urbanboom
Active Member
It's funny that Pakistan is #1. I would've guessed that that'd be a place where peacekeepers were sent to, not from.
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FOX News
- Thread starter Ansem
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jade_lee
Active Member
Not surprising at all that Pakistan is #1 since it's a militocracy and therefore in the business of using it's armed forces to generate cash, power and purpose.
kEiThZ
Superstar
Peacekeeping has becoming a great developing world racket. Have a look at all the top countries on the list. There's a few reason why most of them are developing countries:
1) It brings in income. The UN pays these countries more than it costs sometimes to deploy and field these forces.
2) It provides soldiers with signifcant incomes. Those UN stipends can sometimes be equal to or greater than the soldier's pay depending on country. That's why one of the grivances of the BDR mutineers in Bangladesh recently, was the fact that they did not get their fair share of peacekeeping tours.
3) It brings them equipment. We westerners often provide a crapload of kit for free. When Africans deploy to Bosnia we provide them with winter clothing (which is quite expensive usually) which they keep. Ditto for lots of other more sophisticated equipment too.
4) It brings them training. How do you get access to NATO training if you are a developing country? Sign up for a UN mission and all of a sudden you have Canadians, Brits, Germans, Poles, etc giving you all sorts of training, giving you courses in their home countries, etc
5) It gives them exposure. Both for the country and the troops. Soldiers who would normally rarely ever meet foreigners find themselves all of a sudden working in multi-national force. That's exposure that all militaries value. For the country of course, it does look good to wave the flag in some far flung places.
Many of these reasons also tell you why western countries aren't participating. Costs being a big one. It costs a hell of a lot to keep a well trained, well equipped and well fed western soldier on the ground in some war torn country. And it makes for a particular misuse of resources (using the worlds best forces) when there are problems elsewhere (Afghanistan for example). That's why you'll find that western forces often end up with the tougher hotspots (East Timor, Afghanistan, etc.) than Cyprus, Golan Heights, etc. The best that developed countries can do these days is bankroll UN peacekeeping. Were we to get back into peacekeeping, we would piss off a lot of these developing countries who have come to like the gains they make from participating in these missions.
1) It brings in income. The UN pays these countries more than it costs sometimes to deploy and field these forces.
2) It provides soldiers with signifcant incomes. Those UN stipends can sometimes be equal to or greater than the soldier's pay depending on country. That's why one of the grivances of the BDR mutineers in Bangladesh recently, was the fact that they did not get their fair share of peacekeeping tours.
3) It brings them equipment. We westerners often provide a crapload of kit for free. When Africans deploy to Bosnia we provide them with winter clothing (which is quite expensive usually) which they keep. Ditto for lots of other more sophisticated equipment too.
4) It brings them training. How do you get access to NATO training if you are a developing country? Sign up for a UN mission and all of a sudden you have Canadians, Brits, Germans, Poles, etc giving you all sorts of training, giving you courses in their home countries, etc
5) It gives them exposure. Both for the country and the troops. Soldiers who would normally rarely ever meet foreigners find themselves all of a sudden working in multi-national force. That's exposure that all militaries value. For the country of course, it does look good to wave the flag in some far flung places.
Many of these reasons also tell you why western countries aren't participating. Costs being a big one. It costs a hell of a lot to keep a well trained, well equipped and well fed western soldier on the ground in some war torn country. And it makes for a particular misuse of resources (using the worlds best forces) when there are problems elsewhere (Afghanistan for example). That's why you'll find that western forces often end up with the tougher hotspots (East Timor, Afghanistan, etc.) than Cyprus, Golan Heights, etc. The best that developed countries can do these days is bankroll UN peacekeeping. Were we to get back into peacekeeping, we would piss off a lot of these developing countries who have come to like the gains they make from participating in these missions.
urbanboom
Active Member
^ Good points. I just found it funny since Pakistan is a country that could use a couple of peacekeepers since the Taliban are only miles away from their capital. Maybe it's time for Pakistan to send their peacekeepers home to keep the peace in their own country...
dt_toronto_geek
Superstar
They can joke all they want about Canada but they can't hurt us. Anyone looking in can clearly see the damage that they are doing to their own country through their passionate anti-Obama rhetoric which has only served to further divide an already divided country. I don't understand why the average Canadian would pay to watch the mindless drivel that is Faux News.
Tewder
Senior Member
Keithz, would it be fair to say that the Canadian government and media overstate our 'peacekeeping' contributions because it is the only type of military propaganda that many Canadians can stomach?
Firstly our population is now so profoundly multicultural, made up largely of recent immigrants from every corner of the globe (especially in Toronto) that military operations overseas that are purely on behalf of Canadian interests are inevitably going to be controversial for the government in power to some community here. Afghanistan has been a good example of this. Simply put, as the government encourages the deconstruction of the Canadian identity and point of view through Multiculturalism it is increasingly going to have a difficult time articulating and implementing foreign policy.
Secondly Canadians in general seem to resent any government spending on anything other than healthcare and welfare, and the only way the government can promote unpopular spending on the military is to massage it with moral propaganda, 'peace keeping' being the sugar that makes the medicine go down, so to speak.
Relative to our population Canada does not pull its weight in terms of military funding and operations, and the obligations we have to our allies. As a neighbour to the USA we tend to sit back and allow Americans to pick up this cost and responsibility, and they know it. Should we really be protesting too loudly when they express mocking disbelief at the 'distortions' of our propaganda or resentment at our lack of cooperation with American policy? Just a thought...
kEiThZ
Superstar
Tewder,
I don't want to go too far off-topic but since this is an area I have some expertise in I thought I'd offer my opinion (for what it's worth).
I will start with a real life incident:
My colleague was at a meeting a few years ago where a Foreign Affairs official berated a senior Indian military officer for his country having tested nuclear weapons.
The Indian officer calmly replied that a country living under the US nuclear and military umbrella had no real understanding of the world and that we could afford to be high pitched moralists because we would never have to back up any of our words with real actions.
That example is instructive. IMHO, for all our jokes about how little the Americans know the outside world, Canadians are not much better. For most Canadians foreign policy is to be constructed thus: Find out what the Americans are doing. Then do the opposite. There is no thought to what our interests are, what our goals are, etc. At the political level its worse. We have the NDP which is reflexively anti-American. And the Conservatives who are reflexively pro-American. Essentially, Canada lacks a strategic culture.
This has resulted in us being a global power in our minds only. Most Canadians have no understanding about what national power consists of (diplomacy, foreign aid, trade power, military power). Hence, we have come the point where we think that we can solve all the world's problmes by having a 'balanced' position (Lebanon war for example) or by sending out peacekeepers. The reality is that the world has moved on. Peacekeeping was a great cold war game plan. But there's not much demand for skilled peacekeepers in today's era. The threat to global security today does not come from inter-state conflict. It comes from terrorism, intra-state ethnic conflicts, failed states, etc. If Canadians want to play a role in the world, then it means that these are the battles that we will have to fight. That means there will be more places like Afghanistan. That mission is the first time in at least a decade or more that Canada has been taken seriously. Yet, Canadians are appearing to support a mission that is the very definition of peace-building less and less.
I can understand Canadian discomfort on this. But this is the choice Canadians have to realize their facing: cede our foreign policy to the US and or multi-lateral organizations (UN) or recognize that having an independent voice in the world means that we will have to pay the price in blood and treasure. I would like to think that Canadians are not shrinking violets when it comes to the global stage, that we are a nation that does more than our share of heavy lifting in the world. I happen to think that Canada has something unique to offer the world. Our small contingent of military personnel, diplomats and aid workers are often thought to be top notch and are often in demand. Of course, others would disagree with me. There are those who would prefer isolationism or that we hang out with the other developing countries in the UN peacekeepers club (largely seen as countries who either can't or don't want to do anything of relevance on the world stage).
One last point: The Indian officer was bang on. If Canada was located in Europe during the cold war, how much would we have spent on defence? And how much peacekeeping would we have done? Can you imagine the size of the Air Force this country would have had if we didn't have NORAD? Today, Canada fields 48 combat ready fighters to cover all of Canada. That's half the fighter complement of a single US aircraft carrier (of which they have 10...and that does not include the US Air Force, Marine Corps fighters, etc.). That's one example. I could cite more embarrasing stats from each one of our services. But I'll leave it to the one I serve in.
I don't want to go too far off-topic but since this is an area I have some expertise in I thought I'd offer my opinion (for what it's worth).
I will start with a real life incident:
My colleague was at a meeting a few years ago where a Foreign Affairs official berated a senior Indian military officer for his country having tested nuclear weapons.
The Indian officer calmly replied that a country living under the US nuclear and military umbrella had no real understanding of the world and that we could afford to be high pitched moralists because we would never have to back up any of our words with real actions.
That example is instructive. IMHO, for all our jokes about how little the Americans know the outside world, Canadians are not much better. For most Canadians foreign policy is to be constructed thus: Find out what the Americans are doing. Then do the opposite. There is no thought to what our interests are, what our goals are, etc. At the political level its worse. We have the NDP which is reflexively anti-American. And the Conservatives who are reflexively pro-American. Essentially, Canada lacks a strategic culture.
This has resulted in us being a global power in our minds only. Most Canadians have no understanding about what national power consists of (diplomacy, foreign aid, trade power, military power). Hence, we have come the point where we think that we can solve all the world's problmes by having a 'balanced' position (Lebanon war for example) or by sending out peacekeepers. The reality is that the world has moved on. Peacekeeping was a great cold war game plan. But there's not much demand for skilled peacekeepers in today's era. The threat to global security today does not come from inter-state conflict. It comes from terrorism, intra-state ethnic conflicts, failed states, etc. If Canadians want to play a role in the world, then it means that these are the battles that we will have to fight. That means there will be more places like Afghanistan. That mission is the first time in at least a decade or more that Canada has been taken seriously. Yet, Canadians are appearing to support a mission that is the very definition of peace-building less and less.
I can understand Canadian discomfort on this. But this is the choice Canadians have to realize their facing: cede our foreign policy to the US and or multi-lateral organizations (UN) or recognize that having an independent voice in the world means that we will have to pay the price in blood and treasure. I would like to think that Canadians are not shrinking violets when it comes to the global stage, that we are a nation that does more than our share of heavy lifting in the world. I happen to think that Canada has something unique to offer the world. Our small contingent of military personnel, diplomats and aid workers are often thought to be top notch and are often in demand. Of course, others would disagree with me. There are those who would prefer isolationism or that we hang out with the other developing countries in the UN peacekeepers club (largely seen as countries who either can't or don't want to do anything of relevance on the world stage).
One last point: The Indian officer was bang on. If Canada was located in Europe during the cold war, how much would we have spent on defence? And how much peacekeeping would we have done? Can you imagine the size of the Air Force this country would have had if we didn't have NORAD? Today, Canada fields 48 combat ready fighters to cover all of Canada. That's half the fighter complement of a single US aircraft carrier (of which they have 10...and that does not include the US Air Force, Marine Corps fighters, etc.). That's one example. I could cite more embarrasing stats from each one of our services. But I'll leave it to the one I serve in.
digi
Active Member
There a little bit of difference in the population numbers between Canada and the US. Why compare the two as you have?
Canada doesn't go around warring for oil either, we have our own. We also don't go out of our way to piss off the rest of the world, like the US does.
Canada doesn't go around warring for oil either, we have our own. We also don't go out of our way to piss off the rest of the world, like the US does.
kEiThZ
Superstar
^ You proved my point. Your post is the perfect example of how little Canadians know about the world or understand foreign policy. You completely missed my point. My post was not about being more American. My argument was that for Canada to have a larger presence on the world stage we will have to make sacrifices.
So we have a difference in populations numbers. Does that mean we should not do anything on the global stage? You should tell that to the Brits, the French, the Germans, the Poles, the Aussies, the Kiwis, the Italians, etc. Every other developed country understands the importance of participating in the world except Canada.
Even for our size we do very little. Compare the percentage of GDP (which is a relative measure) that we spend on defence, diplomacy and aid. We fair poorly compared to most European countries and and the US (exception on aid here). And when compared to the US, it's not just that we spend one tenth of what they do (if we are to base things on population ratios) we are usually somewhere around one twentieth.
And all this will prove the point the gentleman in my example made: that Canadians have largely outsourced the defence of their country and their foreign policy to the United States. That's why, as much as I dislike Fox news, their commentators are not always off-base on this point.
Whoaccio
Senior Member
Considering our position on earth I don't see our defense budget as unreasonable. We are pretty similar in relative defense spending (vs. overall economy) to countries like Japan or Mexico, the obvious common denominator being unambiguously within the US sphere. I don't see this as such a major issue.
Small countries are inherently consumers of defense. The European countries, even if they spend relatively more, were and are every bit as impotent as Canada. This is pretty much the underlying theme of the EU, to heal some of Europe perpetual shame over their dependence on the US. To some extent their unique geographic position has allowed small countries like Norway to tailor their defense forces to niche roles, historically waging a defensive war against the USSR until the US arrives to do the heavy lifting. Canada though is, geographically, huge and unable to specialize so heavily. Parallel to all of this is European defense procurement, which has been a clear case of industrial welfare for most of it's existence as opposed to its nominal purpose of aiding the armed forces. Sweden, population 9m, has no real reason to design an indigenous fighter aircraft. Even the US, pop 306m, finds it worthwhile to procure its aircraft in a pseudo multi-national manner.
The honest question to ask is what are our foreign interests? Nobody really asks that. Effectively, we are an island (the one border we do have is so porous and indefensible it is hardly a border) in the most stable corner on Earth. We don't have any clear existential threats. Our antipodal doppelganger, Australia, is a good contrast. They are starting their biggest military buildup since WWII. Why? They are an island country of 21m immediately south of a rapidly changing region of 580m people. It sort of makes sense. This partially explains their activism in peace keeping missions in East Timor or bigger Navy and Airforce to patrol it's northern coast. Does Canada have anything similar? Not that I can see. Apparently the arctic is "heating up," but this ranks behind Japanese whaling in controversial international issues.
We are a regional power without a region, largely powerless to geography. Canada's defense budget is bigger than Israel's, but the geography of Israel almost guarantees it will have a more prominent foreign policy impact than us. It goes without saying we can't seriously try to strongarm the US into anything. That either gives us the choice of just supporting multi-lateral missions like the Balkans or Afghanistan where we can piggyback on the projection abilities of the US or somehow developing the capability to project ourselves globally independent of the US. I don't see the later as feasible in the coming decades without drastically higher, and proportionately unfeasible, defense budgets. But multi-lateral deployments don't scratch our nationalist (and/or anti-american) itch either.
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digi
Active Member
And you completely missed mine...and then continued on your typical tangential rant about nothing. carry on.
You're an american, aren't you?
kEiThZ
Superstar
Read my post history. You'll see I am not American. I did not miss your point. I said it was not relevant to the argument I made. Anyway, this is now a tangential rants. I'll leave the readers to judge the merits of our posts.
kEiThZ
Superstar
Whoaccio. Good points all. The point I have tried to make here though and the one that Tewder raised is that the average Canadians thinks we are some kind of global moral superman with our peacekeeping efforts. That is of course false.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
When it comes to defence spending the counter argument would be that we should at least spend enough to defend Canada. We have 15 major surface combatants in our navy to defend three or the largest coastlines and EEZs in the world. Our air force has 48 combat coded fighters to defend one of the largest airspaces in the world. Heck, it's a longer flight to Alert from Trenton than to Chile in South America. That's why, for example, we need heavy lift aircraft like C-17s.Arguably, our Army is the only right sized service.
So what has this policy led to: NORAD. We essentially cede our sovereignty over to the Americans. They defend our waters and our airspace. The second effect is more perverse. The single service that is about the right size for Canada is the one that we deploy and abuse the most as a tool of foreign policy.
I would not advocate for US style defence spending, but when we don't have the budgets to buy our troops the right colour uniforms when they deploy, there's a problem. And I don't see why its wrong for the US media to call us out on that. Even now in Afghanistan, we have to rely on French Air support, Dutch airlift, British attack helicopters, etc because we don't bring our own. If the government feels that Canada should participate in conflicts like these should they not ensure that we have the right tools for the job?
Aside from the military spending issue....Canada does really poorly at diplomacy and development aid as well. And I would consider those equally important elements of national power.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
When it comes to defence spending the counter argument would be that we should at least spend enough to defend Canada. We have 15 major surface combatants in our navy to defend three or the largest coastlines and EEZs in the world. Our air force has 48 combat coded fighters to defend one of the largest airspaces in the world. Heck, it's a longer flight to Alert from Trenton than to Chile in South America. That's why, for example, we need heavy lift aircraft like C-17s.Arguably, our Army is the only right sized service.
So what has this policy led to: NORAD. We essentially cede our sovereignty over to the Americans. They defend our waters and our airspace. The second effect is more perverse. The single service that is about the right size for Canada is the one that we deploy and abuse the most as a tool of foreign policy.
I would not advocate for US style defence spending, but when we don't have the budgets to buy our troops the right colour uniforms when they deploy, there's a problem. And I don't see why its wrong for the US media to call us out on that. Even now in Afghanistan, we have to rely on French Air support, Dutch airlift, British attack helicopters, etc because we don't bring our own. If the government feels that Canada should participate in conflicts like these should they not ensure that we have the right tools for the job?
Aside from the military spending issue....Canada does really poorly at diplomacy and development aid as well. And I would consider those equally important elements of national power.
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jade_lee
Active Member
You sound American to me but I must admit I rarely read your posts, yawn. It's pretty obvious to me that you did not spend your formative years as a Canadian.
Whoaccio
Senior Member
Canadian tolerance for the win!