Security and Conflict in the 21^st Century

By LCol (Ret) J. Cecil Berezowski

The dawning of the 21^st century has come with more world conflict through rising terrorism. As predicted by some, the most enduring dramas of the 21^st century will be on the fields where the emerging world forces of technology and tribalism clash. And, it may well be war without battlefields or beachheads.

This has become a dilemma for every nation – more often in the form of brute force, revenge, bloodletting and inhumane cruelty.

Despite the murderous attacks of Sep.11, 2001 upon the United States by international terrorists, the nation-state continues to be the principal actor on the world stage. And the reality is that every nation-state has national power and every nation-state has national interests.

Power is the cumulative effect of both tangible and intangible assets that include a nation-state’s geographic and political environment – or geopolitics and national interests. Ever changing dynamic and pervasive world forces and trends interact to influence how a nation-state will apply its national power.

Now, this paradigm of national power has been severely skewed where rising tribalism and technology clash.

Lord Palmerston, Prime Minister of Britain from 1859 to 1865, said it best when he explained that in foreign policy, “You have no eternal friends; you only have eternal interests.” Thus it was startling to read a recent Victoria Times Colonist opinion article advocating that Canada disarm and use the defence budget for health and welfare. Ostensibly, our defence would be surrendered to the Americans.

This is where Lord Palmerston’s words need to be re-read, given Canada’s track record on national security and defence. 

    All governments hate strategic surprise, whether in the grand scheme of global events or domestically at home. Historically, Canadian governments have not been very good at strategic planning to avert surprise, particularly in national security affairs. Indeed, since Confederation, no Canadian government has bothered to enunciate a coherent and integrated national security policy to guide us in using our national power.

Because geography has protected us from external threats for most of our history, security policy in Canada usually has been domestic policy. Nation-building and national unity has been our great preoccupation. Security strategy was rarely an issue. (The British and then the Americans became our proxies.)

A glaring example of this occurred right here in Victoria, after British Columbia’s 1871 entry into Confederation.

The Dominion government’s first response to providing a military garrison, as urged by the Royal Navy given the American and Russian threats, was to resort to part-time militia units in Victoria and the Vancouver area. Poorly equipped, marginally trained and under strength, they were inadequate to the defense.

The Royal Navy saw our strategic vital points to be Victoria – Canada’s major port to the Pacific, the Royal Navy’s dockyard and coaling station at Esquimalt, the Nanaimo coal mines in the dawning age of steamships, and Vancouver, the terminus for the new trans-Canada railroad.

The British Columbia government and the British Colonial Office with the Royal Navy, pressed for regular troops to protect these vital points. Canada undertook to build Work Point Army Barracks in Esquimalt for the newly formed permanent force C Battery of 100 gunners. The new garrison would provide full-time coast artillery defenses and train the militia units on the West Coast.

Construction began in 1897 and C Battery moved in during 1890, vacating the draughty Agricultural Hall at Beacon Hill Park. It was soon apparent that the emplaced ancient cannon, cast off by the Royal Navy years before, were totally inadequate in the new age of steam.

Following several years of rancorous talks over cost-sharing for a fortress with modern guns and facilities, it was agreed to withdraw C Battery and handover Work Point Army Barracks to the British Regulars, on a cost-sharing basis. From 1896 until 1906, British troops occupied Work Point Barracks and installed modern, disappearing six-inch guns for the defense of Victoria and Esquimalt harbours.

It had been a carry-over of Canada’s earlier colonial frugality from the era of “marching and muskets” when local units of part time militia were raised to augment the British Regulars in a strategic crisis. Canada’s West Coast security was thus deferred to the British, yet again.

Now remarkably, in the February Throne Speech, the government promised to craft Canada’s first-ever national security policy. Shortly thereafter, a security policy paper “Securing an Open Society: Canada’s National Security Policy” was released, but without Parliamentary debate because of the federal election.

The paper is a compendium of various departmental security position papers, coordinated through the Privy Council Office. These are in considerable detail emanating from the core responsibilities of providing for the security of Canadians, as vested in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms (that still lacks unanimous provincial consent).

A plethora of national values and integrated policies address these core functions under the chapter headings: Integrating the Security System; Our Intelligence Capacity; Emergency Planning; Public Health Emergencies; Transportation Security; Border Security; and, International Security (with its International Policy and Defence Review yet to come).

While the paper has identified a host of national values, our vital national interests are obfuscated by the many “departmental” interests designed to raise their relative importance in garnering future funding. Without fanfare, the government has proceeded with several major organizational changes to achieve coherence and integration of our security system, in both domestic and foreign environments.

A new Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness was created last Dec. and along with the new Cabinet committee for Security, Public Health and Emergencies, supported by the new National Security Advisor and the future National Security Advisory Council, it will implement the new security system.

While leaning on the Senate Report on National Security and Defence and various other outside contributions, the most apparent flaw perceived is that this bureaucratic “opus major” has yet to be exposed to the national political process.

National security strategy formulation must, perforce, be a political process. Politics implies a diversity of goals and values that must be reconciled before a decision can be reached. It is not simply a question of whether this or that interest should be pursued, as the bureaucrats would have it. Politics implies a diversity of goals and values that must be reconciled before a decision can be reached.

Thus the next step in this process is for Parliament to confirm our major national interests. These, then, would guide all other collateral security processes. They will be few in number but so fundamental that Canadians would bleed and die for these vital national interests. And, these must be endorsed as enduring national goals by the Parliament of Canada. _