Canada in Afganistan: Concepts, Policies, Actors, and Prospects

Canada’s military involvement in the NATO campaign in Afghanistan has been of seminal importance for Canada in several respects. The Afghan campaign has been Canada’s first foray into an active war-fighting environment since the Korean War. It signals the country’s emergence as a nation that is ready to engage in heavy conflict if necessary, after decades of proudly wearing a peacekeeping mantle. This process has been accompanied by an effort on the part of Canada to return to the ranks of leading military nations after a sustained period of governmental neglect of the nation’s defense capabilities. It has also been tragically marked by the proportionally highest casualty rate of any national actor in the post-2001 phase of conflict in Afghanistan, save Afghanistan itself. If Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan was sparked by a need to show its military solidarity with a traumatized post-9/11 United States, it has also brought in its wake conceptual and organizational changes in the way Canada goes about its activities in pursuit of development and reconstruction abroad. Afghanistan has initiated a long overdue debate about the nature and needs of effective development assistance, as well as about the overall relationship between development, security and justice. At the same time, the events of 9/11 have had a significant impact on the country’s understanding of governance, obliging politicians and bureaucrats in Ottawa to rethink the way the various federal departments engage in war zones and troubled states, and what this means for their interface in Ottawa. These trends have evolved in parallel with Canada’s efforts at home to protect its population, infrastructure, and territory from terrorist attack and to deny the use of its territory for terrorist actions. A number of conceptual innovations have accompanied these processes: the 3-D approach, the “whole of government” approach, and, in particular, Security Sector Reform (SSR), which will be the focus of this article. A later section of this article will examine these conceptual developments in detail, but first we will look at the factors that have driven and shaped change in Canadian thinking about security, development and governance in developing countries, including the strategic shift that occurred with 9/11. The article will also address the main features of Canada’s SSR role in Afghanistan: what it has been doing in this theatre, how it has been pursuing its activities there, how its approach compares with that of other countries, and how Canada’s efforts have

Countering Air Terrorism

Air terrorism is an international phenomenon, and one that is not at all new to the global scene: the first example of a politically-motivated jetliner hijacking happened in July 1968, and the first bomb attack on board a plane occurred in May 1949. Until 1967, the number of terrorist attacks directed against civilian aviation was minimal. From 1967–77, however, the frequency of these terrorist attacks increased rapidly. The highest numbers of terrorist acts against civilian airliners was recorded in the years 1977–86. The current annual frequency of such events represents a decrease of about half from the high-water mark in the early 1980s, but the potential effects of contemporary air terrorism attacks are more dramatic and tragic. Terrorists’ targets in such operations are passenger planes, airports, or airline offices. The events of 11 September 2001 have shown that terrorists can suddenly strike against key facilities—private buildings, government properties, military installations, etc.—in any place on earth. The destruction of symbolic objects can weaken the confidence of citizens in a nation’s government, because the state is not able to secure the safety of their own people. And the attacks of 9/11 also proved that at least some terrorists will not hesitate to use jetliners as “human missiles” to accomplish their aims. On the other hand, civilian aviation is a target of special importance for terrorists, given the global impact of such attacks. Every terrorist event in the air focuses the attention of the world through news coverage and around-the-clock publicity. The most exceptionally effective examples of terrorist acts against aviation targets (from the terrorists’ point of view) involve hijacked jetliners with passengers on board. After attacks of 9/11, U.S. President George W. Bush declared the start of a “global war on terror.” More than seven years later, the fight against terror is not finished, and the anticipated results have not been accomplished. The ongoing round of terrorist attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East constitute a daily reality in those regions. Even now, after eight years of dedicated intelligence and military counter-terrorist activity, it is very difficult to detect and to identify terrorists, and it is often impossible to blame concrete persons and organizations for attacks that occur.

The Russian Bear: Russian Strategic Culture and What it Implies for the West

This essay identifies the nature of Russia’s strategic culture: it is its propensity to use force to achieve strategic objectives. It argues that Western policymakers have consistently misperceived the reasons for Russian foreign policy behavior, as they fail to take into account the enduring nature of Russia’s strategic culture. This article claims that Russia has a strategic culture that is fairly stable, although significant changes occurred after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Most importantly, Russia’s imperial ambitions vanished, along with the desire to spread an ideology. The role of military strength as a source of power declined, while the prominence of economic power increased. In the post-Cold War era, Russia has aimed at restoring its status within a great power order, improving the standard of living for its people, and developing (or revising) its national identity. At the same time, the strategic culture that prevails in Moscow makes Russia particularly sensitive to actions taken by the West. The article concludes by examining opportunities for accommodation and constructive engagement with Russia. To attenuate the tensions that currently exist, the West should react assertively but moderately to rhetorical saber rattling and other provocations, and engage in constructive cooperation on both contemporary security threats and economic issues, including pursuing close cooperation to mitigate the effects of the international financial crisis on Russia. In the near term, the West should focus on working with Russia to develop a new concept for long-term security and stability in Eurasia. Future research should thus focus on forward-looking networked diplomacy approaches that may be suited to overcome a Cold War mindset oriented toward bloc confrontation.

NATO Enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia: Old Wine in New Bottles?

This article examines the question of possible NATO enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia, although it will not venture to provide a firm answer as to its likelihood. The aim of the essay is to offer an accurate analysis of the aspiration of these two former Soviet republics to join the Alliance, with a primary focus on relations between the West (in this case, NATO) and Russia, the successor of the Soviet legacy. In the process, it will try to uncover the underlying principle of NATO enlargement as such. To this end, the article will use geopolitics as a theoretical background to explain the behavior of the parties involved, carefully taking into consideration the specific position of NATO as an alliance. Furthermore, it will elaborate the debates over each post-Cold War round of enlargement, with special focus on the first post-Cold War round of NATO enlargement, as this event established the fact of Alliance expansion and laid out the rules for future enlargement rounds. Studying the positions of Ukraine and Georgia in the context of cooperation with NATO, the article addresses the differences and similarities of the two countries, and examines separately their relations with NATO, Russia, and the United States. The overall conclusion is that the prospects for Ukraine and Georgia to accede to NATO membership are not bright, but at the same time they are not completely without prospects. Their ultimate outcome will depend on the terms—whether explicit or tacit— of the ongoing transatlantic bargain between the U.S. and Russia.

Operational Analysis Support to Defence in Norway

Most of the military operational analysis (OA) in Norway takes place at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI). FFI was established in 1946 by initiative of scientists that had participated in military research teams in the United Kingdom, during World War II. No Norwegians did, however, participate in operational analysis units in the UK at that time. OA was therefore not carried out at FFI in its earliest days, but a small OA unit—named the Systems Group—was established in the late 50’s.

General Benjamin Butler & the threat of sexual violence during the American Civil War

What does it mean to be an American?

David Greenberg The presidential debates as political ritual 6 Hsuan L. Hsu & Martha Lincoln Health media & global inequalities 20 Sarah Song What does it mean to be an American? 31 Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen Anti-intellectualism as romantic discourse 41 Ajay K. Mehrotra The intellectual foundations of the modern American 1⁄2scal state 53 John Jacob Kaag Pragmatism & the lessons of experience 63 Christopher Klemek The rise & fall of New Left urbanism 73 Jason Puskar Risking Ralph Ellison 83 Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh Reconciling American archaeology & Native America 94 Sharon K. Weiner Competing organizational interests & Soviet wmd expertise 105 Paul K. MacDonald Rebalancing American foreign policy 115 Crystal N. Feimster The threat of sexual violence during the American Civil War 126

Balancing risks: nuclear energy & climate change

First, nuclear power could make a signi1⁄2cant contribution to climate change mitigation. To do so, however, nuclear power would have to be deployed extensively, including in the developing world. A “one-tier” world will be required– that is, a world with an agreed set of rules to govern nuclear power that are the same in all countries. Second, the world is not now safe for a rapid global expansion of nuclear energy. Nuclear-energy use today relies on technologies and a system of national governance of the nuclear fuel cycle that carry substantial risks of nuclear weapons proliferation. There are still more than 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world, and in the current international system, nations see these weapons as instruments of power and sources of prestige. These nations have competing interests and long-standing conflicts. There are also subnational groups that resort to force. The risks that a global expansion of nuclear power will facilitate nuclear proliferation and incidents of nuclear terrorism, or even lead to regional nuclear war, are signi1⁄2cant. Nuclear war is a terrible trade for slowing the pace of climate change. Third, a world considerably safer for nuclear power could emerge as a co-bene1⁄2t of the nuclear disarmament process. The national-security community is currently engaged, to an unprecedented degree, in seeking progress toward nuclear disarmament. A by-product of this process could be different technology choices and innovations in the governance of nuclear power–notably, a halt to spentfuel reprocessing to separate plutonium as well as multinational ownership and control of uranium enrichment facilities. These developments could begin to decouple nuclear power from nuclear weapons. Finally, the next decade is critical. While several approaches to climate change mitigation are available for immediate, rapid scale-up, nuclear power could be so in maybe 10 years, provided the coming decade is used to establish adequate technologies and new norms of governance. Nuclear power ought to be deployed seriously as a mitigation strategy only when and if it can provide a sustainable contribution. The world will not bene1⁄2t if nuclear power’s contribution is withdrawn a decade or two after global scale-up begins, as a result of flaws related to its coupling to nuclear weapons.

USA/USSR: Architecture and War

Misunderstanding Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Area?

In “No Sign until the Burst of Fire: Understanding the Pakistan-Afghanistan Frontier,” Thomas Johnson and Chris Mason argue that Pashtun tribal identities explain the lure of the Taliban and the shortcomings of the initial U.S. approach to the war in Afghanistan.1 They carry this argument too far, however, and engage in cultural reductionism by portraying the Pashtun tribal code as the determining factor behind politics and preferences in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA). Johnson and Mason make the following errors: (1) treating Pashtun identity as if it were set in stone; (2) failing to consider that today’s radical Islamists rely on different sources of support than did the mullahs (Islamic religious leaders) who led jihads against the British Empire; and (3) misinterpreting the role of the ofacial maliks (tribal and village leaders) in the FATA.