[align=center]Our “Peaceful Reputation”
J.L. Granatstein[/align]

Almost two weeks ago, the senior military commanders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 26 member nations met in Victoria, B.C. for their annual meeting. Inevitably, protesters gathered around the hotel used for the gathering, and all the predictable demands were shouted: for NATO to get out of Afghanistan; for the United States and its coalition partners to pull out of Iraq; and, as is the norm on such ritual occasions, President George Bush—and because this meeting was in Canada—Prime Minister Stephen Harper were called “killers”. As one protester, 86-year-old Janet Hawksley said, “I’m here to say, ‘no to NATO,’ so that Canada can maintain its peaceful reputation.”

Ms Hawksley lives in a dream world. Her parents surely knew that Canada fought in the South African War and in the Great War. She herself is old enough to remember that Canada fought in the Second World War, in Korea, in Croatia, and Kosovo. She must know that NATO opposed the Soviet Union in a long stand-off in Central Europe, and that Canada kept troops in Europe from 1951 to 1994 as part of the Alliance. Those soldiers and airmen, along with most of the Canadian Navy, prepared daily to fight the Red Army if necessary. The fact that they were there kept the peace.

Yes, Canada has a “peaceful reputation”, thanks to NATO’s existence and the way it prevented a global war in the second half of the 20th Century. It is, of course, also due to the fact that we live in a democracy and participate in United Nations and other peacekeeping operations. But Ms Hawksley has clearly forgotten that peacekeeping was a sideline for Canada during the Cold War, a task Canada undertook ordinarily to support the West in disputes in the Congo, for example, or to stop NATO members from falling out with each other, as at Suez in late 1956, or going to war, as in Cyprus several years later. There was idealism there, to be sure, but there was also cold calculation of the need to keep the balance of power intact.

When the Soviet Empire collapsed, most of Moscow’s satellites hurried to join NATO. That helped to restrain nationalist revanche-seeking in much of Europe but, freed of the restraints imposed by the Cold War, not every ethnic group could be reined in. Yugoslavia tore itself apart in bloody civil strife, and nations as far away as the Congo and Afghanistan suffered mightily. Peacekeeping turned from relatively simple “blue beret” operations into dangerous peacemaking and then to even more heavily armed peace enforcement. With well-trained armies, NATO members provided troops to the UN and to coalitions; even the United States, traditionally wary of UN peace missions, provided troops in substantial numbers, recently offering more than Canada with its “peaceful reputation.”

Now NATO is providing soldiers to fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the first major “out-of-area” operation mounted by the Alliance in its almost six decades of existence. It’s not easy for the member states. Some don’t want to participate other than by providing a staff officer or two. Some put caveats on the use of their troops—no fighting, please. And some others, such as the Americans, British and Canadians have committed their soldiers to the fight and are suffering casualties as a result. These differences inside NATO are not unique. Canada, for example, cut its European-based NATO forces in half in 1970 and did so unilaterally. France under de Gaulle pulled completely out of NATO’s military side, and successive British governments cut back on troop strength on the Continent during the Cold War. Defence Minister Peter Mackay is right to press NATO members to do more, but it is clearly going to be a struggle.

This internal NATO fight is immaterial to Ms Hawksley and her fellow protesters. They don’t care about governmental differences and difficulties. To them Afghanistan is flat out wrong. They completely neglect that the United Nations authorized this mission and that NATO, including Canada, took on this difficult, costly, and unpleasant chore at the request of the world body. If such a mission, authorized by the UN and fought by a broad alliance of democratic states against fundamentalist zealots, cannot satisfy the Hawksleys as just and right, what could? The answer, of course, is “nothing,” and Ms Hawksley and her friends care not a whit that a defeat in Afghanistan will threaten NATO’s cohesion and its ability to respond to crises abroad—or at home. They care not at all for the Afghanis whose lives would be made indescribably miserable if NATO pulls out.

There is unfortunately a pacifist mentality in Canada that believes that only the most benign form of peacekeeping is fit duty for Canada’s soldiers. This attitude meshes seamlessly with the anti-Americanism that asserts regularly that Canadian cooperation with Washington in any military activity (let alone anything else) is inevitably wrong and designed to serve the evil ends of U.S. imperialism. NATO is not perfect, nor is the United States. But if democracy is to flourish or, even better, spread to the benighted regions of the world where dictatorship and religious fundamentalism run unchecked, then NATO remains essential.

Canada is a peaceful nation, but Canadians historically have recognized that sometimes they must be prepared to fight. We have never waged an aggressive war; we have only gone to war to defend our deepest values and our friends. The members of NATO are our best allies in the world, their democratic values are our values, their national and international interests are as close to ours as can be, and NATO is a protector of the uneasy circumstances in which we live and thrive. We simply must not forget that.

(J.L. Granatstein writes on behalf of the Council for Canadian Security in the 21st Century.)