Rethinking the Total Force

INTRODUCTION

Canada and the Canadian Forces rely heavily upon the role played by the Reserves within the Defence Establishment. Our greatest military endeavours of the past century – the Boer War, the Great War, the Second World War, the Korean War, and the past decade’s plethora of United Nations peace support operations – would have been impossible without the whole-hearted response of the Reserves to the call to arms. Not only do reserve forces provide a means of augmenting the nation’s aggregate defence capability but, in a larger sense, they also serve as the watermark of Canada’s military heritage upon the collective consciousness of the nation.

Successive governments have reaffirmed the fundamental role of the Reserves within the Defence Establishment; however, throughout the post-Second World War demobilization, the hair-trigger enmity of the Cold War, and the demanding operational environment of the post-Soviet era, the Reserves have been largely overlooked from the strategic planning process. Despite outstanding service on demanding operations by many thousands of individual Reservists over the past decade, we are no nearer today to the complete integration of all components of the Defence Team than we were at the end of the Cold War. This must change if the Reserves are to play a vital, vibrant and affordable role within the Canadian Defence Establishment in the future.

Background – ‘Two Solitudes’

At the close of the Second World War, Canada boasted one of the largest standing armed forces in the world, a creditable achievement but, in the face of post-war austerity, an unsustainable one. The post-war drive for demobilization, however, was checked by the emergence of the Warsaw Pact and the Cold War. The maintenance by the Soviet Union of wartime mobilization levels and the stand-off along the inner-German border suggested that future conflicts would occur on short notice, requiring standing rather than mobilization-based forces. As a result, the Canadian military, traditionally mobilization-based, became a force-in-being with emphasis on high-readiness regular forces.

This strategic stalemate persisted for four decades, during which Canada maintained its best-equipped, highest-readiness troops in Europe against the day of the anticipated Soviet drive westwards. By contrast, the Reserves were largely left out of the strategic planning and force development process for the main effort, relegated instead to secondary or non-operational roles.

The 1987 White Paper served notice that the Reserves would henceforth be considered an integral part of the “Total Force”, and ignited a long journey of change to where we find ourselves today. The Total Force reorientation coincided with the dissolution of the Soviet polity and a concomitant explosion in regional and ethnic conflict reminiscent of the post-Second World War decolonization period. The 1990-91 Persian Gulf War in a sense raised the curtain on a new era in which small but bitter and destructive conflicts proliferated around the globe. Canada saw its annual commitment of military personnel to United Nations missions quadruple, while at the same time the nature of those missions veered sharply from surveillance and peacekeeping to the very edge of actual war.

The strategic debate to determine how best to deal with the new challenges of international peacemaking brought home a number of painful points to those charged with the management of Canada’s defence resources. One of the foremost among these was the fact that the Reserves offered a valuable and largely untapped source of operational capability; another was the realization that five years after the 1987 White Paper was published, little had been done to optimize that capability. Although the Reserves were able to contribute to UN operations in record numbers (more than 2500 Reserve Force personnel served on UN operations between 1991 and 1995 alone), their efforts were hampered by administrative and training systems incompatible with those used by the Regular Force. The Militia in particular, and not without some justification, began to complain that they were being treated less as an integral component of the Canadian Forces than as a “temp agency”. Decades of indifference, of leaving fully one-third of the Defence Establishment out of the strategic planning process, had come home to roost; the Regular and Reserve components were no longer complementary, and only marginally interoperable.

Clearly, despite four decades of reviewing, reforming and revising the Canadian Defence Establishment, no concerted and prolonged effort has been made to ensure either that the Reserves have been a part of the strategic calculus, or derived benefit from inclusion in the force development process. Since the release of the 1994 Defence White Paper and successive federal budgets, the Regular Force has been engaged in an ongoing process of reduction, reform, and restructure. To some degree, the Reserve component has not been subject to the same magnitude of extant changes sweeping the Defence Establishment. While this has spared the Reserves some of the convulsive effects of the change process, it has also prevented the Reserves from benefiting from those reforms. Furthermore, it must be acknowledged from the outset that while this paper is intended to address problems afflicting the Defence Establishment as a whole, and the Reserves in particular, its observations may be more applicable to some elements of the Reserves than to others. The Militia in particular faces a longer and more complex process of revitalization than its sister services. However, all elements of the Reserves, to some degree, stand to benefit from the process of alignment proposed herein.

The Defence Establishment is on a journey, mandated by Government policy and articulated by Departmental strategy, that is designed to take the Canadian Forces into the next millennium. While the threat of total war is further off today than at any time in the last fifty years, current strategic and operational realities demand that contingency forces be more flexible, to deal with the unexpected, and to be able to sustain operations for extended periods. Achieving these objectives within a limited resource envelope is a challenging proposition. In such a strategic environment, Canada can neither afford nor support two components within the Defence Establishment that are not entirely in accord with the country’s defence posture and requirements. We are at a watershed in the history of the Canadian Forces; years of rethinking, review and restructure have combined to create an unprecedented opportunity for beneficial and long-overdue change. The decisions made today will build the force we need to meet the challenges of tomorrow.

Aim

The Reserve component is a vital part of Canada’s total defence capability, without which the Canadian Forces would be unable either to meet current operational commitments or cater to possible future contingencies. There exists a requirement to ensure that the Reserve component is aligned with Canada’s defence strategy, policies and priorities, the absence of which will imperil the ability of the Canadian Forces to maximize the Reserve contribution to the collective defence effort. The aim of this paper is to provide a strategic framework circumscribing the defence environment with which the Reserve component must be aligned, with a view to prescribing an overarching ‘alignment commitment’ that will enable the Reserves to become a more integral, essential and vibrant partner within the Canadian Defence Team.