Nobody picks no fights in Canada

At least with no one they don’t know

Nobody picks no fights in Canada

Wars ended a long, long time ago

Nobody drops no bombs on Canada

Wouldn’t want to send no one to hell

Nobody drops no bombs on Canada

Folks tend to wish each other well

John Gray, Billy Bishop Goes to War (1978)

The lyric comes from a musical play, a tongue-in-cheek portrayal of the exploits of the famous World War I Canadian flying ace who, by one account, scored more victories in that conflict than any other British Commonwealth fighter pilot.

The lyric, like the rest of the play, illustrates the perennial dilemma facing Canadians when talking about the existence of an organization constituted to employ armed force to resolve disputes. Like Bishop, we live in a peaceful country where the first line of protection is codes of law. People generally do not conceive of circumstances in which the picking of fights, the shooting of guns or the dropping of bombs are permissible in the normal course of everyday life. This was true in Bishop’s time, not least because life was highly domestic; Canadians were devoting their energies toward the building of a new country. Our ancestors were aware of the goings-on in the outside world, but I think it fair to say that they took less notice of them than is the case in our globalizing, media-saturated, inter-dependent world of today.

But even though Bishop’s Canada was one that enjoyed geographical protection from the ‘evils’ of the outside world, the Canada of the early 20^th century was an outpost of the British Empire and, for the most part, damn proud of it. In the English-speaking provinces there was healthy support for Britain’s imperial ventures, including the Boer War, and although Canada was legally obligated to follow England’s lead into the First World War, Canadians happily went along with it, signing up for military service in droves.

Of course they did so for very specific reasons. Chief among them was the sense that Canada needed to stand firmly beside the ‘mother country’ in its hour of need. There was little sense of what threat to Canada’s existence was posed by Imperial Germany. Indeed, the Germany of the early twentieth century was an expansionist, militaristic power. (Some would have said the same about Imperial Britain, although one tends to go easier on one’s own ‘side’.) But at least the German state of Bishop’s time was not the ultra-expansionist, hate-filled regime of a generation later. Thus as the second great conflagration loomed, Prime Minister MacKenzie King, perhaps after consulting his deceased mother and his dog, adopted a somewhat clearer sense of Canada’s national interests and what had to be done to safeguard them. Consequently, Ottawa did not declare war immediately in 1939. It eventually did so less on the grounds that Canada would be default rush to Britain’s side, and more on a sober appraisal of what dangers Nazi power, if left unchecked, posed to the civilized world.

There is a certain degree of continuity between Billy Bishop’s Canada and our own: a country (re-)inventing itself, content to go about its business, feeling largely invulnerable from contemporary security threats, but when stirred able to muster the resolution, resources, and talent that surprise even itself.

But while Bishop and many of his colleagues were champions in their field, and were celebrated for their exploits, it is difficult to imagine the same level of public enthusiasm for any cause involving the use of armed force today. The ‘peaceable kingdom’ hailed in the lyric is back, only this time it is a mirror image of Bishop’s Canada. On the one hand it is globally engaged, and on the other ambivalent about what risks it is prepared to assume to see the collective will be done. Instead of being inward-looking but ready to ‘mix it up’ with the Empire’s enemies, it is outward-looking but eager to stay out of major military (or what it perceives to be neo-imperial) entanglements - at least those which hold the likely prospect of killing and being killed.

Admittedly, this is an extrapolation of a more complex political reality. Canadians may be inclined to pacific solutions but are not collectively pacifist. They have been tested both politically and militarily in recent small-scale conflicts and have carried the day. National unity and military capacity have been strained, but not to the breaking point. While recent polls indicate a preference for allegedly safer, more politically correct missions (i.e. classical peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance) the public’s views of military matters may be more sophisticated; they may include an unspoken recognition that even safe missions may require robust rules of engagement and the option of resorting to force beyond mere self-protection.

If there is a collective reluctance to engage in physical confrontations it may be because there is a weak consensus on what, if anything, is worth the price. What are Canada’s vital interests? What are our sacred values? Do we have values that we delude ourselves into thinking are sacred? This is a conversation that Canadians and their governments seem unwilling to have, as evidenced by the way in which the International Policy Statements tap-dance around the issue of what would bring Canadians into the field. This is not an accidental omission; it is quite deliberate.

It is also consistent with the decision, taken some time ago and without fanfare, to drop the word ‘armed’ from Canadian Armed Forces. A country that cannot bear to speak its military’s name, or to acknowledge its essential purpose – the instrument through which the violence, or the implied threat of violence is employed to further national goals – may be pacific at heart and politically enlightened. It may also be naïve or self-delusional.

One thing is sure: Canada’s relatively peaceful history has spawned a political culture that favours basic freedoms and the supremacy of law, that balances individualism with collectivism, that favours for quiescent nationalism rather than melodramatic jingoism, and that strives toward social stability. These principles were embodied in the ‘peace, order, and good government’ mantra adopted at the time of Confederation. What is relevant to this discussion is that our political culture has yielded a security culture, one that is pragmatic to a fault, usually hesitant to take action, softly anti-American, and always virtuous in our own eyes. This culture shies away from the application of military force in most circumstances. This can be a laudable outcome if, as in the case of Iraq, the recourse to force was hasty or premature. It may not be so praiseworthy (i.e. Srebrenica, Rwanda, Darfur, Democratic Republic of the Congo) where ineffectual diplomatic efforts and Security Council resolutions are backed up with nothing more than hand-wringing, at the cost of thousands or even millions of lives.  

Where do we find ourselves today? Many Canadians are inclined to see their armed forces through the lens of contemporary U.S. foreign policy, as if there was no distinction between the security cultures and defence policies of the two neighbours. There are as many differences as there are similarities. Thus what the current administration is up to is largely irrelevant to this discussion. Canadians should have an on-going conversation about their military, regardless of who is sitting in the White House.

The government has made some clear decisions about the future of the Canadian military. The first among these is that we will in fact have a military. That in itself is significant, in that it rejects pacifism as a panacea for the world’s ills. The abolition of the organization – a course of action favoured by some - is not on the horizon. But nor is there an acceptance that problems will be amenable to military solutions. Most will not. Thus a vastly larger and powerful military – another course of action favoured by some – is not in the cards. So while one can certainly dream, the two extremes of the debate will have little or no standing in this debate.

While Canadians may favour the safe, easy missions over the difficult and dangerous ones, we should not fool ourselves into thinking that but the former will be sufficient to achieve national goals, whatever they may be. Thus the promotion of Canada’s self-image as ‘peacekeeper’ is less important that ensuring that difficult yet necessary work be done.

Still, the desire to be a peacekeeper/humanitarian and little more makes sense so long as Canadians see no external military threats to national survival, nor anything else truly worth fighting for. Thus despite the recent policy announcements, Canadians will enjoy a degree of latitude as to how their military is structured and under what circumstances it will be deployed.

To summarize, Canada has a military. It will have one for the foreseeable future. It is likely to be modest in size and capability. It will be composed of highly-trained personnel serving under the unlimited liability clause. It will be armed. It will have a flexible mandate, ranging from core tasks that only it can perform, to ancillary ones shared with unarmed domestic and international actors. That mandate will stem as much from a realistic view of how the world is, to an idealistic view of what type of world Canadians want to create. In short, we will have a military that is as Canadian as possible, under the circumstances.

This address was delivered at a panel discussion hosted by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Calgary Institute for the Humanities on 16 June, 2005.

David Rudd is the President and Executive Director of the CISS.

Copyright CISS 2005

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