Conflict prevention key with no clear military wins in future, says Vance

OTTAWA – The country’s top general says Canadians need to accept hard truths about their military’s future role in a volatile world — preventing conflicts will be essential, while clear-cut battlefield victories are a thing of the past.

Gen. Jonathan Vance, the chief of the defence staff, offered that assessment Wednesday in a major speech to a defence industry conference in Ottawa.

Vance says he welcomes the government’s new defence review, but he says Canadians need to accept that the days of decisive military victories, such as those of the two world wars, are long gone.

“That’s somewhat counterintuitive to many Canadians. But it’s the truth.”

The military, he said, now often finds itself having to “stitch together and reweave the social, political and economic fabric” of countries they are still fighting in.

“Given that reality,” the general added, “given that the types of threats that we are facing do not necessarily lend themselves to cataclysmic wins and losses, I think we have to turn our mind to conflict prevention, to try to prevent the conflict before it happens.”

Vance’s acknowledgment of a greater role for the Canadian forces in peacekeeping dovetails with the Liberal government’s plan to return the military to that traditional role.

Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion told The Canadian Press that he agrees with Vance’s assessment of the shifting global landscape. That’s one reason why Canada is also focusing on Jordan and Lebanon as part of its expanded mission to fight Islamic militants in Syria and Iraq.

Dion also cited Egypt and Tunisia — two countries he visited this last week on a Middle East tour that also took him to Saudi Arabia — as examples of countries that need support to prevent them from falling into chaos.

Both countries have been rocked by terror attacks and that has hurt their respective tourism industries, Dion said.

“It’s a tragedy for their economies,” he said in an interview from Egypt on Wednesday. “You see how much there is a strong link between security and the economy.

“We need to help them find a way to help them get out of this vicious circle.”

Vance said modern peacekeeping is becoming more dangerous and stopping conflict before it starts is complicated.

Long-running missions, such as Canada’s contribution to the multinational observer force in the Sinai Peninsula monitoring the Egypt-Israel peace agreement, face renewed threats from the militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

“ISIL in the Sinai has now grown in strength and impedes the conduct of the mission. It impacts badly on mission viability.”

Vance suggested it might be tough to sell the Canadian public on peacekeeping missions that focus on prevention.

“It is very difficult to contemplate the investment in blood and treasure in something that hasn’t happened yet,” he said. “Conflict management and mitigation are becoming clearly a trend.”

The government is currently grappling with how best to recommit Canada to UN peacekeeping missions, after more than a decade of war fighting in Afghanistan. Prevention is a question that has been the subject of discussions at Global Affairs Canada.

“We’ll have to make tough decisions about where and how we’ll do it,” Dion said.

And despite the sorry state of world security, the last thing Canada should be doing is rushing into missions, said Vance.

“We have to do a better job of thinking and understanding before we start shooting,” said Vance, who commanded Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

“We do not want to go to places in the world where we make enemies because we made friends with the wrong people.”