Presentation to the Standing Committee on National Defence

6 May 2010

Dr. Douglas Bland

Queen’s University at Kingston

(please check against delivery)

My main point for the committee is that a study of “the future of peace operations” that begins from the premise that ‘peace operations’ or ‘peacekeeping’ are military operations distinct from war-fighting sets up a false dichotomy that may diminish the study’s influence in the formulation of Canada’s future defence policies.

Peace operations and peacekeeping operations are forms of warfare in which –  as in all the various forms of warfare – means and tactics are adapted to meet the need of particular circumstances. To set these operations outside the realities of warfare confuses policy and defence planning and raises unrealistic expectations in our community. As we have seen in the Afghanistan campaign these confusions can hinder the operations of the CF in the field and harm Canada’s national interests.

Scholars have for a very long time described warfare as occurring along a spectrum of conflict. At the lowest end one might place ‘unstable peace’ or ceasefires during conflicts. At the high end we find ‘total war’ with few limits to the scale or ferocity of combat operations.

Examples of operations conducted at the low end of the spectrum include the early large scale UN peacekeeping missions in the Middle East (1956 and continuing) and in Cyprus (1964 and continuing) when lightly armed forces were deployed in situations where the likelihood of UN forces becoming involved in armed conflict seemed low. At the higher end of the spectrum we find the world wars and along the spectrum we find so-called limited wars, for instance, in Korea, (1950 and continuing) and the Middle East (1956, 1967, 1976) and in Lebanon more recently.  All wars, as defined by their particular characteristics, can be place here and there along the low to high conflict spectrum.

Wars that share particular characteristics often assume particular modes of conduct and tactics. For instance, urban warfare, guerrilla warfare, revolutionary warfare and civil warfare have their own defining characteristics and thus often their own defining modes of combat. However, they are all wars by general definition: ‘they have their own grammar, but not their own logic.’ In other words, they are identified by their particular means and modes, not as operations set aside from the general circumstances and demands of warfare.

Thus peacekeeping and peace operations too are not distinct from warfare; rather, they are another form of military operations and ‘have their own grammar, but they do not their own logic.’

When we assume today that peace operations are not warfare because they occur in particular circumstances, under the direction of international authorities, and use particular tactics and modes of operations, we make a significant error. Moreover, when we assume that all future peace operations must be stuffed into the configuration of 1950s -1960s UN peacekeeping operations, then we make a dangerous error as well.

Let me support these remarks with two illustrations from CF military operations conducted between 1990 and 2010. The CF were deployed into the former Yugoslavia in 1991 under a UN blue flag and equipped for that mission on the assumption that it was a ‘peacekeeping operation.’ Our combat units arrived in theatre with a mere six rounds of rifle ammunition for each solider. They almost immediately came under fire from well equipped local forces. For ten years these units attempted to conduct peacekeeping operations inside a conventional war. The Liberal government of the day refused to acknowledge this fact and sacrificed the lives of 25 soldiers and created scores of serious wounded casualties as a result.

Today, the CF are involved in a war in Afghanistan and at the unit level it is as deadly a war as any we have fought around the world and it is conducted with every conventional weapon the CF own. Yet in the midst of this war CF soldiers and public servants serving the government of Canada are conducting complex peace operations – development and humanitarian missions. Our Afghan mission cannot be labelled as a either a war or a peace operation; rather, it is a conflict mission we are waging with the means and methods appropriate to its particular circumstances.

The questions this Committee is addressing and the recommendations that this committee will make are important. But a study that reaches conclusions aimed at influencing future defence policies based on the notion that peace operations are separate and distinct from warfare may seem incredible and thus be set aside by defence planners.

The international environment in which the CF can expect to operate in the future will not allow for the deployment of peacekeeping forces not prepared at the outset for the rigours of combat among the people in disintegrating states and communities.

I would hope this committee will break with the past attempts to separate peacekeeping missions from warfare and be the first to boldly alert Canadians to the operational realities and the limitations of what I term “third-generation peace operations” or warfare by another name and the dangers they present to the men and women of the CF.