K
King
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I know it‘s not cool anymore to post long articles, but the link wouldn‘t work...Does anyone believe this would happen?
Imagine a Canadian brigade
David Bercuson
National Post
On the military front, the next serious question Canada faces is how will we be able to make a significant contribution to phase two of the War on Terrorism -- the war to topple Saddam Hussein? Iraq will be the next target and everyone in Washington knows it. Saddam Hussein is far more dangerous to the West -- especially to the United States -- than 10 Osama bin Ladens, and his regime must be eliminated. When the troop buildup against Iraq begins, say, a year from now, what will Canada do to help? If things remain as they are, not much more than we are doing now.
For Canada to offer a significant contribution to the coming war against Saddam Hussein, our contribution should be nothing less than a full mechanized brigade of 3,500-plus troops, and most of the tanks and light armoured vehicles in the Canadian inventory.
In such a brigade, Canadian reconnaissance units using Coyote vehicles would pave the way for Canadian armour using upgraded Canadian tanks, accompanied by Canadian infantry carried in Canadian light armoured vehicles, with the assistance of Canadian Air Force Griffon helicopters.
A Canadian Brigade could fight under command of, or as part of, a U.S. or British division. It could operate as a more or less self-sustained fighting unit large enough to warrant inclusion in front-line forces and large enough to position Canada as a significant coalition partner. It would carry the name and reputation of Canada‘s fighting forces into battle.
Since the early 1990s, Canada‘s contribution to larger UN or NATO operations has been the "battle group." This is an artificial construct of some 1,600 personnel that takes one of Canada‘s nine infantry battalions or three armoured units as its core (900 soldiers), then adds specialized units of engineers, medical personnel, logistics and supply troops. But a battle group is not a standard military formation, recognized by our larger coalition partners. That is why Canada would no doubt be asked, as it was in the initial stages of the Kosovo occupation, to break up its battle group and send reconnaissance troops here, engineers there, helicopters somewhere else. That would absolutely diminish Canada‘s role in the campaign.
But how to prepare one of Canada‘s three standing brigades for war in a year or so, and how to prepare a second of those brigades to replace it in rotation?
When Canada volunteered a brigade to defend South Korea in August, 1950, it had to raise it from scratch. Most of that brigade did not arrive in Korea until 10 months later.
In 1990, Canada was in better shape. It still had a brigade overseas in Germany with NATO, but when Ottawa was asked to send that brigade to augment the coalition forces then building for Operation Desert Storm, it refused, primarily because it did not have sufficient replacements .
The only way by which Canada might begin to prepare, now, for a conventional war against Iraq is to designate the necessary forces -- one of the three brigades -- as "first in" and begin to get them ready for deployment in six to nine months. At the same time, the back-up brigade should also begin to prepare for the mission. To do that, however, Canada will have to give notice to NATO that our commitment to Bosnia will end sometime in 2002.
Our commitment to Bosnia is crippling the capacity of the Canadian Army to mount operations. The Canadian Area of Responsibility -- recently expanded in size -- eats up a good chunk of Canada‘s army. Canada has only nine infantry battalions and three armoured regiments to fight wars at "the sharp end" and fully a quarter of them -- three battle groups -- are at any given time either in Bosnia, training to go there, or recovering and retraining after having been there on the normal six-month rotation.
The United States will not like this. They have already urged us to make our contribution to the war against Osama bin Laden by replacing their troops in Bosnia. Our government has no doubt eagerly complied: Bosnia is a safe mission we can do. But the Americans would love to extricate themselves from Bosnia because they maintain three times the troops there that we do and thus waste an entire ready division. They‘d no doubt love to stick Canada with Bosnia forever, if they could, while they take on the high-profile missions in the war on terrorism.
It would be a snare and a delusion for Canada to accept long-term augmentation of U.S. troops in Bosnia as our primary mission in the war against terrorism. We should begin to get out of Bosnia now. If we are to regain our influence in the world, as John Manley, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, has urged us to do, our troops should be at the front line when the war to eliminate the menace of Saddam Hussein begins, and not patrolling the now quiet roads of Bosnia.
David Bercuson is director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.
Imagine a Canadian brigade
David Bercuson
National Post
On the military front, the next serious question Canada faces is how will we be able to make a significant contribution to phase two of the War on Terrorism -- the war to topple Saddam Hussein? Iraq will be the next target and everyone in Washington knows it. Saddam Hussein is far more dangerous to the West -- especially to the United States -- than 10 Osama bin Ladens, and his regime must be eliminated. When the troop buildup against Iraq begins, say, a year from now, what will Canada do to help? If things remain as they are, not much more than we are doing now.
For Canada to offer a significant contribution to the coming war against Saddam Hussein, our contribution should be nothing less than a full mechanized brigade of 3,500-plus troops, and most of the tanks and light armoured vehicles in the Canadian inventory.
In such a brigade, Canadian reconnaissance units using Coyote vehicles would pave the way for Canadian armour using upgraded Canadian tanks, accompanied by Canadian infantry carried in Canadian light armoured vehicles, with the assistance of Canadian Air Force Griffon helicopters.
A Canadian Brigade could fight under command of, or as part of, a U.S. or British division. It could operate as a more or less self-sustained fighting unit large enough to warrant inclusion in front-line forces and large enough to position Canada as a significant coalition partner. It would carry the name and reputation of Canada‘s fighting forces into battle.
Since the early 1990s, Canada‘s contribution to larger UN or NATO operations has been the "battle group." This is an artificial construct of some 1,600 personnel that takes one of Canada‘s nine infantry battalions or three armoured units as its core (900 soldiers), then adds specialized units of engineers, medical personnel, logistics and supply troops. But a battle group is not a standard military formation, recognized by our larger coalition partners. That is why Canada would no doubt be asked, as it was in the initial stages of the Kosovo occupation, to break up its battle group and send reconnaissance troops here, engineers there, helicopters somewhere else. That would absolutely diminish Canada‘s role in the campaign.
But how to prepare one of Canada‘s three standing brigades for war in a year or so, and how to prepare a second of those brigades to replace it in rotation?
When Canada volunteered a brigade to defend South Korea in August, 1950, it had to raise it from scratch. Most of that brigade did not arrive in Korea until 10 months later.
In 1990, Canada was in better shape. It still had a brigade overseas in Germany with NATO, but when Ottawa was asked to send that brigade to augment the coalition forces then building for Operation Desert Storm, it refused, primarily because it did not have sufficient replacements .
The only way by which Canada might begin to prepare, now, for a conventional war against Iraq is to designate the necessary forces -- one of the three brigades -- as "first in" and begin to get them ready for deployment in six to nine months. At the same time, the back-up brigade should also begin to prepare for the mission. To do that, however, Canada will have to give notice to NATO that our commitment to Bosnia will end sometime in 2002.
Our commitment to Bosnia is crippling the capacity of the Canadian Army to mount operations. The Canadian Area of Responsibility -- recently expanded in size -- eats up a good chunk of Canada‘s army. Canada has only nine infantry battalions and three armoured regiments to fight wars at "the sharp end" and fully a quarter of them -- three battle groups -- are at any given time either in Bosnia, training to go there, or recovering and retraining after having been there on the normal six-month rotation.
The United States will not like this. They have already urged us to make our contribution to the war against Osama bin Laden by replacing their troops in Bosnia. Our government has no doubt eagerly complied: Bosnia is a safe mission we can do. But the Americans would love to extricate themselves from Bosnia because they maintain three times the troops there that we do and thus waste an entire ready division. They‘d no doubt love to stick Canada with Bosnia forever, if they could, while they take on the high-profile missions in the war on terrorism.
It would be a snare and a delusion for Canada to accept long-term augmentation of U.S. troops in Bosnia as our primary mission in the war against terrorism. We should begin to get out of Bosnia now. If we are to regain our influence in the world, as John Manley, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, has urged us to do, our troops should be at the front line when the war to eliminate the menace of Saddam Hussein begins, and not patrolling the now quiet roads of Bosnia.
David Bercuson is director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.
