Why Is Canada in Afghanistan? Explaining Canada's Military Commitment

Abstract

Canada's military engagement in Afghanistan can be fully explained, according to many academic accounts, government officials, and media commentators, by exclusively examining domestic or state-level factors specific to the Canadaian nation, most notably the political priorities of successive governments. This essay instead finds that Canadian external behavior must be analyzed in the context of the current unipolar international political system. The presence of only one great power, and the fact that the power in question is the United States, has and will continue to play a significant role in the formulation and execution of Canadian foreign policy pursuits, including Afghanistan.

Keywords:

• Afghanistan
• Canada
• policy
• unipolar
• unipolarity

Notes

1. A September 2008 Angus Reid poll found that 59 percent of Canadians strongly disagree with Ottawa's proposed extension of the military mission past February 2009, while only a minority (34 percent) are supportive. The same poll found that a vast majority of Canadians, 75 percent, continue to believe that Canada is shouldering too much of the burden of NATO's mission in Afghanistan (www.angus-reid.com). An Environics poll also from September 2008 illustrates that the number of Canadians who disapprove of Canada's military action in Afghanistan is at its highest point since Canada became involved in 2002. The majority, 56 percent of Canadians, disapprove of Canada's military action in Afghanistan. Almost two-thirds of Canadians, 65 percent, agree that the mission is not likely to be successful, while only 28 percent think it is likely to be successful (erg.environics.net). A November 2008 Strategic Counsel poll, for example, found that 56 percent of Canadians disagree with the Canadian government's decision to extend the mission of the Canadian Forces until 2011, while 53 percent of Canadians want the majority of Canadian Forces in Afghanistan to be withdrawn before 2011 (www.thestrategiccounsel.com).

2. Indeed, the volume “What kind of Security? Afghanistan and beyond” focused instead on topics such as the ongoing challenge of securing domestic political stability in Afghanistan. See International Journal vol.62, Summer 2007.

3. The link between and significance of domestic determinants on foreign policy outcomes, regardless of national setting, is an uncontested phenomenon amongst scholars and practitioners alike. See, for example, Kissinger (1969). A classic work is Seyom Brown's treatment of the formation and conduct of American foreign policy in the post-1945 period; see Brown (1994). For the perspective of a prime minister and his impact on the course of Canadian foreign policy, see Head and Trudeau (1995).

4. While recognizing and acknowledging the clear importance of domestic factors such as the individual preferences of political and military leaders and the foreign policy platforms of political parties in shaping this engagement, this study explicitly seeks to assess the relative contribution of international political forces.

5. Turenne Sjolander (2009) is a notable exception.

6. The seminal work of Kenneth Waltz places direct emphasis on the significance of the structure of the international political system as an independent variable in influencing foreign policy behavior. See, in particular, Waltz (1959, 1979, 2008).

7. See George (1979, 43–68).

8. Canada's commitment to the US-led presence in Kandahar was a sharp contrast to Ottawa's rejection of a British request in fall 2001 for upward of 300 Canadian Forces to participate in the UN-mandated ISAF peacekeeping operation centered on Kabul (Turenne Sjolander 2009).

9. Canadian air and naval forces and members of JTF-2 would remain in-theater, in a support capacity, for an undetermined period of time.

10. The ISAF was created under a UN mandate on December 20, 2001, with the mission of protecting the areas in and around Kabul “so that the Afghan Interim Authority as well as the personnel of the United Nations can operate in a secure environment” United Nations Security Council (2001). This action by Canada effectively allowed American troops to be redeployed from Afghanistan to Iraq (Barry 2005).

11. The US-led war against Iraq – Operation Iraqi Freedom – commenced at 5:30 a.m. Baghdad time (9:30 p.m. EST, March 19) on March 20, 2003. For a further discussion of the political deliberations by the Chrétien government surrounding military commitments to both Iraq and Afghanistan, see Gross Stein and Lang (2007).

12. On the transfer of control of the ISAF Kabul mission to NATO, see Alberts (2003).

13. Canada had been formally approached as early as January 2004 by Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the new NATO Secretary General, to consider participating in a PRT mission (Sallot 2004, Blanchfield 2004).

14. Canada was offered the choice of several PRTs and chose Kandahar. For the reasons behind this selection, see the Marten's and Holland's articles in this issue.

15. On the political calculus behind Prime Minister Harper`s decision to appoint the Manley Commission, see the article by Claire Turenne Sjolander in this issue.

16. NATO's Secretary General, De Hoop Scheffer, had in fact publicly indicated to Prime Minister Harper, as early as June 2007, that NATO favored an extension of the Canadian mission beyond February 2009 (Blanchfield and Bauch 2007). There is no operational rationale that convincingly explains why the date of December 2011 was chosen.

17. It should be noted that of the 41 coalition nations (both NATO and non-NATO members) with armed forces in Afghanistan, only four actually engage in combat against insurgents: Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands.

18. For the fullest statement on the effects of changes to the distribution of capabilities (i.e., power) in the international political system, see Gilpin (1981).

19. The chief academic proponent of bipolarity – as a structural distribution of capabilities for maintaining order in the international political system – was Kenneth Waltz (1979). Many other observers were, however, less than enthusiastic about the bipolar world. As an academic and later practitioner of foreign policy, Henry Kissinger wrote: “A bipolar world loses the perspective for nuance; a gain for one side appears as an absolute loss for the other. Every issue seems to involve a question of survival. The smaller countries are torn between a desire for protection and a wish to escape big-power dominance. Each of the superpowers is beset by the desire to maintain its preeminence among its allies, to increase its influence among the uncommitted, and to enhance its security vis-à-vis its opponent. The fact that some of these objectives may well prove incompatible adds to the strain on the international system” (Kissinger 1969, 56).

20. According to Stephen Walt, “The United States can now contemplate actions it would have quickly rejected when the Soviet Union was intact” (Walt 2009, 94). Robert Jervis comments that “what is most striking about American behavior since 9/11 is the extent to which it has sought not to maintain the international system but to change it. One might think that the unipole would be conservative, seeking to bolster the status quo that serves it so well. But this has not been the case” (Jervis 2009, 204).

21. Scholars of international relations have long observed that the structure and the prevailing distribution of capabilities are not, in and of themselves, determinative of external state behavior. As such, the predictive capacity of structure on the timing of foreign policy activities by states is regarded as nil (Waltz 1979).