forces in many countries but your closest collaboration has been with the United States. What, in your opinion, is the main difference between the Canadian and the American Forces? General Matern: The main difference is quite simple. It’s all about capability and capacity. For example, we are a small army, but very capable at producing good tactical battalions, ships that go out. The U.S. Forces are very good operational and strategic forces, so they are used to deploying big formations out. When I had the opportunity to serve with the U.S. as a senior officer, it was at a very strategic level. For instance, in Iraq I got exposed to the whole theater of Iraq, whereas Canadians are generally limited to specific regions. In Afghanistan, for example, we were very much consumed by the Kandahar region. The U.S. has much more capacity than we have, more ability to project and more reach. What we can expose our senior officers to in terms of strategic movement and strategic affairs is just easier in the U.S. configuration because it’s at a higher level of operations. But while Canada has a tactical army, a smaller army, the operations it engages in on a regional level are top notch. Diplomatic Connections: You came to Washington via Ottawa, but from 2007 until 2010, you had the honor of being the first Canadian Deputy Commanding General at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Your mission at Fort Bragg took you to Iraq. Can you tell us about your contributions to the mission in Iraq, both for Canada and the United States? What did you, and by extension, Canada, gain from your time in Iraq? General Matern: In terms of the Deputy Commanding General position, you are right, I was the first to open the position in Fort Bragg and that followed a position that both General Hillier and General Natynczyk occupied in Fort Hood when they were Deputy Commanding Generals for III Armored Corps. We were expanding and we wanted to find other places where we could expose our senior officers to the American way of doing things. So that choice was the XVIII Airborne Corps in Fort Bragg. Subsequently, there was also another Deputy Commanding General installed in Fort Lewis, Washington, with I Corps, so we really had all three of those corps covered. We’ve since given up one of the positions in III Corps to the Brits so that they could benefit from the exposure that we had. But to get to the specifics of your question, I think it’s very much a quid pro quo type of exchange. Personally, I gained a lot of experience from the deployment to Iraq because it exposed me to higher-level operations. The fact that I was participating in a conflict where
most other Canadians were not gave me insight as well as an ability to let Ottawa know what was going on within that theater, which otherwise they would not have had. And for the Americans, it was really about exposing them to someone who may have different ideas and who might approach a problem from a different perspective. I think they recognized that I could resolve issues in a different way or propose things that they might not have thought of.
Diplomatic Connections: Can you give an example? General Matern: Well, I was in charge of two things over there: coalition operations and infrastructure. My being a member of the coalition, and not a U.S. army officer, enabled me to see coalition experiences from a different way than the Americans and I could share that information. I was also much better positioned to make a case to my boss so that he could understand the issue from a coalition perspective. I was also working with U.S. personnel to resolve infrastructure security issues. That, I must admit, was completely new to me at that time. So, not being an engineer, and not having been trained in infrastructure security, I could come at that aspect from a very operational perspective and just question why we were doing things a certain way. Diplomatic Connections: I think that even in nonmilitary situations it can be important to look at things from different angles and to get outside opinions. A matter of thinking outside the box, perhaps? General Matern: Well, maybe it wasn’t thinking outside the box so much as forcing people back to first principles. Because when you’re dealing with professionals who know what they’re doing, they come at a problem from a very specific perspective and sometimes they’ll hit a wall because they can’t resolve an issue. When you don’t necessarily have that training you come at the problem from another perspective. That was more the strength that I could bring. It was all about exchanging information and finding out what’s important, what’s not important. Diplomatic Connections: After Iraq, you changed venues and deployed to Haiti as head of the U.S. Joint Task Force Humanitarian Assistance Coordination Center after the earthquake of January 2010. Working with NGOs would have been very different from commanding in a war zone. What sort of adjustments did you have to make in your approach to the situation in Haiti? And how relevant were your previous experiences to your role in Haiti? General Matern: Well, I could build on all those experiences. Two completely different theaters of operation: Iraq,
D I P L O M A T I C C O N N E C T I O N S B U S I N E S S edition | J anua r y - F eb r ua r y 2 0 1 3
23