Abstract:

The decision by the Chrétien government not to commit the Canadian Forces to conduct combat operations against the Hussein regime in Iraq in 2003 and instead to commit a 1900-man partially mechanized battalion group to serve with ISAF in Kabul, Afghanistan has once again prompted suggestions that the Canadian Forces is really a peacekeeping force and is not or should not be capable of fighting in a mid- to high-intensity war. Indeed, the ISAF deployment was announced as a “peacekeeping” operation rather than a “warfighting” operation. These arguments echo the sentiments made during the debate process over the 1994 Defence White Paper back in 1993, which drew on the non-deployment of Canadian ground combat forces to the first Gulf War (1990-91). These sorts of simplistic arguments, made in the public media and academic arenas to support policy advocacy, deliberately overlook critical factual and contextual details relating to force structuring, deployment capabilities, and political will. This study will examine what military forces Canada has contributed to other wars in the 1990s, the principles underlying those commitments, the force structure as it existed in the fall of 2002 and spring of 2003, and what options existed for a possible deployment to Iraq. It will illuminate critical contextual aspects of force generation and deployment and factors that need to be taken in considering any such commitment of Canadian combat forces to crisis situations.