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.