December 5, 2002
MULTILATERAL UNILATERALISM:
Troops overworked, says army chief: Poorly equipped and overworked troops should be brought home from Bosnia: general (Mark Kennedy, December 05, 2002, The Ottawa Citizen)The head of the army said yesterday that Canada is pushing its soldiers to the limit and he would like to withdraw troops from Bosnia.In an appearance before the Commons defence committee, Lt.-Gen. Mike Jeffery faced pointed questions from Opposition MPs over whether the army could deploy -- and sustain -- the required military force within the next six months abroad in response to a threat.
Lt.-Gen. Jeffery indicated it would be a "challenge" -- in part because of a lack of materiel, such as spare parts for vehicles, and the effect it would have on the overworked troops.
He said that as head of the army, he would be obliged to send a light infantry battalion (500-750 personnel) on 10 days' notice and a mechanized battle group, as many as 800 soldiers, within 21 days. That could be done, he said.
But the third requirement -- deploying a fully mechanized brigade group (3,000-5,000 soldiers) within 90 days -- might not be achievable, he said. [...]
He said the cuts to the military budget in the 1990s are now beginning to show, adding he believes the state of the army is "fragile" and requires attention.
Without prompting from the politicians, he even said he would like to see the withdrawal of Canadian soldiers from Bosnia, where Canada has 1,270 troops as part of the NATO stabilization force. [...]
Canada had to pull more than 800 troops out of Afghanistan last summer when the government admitted it could not field a replacement battalion.
So, riddle me this, Batman: why is it that the U.S. is guilty of "unilateralism" when it decides to act in its own national security interests, but it's not unilateralist of putative allies like Canada to render themselves utterly incapable of lending us any assistance in a foreign crisis?
Posted by Orrin Judd at December 5, 2002 9:59 AM
Yes, I had a similar thought last week reading about how German politicians are responding to Bush administration requests for contributions to the war. The sense of the Germans was, if we get a request and we can meet it, then we have a moral obligation to do so; but rendering ourselves unable to do anything relieves us of our moral obligations to help; and since we don't want to do anything, and we don't want to be immoral, disarming ourselves will let us have everything. It does seem that this logic is making them reluctant to invest in their militaries. Of course, the unspoken, maybe unconscious, assumption is that the US will not punish them for contributing nothing to our mutual defense.
Posted by: pj at December 5, 2002 11:03 AMI know Canada has a lot of space, but I never know it had a Space Agency. Thanks for this posting, Orrin.
Posted by: Barry Meislin at December 5, 2002 12:06 PMWell, they really only have those water rockets like we used to shoot off on our lawn when we were kids.
Posted by: oj at December 5, 2002 12:08 PMArticles like this only reenforce the recent notion that Canada is not a serious country anymore.
Annexing large parts of Canada, particularly the western parts, looks more reasonable.
I was just talking with three co-workers in the lunchroom within the last hour and three of the four of us proclaimed a willingness to seriously consider separation if it was an option and speculated on the odds of the U.S. being willing to take us in (we live in Saskatchewan).
Americans aren't the only ones getting fed up with Canada's government.
Canada's space program really piggybacks on the US program. The arm the space shuttle uses for satellite launch and retrievals is a Canadian design and a number of shuttle astronauts have been Canadians.