Left Out of Battle: Professional Discourse in the Canadian Armed Forces

Introduction

After a presentation on his experiences as a United Nations peacekeeper in the Middle East and Cyprus, one of the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) students in the audience asked Major-General (Retired) Walter Holmes what one should study to ready oneself for the challenges of current and future operations. To this question, Holmes in part answered with the above statement. This response prompted a degree of introspection, and later, class discussion. That further exchange concerned the nature of the contemporary security environment, and, more importantly, how one could become cognizant of those issues that were important to the Canadian profession of arms. This was all very interesting, as I was at the time researching an article on the counterinsurgency debate in the United States, and what similar discussion was happening in Canada. Surprisingly, I had discovered little indication that demonstrated substantive Canadian debate around perceived issues with counterinsurgency, and certainly nothing that mirrored the heated dialogue that had occurred, and is still ongoing, within the American military. My research question then changed from “what?” to “why?”- Why was there a lack of similar professional debate in Canada concerning how we conducted warfare in Afghanistan, particularly since the cost of our involvement was so high. From there, the line of inquiry became broader, to encompass the idea of Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) professional discourse and why did it not seem to evidence itself in any consistently-discernable or institutionalized fashion. The absence of such indicators helps. demonstrate that the CAF looks to other militaries for guidance regarding key aspects of the profession of arms, and that intellectual tradition has existed, to a greater or lesser extent, from the earliest years of the Canadian services.