All matters Canadian / Canada

[John T. Fishel]

About a dozen years ago, I was invited to lecture at Canadian Forces College (CFC) in Toronto. Later, I worked with several Canadian officer colleagues at CGSC Fort Leavenworth, one of whom was then Major, now Lt. Col. David Last who is now the Registrar at the Royal Military College. Through that association, I was invited to evaluate the Master of Defence Studies program at CFC this past Fall.

I was very impressed with the difference and strides made by CFC in the last decade. Their program, patterned after Leavenworth's MMAS, is as rigorous but has a better complement of permanent civilian faculty, all of whom were chosen for their academic credentials and substantive expertise. The program can (and does) also draw on academic talent from RMC and other Canadian universities.

One of the outstanding young academics is Dr. Chris Madsen, whose article "Canadian Troops and Farm Burning in the South African War" in CANADIAN MILITARY JOURNAL, Vol 6, No 2, is an outstanding piece of historical work on "COIN" operations during the Boer War. In addition, Dave Last has co-edited a 2 volume study of SOF with reference to Canada, entitled CHOICE OF FORCE and FORCE OF CHOICE, published by McGill-Queens University Press.

I supect that the new manual is just part of this renaissance in Canadian Military thought and I hope it takes the best from British, American, and French doctrine and tempers it with Canadian experience in PKO and operations in Afghanistan. If it does that, it will make a superior contibution to the cross national military doctrine discussion and debate.

[Michael Shannon]

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.

[John T. Fishel]

Jed--

Thanks for the edit. Being able to locate the books easily will help anyone who is interested in the subject. But I am most grateful for your posting of Chris Madsen's article. It really is relevant to this site.

On the "for fun" aspects, the photo reminded me of the famous photo of the Pershing Punitive Expedition to Mexico in 1916. The US and Canadian uniforms of the era were practically the same; both armies used similar bridles; but they differed with respect to saddles. The US used the McClellan (which I have never ridden but some swear by it while others hate it); the Canadians used the British Universal Pattern (UP). I have a modern version that is supremely comfortable - of course it does use a modern gel cushion for my tired old butt!

John