.... In this article I first argue that Kandahar was in large measure the product of powerful forces brought into being by political decisions in NATO. Those decisions, such as that leading NATO to assume leadership of the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) in mid-2003, entailed binding commitments on national governments, whose maturation, though it could take years, was almost inescapable. Second, I demonstrate that Canadian mission preferences had less to do with Kandahar or any other Afghan province per se, and more to do with experience gained from past deployments, notably in the Balkans. These preferences coalesced into a virtual policy that required any Canadian contribution to meet a number of precise conditions, and Kandahar was one of few provinces that allowed for doing so. Third, I show that Kandahar was also the result of long and extensive talks between Canadian officials and their NATO allies – the Dutch and especially the British. The talks, for the most part informal andexploratory (in the sense that no side had a set agenda), were integral to the gradual development of a plan aligned with Canadian priorities. Without partnership with Great Britain, Canada’s deployment might never have happened.
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This article’s analysis shows that when it comes to the genesis of Kandahar, the domestic Canadian and international strategic spheres were indissociable and both marked by history. To contend that Canada’s deployment was determined by alliance dynamics would be an overstatement – governmental willingness was also fundamental – but it was unquestionably conditioned by them. NATO’s assumption of responsibility for ISAF, and the resulting timeline for the mission’s expansion, defined the number and timing of Canada’s future deployment options. The alliance’s streamlining of OEF and ISAF substantially changed the nature of the latter, making certain deployments under the ISAF banner less desirable to many member states. Canada was not obliged to pick a southern province, but it began to find itself aligned with one by simple virtue of not seeking a way out. The impact of coalition membership on national foreign policy in Afghanistan is probably underappreciated.
Equally apparent is the “organic” nature of the policy process that eventually generated the Kandahar decision. It was organic because it lacked any clear beginning; it was contingent on developments Canadian planners did not control; its outcome was not predetermined; and, though driven by the implicit knowledge that a mission must materialize eventually, it did not proceed in a linear fashion. Ultimately, much of the reason the Kandahar proposal was put before Paul Martin was that it embodied the qualities Canadian planners sought in a deployment. These qualities were determined by extensive Canadian experience of past missions, at least as far back as UNPROFOR and perhaps further. Though constituting something less than a policy, they came very close to constituting a policy line – something that may never have been explicit but whose elements were widely known.
Finally, it is clear that opportunity also played a part. Had not the United Kingdom opted to undertake a major deployment to the south – partly on the basis of its own mistaken prediction of the speed at which it would pull out of Iraq – Canada might never have joined what became Stage 3, or gone to Kandahar. The talks between Canada and Britain, and the Netherlands to a lesser extent, illustrate the hitherto-under-examined multinational dimension of the Stage 3 deployments. They also underscore many commentators’ misconception of the role of the United States and NATO in Canada’s policy process.
