Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 3 - Evidence - Meeting of April 26, 2010
OTTAWA, Monday, April 26, 2010
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 4:36 p.m. to examine and report on the national security and defence policies of Canada.
Senator Pamela Wallin (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, I have copies of an executive summary of this report — two copies in French and some in English. Would you like those passed around?
Senator Banks: Which report?
The Chair: The Conference of Defence Associations' report.
Senator Banks: Yes.
The Chair: Okay.
Kevin Pittman, Clerk of the Committee: This is the report prepared by the witness in question.
The Chair: Honourable senators will know that Major-General Mike Ward, Deputy Commander, NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan, was to be our witness today. Due to operational requirements at the last minute, he is unable to be with us. We have Paul Chapin, Member of the Board of Directors, Conference of Defence Associations. He is the principal author of the newly released report entitled Security in an Uncertain World: A Canadian Perspective on NATO's New Strategy Concept. After we hear from Mr. Chapin, we will hear from two other gentlemen in a second panel who have been involved in this issue, Lieutenant-General (Retired) George Macdonald and Brigadier-General (Retired) Don Macnamara. They will be introduced later. Both of those witnesses have assisted with the ideas behind putting this report together.
We will start with Mr. Chapin's opening comments. Mr. Chapin is the former Director General of International Security in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. He is a director of the Conference of Defence Associations and the principal author of this report, which is timely. NATO will release the first draft of its new strategic concept — basically a road map for the alliance — probably as early as next month. Governments will respond and will look at it specifically in the fall.
We will start with what our own committee has recommended regarding a major overhaul for NATO and look at the relationship between the Afghanistan mission and NATO. Mr. Chapin has also done research on NORAD, which we will talk about.
Mr. Chapin, please proceed with your remarks.
Paul Chapin, Former Director General International Security, Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Member of the Board of Directors, Conference of Defence Associations, as an individual: Thank you, madam chair and honourable senators, for affording me an opportunity to appear before you. It is a distinguished committee. I am not sure how often you have the opportunity to speak with former foreign service officers. I imagine many former generals appear before you.
The Chair: That is correct.
Mr. Chapin: I am privileged, and I hope I can do justice to the occasion. I had a mentor in the department years ago who told me that the responsibility of public servants is to provide fearless policy advice based on the best information available. That is my purpose today. I hope I am up to the challenge.
The study we issued two months ago was explicitly designed to provide Canadian input into what we believe may be an important milestone in NATO's reinventing itself to deal with the new international security environment.
This is not a NATO study going nowhere. It was commissioned by NATO heads of state and heads of government at their summit meeting in Strasbourg and Kehl in April 2009. The NATO Secretariat and its Secretary General are under instruction to get proposals into the system that can be signed off by governments — including the Canadian government — and approved by leaders at a NATO summit meeting that is to be held, I believe, in November in Portugal.
We wanted to ensure before views were settled that NATO heard from Canada and, in particular, that they heard not only from the Government of Canada — which I am sure they will in a variety of ways — but also from a cross- section of Canadians who are reasonably well-informed, interested and concerned and who represent more than one of the typical groups. You see a list of contributors in our masthead. They include former military officers — some at a very senior level and all with some NATO experience — senior civil servants and senior academics. These people did not only lend us their names; they were directly involved in drafting the report, attending meetings, commenting on various drafts and, finally, signing off on the final draft.
We were very pleased that the product came out at approximately the time we hoped and that it sustained the support of this very disparate group. I think it kept some of an edge, which is quite often not the case. When reports are issued, you tend to have to settle for the lowest common denominator.
What were our basic findings? First, NATO has been an extraordinarily successful security organization, arguably the most successful one in history. It started out with 12 members 60 years ago. It is still in business. Most alliances collapse long before 60 years. It has 16 new members, and there are still people knocking on the door to get in.
Therefore, our first conclusion is that we not write this organization off too quickly. It is being dismissed by some as a bit of a relic. The Soviet Union disappeared, so what do you need NATO for?
The second thing we wanted to point out was that NATO was not designed explicitly to deal with the Soviet threat. It was created at the time of the Soviet threat to arrest the encroachment of Soviet forces on Eastern Europe. However, nowhere in the NATO charter in the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 is there any mention of the Soviet Union or any other kind of threat. NATO is not there to defend us against something in particular. It is there to defend us against whatever is out there.
If one kind of a threat has disappeared, NATO is absolutely equipped to deal with other menaces and dangers that its members might decide threaten their interests significantly enough to take collective action on.
However, NATO has to adapt to the times. This organization was not constructed to deal with the kinds of situations we are encountering today. We argue in our paper that NATO has made some quite extraordinary adjustments to the new times over the last 10, 15 and 20 years, but it still has a distance to go and in some very important areas.
What are those areas? The first is the notion that allies need to understand that they are in this together. They have obligations towards each other that they have minimized over the years to pursue their own national interests.
Second, NATO's decision-making processes are cumbersome and too prone to want to protect the consensus. That is important; however, when you have 28 members, operating through unanimity may not be as absolute a requirement as you once felt it was.
NATO is not generating the kinds of resources it needs. NATO is wealthy beyond belief. It does not lack for resources. It lacks for the kinds of resources that are required to deal with the tasks that have been set. Therefore, NATO can have millions of troops in uniform and maybe 100,000 or 150,000 who are sufficiently trained and supported to be able to send them anywhere else except in their home territory.
We know from the strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan that civilians are now absolutely critical to resolving the problems of failed states. You need to have the military and the police, but you need to have the civilians. The civilians are the exit strategy for the military and the police. However, we have been working ad hoc on our generation of civilian resources to do this kind of work. We point that out in the paper.
We also say that the burdens being sustained are not being shared equitably. NATO still has a rather archaic approach to burden sharing. There is a common budget to deal with the headquarters stuff and some infrastructure projects in Europe, like pipelines and headquarter establishments and so on. However, if NATO wants to do anything in the operational field, the members pony up the resources that are required and they sustain all the costs.
That was probably acceptable in the days when you were trying to defend territory, but now that you are going offshore in an expeditionary mode to do other kinds of things, it is not by any means a fair or effective funding formula. Therefore, we propose something along the lines of how the UN operates and funds its peace support operations.
We also say something about the internal structure. The two gentlemen who came with me today can speak much more intelligently than I can about the military chain of command and some of the problems that arise there.
The third major finding is that NATO belongs to Canada as much as to anybody. There is a sense sometimes that this is a European security organization that the United States and Canada support. That is wrong. We were in on the founding of NATO. We have conceived of NATO as a community-building instrument, not just a defence association. At some point, if NATO's concerns about Canada get really lost in the shuffle and it is hard to argue that NATO is serving Canadian security purposes, I think it would be incumbent on government to start thinking seriously about whether NATO is what we need for our own defence.
We argue in this paper that it is, but we do not argue that the current NATO is doing that job. We argue that NATO, with the adjustments we are proposing, needs to be fundamental to Canada's concept of how to preserve and protect the safety and security of Canadians.
I will stop there.
The Chair: That is great. Thank you. Before we begin our questioning, I will have you comment on one thing. In the study you said NATO may be suffering from the UN syndrome: approving operations and missions without committing resources. You stated that it is not a financial issue. Are you therefore actually referring to physical resources and human resources?
Mr. Chapin: Yes. As NATO has mostly gone out of the business of protecting territory and into the business of sending multinational expeditionary forces abroad, it has slid into a habit that has been quite deeply rooted now in the United Nations for some time. The UN Security Council rings its hands, justifiably, over an international problem, passes bold resolutions about the action that should be taken, and then leaves it to the UN Secretary-General and member states to come up with the wherewithal to implement the council's recommendation.
The UN Security Council has improved quite significantly over the last 15 or 20 years, but it is still afflicted with that. We fear that NATO has slipped a little bit into that mode. The classic case is Afghanistan, where we are all fully committed. We know what has to be done, and somehow or other, notwithstanding NATO's vast wealth, we sometimes lack rather small amounts of kit that would make all the difference in theatre.
The Chair: Okay. We will explore that. Let us go to our first question from the deputy chair, Senator Dallaire.
Senator Dallaire: Thank you. I got your report when it came out. I also have Jocelyn Coulon's report, Whatever Happened to Peacekeeping? The Future of a Tradition. In reading and evolving both, I am looking at NATO and I am, first of all, questioning whether NATO, which is massive, is necessarily the most effective tool the UN could use when it has to establish security in a conflict zone, as it is doing in Afghanistan.
With all the development work it does, the European Union would be more attuned to structuring itself to meet that dimension in other territories, and it would probably be more prepared to deploy forces into places like Darfur than NATO is. NATO is struggling with places as far off as Afghanistan, where the proof of our security or self-interest is still in much debate.
Is a reformed, re-aligned NATO still the best tool for the UN to establish atmospheres of security in conflict zones? Should it go to the European Union? Should it go to the African Union and reinforce those entities instead and use them?
Mr. Chapin: We treated that subject briefly in the report. Frankly, if we had another month or two, we would have written you a 100-page report instead of a 50-page report, and this is one of the areas we would have explored more.
We did conclude in our report that the UN remains fundamental to international security. We are not proposing to abandon the UN. We are concerned that efforts at UN reform have been halting and sometimes less successful than the effort generated.
However, it is quite clear that the UN has never seen itself as having an exclusive role. Chapter 8 of the Charter of the United Nations explicitly mentions the role of regional organizations. Nor do we believe that NATO has any exclusive claim to being the only Chapter 8 organization for the UN. In fact, there is more than enough argument in NATO right now that it has overreached, that it is getting into things for which it is really not suited.
In the meantime, there is a parallel argument — sometimes it is more like a row — between NATO and the EU about the division of labour. In our paper, we are a little agnostic about how that all should come out, but we do argue that it is time these major international organizations sorted out a better division of labour among themselves.
It is not a foregone conclusion — and we did not discuss it much in our group — that NATO really has any business in Africa, North Africa or any place else, other than maybe providing some of the real expertise that exists within the organization in multinational interoperability planning, command and control and those sorts of things.
One thing NATO can do, which the UN has struggled to do, has been to develop, over 30 or 40 years, absolutely amazing levels of cooperation among countries and military forces of different nationalities. At this stage, you can plug almost any country into a NATO operation and have confidence that its general quality and ability will be comparable to the average right across the operation.
We are not looking to advance NATO in opposition to any other organization.
Senator Dallaire: My question was not that. A reformed NATO might be similar to the way we are trying to reform the UN. I do not see it as a Chapter 8 in Europe, but I see it as a Chapter 7 mission anywhere in the world; it could send elements to a Chapter 8 mission in Africa, the African Union. In fact, they had advisers in Darfur to help them out.
Do we need that capability, as massive as it is, to provide us with that need for the UN? Or should we not be looking at reinforcing the other regional capabilities versus continuing to reinforce maybe the NATO entity, when you have the European Union right up beside you?
Mr. Chapin: The European Union argues that it has greater capabilities in the civilian field than NATO does. That is almost self-evident. In our report, we approached gingerly the notion of NATO expanding its ability to manage civilian deployments, but not because we think there needs to be some kind of NATO civilian surge core or something like that.
Most of the NATO members are also the UN members and also the EU members. It is not as if these organizations are directly in competition; there is a common membership in all of them. The challenge is to work out a division of labour where the comparative advantage of one organization puts it in one field and the comparative advantage of another organization puts it in another field.
[Translation]
Senator Nolin: Mr. Chapin, your report is very interesting. A number of people are not familiar with the Washington Treaty. Article 2 is in a way the Canadian article because it permits our alliance, which is more than military; the aim of this alliance is to promote the general welfare of its members. I would like you to tell us about the importance of that article.
[English]
Mr. Chapin: It is fundamental to how we look at NATO today to realize that it is an option for Canada. If NATO is thinking of itself as a European organization, at a certain point Canadians will say, ``Why bother?''
We have a relationship with the United States in North America. We are members of the OAS, the Organization of American States. We can easily develop new arrangements with Central America and South America. We have strong relationships with Australia and New Zealand. There are all sorts of other possibilities.
Back in 1949, people said — and it was a debate within the government — ``Do we really want to involve Canada once more in a long-term and potentially casualty-ridden military operation in Europe?'' We lost 60,000 Canadians in the First World War and 40,000 Canadians in the Second World War. The Second World War had just ended and people were talking about Canada joining a military alliance to defend Europe. This was not much of a winner politically in Ottawa. At one point, the secret discussions that we were involved in with the U.S. and Britain had us beginning to back out of the whole deal because this was not going to be tolerable to Canadians for all kinds of reasons that I do not need to explain.
The way we arranged to remain in NATO and to sustain the notion of an alliance was to ensure that this was more than just another military alliance to defend Europe. This was more about demonstrating to the communist world and to the captive nations and those who were under threat that there was an alternative democratic model that could defend itself.
There was a lot of hopelessness in Europe in 1946, 1947 and 1948. We touch a little bit on that in the paper. We wanted to put forward this notion of the Atlantic community.
Senator Nolin: Right. That brings me to my first question, which is quite in line with the intent of Article 2, which deals with the well-being of all and the projection of democracy as the founding pillar of the quality of life.
Regarding the North, the Arctic, you referred to the fact that being Eurocentric, NATO lacks interest in areas that are important to Canadians — the North and the Pacific. Let us focus on the Arctic. This committee has looked into the Arctic for a few meetings. Should NATO, in the next strategic concept, talk about the North?
Mr. Chapin: Are you suggesting that NATO somehow become an active player in Arctic security affairs? It is a marginal player at this stage.
Senator Nolin: I will answer your question by another.
Mr. Chapin: I am sorry if I am breaking a rule here.
Senator Nolin: No, that is fine. Four of the Arctic Five are NATO members; we physically have borders in the Arctic. The changing climate may develop or bring a more intense circulation in the Arctic. Therefore, would it be prudent for NATO to start preparing for being asked to play a role in the Arctic? Also, if that thinking is there, should we talk about it in the strategic concept?
Mr. Chapin: I think NATO does do some rudimentary thinking and planning for the defence of all of its members, including the members with borders in the Arctic. Given all the things that NATO has to be concerned about today, is it sensible to add to its to-do list the development of the expertise, capacity and resources for an area that has had little engagement until now? Some major NATO members believe that they are doing a tolerable job of protecting the security of that region. As an organization, NATO is supposed to be concerned about the security of every member and its respective territory, including its Arctic and Pacific boundaries. Do we want NATO to spend time on those sorts of things right now when it has the larger challenge on its hands of dealing with other kinds of security threats? We did not rehearse this issue in the paper, but my answer is that I do not see the value-added that NATO could bring to the Arctic right now. Theoretically, it has an obligation to support us if we get into trouble in the region, but Canada, the United States and Norway could probably do a good job of looking after our security interests there.
Senator Nolin: My question will be short, but the answer might be long. In your presentation, you referred to the cumbersome decision-making process. You referred to unanimity, but I prefer consensus, because some members, regardless of their size, might not be there or might remain silent. That is part of consensus building. Some might think that it was and still is part of the uniqueness and quality of the alliance and why the alliance is still alive and kicking. Why change that?
Mr. Chapin: We are not proposing a major change to the notion that the big decisions need to be made by consensus. We argue that strenuously in the document. This has been one of NATO's distinguishing characteristics. If you are looking for an explanation as to why this organization has lasted so long and done so much, it is because there have not been majority decisions that have been foolish and offensive to some members.
In our document, we propose that perhaps the consensus principle does not have to apply all the way down the organizations to the ad hoc committee for this or the subcommittee for that. Today any representative from any country can throw a spoke in the wheel of the bicycle by raising objections, slowing things down and disagreeing that something should be on the agenda. Our view is that the time for that has passed. Maybe it was fine when there were 12 or 15 members. The organization was transparent and there were few committees even when I was at NATO in the 1980s. Under the NATO Council, there were four to six committees. Today, there are hundreds of committees.
We argue that the consensus principle needs to be modified at the lower levels of the organization so that frivolous objections and ulterior motives cannot delay or defeat the movement of ideas and recommendations at the council level where the ambassadors sit, where absolutely we still need to have that consensus.
Senator Banks: Senator Nolin knows more than anyone here does about NATO, with the exception of our distinguished witness. I do not understand what you meant by ``addressing the cumbersome decision-making process,'' and I think the issue of the division of labour is connected to that. If I am country X with forces committed to NATO, I have certain obligations as a member of NATO. It has not been possible at the United Nations to develop a force that is at the disposal of the United Nations. The UN Security Council said that the issue needs to be addressed because if there is an emergency, there is not a camp they can go to in the middle of France and call out the cavalry. It would be nice if there were such a thing. Could that happen, in your view? Would you be able to convince a member country to subjugate sovereign control of its armed forces and the terms under which they will be engaged to a decision to commit to something? You said that Afghanistan is a perfect example. There are forces there with entirely different terms of engagement; they may do this but not that. Is there any real hope that NATO will ever become an organization that can, on some consensus basis or otherwise, push a button and something would happen?
Mr. Chapin: I do not see that happening, and it would not be desirable in any case. The notion of sovereign rights of every single member is important to preserve. That is fundamental to why Canada is still there. If Canada thought that by being a member it might be overridden in its decisions willy-nilly because other people wanted to do something else and that on top of that it would have to commit troops, it would be out of there in a flash. We make a distinction between supporting a decision at the council to do something and providing the wherewithal to implement that decision.
Senator Banks: To do it with strings attached.
Mr. Chapin: Yes, that is true.
Senator Banks: The other end of the example you just gave is that there are views in this country that Canada is there pulling its weight and going full force at it, while other people are there who are not, in our subjective view, pulling their weight. What kind of alliance is that?
Mr. Chapin: We are reformed alcoholics on this one. About 10 to 15 years ago, we were justifiably criticized for being deadbeats in the council. I remember 25 years ago having to fight with one hand behind my back in the political committee to try to get people to respect Canada, even though our contribution is minimal. Today, the issue matters, but back then, it did not matter as much. Why should Canada have spent as much money 40 years ago as the Europeans spent to defend Europe? That was the business NATO was in.
Today when trying to rebuild war torn societies or deal with the Afghanistans of this world, you are in a different kind of business. At that point, you do need an approach that goes beyond picking and choosing the things you want or do not want to be engaged in. Many countries have come quite a long way. The people we used to criticize most, the Germans, the French and others, have demonstrated courage in waiving the kinds of caveats related to their respective troops that they used to insist on having. We did that through a difficult and unpleasant process. We weaned ourselves off the caveats, and we have benefited since.
The Chair: I am surprised to hear you say that the activities of Germany, in particular in Afghanistan, are a huge improvement since the beginning of the operation in terms of caveats.
Mr. Chapin: I am not sure I used the word ``huge,'' because there is still enough of a diplomat in me. It is important to give all allies their due. Just as we come to something like Afghanistan with our own perspectives and baggage, so too do the Germans and others. It depends sometimes on the political character of the government. All told, we have probably been more critical of the Germans than they deserve, given the difficult situation they find themselves in domestically politically.
Senator Lang: I would like to direct some questions toward the resources and your comments on the reality that NATO seems to be facing from the point of view of what is available financially to do what we are asking them to do.
I notice in your report that back in 1986 the expenditures peaked and we are over 4 per cent GDP. In 1999 we were down 2.7 per cent overall. Canada, to its credit, substantially increased in the last number of years from $14.9 billion to $21 billion in 2008.
What are you looking for in your organization, your group of people involved in this, with regard to expenditures? Are you looking to increase this to 4 per cent of GDP across the board? If so, what kind of money are we talking about here?
Mr. Chapin: Our group did not spend much time on the financial issue. Where many of us would probably come out is that we have to change the nature of the discussion. There is not much point any longer talking about sheer input, how much you are contributing. The problem, and I think this is the problem with the budget of the Department of National Defence, is the question of what the money is for. If you can explain better the purposes and why you need these resources, sensible people will typically come around.
NATO first has to deal with the issue of what business it is in today and determine what it wants to achieve. After developing a bit more clarity about that, NATO must come to a conclusion about what resources will actually be needed from here on in to do those things. It will probably be a mix of resources for static defence or territorial defence and a mix of resources for expeditionary capability. At that point, if we want to have a formula for a fair sharing of the burden, now we know what we have to do, and these would be the expectations we would have of various countries based on their capacity to pay. If governments went back to their parliaments and said that this is the name of the game and this is why people are asking us to do our share, I think the terms of the discussion would change quite dramatically and for the better.
Senator Lang: Sharing the burden would be a question in itself. From your perspective and your knowledge, which is obviously quite extensive, do you feel the political will is there for the 28 countries to come up with a formula to share the burden, or do we have too many countries and too many players at the table?
Mr. Chapin: Frankly, I do not think I know, and I am not sure our group would know. I am not sure that is a knowable question. We wanted to put this issue into the public domain and, while NATO is looking at this issue over the next six months, keep it from getting slipped under the carpet, which has happened so many times before.
We have almost said in this report, ``We are mad as hell and we are not going to take it anymore.'' We are hoping more people will come around to the notion that if NATO is to succeed in the future, we cannot just forget about the business of resources and financing. We know the Americans are interested in anything that changes the financial arrangements to their benefit because they bear a disproportionate burden of it. We explain in this paper as well that Canada's input might not be up to the general levels, but what we do is probably more than what most people do with that. We are paying a disproportionate share as well because when we send a military unit from Petawawa to Afghanistan, it is a lot more expensive than sending one from Brindisi to Afghanistan.
Senator Lang: Perhaps you can explain to me how it works. I understand we are perhaps looking at a $1-billion deficit currently with the organization. How does that get paid? Do we send Canada and the United States a bill? Who pays that?
Mr. Chapin: You mean in respect of Afghanistan?
Senator Lang: Yes.
Mr. Chapin: Right now, whatever the aggregate bill might be and the deficit that appears on the books, we all pay our own way. Canada pays whatever Canada is supporting in Afghanistan. Every last Canadian soldier and civilian and everything we are doing in Afghanistan — I do not know whether there are any exceptions — we pay for. The view is that it is about time that we aggregate, put this all together and see whether the expenses could be divided up more evenly. There is no question that Canada is not just bearing a heavier burden in casualties; it is bearing a heavier burden financially in Afghanistan compared to others, based on their capacity to pay and our capacity to pay. Does that help?
The Chair: Yes. Thank you.
Senator Meighen: I have two questions. One probably does not have to be answered because you have mentioned it in a couple of instances. Any organization whose membership almost doubles in a decade must have digestive problems of a fairly significant order. If we had trouble getting however many we were — 7 and then 10, 12, 16, and now we are up to 28 — together at that point, it must be even more difficult at 28. You mentioned that perhaps one answer would be to modify the decision-making process and take it to lower levels. There may be other areas where this growth has an impact. I would like to hear what you have to say about that.
Second, suppose that your paper is well received, which is not entirely unthinkable, and they say, ``That is wonderful; we will adopt most of this; they are terrific ideas.'' What implication does that have for Canada's defence policies? For example, you argue for niche capabilities. Do we have those capabilities, or do we have to start developing them? I have not had a chance to go through the paper, but there may be other areas that might receive support. What impact would that have on our defence strategy?
Mr. Chapin: I am not sure I can give you an intelligent answer to the second question.
Senator Meighen: There is the niche one, to take one small example. You argue for the improvement of NATO's capacity to deploy a rapid reaction force to intervene in a humanitarian crisis.
Mr. Chapin: Yes. We also argue for greater capacity generally to deploy civilians. It is a war-torn society. Civilian peacekeepers and civilian police would imply time, effort and resources to develop enhanced capacities that do not now exist. Presumably, we would have to pay a share of that.
However, some of the other recommendations we are making would probably make this organization more relevant and useful to Canada. People must understand that this organization is not European, that it has obligations to us, and that the members need to be more deferential to each other when a crisis comes along. We were put in an awful situation for that decision in 2003 on Iraq. We mentioned in the paper the Suez decision. There have been other times in the history of the organization when decisions have been very difficult for Canada because allies were so reluctant to compromise or even to talk to each other about those sorts of things.
On sharing the burdens, presumably it would mean that the next time we engaged in something like Afghanistan, there would be less cost to us and more cost spread around. I am giving you something off the top of my head.
On the issue of the absorptive capacity alliance, it stands to reason that if you go from 12 to 15 members — we had 15 earlier on in the process — to 28, it must complicate the decision-making process. It does. However, many of those new members are more diligent and committed allies — I have to be careful of my language here — than some of the older folks have been. They see NATO in a very new and fresh way. They have come in from the cold after being out for 40 or 50 years. Every last one of them, no matter how small, has something going on in Afghanistan, some unit doing even marginal work, and they all ante up to the extent they can.
In some respects, I do not think the problem is simply the growth in the numbers. I think it is something a bit more fundamental than that, some lack of clarity about the business that the alliance should be in from here on out.
Senator Meighen: In the early days, an attack on one was deemed to be an attack on all. I think that was pretty easy for most Canadians to grasp. Whether they liked it or not did not matter. We have felt that since the First World War and the Second World War. Now with 28 member states, and I say this with great respect, some are largely unknown to Canadians. It might be hard to convince Canadians that an attack by state A on state B means we are at war, too.
Mr. Chapin: Except that within the alliance, it has been very rare. There have been wars between Greece and Turkey and there have been set-tos between the British and another state over fisheries or something. Within the alliance, people have not gone to war with each other. They have stuck it out sufficiently that their unity has deterred anyone from the outside encroaching on any one of them. That has been NATO's real strength.
Senator Marshall: In your introductory remarks you talked about NATO being successful. I was very interested in that. Could you elaborate a bit on that? I am not disputing that NATO has been successful. I know it is mentioned throughout the report, but how is success measured for NATO? Is success measured also for individual missions? Is it a matter of degree? Also, you acknowledged the success of NATO, and then you said you would like to reform NATO. I am trying to link up the two.
Mr. Chapin: Success probably has to be looked at from the perspective that success for an institution is its sheer survival and its ability to protect its members. From that perspective, NATO has been an absolute success. It has been less successful when it has gone outside of what used to be known as its area into out-of-area operations. There is an argument now about whether that is a useful term any longer.
Within the organization, as an organization, it has been highly successful. In the lead-up to the creation of NATO, the Soviet Union took over pieces of four or five countries, absorbed 90 million people and blockaded Berlin, and in Western Europe there was a sense of hopelessness about the ability over time to resist this juggernaut.
From the moment NATO was created, not a single further encroachment was made on any democratic country in Europe. That is tremendous success. Then other countries that were finally liberated from the Soviet Union wanted to join and did join, and that they wanted to be a part of that is another measure of success.
NATO was successful internally in providing people an opportunity to sit around the table with the big boys — the U.S., the U.K. and so on — and talk candidly, share information that was highly classified and feel they were part of the decision-making process no matter how small they were so they could go along with things. With that said, there have been books written about the problems NATO has had over the years, and we sort of list them.
The fact of the matter is that no matter what kinds of problems NATO has had internally, somehow or other what kept them together always trumped what divided them.
We are now into a whole new territory. We are not talking any longer about defending NATO from the Soviet Union. We have to think about what it means to be an ally, and that is a whole new ball game.
Senator Marshall: If all of these recommendations were accepted and implemented, is there any concern that rather than fix some of the problems that would make things worse? For example, if there is an issue with regard to a big bureaucracy, is there a concern that some of the recommendations would only add to that problem?
Mr. Chapin: We have one recommendation that seems to suggest we are proposing an addition to the bureaucracy, which is a unit that would deal with complex, comprehensive, whole-of-government operations. We have also hinted fairly broadly in the paper that the decision-making process is cumbersome, and maybe there are too many subordinate headquarters. I think you will need to ask that question of General Macdonald and General Macnamara.
I do not think what we are proposing would make NATO larger and more cumbersome. If that is the case, we have failed. Our whole purpose is to try to make it leaner and meaner, not simply through some bureaucratic reorganizational effort, but by getting the organization to think clearly about what business it is in and then organizing itself accordingly. If it did that, a lot of old Cold War stuff would drop away from neglect and disinterest.
Senator Marshall: In the previous discussions with Senator Lang, I believe, about resources and making sure NATO was properly resourced, it sounded to me like that could be somewhat bureaucratic. I do not have it sorted out in my own mind how that could work exactly. I would be concerned that some of the recommendations would not be workable.
Mr. Chapin: I will leave you with a thought. If there was a new financial arrangement within NATO to commonly fund operations abroad, such as Afghanistan, I think it is self-evident that Canada's financial costs would be much less than they are. I do not have any paper to prove that, but that is my instinct. If that was the case, it would certainly change the political calculus in this town about whether or not we should be staying in Afghanistan.
Senator Marshall: As I was saying earlier, even to look at individual missions like Afghanistan, how do you measure success versus the cost? You look at the financial cost and the cost of human lives, both from our country and from other countries. You wonder how to judge success.
Senator Day: I am mindful of the time, so I will put my two points to you at the same time, if I may, Mr. Chapin, and if you can combine an answer to those that would be great.
First is the role of civilians. You indicated that the opportunity for the military to withdraw is to build up the proper civilian side of things. It is the unity of command I am wondering about. You have commented on the importance of unity of command in the civilian component, and we have seen an evolution of that from the military being in there and provincial reconstruction and saying we need some civilian, to a 3D strategy, to a whole-of-government approach. Is it realistic to expect NATO, which is primarily a military alliance, to get involved in the civilian side, or is it just being forced into that in order to develop the exit strategy, as you have indicated?
If you believe that NATO is the right area to develop the civilian side, should we not be thinking in terms of a greater role for the United Nations here? Is the United Nations standing up to its role?
Second, the commitment to go on a mission seems to be primarily an executive decision, but the decision to stay and to support that executive decision is a political decision. Virtually all of these members are democratic governments. I think we are seeing in Canada, Germany and the Netherlands that the political decision is not necessarily supporting the executive decision. That is creating part of the problem. Have you considered that?
Mr. Chapin: Regarding your first question about the civilian side, what we argue in our paper is not that NATO should do it, but that NATO should ensure it is done. For example, if the new strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan of clear, hold and build is to succeed, we will need civilians and police in there sooner. They must be better equipped, trained and focused on capacity building, and so on.
It is not a matter of NATO developing a lot of resources. NATO does not have resources of its own. NATO is simply a bunch of buildings near the airport in Brussels. NATO is its members. Everything essentially comes from its members.
We argue that NATO's members need to reorganize themselves to put more time, effort and money into developing these non-military capacities to work in sync with the military. NATO's job is not as much to beat allies around the head to do this, but to ensure that people understand, one way or the other, what is required to be successful in one of these missions and that allies individually have developed the wherewithal to produce the results they want. Therefore, NATO's function is more a supervisory and mentoring function rather than to develop its own cadres of people in this field.
I would argue that missions are political from the outset. Decisions to go or not to go are political. Once made, decisions become the charge of the executive within the organization to implement. As we have seen in some of these operations, the political and functional — the executive — may start to diverge because operations take longer, are more difficult or more costly and create greater emotions than anticipated. Governments live through all of that and try to sustain themselves.
Many of these governments are not in majority situations for very long. Not even the United States with a president can always count on Congress to go along. Majority governments are quite rare in Europe, and Canada has not had a majority government for four years.
As these operations become difficult and complicated and are in the newspapers, people wonder what is going on and why things do not seem to work. Governments take the heat. I think the decision is political from the beginning when an action is authorized. It may get more political as time goes on until the day comes when the operation wraps up.
In our report, we have a lot of sympathy for the Secretary General, for the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, for subordinate commands and for the NATO Secretariat that have been asked to do something and then find out that they are not given what they were promised. They go around cap in hand hoping to get the helicopters, or whatever is missing, that they thought they would have.
The Chair: We are 10 minutes overtime. Please keep your question brief, Senator Dallaire.
Senator Dallaire: We have the UN with its regional capabilities and coalition forces as we have seen in the Gulf War and Iraq. We have NATO. You also see a role for NATO to move beyond conflict resolution to create atmospheres of security and potentially do nation building.
In that context, do you see NATO handing over its mission to a UN force or mission after 2011? Is that scenario within the planning process, or do you simply hand over the mission to the Afghanistan government?
Mr. Chapin: I am not privy to the NATO planning process, but I have no reason to believe that NATO will not be in Afghanistan for many years after 2011. Many NATO countries are planning well beyond 2011.
The strategy is to accelerate the process, if we can, to hand over the mission to the Afghans. The population of Afghanistan is getting quite impatient in some respects about the duration of time foreigners have been in their country. Canadians would be impatient if we went out every day and saw foreign troops in our streets, no matter how well-intentioned they were.
I do not see NATO leaving Afghanistan for some time. If NATO develops a better sense of its purpose and direction, I see a clear division of labour with the UN. Hopefully, the UN will come part way. Currently, the UN does not even have a liaison officer in Brussels. NATO has a liaison officer at the UN in New York.
The division of labour has to be sensible. If we want the UN to take on more of a role — and I think that is eminently reasonable as a proposition — the same countries that are members of both NATO and the UN need to work with the UN to ensure that the comparative advantage of these two organizations is respected.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Chapin. We have taken more of your time than planned and kept our other guests waiting. We appreciate this overview today, the work done in this report and your answering of our questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are continuing our discussion on NATO and related matters. We have with us Lieutenant- General (Retired) George Macdonald, Honourary National President of the Air Force Association of Canada and Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute Fellow. General Macdonald served 38 years in the Canadian Forces where in his last two positions he was Deputy Commander and Chief of NORAD and Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff. This was after years as a fighter pilot and serving with NATO forces in Europe and with NORAD in Canada and the United States. He was also Director of Operations in the Foreign and Defence Policy Secretariat of the Privy Council Office.
We also have with us Brigadier-General (Retired) Don Macnamara, with 37 years of experience in the Canadian Forces. He was also a contributor to this report. In the latter half of his career, he was in Strategic Analysis, Policy Planning at National Defence Headquarters. He was also Director at both the Canadian Forces Command and Staff College and the National Defence College. Today, he chairs the Board of Governors of the Royal Military College of Canada.
You both have long CVs to go through. General Macnamara, do you have some opening comments?
Brigadier-General (Retired) Don Macnamara, OMM, CD, Past President and Board Member, Conference of Defence Associations Institute, and Board Member, Canadian International Council, as an individual: Yes, indeed, senators. Thank you very much. It is nice to see some friends of long standing around the table, as well.
It is indeed a pleasure to have this opportunity. I spent 37 years in the Canadian Air Force. However I was a professor at Queen's for 20 years after that. If I sound less like a warrior and more like a professor, you will know why.
At the outset, I would like to set the stage for a couple of things. One of the problems I see in the public, in government and in our political leadership is that we very often ask why we are doing things with regard to our security activities and indeed deployments of our forces.
First of all, we should understand the history. The strategic culture and the strategic history of Canada is one of expeditionary forces being sent abroad, starting with the Boer War, the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War and then into NATO deployments in Europe and being stationed there from 1950 on. We had multiple peacekeeping operations during that same period. Since that time, we have had deployments all over the world, continuing now in Afghanistan. We have to recognize that these kinds of expeditionary forces are part of our history.
Why do we do this? We do this because of our fundamental values and our interests. My argument would be that we should always look at our deployments through the lenses of our national interests. Our fundamental values, not well articulated in our education activities but clearly articulated in our various constitutional documents, start with democracy, include the rule of law, represent individual freedom and individual rights, and end up with human rights and a sense of social justice.
Those are the foundational values that then lead to our interests. Our national interests are the security of the country. The first and most important responsibility of government is providing for the security of the country and its citizens. The second is ensuring our national prosperity or economic well-being. The national security component is our freedom from fear. Our prosperity is our freedom from want.
The third extremely important component is international stability or a stable world order. Last is the promotion of our values, the democracy, the individual freedom and the social justice that we talk about. That does not necessarily mean imposing it on other people, but serving as examples of those values.
If one says, ``Why are we doing anything; what are the interests at stake?'' then I would argue that we should understand that, in the very early days of the difficulties in Afghanistan right after 9/11, the question was what will we do about it and what are the risks. My colleague General Macdonald was probably involved in this, as well. The first and most important real risk was the possibility that al Qaeda would get their hands on nuclear warheads in Pakistan. It was our fundamental interest to prevent that from occurring. That was one of the major decision points for Canada's deploying. It is one that is recognized within the military and forgotten entirely after that.
Second, we should also recognize that our peacekeeping operations throughout the Cold War period from 1956 until 1989 were fundamentally based on one thing: the prevention of the escalation of regional conflicts up to the point that they could become an East-West conflict that could lead to a nuclear war, which is the only thing that could destroy this country. It was in our vital interests to prevent a nuclear war, and we did so in peacekeeping terms. They were essentially relatively benign operations because there was an agreed truce, and we could step into the middle of that.
After the Cold War ended, we were involved in something that many people called ``peacekeeping'' but was more like peacemaking or what we used to call ``war.''
There is a misnomer and a misunderstanding of why we have done things and where we have done things. If we take a look at the map and ask why we are in Afghanistan, most people have to be shown where Afghanistan is. Second, you have to ask them where Afghanistan is. Afghanistan is in Southwest Asia. What else is in Southwest Asia? There are five nuclear powers, with a sixth one probably coming up.
Why are we interested there? Interestingly, we have been in 20-plus military operations in Southwest Asia since the end of the Second World War, as either part of the UN, a coalition, as an individual or on observer missions, for interventions and the like.
We are there because our national interests really should dictate that we should be there. We are there in the same common interests that led us through peacekeeping throughout the Cold War, and we are there because our allies see it also in their interests. Our allies, the United States and NATO, are there for the same reasons, because we have common values and common interests.
Many people wonder why the UN is not there. This is a UN operation and the UN is there. I think there are several things that people must understand. It is not only about our interests and why we are there. Second, NATO is there and, third, the UN is there. That is all why we are there.
The Chair: Thank you for those opening comments. Perhaps we could just hear from both of you as we begin. We have heard a lot of testimony so far from your colleague, Mr. Chapin. Is NATO in its current configuration the right body to make decisions about where and when Canada should go to defend its own interests and values?
Go ahead, General Macdonald.
Lieutenant-General (Retired) George Macdonald, Honourary National President, Air Force Association of Canada, Former Deputy Commander of NORAD: Consistent with what Mr. Chapin said in his comments, it is the most appropriate organization that should be doing the thing that needs to be done at the time. NATO has been the most appropriate organization to do many of the Cold War missions and now the mission in Afghanistan and maybe others. Certainly, there are other capabilities that exist for certain missions — humanitarian assistance and other types of things — but the consistency that we have with the military capability of NATO, the ability to come to a consensus and to act on that consensus I think is unique and will continue.
The Chair: I will put it more starkly: NATO versus coalitions of the willing. We end up with coalitions of the willing to do many of these missions, even including Haiti. What is the distinction there?
Lt.-Gen. Macdonald: In some cases, where it is a very short-term issue and a mission that will see only the delivery of humanitarian relief or the restoration of some tragedy that has occurred, yes, coalitions may work in a specific instance.
However, when you talk about trying to get a consensus among nations to commit to a higher principle for collective defence and security and embark upon something as significant as going to Afghanistan, for example, I think only a NATO-like organization can do that, and especially do that over a longer term with changes and evolution, as described by Mr. Chapin, to do it even better. I think only NATO will have the capability to do that.
The Chair: All right. We will come back to the question of whether or not this can be done without the Americans and their money, but we will save that for a later time.
Senator Dallaire: I would like to question the evolution of conflict resolution from the point of view of who can participate not only in crisis management but also in crisis prevention. Your recapitulation of the evolution of peacekeeping is most appropriate, but then we went into the post-Cold War era. I am speaking now of 1991, with the Gulf War, and then a whole series of operations since then where the military were in war zones and complex missions. We still see a bunch of those missions going on, and on top of that we have Afghanistan.
Do you not believe that we have, on the contrary, not committed enough of a capability to enhance the UN for taking on more of these responsibilities and having the ability to command and control complex missions?
I will give you an example. We have a UN mission in Sierra Leone. The UN mission is in trouble. The United Kingdom sends in some 2,000 troops. They clean up the place and they leave. Would it not have been better to have given the UN force the mandate and the equipment to be able to do the job in the first place, to build the UN capability instead of continuously arguing that maybe NATO is the instrument the UN needs to do those jobs?
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: Senator, you know better than I some of the difficulties the UN has in getting the right people in the right place at the right time, and on time.
One of the great advantages NATO has is that it has adopted common procedures. It has common training. It is constantly exercising that kind of training and interrelationship. It has multinational headquarters. It has exchange programs. It has its own staff college for planning purposes. It has common languages. All of those things that one would like to have in a complex operation NATO has, but the UN does not.
In addition to that, as Mr. Chapin has already indicated, NATO has a very large bureaucracy that is dedicated primarily to the analysis and organization in the event that a conflict could occur. As you know, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations in the UN is not particularly well staffed in terms of both numbers and background. It would have to be a fairly major study to look at the United Nations and see what is it that the UN really will need to be able to do the kind of thing that you suggest.
It probably needs an organization very close to what NATO looks like. However, to do that and involve more than the membership of NATO into another 100 and some odd countries in the United Nations would be a very complex undertaking.
I know that the United Nations has the peace academy in New York, and it tries to get more common doctrine through that. However, it still does not come anywhere close to the commonality that NATO has; that is NATO's capability.
Senator Dallaire: I am not debating that. NATO has strategic lift and so on, but it also puts limitations on out-of- area operations that are in the self-interest of the nations that are part of it. That does limit where it wants to play and where it wants to go, ultimately. It can sort of shape its interests and capabilities, and it is significant.
I am arguing that if we do not enhance the capabilities of the UN to cover the globe, and we continue to enhance and put efforts into NATO, NATO will become potentially not just a regional capability, like the African Union, but be an arm of the UN in applying force and also ultimately in conflict prevention and nation building. Would you not want us to move in that sort of direction?
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: I have heard a number of people suggest that NATO should become the operational arm of the United Nations and that NATO provide the sort of fundamental organizational infrastructure, and then other nations can come and join into NATO.
NATO has been very imaginative in the way it absorbs other nations and brings them on so they can adopt and adapt to NATO procedures. As you well know, it is practically a whole new exercise every time a new UN operation goes out. A totally new organization has to be developed and trained and put into place. This takes a long time, and that leads to limitations in the effectiveness.
Senator Dallaire: It is interesting that the same countries that would be concentrating on building the NATO capability are the countries that crashed SHIRBRIG, the Multinational Standby High Readiness Brigade for United Nations Operations. In fact, it deployed ultimately into southern Sudan, and then we closed it down as one of the efforts of enhancing the UN capability.
Do we see NATO evolving into nation building, which includes humanitarian aspects, creating good governance and all those things? Do we see NATO being able to bring all those things together, as maybe Mr. Chapin optimistically was describing? Does NATO want that job?
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: I do not think NATO would want the job. However, in the interim, considering the time it would take if this were to be seen as the ultimate goal of the United Nations, somebody will have to be there in the meantime. Indeed, NATO might be the organizational model to help the UN develop these kinds of capabilities. NATO could be one of the effectors and one of the enablers.
The decision would have to be taken that rather than NATO undertaking these kinds of operations, this should be a new capability that the UN should have on standby on a much larger scale than SHIRBRIG was.
As you know, in this country for decades we had a NATO standby battalion. When we were involved in making the decision as to whether or not we were going to commit anything to the UN, we knew there were troops that could be put on notice immediately. That is a different kind of context in other countries.
Other countries do not have that kind of thing, and the poor United Nations has to go around begging for contributions. They may not be the kind of things that you put together in a jigsaw puzzle; you have to mix and match, which is not an effective way of putting a military organization together, as you know.
Senator Nolin: I want to go back to a question Senator Banks raised with Mr. Chapin earlier, without naming it; he was referring to the NATO Response Force, NRF. You just mentioned our availability for that.
I think the NRF was one of Lord Roberson's great achievements when he was Secretary General of NATO. If I am not mistaken, he put that in place 10 years ago.
Could you evaluate the NRF for me? I understand that the air lift is an important component, which is why you are making a recommendation to give NATO the expeditionary capabilities. How do you rate the NATO Response Force?
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: First, it has that quick reaction capability, and it has had it for longer than the 10 years; we have had these quick reaction forces available. Canada contributed both air and land forces, as well as sea lift, to support northern Norway, for example, in the event of an invasion of Western Europe. This has been a long-time commitment.
Senator Nolin: To follow up on Senator Banks' question or concern, if something happens, we can deploy on very short notice; is that correct?
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: We have been in that position for many years. Our capacity for that deployment has been hugely enhanced with the acquisition of our new C-17 aircraft.
Lt.-Gen. Macdonald: I would like to remind you that there are practicalities involved. If the country commits to a particular nation that uses that particular resource to its capacity, then it is not available to do something else.
It is the same with the overall NATO versus UN argument. There is a theory and then there are the practical realities of how you can best assign the resources to do the job of the day; how you could best organize them, having a cogent military organization to effectively be able to apply that action; and how you bring together the member countries effectively to support it.
Senator Nolin: I will return to the question raised by Senator Dallaire about outside states. You recommend that NATO put in place a standing mechanism to allow key democratic states outside the Euro-Atlantic region to be part of the decision making. What do you have in mind for that? With the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, in mind, Australia is involved as well as other non-NATO countries. Are you thinking of a permanent or flexible mechanism? What would it be?
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: Are you referring to the recommendation in the report?
Senator Nolin: Yes.
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: In that connection, quite commonly we find ourselves in operations with other countries like Australia and New Zealand, in particular. Not surprisingly, we have a special relationship with the English- speaking and former Commonwealth countries that has allowed us an easier kind of relationship with them. Incidentally, our military education and training programs have exchange programs with Australia and New Zealand, and we have their students at our command and staff end and at national security programs in Toronto today. This has been a long-standing activity.
In addition, Australia wanted to follow Canada's lead in becoming involved in UN peacekeeping operations. They sent some of their officers to Canada to learn what is involved. As well, the first Australian commander of a UN force in Egypt was an officer who had come to Canada for our programs.
We have what I would call ``traditional relationships'' with these people, and that is why we engage them more. Incidentally, the Australians want to become involved as quickly as possible to ensure that the Americans realize that the Australians are supporting them.
Senator Nolin: When you talk about a standing mechanism, do you mean there would be permanent members of those states at NATO headquarters in Brussels?
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: I do not think we have a specific structure in mind, but it would be reasonable to have a liaison office for them. We had liaison offices at NATO with Eastern European countries after the end of the Cold War. There we were with our former adversaries sitting in offices around us in NATO. It would not be unreasonable to have similar kinds of offices with other people who feel they might be able to contribute to such operations.
Senator Lang: Brigadier-General Macnamara, I appreciated your opening remarks. It would be good for Canadians to hear what you had to say about our history and where we are at today. It was most informative, and more Canadians should hear it.
I have one comment. It is important for Canadians, as we re-evaluate NATO to see whether changes can be made, that the principle that all members will carry their equal share of the responsibilities be accepted. It would be easier for Canadians politically to accept Canada's role and what we do in NATO.
I draw your attention to a statement in the report that has to do with the costs of running NATO and how it is organized and the various threads throughout the report that there should be changes in view of the decision making and the bureaucracy and the fact that we are living with a legacy from the Cold War. The report refers to ``Cold War- era legacy programs such as multiple pipelines and layers of redundant headquarters long past their usefulness.'' In other words, NATO should be reviewed and maybe changes made or cuts made. Can you comment on that? When you say ``headquarters,'' are we talking about something over and above Brussels or other countries within the 28 members? Are you talking about an amalgamation so that we are not spending a lot of money on bureaucracy?
Lt.-Gen. Macdonald: NATO has traditionally been a bureaucratically heavy organization, and militarily several levels are involved in its overall operational responsibilities. Some headquarters in the Cold War period were established not so much because they were absolutely necessary but because they were in a particular region or area or because a particular country could then have a headquarters or could provide the necessary staff. The positions in headquarters were often assigned by the level of commitment of a country. Therefore, the more senior leadership positions would be held by country X here and country Y there to strike a balance. Country Z might not have a position because it was not contributing.
The NATO infrastructure budget to which you referred was largely spent in Europe. It assisted those countries in their defence budgets to acquire infrastructure at the expense of the whole, of which Canada and the United States were contributors, without Canada and the United States necessarily getting their share of that spending. Things have persisted but are slowly evolving, and the Cold War approach to NATO funding still has to be addressed.
Senator Lang: I will pursue that a little further. Do you think it should be one of the given principles in the negotiations and the review of the criteria for NATO and that the situation be addressed and changes made? Will we go through another 10-year review and come out the other end with what we have?
Lt.-Gen. Macdonald: Certainly, it should be addressed. To be fair, it is being addressed and has been addressed for some time. NATO has had a number of iterations where it has looked at the structure and rationalized the headquarters structure in NATO. There is always room for improvement and for reducing the size of the personnel strength at NATO headquarters generally. At the same time, though, as was mentioned earlier, if there is to be a more civilian focus, then perhaps it would be more a change of focus than it would be a numbers reduction overall.
Senator Lang: We talked about resources with Mr. Chapin when he was here. It would seem we are spending a lot of money that does not bear results, from what your report said. Perhaps it functioned in years past, but it is not necessarily doing that now.
With the knowledge that either one of you have with respect to the running of NATO, if this report were accepted, would we be looking at significant savings in administrative costs that we could move to other areas to meet some of the other recommendations in your report? Instead of going back to the well for more, could we simply redistribute the money? Significant money is being spent, and it is not a make-work program, I do not think.
Lt.-Gen. Macdonald: As was stated earlier, the NATO countries are generally very rich. My opinion is that NATO spending and the commitment of the defence budgets of the collective member nations should be spent more effectively toward capabilities that deliver NATO results. The more stationary Cold War posture that NATO has had still has room to evolve to a more expeditionary capability. NATO countries need to direct their defence budgets more toward those expeditionary, strategic transport, logistics and support capabilities that will enable NATO to do the kind of operation that it conducts currently in Afghanistan and will conduct elsewhere in the future. There needs to be some reckoning among NATO countries to ensure that those capabilities are provided equitably by them rather than by the contributing nation.
Senator Nolin: Secretary Gates referred to the military reform of the alliance as recently as last February. What do you think he had in mind? He knows the effort that we have made, because he was part of it. What reform does he have in mind?
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: He probably has in mind that NATO transformed the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic, at naval headquarters in Virginia, into the Allied Command Transformation. The Allied Command Transformation is looking at what is going on around the world, the changes in technologies and how military systems change. These kinds of studies will have to be done before we decide what kind of an organization we will have in the future. They just completed a report last November on the future security environment. I would suggest you read it if you have the opportunity. It is fairly lengthy and detailed, and it talks about a world in which NATO will be constantly concerned about out-of-area operations. Once it describes that world, then the next group of people will come and say, ``What does this mean to NATO in hard-core military terms?'' Then they will ask: ``How much of this military will be available on a permanent basis; how much will be part-time; how much will be deployable; how much will be fixed-base?''
This whole process is under way now, and they have just completed the first large step of discussing the future security environment. The next step will be this strategy to which we have been contributing. Out of that Allied Command Transformation global analysis comes the next step: What strategy will NATO adopt in the context of this strategic environment? I suspect that what Secretary Gates is referring to is what these next steps will be in light of that.
The biggest difficulty with many of these things is that certainly people outside of the system see each of the steps as being separate and discrete, but they are part of a continuum. The first step always has to be what is going on in the environment out there that will be a risk to you. Then it is what will you do about it, and then how will you do that.
Senator Day: Transformation and Norfolk get me thinking about this issue of the role of NATO as being primarily a defence organization being forced in Afghanistan to evolve into a whole-of-government role, because the United Nations was not there to step forward. Do you see the possibilities of the United Nations expanding into that role or the creation of another NATO-type organization of the willing nations, or a complementary role between the European efforts and the NATO efforts? Where do you see us going in relation to transformation over the next while?
Lt.-Gen. Macdonald: As has been mentioned on a number of occasions previously today, the reality is that it is the same nations we are talking about that are members of the European Union, members of NATO or members of the UN. Recreating some of the capabilities that now exist in NATO and that are evolving in our ability to act in this situation is not likely to be done within the auspices of the UN. The idea of having NATO as an arm of the UN makes more sense. That is a more realistic and likely option when you look at the future demands to be placed on the UN and the future capabilities of NATO if it evolves successfully.
Senator Day: That would be a defence role. What about the whole-of-government role?
Lt.-Gen. Macdonald: You talk about defence — defence and security perhaps. As General Macnamara said, NATO probably does not want to have the civilian role, but it has to be cognizant of the demands, pressures and abilities of the civilian role, the two D's of the 3D policy, and to be able to work with it and support it effectively. You cannot treat it at arm's length. You have to cooperate and have a fully working relationship that allows you to extract the maximum benefit from both sides of the equation.
Senator Day: NORAD has been wonderfully successful over a good number of years and is now expanding into marine surveillance, to a degree. Other than the obvious, that there are just two governments that have to agree with one another, are there any lessons we can learn from NORAD that can be used to help improve NATO?
Lt.-Gen. Macdonald: The greatest benefit of NORAD, and some would argue it is the most successful alliance — certainly NATO has been around longer — is the level of integration, trust and understanding that is achieved between the two partners. If you can achieve that and you have a common perception of what your objectives are, what you are there for and what your collective defensive action is, you can deal with unexpected situations or contingencies. To get to that level within NATO, which is evolving with the new members and so on, is probably the most important lesson to be learned — to have that level of understanding, trust and integration and to develop interoperable military capabilities to do that, and have the flexibility to deal with such events as Hurricane Katrina or the equivalent that might happen in Canada by using each other's capabilities in a synergistic way.
The Chair: I want to follow up on that one. I will come back to you, Senator Day. When there were conflicting interests with ballistic missiles, we had to graft on other structures to this. That creates another problem, and that is with only two members.
Lt.-Gen. Macdonald: I would argue that ballistic missile defence was an aberration in that partnership. Certainly you have to respect each other's national perspectives. In that case, Canada did make a clear decision; the United States had a clear position, and we proceeded from there in not an uncomfortable way.
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: To pursue the context, as General Macdonald is talking about, the extension of the civilian components, we have to recognize that NATO was built on the basis of a perceived threat of the invasion of Western Europe by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies. There was no expectation that we would have to deal with many of the non-military aspects that we now see. In UN peacekeeping we see it big time. Now in Afghanistan we are seeing it right in front.
However, we have to get into our minds, and I spend a lot of time trying to get military people to understand this, and I think General Macdonald certainly understands this, that we have a new definition of security, and it is not military security alone. Military security is the starting point. We have to take into account the economic security, the economic base, the means by which a country can regenerate itself. We have to take into account the social security, including providing for education, medical care and things of that nature in a society. If we think in terms of the kinds of operations in this new security environment, we will be dealing with essentially failed states. Most of them will be undeveloped, but not necessarily so. The failed state that came to us right up front was in the Balkans, when Yugoslavia came apart. Yugoslavia was hardly an undeveloped or underdeveloped state, yet it came apart and had to be reconstructed and is still going through that reconstruction phase. That is why this whole-of-government approach is absolutely necessary.
I would argue that the strategic culture of deployment and expeditionary capability of the military must be transferred into the other government departments. Along with that will be two other necessary components. One is to train and educate them in the same way that the military has a professional development program that will enable them to take on these responsibilities when necessary, and the second is to have the force capability, that is the standby staffing in teams in these other government departments, so that when something happens on short notice, they do not have to go around and find out which job cannot afford to be done anymore and they will send that person off. This is one of the real limitations that other government departments have. The military are staffed for contingency and deployment. Other government departments are not staffed, trained or educated, and when things happen they are at a huge disadvantage. They get blamed for not being able to do the job, but it is not their fault. Conceptually, we have to get our heads around a new security environment.
I work with an organization in Great Britain, the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom; this is basically its raison d'être. It looks at security sector reform, and the security sector is everything from the farmer up to the judges in the Supreme Court and the elected prime ministers and presidents. These people all have to be involved.
Senator Day: Is there anything within the NATO charter, the NATO mechanism right now, that would allow it and the nations of NATO and that organization to expand into this whole-of-government approach?
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: That is why we put it in the report. It is not there now. We think it will be very important. It is more than a one-liner. This is basically a long essay, half of which I already have written. I do not think I will ever finish it because things keep happening.
The reality is that we have to understand a new concept of security that starts with the military providing the stability and then must be followed on with all of those things that put governments together and the other institutions of a functioning state. If you want to see an example of how this has not been done by the UN or anyone else, look at Haiti. Look at what has happened to Haiti in the last 25 years. We have had chance after chance, and because we have not had the total security concept going in there, we have not been able to do it. I think that maybe, just maybe, there is an understanding that we may have to go about it in a different way now.
Senator Meighen: On that, I am wondering where Canada is on a continuum in terms of that concept. When we were in Afghanistan, we were quite impressed with the number of people from Correctional Service Canada and people assisting Afghans with governance. Are other countries deploying a similar effort, or is it a question of starting from zero in terms of education and describing the importance of what you have just outlined?
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: My understanding is that other countries are doing it but not necessarily in the same way. Each of the provincial reconstruction teams is in a different province and they all have different problems. People will say the Germans are not doing anything, but in fact until recently, the German military were not in a situation that was particularly threatening in a security context. The Dutch, for example, set up an industrial training program and kept themselves inside a base and did not go out. The Dutch casualties were unfortunate people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were not out there fighting.
One difficulty in making comparisons in Afghanistan is that comparing what countries have done must be done on the basis of knowing what other countries' particular provincial reconstruction teams were. That was the basis of the original foundation as to why people were going there at all; each country was asked to take on a province.
Senator Meighen: I am confused. Do you have to sell this concept? Is that why you put it in the paper, or do we have to refine this concept?
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: We have to refine the concept, but we have to make sure people understand the concept and what the context is going to be, because it is very easy. We lived for several years in this country with the 3D concept. I remember when it came out, and, as one who had been trying to promote a broader context of security, I thought this was a heaven-sent opportunity, except that we could not get people to understand that it takes more than statements. It takes people, time, education, training and a change of strategic culture mindset in a department. We have cultural differences among the departments, and that is the kind of thing we will have to bring together.
Senator Dallaire: Just to reinforce, we are under a new conceptual base of security where the development people, the political, the governance, the rule of law, all those civilian elements, plus security elements, including police, have to function concurrently. They have to function not as separate silos but in fact have to integrate their capabilities. Such a doctrine does not exist. We are still on job training in Afghanistan, and we are fiddling with these concepts.
I want to emphasize that I am not convinced that the civilian side in Canada did commit early on enough capability, and it still does not because the civilians in the Canadian government, who would be from Correctional Service Canada or whatever, do not have the same protection that the military have. They do not have Veterans Affairs Canada to take care of them if they are injured. They do not have career enhancement programs for such deployments. In fact, when the diplomat was killed you could not find someone from the Department of Foreign Affairs who wanted to go overseas. They would have to change their concept to what their role is in regards to deployment and a new training mechanism that would bring all of them together and not train separately, correct? Correct me if I am wrong. This is where I am looking for your answer.
The Chair: I think that was your point, that we have to change the mindset about what is getting people ready, and getting them ready in the Department of Foreign Affairs is different from getting them ready at DND.
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: Exactly, but with respect, I do believe there have been major changes in these benefits approaches in recent years because it was a major problem. I also believe this will have to be a top-down policy thing. It is not something that will bubble up from below. If you are to impose some culture change on other government departments, it will have to be essentially an imposed change, in my view. It will be like unification. It was not very popular, but it was done because you were told you were going to do it.
Lt.-Gen. Macdonald: However proud we may be of the accomplishments of civilians in Afghanistan, we are still very much feeling our way through personalities, through finding ways to cooperate in very small numbers generally as well. There are a few corrections officers here, a few RCMP, and so on. A huge amount of improvement is possible.
Senator Banks: I will ask almost a bootleg question. I will ask you both to cast an eye on Parliament. It might be a baleful eye. When what I am about to ask about happened, General Macdonald, you were still a serving officer, and, General Macnamara, you had the advantage of 20/20 hindsight and glaring scrutiny from a distance. What you said about the whole-of-government business is very important. It is important that civilians be involved, but when we first realized in Afghanistan, I guess, that that had to be a function, it was provided entirely by military people who provided, for all intents and purposes, the president's secretariat in Kabul. They were Canadian army officers. We had discussions about whether there should be civilians there, and the short answer at the time was no, there should not. I am talking about the time when Colonel Labbé was there, for example.
In your opening remarks, General Macnamara, you talked about our expeditionary history and culture, and now we have another expeditionary matter, but never before has Parliament decided on the basis of anything other than some metrically measurable success, which used to be such a simple thing as victory, but it is not that any more. As you have described, in this instance alone, Parliament — and my party was just as much a party to it and is in my view just as guilty of it as is the governing party who are equally guilty of it — has arbitrarily said that is when it will end, never mind where we are, never mind how much success we have had, never mind what the metrics of measurement are, never mind that it is not victory any more but a different set of measurements.
When you talk about the commitment of its members being fundamentally important to the capacity of an alliance of some kind to bring something off, how is it possible that it can be susceptible to meddling politicians to say that it will finish on that day? Never mind what you have expended, never mind what we have bought for you, never mind how many lives have been lost, never mind where we are on the continuum of what would be measured as success, we are leaving on that day. Can we hold our head up and do that?
To finish, is Parliament not meddling in a strategic question that is best left to people who know about strategy?
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: Senator Lang said that he would like more people to hear what I said at the outset. I would suggest that parliamentarians were well-meaning but poorly informed. If someone had asked whether they understand what our national interests are and what national interests are at risk and at stake in this decision, would they know that the impact this will have on our relationship with the United States would be so substantial, could be so substantial, that if we stay and help out and do our job alongside our NATO allies we will be good guys, and if we do not we will be bad guys? You know and I know that the impact will be a whole lot worse than we would like it to be. If we look at this through national interests, where do our vital national interests start? They start at the forty-ninth parallel right behind us, because our economic prosperity and our physical and continental security are absolutely dependent upon our foremost relationship with the United States. General Macdonald has been all through this with NORAD and knows how important it is when the defence of North America is absolutely dependent upon them. We are probably the most fortunate country in the world to be as close as we are to the United States, but let us not be foolish about how far that can go.
Senator Banks: Would you not agree that our uncompromising commitment would depend on Canada first having said yes? I give you the example of Iraq, where Canada said no. It turns out that we were right for very good reasons. This committee happened to be at the White House in the week after the beginning of the second Iraq war. We took considerable flak on that occasion, but we were right. Canada had not said yes and then decamped, in effect, if that is the right word. Is that a difference? I assume that you do not think Canada ought to have gone to war in Iraq.
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: No, I do not think we could have, frankly, but that is another matter. General Macdonald was there.
We must understand that the Afghanistan situation was declared to be an Article 5 situation for NATO. Canada had an obligation, and that obligation still exists. It has not been withdrawn. Another part of what concerns me is what good is Article 5 if we put a time limit on it and withdraw.
Senator Banks: What good is an alliance if people can leave it?
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: Yes.
The Chair: I would like to hear from both of you what it means to the alliance. There are many questions about whether NATO has functioned properly in this situation, whether it is cumbersome and whether it can make the right decisions. However, if Canada takes its leave, in the minds of many of its allies, prematurely, what does it mean for NATO?
Lt.-Gen. Macdonald: Canada is known to have contributed a great deal. The parliamentary decision for military forces to leave Kandahar in 2011 was a reasonable decision at the time. It granted the ability to come to some agreement on what should happen. However, things have changed since then. They have not evolved as quickly as was expected. A reasonable approach would be to rethink whether that was the right decision. I draw your attention to the Conference of Defence Associations' position paper that suggests perhaps another John Manley-like panel might be an approach to help inform future discussions. Senator Wallin contributed to the Manley panel.
I think everyone understands if Canada's large combat force leaves Kandahar — the mission is unsustainable over the longer term — but what is the alternative? What else can Canada provide to contribute to training, mentoring and supporting the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team? What other things have we done or could we do that are perhaps less demanding but would verify that Canada is still part of the alliance and that we contribute to our NATO commitment made along with other NATO partners, without saying that Canada decided in 2011 that Article 5 no longer applies and we are leaving? Is that realistic?
Senator Banks: I will ask two questions about what you just said.
The Chair: Quickly, please, since we are past our time again.
Senator Banks: Our present commitment in Afghanistan is unsustainable. We have heard otherwise from some people. In your opinion, is it unsustainable?
Lt.-Gen. Macdonald: The commander of the army will say he is inundated with volunteers to go to Afghanistan. However, the reality is that the operational tempo created in the Canadian Forces along with demands in other areas — and now the pressures of the budget — increasingly cause the mission to be more difficult to sustain. The more reasoned approach to Afghanistan would be that Canada can continue in Afghanistan at a much lower level of expense and resources.
Senator Banks: Can we have an operational provincial reconstruction team, PRT?
Lt.-Gen. Macdonald: Yes, I think so.
Senator Banks: Would someone else defend the PRT rather than Canada?
Lt.-Gen. Macdonald: No, we should add military support to a PRT. The PRT is the whole-of-government wave to the future.
Senator Banks: The PRT is very interesting because Canada found that it is all very well to have a PRT close to Kandahar City, but we need to have a company of infantry to defend it, and that came after the fact. In your view, should Canada keep soldiers in Afghanistan to protect the operations of the PRT?
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: If we continue with the PRT, I think we have an obligation to it. If we do not do it, the Americans will and if the Americans do it, the Americans will take over the PRT. Therefore, the question is whether we want to be a part of the PRT, and if we do, we have to look after our own people.
To answer the previous question asked about whether this will impact NATO, if we go ahead with this decision, my nightmare is that Canada will forever be known in NATO as ``the Canadian position on a deployment.'' From this point forward, people will say they will take the Canadian position and leave in two years or whatever. I do not want Canada to be seen in that context.
Senator Day: The Dutch are leaving this year.
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: The Dutch are in a similar quandary. They have had very difficult political problems, as you know.
Senator Banks: We are taking the Dutch position.
Senator Lang: I have two quick questions. I assume the report has been disseminated amongst all the players and that other countries' personnel have read it. What response are you getting to date with respect to what you recommend?
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: Everything I have heard until noon today is that everyone who has seen the report considers it an excellent report. NATO staff have said they are grateful to receive it. The ideas are consistent with what others are saying. Some of our ideas may not be new, but it is the kind of common approach that people want. We are getting very good feedback.
Senator Lang: My other question has to do with NATO and the organization you are part of. Have you considered putting a framework together for a public relations campaign in Canada to explain what NATO is, what it does and why we should support it? Someone should do this.
Brig.-Gen. Macnamara: The quick answer is no. A NATO council in Toronto has that as its primary responsibility. It runs conferences and the like. The Conference of Defence Associations has had a major speakers program across this country to inform people about our military operations, including NATO. We talk to a lot of people, but unfortunately it does not seem to make a lot of difference.
The Chair: Thank you. I appreciate your time and for agreeing to come with short notice. I want to echo Senator Lang. Your opening comments were very helpful. Thank you for refocusing our minds on why we are doing what we are doing.
Our thanks to Lt.-Gen. George Macdonald and Brig.-Gen. Don Macnamara. That brings to an end this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence.
(The committee adjourned.)