Newsletter October, 03

Table of Contents:

[The Shape of Things to Come?] [NORAD and Missile Defence] [Our Incredible Shrinking Army] [Voices of Freedom]

Editor’s Remarks

Israel has been taking some underserved lumps again; and it should trouble everyone. Frankly, most of the charges laid against them are hysterical (in both senses of the word) and sinister. Nor do they stand close objective scrutiny, but it is disturbing to see them taken seriously by so many around the world.

It is hard to think of why the Palestinians are ever taken seriously — especially after the Jenin ‘massacre’ of 2002 (one might recall one ‘victim’ who fell out of his stretcher during a funeral, and climbed back on). Nor does anyone seem to recall that the current intifada began when the rampant corruption and waste of Arafat’s government was being questioned by ordinary Palestinians. Yet these and other incidents are always forgotten by most media.

Hostility towards Israel is growing in Western Europe, and it seems that a majority are of the opinion that the Israelis are more of a threat to world peace than anyone else… a belief akin to blaming mugging victims for street crime. The Israelis have lost more of their civilians to terrorism since the ‘peace process’ began 10 years ago than at anytime since their state was founded — yet they still hope it can work. The Israelis have a robust democracy in a region full of despots and dictators. They are governed by laws and restrained in their behavior, even when given outrageous provocation. No sane person can trust Arafat and other Palestinian terrorists, but Israel deserves our trust.

Predicting the future is an easy game in which everyone can play — as the only stakes are one’s reputation provided that a critic cares enough to look up your record and beat you over the head with it.

The wild gibberish of Nostradamus still sells well, over 450 years later. One shelf in the Institute library is filled with the dire predictions of environmentalists over the years — one favorite is Lowell Ponte’s 1976 prediction of a pending ice age as industrial pollutants cut down on sunlight. Resting beside it is the 1970 collection of apocalyptic predictions of Paul Ehrlich (Population Resources Environment: Issues in Human Ecology) — now largely discredited. Jonathan Schell is still in the prognostication business although his predictions of an imminent nuclear holocaust in The Fate of the Earth are out the window. Schell still writes profitable books while Ehrlich had a long academic career (but did lose a substantial bet about the prices of commodities that he predicted would have been depleted by 2000).

A more useful hint about the future comes from the recent book Constant Battles by the Harvard archeologist Steven LeBlanc (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2003). Reaching the conclusions already pointed to by other near-heretical archeologists and anthropologists, LeBlanc points out that the roots of most human conflict are easily explained. Part of the theory is hardly new: Most human societies exploit their environment to the limits that their technology and home range can tolerate, but once their numbers grow to the point where their prosperity is threatened, it is time to see what can be stripped from the neighbours.

What makes LeBlanc new is his very unfashionable perspective; sub-state societies (or non-state actors in contemporary thought) are far more likely to engage in this sort of behavior than states do. Moreover, only states — particularly Western ones — have ways of containing or diverting this drive for exploitation and aggression.

As stability also rests with issues of population growth and the ability to exploit one’s environment, the prosperity of the Western World will be the greatest asset for peace the world has ever seen. Our prosperity tends to limit natural population growth (a behavior that extends to second generation immigrants), and our relentless scientific progress keeps expanding our ability to harness our resources in an efficient manner.

Human population growth is continuing — though not as fast as we once feared, the prosperity engendered by the liberal democracies is spreading elsewhere. So are our abilities to use our resources more wisely. Although environmentalists — who have all cited Ehrlich, Schell, et al, and who firmly believe primitive societies are inherently peaceful and respectful of the environment — cannot admit it, but the environment in Western Europe and North America is improving.

The environmental lobby also believes that genetic engineering will only be the latest catastrophe mankind has wrought on the planet. The environmentalists should try reading Jonathan Rauch’s article "Will Frankenfood Save the Planet" in the October 2003 edition of Atlantic Monthly. Genetic engineering in the agricultural sector leaves a lot of people uneasy, and with no real reason. What is wrong with an agricultural sector that greatly reduces soil erosion (as no plows are necessary), needs far fewer chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and restores topsoil? This is not a pipedream but a description of the impressive successes of the ongoing major pilot programs in Virginia. Increased yields and vastly reduced environmental stress means that another agricultural revolution is underway, and the world will not need to fear hunger.

The doomsayers of the 1970s forecast that the world would soon run out of copper, coal, oil and other vital resources. What they failed to anticipate was the ongoing revolution in material sciences. For example, fiber optic tubes (made of silicon) do a far better job than copper wire. We have become very efficient in our use of fuel and are rapidly producing cars that use a fraction of the fuel that the cars of 1970 did, all while finding more reserves than ever before. The microbiology and emerging nanotechnology revolutions promise even more dramatic efficiencies in our use of natural resources.

In short, the primary incentives for warfare, the depletion of resources and population growth, will not be a concern for the liberal democracies of the Western World. This will not be true elsewhere. China, India, and the Middle East are facing the possibility of severe environmental stress, and while it may become possible to overcome this with the emerging technologies, they might not be able to afford them, or would be unwilling to embrace them.

Moreover, in much of the modern world humans have become removed from immediate fears of famine and acute material want (save only those ruled by the most disorganized and incompetent of governments — such as those in much of Africa). One result is that people have completely redefined their expectations of their societies. Now, in North America, Western Europe, most of Asia and the Middle East, and elsewhere, what we want is related to purpose and meaning. For example, in much of the Middle East, there are tens of millions of restless young men (to say nothing of the women) who are fed, clothed, housed, and provided with a basic education, but who have no idea of what it is that they will do with that education. In China, the necessary means of existence now seem secure for the vast majority of the population (for the first time in their history), so now their minds turn to questions of what is the place of their society in the World.

People will commit violence over issues of collective status, prestige, self-identity and self-expression. There are instances enough of this within living memory in Western civilization; the growing belligerence of China and Islamic Fundamentalism from the Middle East are renewing our acquaintance with the phenomenon. The threats posed by Islamic Fundamentalism and — indirectly for now — by China could easily lead to real conflict, particularly as both the hyper-nationalists among the Chinese and the Muslim World see our society as an obstacle to their own aspirations and our successes as a direct threat to how they think both their own societies and the world should be ordered.

There are also numerous instances in history of how human societies can collapse in both a mass psychological and in a physical sense. In 19^th Century Ireland, the population dwindled from a high of over 10 million to around 3 million — the Potato Famine of the 1840s started the process by killing about 1.5 million people, but emigration did the rest of the damage. In a world filled with ‘failed states’, ‘collapsed states’ and ‘terrorist states’, it is clear that the survival of many Nation States is not assured.

The decline of Russia has continued over the last 30 years. The looming failure of the Soviet society was first apparent to some observers in the 1960s (Arthur Koestler even predicted it in the 1950s), and the desperate attempts at reform in the 1980s did nothing to stave it off — nor have Yeltsin or Putin been able to seriously retard the process. Russian life expectancy has shrunk, those young people that can leave are doing so as quickly as they can, and the Russian population inside the former USSR is collapsing. In large parts of Eastern Siberia, the majority population now consists of illegal Chinese immigrants; the Russian government has just closed whole cities in the Far North by ending the subsidies for their inhabitants; and the fertility rate for Russians themselves has plunged.

With each decade, the ability of the Russian government to rule will diminish, and its population will retreat — leaving a vacuum that other peoples will fill. By the middle of this century, if the present trends continue, ‘Russia’ might be little more in size than the state that Ivan the Terrible inherited in the 16^th Century.

Sub-Saharan Africa is another area where chaotic conditions and a failing population is already presenting problems. The failure of almost all African governments to govern effectively has been clearly evident for years, but the full severity of the AIDS epidemic there has yet to be realized. In Africa, AIDS is almost out of control, and is rapidly emerging as the leading cause of death. In some communities, almost all of the adults have HIV/AIDS and most of the children are born infected. Elsewhere in Africa, all of the educated/technical classes are also almost entirely infected. Either way, the younger generation is at severe risk from the disease, but is often maturing to adulthood in regions where there none of the institutions of civil or traditional society are functioning. The child militias of Liberia and Sierra Leone will become more common elsewhere, and in other regions population loss is inevitable.

Those countries that lack the ability to match the Western World in providing for material demands while minimizing or reversing the harm that has been done to their environment may find themselves — like the Germans of the first half of the 20^th Century — in a search for lebensraum… In a couple of decades, some of them may be able to find it.

Could China possible resist annexing parts of Siberia? Or could the Central Asian Muslims refrain from expanding into the failing cities of Russia and their empty countryside? In both cases, they already have a substantial foothold in these regions.

In Africa, two of the most AIDS-resistant populations consist of local Muslims (and many Middle Eastern peoples have a history of involvement in Africa) and the descendents of Hindu immigrants. India, whose population may soon surpass that of China, could also seek new opportunities as Africa empties out. India also has its differences with the Muslim World and with China, and could be a natural ally for the United States in coming years; might they expect a free hand in the Indian Ocean as a reward?

Over the next few decades the Western World can largely expect to remain almost untroubled although we face a threat of terrorism with weapons of mass destruction and some stress from immigration in numbers that may almost be too big to comfortably assimilate. In the rest of the World, there will be a tight race between the need to acquire new resources from someone else and the importation of new technologies to keep using their own more efficiently. There will also be the violence attendant in the retreat/depopulation of Russia and Africa, and in the race to fill the vacuum.

Now, how to write these up in indecipherable quatrains like Nostradamus used to do?

Canada has always been characterized by the fact that we have slender numbers of people spread out across a vast territory — a circumstance that cannot change no matter how much we wish it, for much of our land is too remote and too unsuited for towns and cities. This has meant that we have always had to look to others to help survey our distances and backstop the defence of our sovereignty.

With the 1940 Ogdensburg Agreement, that guarantor became the United States and an increasing number of treaties, ties and mutual obligations have strengthened those ties since. The main focus of the relationship is to provide for joint continental security, but we have also harmonized defence production, and ensured commonality in vital systems. This has usually been to Canada’s advantage: For a start, our industries have a large piece of American defence production. Military relations with our largest neighbor remain entirely cordial — a situation that so many smaller resource-filled nations in our position would deeply envy.

For decades, the centre-piece of Canadian-US military cooperation has been NORAD — the shared arrangement for the air defence of North America. For the US, the arrangement let them have access to the strategic space they needed for defence in depth against Soviet bombers and cruise missiles, Canada got the benefit of access to American resources (and markets) in a context that respected our sovereignty. NORAD was a joint command and the Americans took that concept very seriously, Canadians were always fully involved in every aspect of the organization at every level — almost all the key roles either have a Canadian in command, or as the deputy to an American counterpart.

Another advantage to NORAD was that it let us know what was going on. NORAD’s satellites watch the entire planet for missile launches. During the author’s first visit to Cheyenne Mountain, the NORAD command centre, they were watching the Iraqis and Iranians firing ballistic missiles at each other. During another visit this October, they were tracking a narcotics flight off the West Coast of North America with radar. Besides common defence and access to intelligence, participation in NORAD has also had commercial benefit — letting Canadian companies gain access to new technologies and participate even more in the US defence market.

Few people outside of the United States have understood the extent to which the Americans have changed their government and military posture since the 9/11 attacks — but the changes have been sweeping indeed. On the actual day of the attack, a Canadian general was running things inside the Mountain, and that day was the very first time NORAD ever called an alert over possible attacks on the US-- in the belief at that moment that more airliners had been hijacked. While NORAD has long been used to watch for missile launches and to coordinate air defences against bombers and cruise missiles approaching North America, watching out for an internal threat was new (NORAD also tracks tens of thousands of man-made objects in space and watches for inbound drug smugglers).

As a result of that day, NORAD now also watches all internal flights inside the US and southern Canada, and would direct the interception of any hijacked aircraft by American or Canadian fighter aircraft. Other changes include the American creation of Northern Command (NORCOM)— a military HQ tailored to coordinate the defence of the US population from all threats, man-made or natural. Seeing the success of NORAD, the US had hoped that Canada would become involved in NORCOM, but Ottawa declined the invitation. However, a joint planning group within NORCOM has Canadian officers involved in harmonizing many aspects of domestic security between our two countries.

The current Bush administration is also determined to go ahead with providing a degree of ballistic missile defence for North America. This is not some sort of vague plan, as concrete actions are already well underway to bring an ABM system on line in 2004. At the time of writing, long-range anti-ballistic missiles are being deployed in Alaska and other systems are being mounted on naval ships or are going to US theatre commanders overseas.

For the Americans, it makes enormous sense to use the NORAD command centre to coordinate missile defence, and to combine air defence and missile defence in one organization. The US Military is enormously satisfied in its partnership with Canada in NORAD and hopes that we will agree to sign on to missile defence in an expanded NORAD when the agreement comes up for renewal next year.

The US does not need to deploy missile defence systems in Canada, nor does it need to build new battle management or radar systems here. Likewise, the American intent is to have the debris from destroyed missiles fall over the oceans — or better yet — back onto the country that fired them in the first place. We would also probably expect coverage against incoming missiles whether we agreed to the program or not. What the US really needs from Canada is an agreement to let some convenient command relationships and facilities continue as they have for decades.

Should we agree to sign on, we will not have to contribute to missile defence in any substantial way; could receive access to the production programs that the system requires, and will — as we have in NORAD — continue to receive intelligence on all manner of incidents around the world. Also, considering the beating that Canada-US relations have taken lately, agreeing to participate would be an inexpensive way of reassuring our closest friend and ally.

The alternative, should Canada fail to agree to participate in missile defence, is that air and missile defence will have to become separate organizations — an expense to the US and a potential short-term handicap. Moreover, what American officers in Cheyenne Mountain worry about is having to put up with the absurdity of asking their Canadian colleagues and friends in the command centre to shut their eyes, plug their ears and leave the room whenever missile defence issues come up.

In a world where the likes of Korean Communists or Iranian Fundamentalists could threaten anyone they care to with nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles, missile defence makes enormous sense. We have nothing to lose by participation in the program, and the costs would be next to nothing. So let’s sign on the dotted line.

Imagine that over the past thirty years, your community had a two-thirds reduction in police officers and police cars; or that there were now only about a third of the medical professionals and hospital beds that you had access to in 1973. How about having only one in three of the budgeted firemen remaining, and all the Fire Department’s trucks have been swapped for family sized cars?

Now imagine what the last 30 years have done to the Canadian Army…

Delegates to the 2003 conference of the Artillery Association of Canada (one of the several associations of serving and retired officers that comprise Canada’s Conference of Defence Associations) received a rather startling brief about the latest reorganization of Canada’s four artillery regiments. The Canadian Army’s crisis in manpower, equipment and resources is becoming acute, and there is a way to measure it.

Over the last 30 years, the Regular component of Canada’s Army has consisted of 10 (then nine with the unwarranted and undeserved disbandment of the Canadian Airborne Regiment) battalions of infantry, four regiments of armor and four of artillery. There are also the Field Engineers, Service Battalions and other components of the Regular Army -- though their absence in the following paragraphs is not intended as a slight to them. The woes of the Reserve component of the Army, while also considerable and equally undeserved, are worthy of another article on another day.

Since 1973, while the number of our regular battalions and regiments has scarcely diminished, what has happened to them has been remarkable indeed.

In the Western tradition, infantry form the heart of an army. On the battlefield, they are the only component that can be expected to both take and to hold ground from the enemy, and nothing can really be thought secure until infantrymen have gone through it, poking into the nooks and crannies, and dealing appropriately with whatever they find. Only infantry are adaptable enough to operate without the support of other arms. An army needs infantry who are hardy, self-reliant, confident, and plentiful — infantry take the bulk of casualties in almost all circumstances.

In 1973, leaving aside the unusual organization of the Canadian Airborne Regiment, our infantry were organized thusly:

• A headquarters element of signalers, clerks, provosts, drivers, medics and the command elements;
• A combat support company with an anti-tank platoon (then of eight S-11 missiles, although the 107mm recoilless rifle was much preferred), a mortar platoon with eight 81mm mortars, a platoon of sappers — infantrymen come engineers -- and a reconnaissance platoon with the battalion’s scouts and snipers;
• Four rifle companies, each comprised of three platoons of 30-40 men, a company HQ, and an extra weapons detachment to round out the organic firepower of the company.

This organization had been tried and tested in combat, on peacekeeping missions and in a variety of other circumstances. It was resilient, endurable and effective. In 1973, these battalions were mechanized and mounted in the M-113 — a tracked armoured personnel carrier.

Thirty years of fiduciary starvation later, the new organization of our infantry battalions is thus:

• A headquarters element that generally comprises the same elements of 30 years ago, and is generally of the same size.
• The combat support company now only consists of the reconnaissance platoon and the anti-tank platoon (with eight TOW wire-guided missiles). The sappers and mortars are now gone.
• Most of our battalions now sport two companies of two platoons each.

Theoretically, the strength of our infantry battalions is larger than a mere four platoons where they once had 12. When they are to be deployed overseas, a full nine platoons are created by combing out Regulars and Reservists from elsewhere in the Armed Forces — which explains why so many soldiers do so many back-to-back tours away from home.

Veteran infantry from sundry conflicts will decry the loss of the sappers and especially more so of the mortars — often the Battalion commander’s most critical support weapon. However, the mortars have turned up elsewhere.

Artillery is the most critical firepower component of an Army. It causes most of the enemy casualties in combat, and is exceptionally versatile by suppressing enemy defences in the advance, quelling his formations when they move into the open, and otherwise threatening all of his activities. Modern guns can lay anti-tank minefields, deluge hostile infantry in a cascade of bomblets, crumple bunkers, and — when necessary — demolish houses from afar. Needless to say, the key question for a unit of artillery is how much weight of high explosive and hot steel can you throw, how far, how accurately and how quickly.

Canada has been exceptionally well served by her gunners in both World Wars, and gunners (like the troopers from Armored Regiments and sappers from the Field Engineer Regiments) have also served as peacekeepers without their artillery pieces on many occasions.

In 1973, each of Canada’s artillery regiments could brandish three batteries of eight 155mm M109 self-propelled howitzers. At that time, if necessary, a Regiment’s 24 guns could drop a combined total 2.09 tons of shells per minute on somebody out to 18km away (and rocket assisted shells could let them reach a bit further still). This certainly added defence in depth, and like their mighty sires in Normandy and Flanders, Canada’s gunners could keep this up all day.

The 155mm gun has become the standard artillery piece of the World’s Armies over the past decades, and has undergone considerable improvement (thanks in no small part to a Canadian physicist, the late Dr. Bull). Rates of fire in the latest version of the M109 have improved and the gun can reach out to 30km — but not for Canada’s gunners. Their M109s have been mothballed in the latest reorganization.

The organization of our artillery regiments now consists of what might well be the most pathetic order of battle since the 1890s. We now have one battery of six truck-towed 105mm guns (two of which must be manned by Reservists), a battery of eight 81mm mortars mounted in light armored vehicles, and a battery of eight more 81mm mortars in trucks. Assuming the Reservists are present, the Regiment can fire about 0.54 tons of explosive a minute out to 13km (this is the 105mm battery), and about 0.95 tons a minute within six km once the former infantry mortars weigh in.

Mortars are, of course, highly specialized weapons — deadly and impressive under the right circumstances and of little impact otherwise. They are an infantry weapon for good reason and should remain there. In the artillery world, a truck-towed 105mm howitzer was good enough for the Second World War, but there have been some changes in the World over the past 60 years…

Our skeletal infantry battalions and impotent artillery are complimented by our Armoured Regiments. Armour is the heir to the ancient role of cavalry, in that it serves two functions: Scouting troops (like hussars) that gather information on the battlefield and undertake reconnaissance, and ‘shock action’ troops that break enemy formations through the speed and violence — a role that once belonged to mailed knights and dragoons, but which is currently the province of tanks. In either event, armored regiments were the main guarantor of battlefield mobility for a Canadian Brigade Group.

In 1973, our fleet of Centurion tanks was reaching the end of its service, but each of regiments had three squadrons of 19 of these tanks, and a reconnaissance squadron of 21 light armoured vehicles (with an additional 5-6 which carried the latter’s versatile support troop of sapper/scouts). Including command vehicles, there would be about 90 armoured fighting vehicles present in a mix that let the unit cover both traditional functions.

Now, of course, all the tanks are retired (saving a single squadron in the Armoured School in Gagetown), and our Regiments can muster only lightly protected wheeled vehicles. Each has one squadron of 12 of the much-vaunted Coyote surveillance platforms and one of 15 LAVs reconnaissance vehicles. The recent purchase of some 60 Stryker wheeled gun platforms will restore some capability (and probably will add eight such vehicles to each regiment), but it is still a lightly armoured vehicle and still lacks the ability to provide shock action.

Imagine that your city had nine police stations thirty years ago, each of which could place 12 squad cars on patrol, and now only have four such cars apiece. Imagine that the fire department traded in all of its big fire engines for cars and minivans (some of which had been swiped from the police department). Imagine that only a third of your hospital bed spaces are still open and half of their specialists had been sent into retirement.

For thirty years, you have neglected to pay close attention to your emergency services, taken them for granted, and believed the assurances from City Hall that all was well and any shortfalls could be easily made good… Now, suppose that a real emergency occurred; just how safe do you think you are now?

"Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous."

"The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do."

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts — for support rather than illumination."

And this is just in from the "You said it, buddy!" Department.

"All generalizations are dangerous, even this one."

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca