TFK TNC UNITAF UNMIH UNOAOM UNPol UNSC UNSCR USC WFP WPS

International Commission for Supervision and Control internally displaced person International Development Research Centre International Security Assistance Force Islamic State of Iraq and Levant Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham Land Force Doctrine and Training System Law of Armed Conflict Multinational Interim Force United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti maternal, newborn and child health Member of Parliament national action plan North Atlantic Treaty Organization New Democratic Party no-fly zone non-governmental organization Norman Paterson School of International Affairs Dand District Operational Coordination Centre official development assistance Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Operation Enduring Freedom Operation Unified Protector Police Nationale d’Haïti Responsibility to Protect Royal Canadian Mounted Police Royal Canadian Dragoons Somali National Alliance Stabilization and Reconstruction Team Servicewomen in Non-Traditional Environments and Roles Task Force Kandahar Transitional National Council Unified Task Force United Nations Mission in Haiti United Nations Operation in Somalia United Nations Police United Nations Security Council United Nations Security Council Resolution United Somali Congress World Food Programme women, peace and security

Introduction Learning Lessons from Canada’s Interventions Fen Osler Hampson and Stephen M. Saideman

When we speak of Canada “among” nations, we need to remember that Canada has frequently intervened in foreign countries as part of multilateral efforts to stop wars, monitor the peace, avert genocide, promote development and good governance, occasionally topple dictators and even win wars. Canada was one of many countries to intervene in Afghanistan for more than a decade. But it was also an intervention that cost Canada many lives and much treasure, with uncertain results. Afghanistan will almost certainly cast a long shadow over future debates about what Canada can and cannot do when it is asked to send troops abroad. However, Afghanistan is not the only country where Canada has intervened in the past two and a half decades: Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Libya, East Timor and now Iraq and Syria form a growing list of interventions in the elusive pursuit of peace and global security. The actual mission and level of Canada’s commitment varied in each case. Yet they all have one thing in common — a failure to study and script some useful lessons for the future. Modern militaries engage in “lessons learned” exercises regularly because the cost of failure on the battlefield can be tragically high. Other departments and agencies of government do so episodically at best. As the Canadian effort in Afghanistan wrapped up, the Privy Council Office apparently organized a formal lessons learned exercise to determine what went right and wrong with the “whole-of-government” approach to the mission. Many officials at different levels of seniority and in different departments were interviewed

2 | Fen Osler Hampson and Stephen M. Saideman

as part of the exercise, and the results of that assessment were penned in a formal report. Unfortunately, the report is now buried in a cabinet drawer.1 Not only are outsiders denied access to the report, but so too are those who work within government. This is a problem, since collecting first-hand accounts and writing a report are only the first two steps — the third is to disseminate the findings so that reforms can be made to improve performance. Perhaps the issue is that admitting mistakes is a painful thing to do and cannon fodder for the government’s critics if the findings become public. One motivation for this volume is to do what governments often cannot — to stimulate public debate and discussion about lessons learned from Canada’s post-Cold War military interventions by offering our own assessments that come from a careful scrutiny of the public record of such interventions. Despite Canada’s recurrent interventions in conflict zones around the world, we have surprisingly few comparative analyses of such efforts. It is true that there are many studies of individual cases, but there are few systematic comparisons across different cases. As a consequence, we do not know what Canada does well, what it does poorly and why (and where) we choose to intervene and why we sometimes do not.

Intervention Patterns Canada has intervened abroad many times over the years, but almost always with others, either as part of a UN-mandated mission or alongside other countries in a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-led coalition. When scholars speak of intervention, they tend to refer to the deployment of the military in an effort to affect the internal dynamics of another country. While much of the focus of this volume will be on this conventional idea of intervention, the contributors also consider less “kinetic” forms of involvement such as humanitarian aid and development assistance. The goals of such interventions can range from promoting regime change to peacemaking to peacekeeping to training to promoting stability and good governance. Indeed, one can even consider diplomatic efforts to be a form 1

The best evidence we have about this process, aside from a number of conversations with government officials who would rather stay anonymous, is the rejection of the Access to Information request submitted by Stephen M. Saideman. It acknowledged that this document exists, but that he could not see it. The denial is currently in its third year under appeal.

Introduction | 3

of intervention. Still, for most of this volume and for the public in general, intervention tends to mean the use of force to affect the domestic dynamics of another country, with the broad aim of contributing to international peace and security. These interventions tend to be the costliest for Canada in terms of lives and dollars. As a consequence, they receive the most media attention and political scrutiny. What have been the patterns of Canadaâ€™s interventions (narrowly defined)? Figure 1 illustrates the missions (number and size of contributions) in which Canadians have contributed troops in substantial numbers to both UN and NATO missions. Figure 1: Canadian Forces Deployment, UN and NATO 5000

4500

Troop Numbers

3500 15

3000 2500 2000

1500 1000

Number of Missions

4000

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

500

NATO

Missions

Data sources: For UN statistics, Kathman (2013). For Canadaâ€™s NATO deployments, we combined figures from NATO placemats for part of the Kosovo effort (www.aco.nato.int/kfor/ library/facts-figures/archive-kfor-placemate.aspx) and for all of the Afghanistan effort (www.isaf. nato.int/isaf-placemat-archives.html) with Canadian Armed Forces numbers for Bosnia (www. forces.gc.ca/en/news/article.page?doc=canadian-forces-operations-in-bosnia-herzegovina/ hnps1u07) and Libya (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mobile). The Wikipedia numbers were linked to a Canadian Armed Forces document that is no longer accessible.

While the number of troops deployed in UN peacekeeping missions declined, mostly as Canada ramped up its efforts in Bosnia and then Afghanistan, the overall number of missions has not. Figure 1 indicates that Canada has been

4 | Fen Osler Hampson and Stephen M. Saideman

more or less continuously involved in major international peace and security enforcement operations since the early 1990s, dedicating anywhere between 1,000 and 4,000 personnel overseas. This figure also points to a basic reality that is easy to overlook — Canada always intervenes with other countries under the auspices of international institutions (Dawson 2003; Gordon 1994). It does not act independently nor without the formal blessing of global and/ or regional multilateral institutions. In fact, the only non-UN peacekeeping mission to which Canada was a party during the entire Cold War era was the International Commission for Supervision and Control (ICSC) established in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos following the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indochina. One of the more noteworthy features of the new Iraq-Syria mission is that it is the first military effort in which Canada has participated without either the United Nations or NATO being involved. The only previous time Canada was offered such an opportunity, in Iraq in 2003, it declined (Fitzsimmons 2013). There are at least two ways to consider the multilateral nature of Canada’s interventions, one focusing on international norms and another on Canada’s limited abilities as a middle-sized power. Even before the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) was enunciated, Canada was consistently and heavily involved in UN efforts to end wars and provide humanitarian relief to those caught up in conflict.2 In the aftermath of Bosnia and Rwanda, Canadian diplomats played an important role in defining R2P and getting UN support for it. Perhaps the spike in Canadian peacekeeping efforts at this time is no accident. The chapters in Part Three: Responsibility to Protect of this volume address R2P’s role in Canada’s interventions, as well as the competing imperatives that might be driving Canada’s selectivity when it comes to non-NATO efforts. That Canada never intervenes alone is most obviously tied to another key reality — Canada does not have the military capability to act unilaterally. Canada’s military is too small to perform most, if not all, interventions on its own. That Canada cannot operate militarily without some partners means that Canada’s ability to choose to intervene will always be severely constrained. The Jean Chrétien government discovered this when it was asked by the Bill Clinton administration to take the lead in 1996 to deal with a growing humanitarian crisis in what was then Eastern Zaire. The crisis dissipated 2

For a good chronology and summary of Canada’s UN efforts, see www.canadahistory. com/sections/war/Peace%20Keepers/peacekeeping.html.

Introduction | 5

before Canada was able to put any troops on the ground, but the burdens of planning and assembling a large multinational force almost brought the Canadian government to its knees, and was a prudent lesson in the limitations of middle-power management and intervention in complex humanitarian emergencies, especially when other major political interests are involved (Smith and Hay 1999). The lesson then and since is that Canada can only go where others are willing to go. Former Prime Minister Paul Martin criticized the Afghanistan operation after he lost the 2006 election, in large part because the growing commitment there crowded out other possible interventions, particularly in Darfur.3 At the time, however, NATO was not going to get involved militarily in Darfur, so Martin was really talking about an intervention that was not going to happen. Canada cannot intervene when it does not have partners, and even when it does have partners, its choices will be constrained by the choices its partners make. Until the early 1990s, Canada participated in every UN peacekeeping operation, but that pattern changed as the number of UN missions grew and Canada realized it had to be more selective about its commitments. However, Canada has participated in all NATO-led enforcement operations, including the missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya. Of course, it is not just that NATO is more selective than the United Nations, but that the costs of opting out of NATO missions are seen by the Canadian government as being far greater.

Assessing Canadaâ€™s Impact If Canada always intervenes as part of a multilateral operation, what is the particular value that Canada adds to such undertakings? Like nearly every other country operating in Afghanistan, Canada claimed that it was punching above its weight and contributing more than one would expect from a country of its size. Indeed, the argument is easiest to make when the topic is Afghanistan, since Canada had responsibility for one of the most important areas in the country. Kandahar Province was a pivotal locale because the Taliban movement originated there. In her chapter, Caroline Leprince focuses on the key village program, where the Canadian Forces developed a new set of tactics that attracted much attention from those at International Security 3

Interview with Paul Martin, March 29, 2007, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

6 | Fen Osler Hampson and Stephen M. Saideman

Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters. This was a visible effort to make a difference. Scholars and other analysts will debate whether Canada made a sustainable difference, but it is clear that while Canadian Forces and Canadian whole-of-government officials were on the ground, they made an impact. In other NATO efforts, Canadian Forces also made significant contributions. Canada provided 10 percent of the sorties during the Kosovo campaign, which may not seem like much, but was one-third of the total non-American contribution (Dashwood 2000, 288). During the Libyan effort, Canada provided key resources, such as refuelling and reconnaissance aircraft, and was one of only eight NATO members to drop bombs (Auerswald and Saideman 2014). The rest of NATO was unwilling to participate in the bombing campaign. Nevertheless, the reality is that Canada is primarily a “strategy consumer” rather than a “strategy producer.” The big decisions about military operations are generally made by the United States and the American officers that head the missions. This limits how much of a leadership impact Canada can have. However, the general tendency of NATO efforts to distribute responsibility geographically means that Canada can and does run its area of operations as it sees fit within the broader rules of the operation. Moreover, because Canada has “punched above its weight,” Canadian officers have served in major command positions in Afghanistan (Lieutenant-General Rick Hillier served as commander of the ISAF in 2003-2004)4 and in Libya (LieutenantGeneral Charles Bouchard served as NATO’s operational commander of the Libyan mission). One of the key questions that the chapters in this volume also address concerns the longer-term impact of such interventions on the trajectory of politics and developments on the ground. Aisha Ahmad’s chapter on Somalia indicates that Canada had an impact that goes well beyond the immediate fallout of the widely publicized “Somalia Affair.” Ahmad argues that Canadian food assistance, which continued long after the Canadian Forces went home, actually exacerbated the power struggles among Somalia’s rival factions, thus furthering political instability and violent conflict. In her discussion of the Canadian effort in Haiti to train police, Gaëlle Rivard Piché finds that Canada’s focus on the technical aspects of police training have been 4

At the time he served as commander of the ISAF, Hillier was a lieutenant-general, but he was promoted to general and chief of defence staff in February 2005.

Introduction | 7

productive, but come at the expense of other elements of governance reform, such as repairing the country’s weak judicial system. Marie-Joëlle Zahar’s chapter considers Canadian diplomacy in the Middle East, where Canada is swimming in turbulent waters with limited impact. To be fair, Canada is only one of many countries involved in security sector reform and development, so it is hard to give Canada too much credit when things go well or to assign Canada blame when they go wrong.

The Style of Canadian Interventions How is the Canadian military distinct or similar to the military of other countries in the way it performs or carries out its missions? The key village program discussed by Leprince is one such distinctly Canadian effort, and was viewed as a potential model for other countries. Rivard Piché demonstrates that Canada does pursue its own course in Haiti, doing both more and less than what the other international actors are attempting to do. Ahmad’s chapter provides a split decision on this question, as the Somalia Affair produced a uniquely Canadian reaction — disbanding the Airborne Regiment — but the food assistance programs presented dynamics similar to those experienced by other contributors. In other ways, Canada is not that unique, especially when it comes to dealing with the legal aspects of a mission, as Christopher K. Penny documents in his chapter on Libya. Stéfanie von Hlatky suggests that there is not a single Canadian style of intervention, since agencies differ even in how they understand gender mainstreaming. Likewise, Stephen Brown demonstrates that Canadian aid has not had a single consistent pattern, which makes it hard to argue that Canada does aid differently than other countries. Derek Burney, Fen Osler Hampson and Simon Palamar do not put their chapter into comparative context, but one could see how the pressures facing all NATO leaders could lead to similar responses — doing as much as expected by their allies. Similarly, Zahar’s perspective on Canada’s diplomacy in the Middle East suggests that Canada is not that distinct — the focus on the threat of Islamist extremism has meant compromising values via supporting brutal regimes.

8 | Fen Osler Hampson and Stephen M. Saideman

The Domestic Politics of Intervention Under the Canadian Constitution, the executive branch of government is not formally required to secure parliamentary approval for declarations of war or when Canadian troops are deployed overseas in peacekeeping or peace enforcement operations (see Hampson 2003, 128-29). Under the National Defence Act, the governor-in-council has the statutory authority to deploy Canadian forces in “active service” in Canada or overseas, as the situation requires. Until recently, however, the practice of most governments was to inform Parliament when Canadian Forces were being deployed overseas in peacekeeping or enforcement operations, usually in the form of “take note” debates. That practice changed under the Harper government, which not only went to Parliament to seek formal approval for the extension of the Afghanistan mission, but also for the subsequent mission in Libya.5 Whatever the political motivation, the decision by the Harper government to secure parliamentary approval for these foreign troop deployments is one that future governments may be obliged to follow, now that the precedent has been set. The Canadian public has rarely been warmly disposed or strongly opposed to these overseas military engagements and public support has been lukewarm at best. Politicians have struggled to articulate the purposes of these missions (Boucher 2009, 717) with indifferent results. As Jean-Christophe Boucher and Kim Richard Nossal document in their chapter, politicians do not get entirely clear signals from the Canadian public. Support also tends to be highly regionalized, being stronger in the West than it is in Quebec or Ontario. Brown suggests that domestic political interests drive Canada’s assistance policies, even as there are other ways to consider the broader patterns over time. This ambivalence or uncertainty gives Canadian politicians and parties significant room to operate. Constraints, however, do exist, as Chrétien clearly understood that the Canadian public would not accept participating in the American war in Iraq in 2003.

The Iraq mission is confusing given that the language in the motion is not about approval but giving support.

Introduction | 9

The Road Ahead This volume is organized into three parts: focusing on the Afghanistan experience; considering Canada’s less violent efforts abroad; and then addressing the larger principles and patterns influencing Canada’s engagements. Afghanistan will clearly shape the imagination of Canadians as they consider interventions over the next 20 or more years. Analyses of the mission will fill many books, and we cannot adequately address the entire conflict in this volume. Instead, we have three chapters that take very clear and distinct angles providing us with some key lessons to be learned. Leprince examines the key village effort that the Canadian Forces initiated toward the end of the Canadian effort in Kandahar. When finally given a chance, not just to clear, but to hold and to build, the Canadian Forces were able to innovate and make more progress than before. The author draws upon this experience to assess the conditions for success in future efforts. Boucher and Nossal look at the home game, and seek to explain the patterns of public opinion that allowed this effort to continue, despite being the most costly intervention since Korea. Their assessment suggests that another prime minister could commit Canada to a similar effort, and ride the waves of ambivalence through elections and through mixed outcomes in the field. Von Hlatky uses the Afghanistan experience to consider the role of gender in the Canadian Forces. There was much irony involved, as the Canadian Forces’ stance on equality — that women should be treated exactly the same as men — ignored the added value that women brought to this distinct battlefield, where the population was highly segregated by gender. To get the most out of population-centric operations, the Canadian Forces had to engage the women of Afghanistan, which turned out to be “women’s work,” since the women of Afghanistan would not talk to the men of the Canadian Forces. The volume then turns to Canadian interventions that involved less or little violence, with some contradictory lessons to learn about Canadian ambition: should Canadians learn humility or should Canada try to do more? Canadians mostly remember the Somalia intervention for the scandal involving the beating and killing of Somalis. Ahmad puts those events into context by addressing the larger purpose of the intervention — feeding the starving Somalis — which had longer-lasting but deceptively pernicious effects.

10 | Fen Osler Hampson and Stephen M. Saideman

Canada’s good intentions here had quite tragic consequences. Rivard Piché considers the enduring effort to build Haiti’s justice system. Canada has been a significant contributor to Haiti’s development efforts, but Rivard Piché argues that the lesson to be learned is that much more needs to be done than improve the technical aspects of Haiti’s rule of law. Zahar examines Canada’s diplomacy in the Middle East, and finds significant contradictions between Canadian actions and values. Brown addresses Canada’s development assistance, seeking to assess the key dynamics driving the delivery of dollars and projects. The last section of the volume considers the larger lessons to be learned from the broad patterns of Canadian intervention. What does R2P require? Does it involve regime change? Penny’s perspective on the legal lessons drawn from the Libyan mission speaks to larger questions about how Canada can and should participate in these very complex operations. He raises issues about the complicated mandates of these efforts and how they impose significant responsibilities on those who join such efforts. Boulden considers the nonevent — the limited intervention against Assad in Syria — to examine the limits of R2P. Her chapter draws lessons about somewhat more subtle forms of intervention — the non-use but threat of force. Burney, Hampson and Palamar argue that Harper’s foreign policy toward various crises has not been driven by R2P, but instead by a principled duty to participate. The imperatives of joining with allies have meant that Canada engages in these missions even as the goals are less than clear. Leuprecht addresses the key lesson that might be learned from Afghanistan — not to intervene at all. His chapter considers the larger demographic trends that suggest that this lesson might be the most enduring of them all. The contributions in this volume do not provide a single set of recommendations, but they do help develop key themes that need to be considered the next time Canada is involved in an intervention. Indeed, the clear lesson here is that there is always a next time. Canada is not just among nations, but in nations on a regular basis. Perhaps the real lesson here is that Canadian politicians need to embrace humility — there is only so much Canada can contribute, the problems requiring intervention are increasingly complex, and the various alternatives tend to range from bad to worse. Domestic and international politics will push Canada again and again into these multilateral interventions,

Introduction | 11

even as many of them do not work out so well. By facing Canada’s limitations and strengths, perhaps we can pick and choose among the many intervention opportunities and implement better approaches.

Acknowledgement This introduction benefited significantly from research assistance provided by Uri Marantz.

Works Cited Auerswald, David P. and Stephen M. Saideman. 2014. NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting Together, Fighting Alone. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Boucher, Jean-Christophe. 2009. “Selling Afghanistan: A Discourse Analysis of Canada’s Military Intervention, 2001–08.” International Journal 64 (3): 717–33. Dashwood, Hevina S. 2000. “Canada’s Participation in the NATO-led Intervention in Kosovo.” In Canada Among Nations 2000: Vanishing Borders, edited by Fen Osler Hampson and Maureen Appel Molot. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press Canada. Dawson, Grant. 2003. “A ‘Special Case’: Canada, Operation Apollo, and Multilateralism.” In Canada Among Nations 2003: Coping with the American Colossus, edited by David Carment, Fen Osler Hampson and Norman Hillmer. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press Canada. Fitzsimmons, Dan. 2013. “Canada, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.” International Journal 68 (2), Spring: 305–13. Gordon, Nancy. 1994. “Beyond Peacekeeping: Somalia, the United Nations and the Canadian Experience.” In Canada Among Nations 1994: A Part of the Peace, edited by Maureen Appel Molot and Harald Van Riekhoff. Ottawa, ON: Carleton University Press.

12 | Fen Osler Hampson and Stephen M. Saideman

Hampson, Fen Osler. 2003. “Canada: Committed Contributor of Idea and Forces, But with Growing Doubts and Problems.” In Democratic Accountabilty and the Use of Force in International Law, edited by Charlotte Ku and Harold K. Jacobson. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Smith, Gordon and John Hay. 1999. “Canada and the Crisis in Eastern Zaire.” In Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World, edited by Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall, 87–105. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace.

CANADA AMONG NATIONS 2015

Canada Among Nations 2015

Published by the Centre for International Governance Innovation in partnership with the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.

L E S S O N S F R O M C A N A D A’ S I N T E RV E N T I O N S A B R O A D

Hampson / Saideman

Elusive Pursuits

ISBN 978-1-928096-11-5

www.cigionline.org

9 781928 096115

Edited by Fen Osler Hampson and Stephen M. Saideman

PREVIEW: Elusive Pursuits: Lessons From Canada’s Interventions Abroad