The so called 'decades of darkness" were the response of both Conservative and Liberal governments to the demise of Canada's only convenetional threat, the USSR. Given the realities of government financing and politics, they had no other reasonable option but to reduce defence spending. The military was still given enough cash to be the second most expensive force per man in the world with total cash outlays 6th in NATO and 16th in the world. The CF made choices on what to spend it's budget on. It could have had more soldiers attend US Army Ranger and SF courses. It could have taught more foriegn languages (it only offers Spanish) at the Royal Military College. It could of had a mountain school. It could have offered COIN as a subject on it's Master of War Studies program. It could of had COIN as a subject at staff colleges. It could of bought suitable aircraft. It did none of these things but not for want of cash and not from interferance from politicians. I suggest that it was because the officer corps could not imagine particpating in a "Viet Nam", found language study difficult (in the CF it still makes far more career sense to perfect French or English than to learn Dari or Pashtu) and found playing tank versus tank war games much more fufilling than thinking about politics, culture, reconstruction and police work.