Andrew Loucks
LINCHPIN

If you are a political junkie of some sort, you will likely be fascinated by Janice Gross Stein and Eugene Lang’s multi-faceted answer to the question of how the Canadian government came to help invade and occupy Afghanistan. The role of Ballistic Missile Defense and the Iraq war; the transitions from the Chretien to the Martin and Harper governments; the bravado, patriotism and military marketing skill of Canadian Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier; the imbalance between civilian departments and the military; and the ever-present consideration of remaining favoured members of the US imperial sphere are all factors impressively explained and documented in The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar (Toronto: Penguin Group, 2007).

Stein and Lang wouldn’t use the words “invade” and “occupy”. If the Canadian Oxford dictionary had pictures, the authors would feature near the definition of intelligentsia. Stein directs the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto. Lang too has been a fellow at the Munk Centre, and also Chief of Staff to two former Liberal Ministers of National Defence. Interviews with these ministers and other government officials provide evidence for the backbone of Stein and Lang’s analysis.

To explain how the Canadian government became so heavily involved in fighting an insurgency in Afghanistan, Stein and Lang borrow three words from the editor of the Beirut Star: ignorance, arrogance and ordinance. It’s their catchy way of concluding what might have been long obvious to some: Ottawa hadn’t a clue about Afghanistan and its people; it bought into the egos of Bush’s America and Canadian Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier; and it was oblivious to the developing insurgency.

Some of Stein and Lang’s answers, in basic form, are not profound. We may not learn much from their description of Paul Martin’s so-called “non-hierarchical” style. But the details of the “how”, the multi-layered analysis of Canadian state machinations in The Unexpected War should be interesting even to anti-authoritarian lefties. Most importantly, Stein and Lang show, unequivocally, Chretien’s, Martin’s, Harper’s – and especially the Canadian military’s – imperative: “Canada’s missions were largely, if not exclusively, determined on the basis of Ottawa’s relationship with the United States.... Much was ignored: Afganistan’s history, its traditions and accomplishments, its social structure....” (261, 262).

It should have always been clear that the US marines (and their Canadian counterparts) are not, as Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy jokingly put it in 2002, on a feminist mission to liberate Afghan women from their burkhas. But it is valuable to have further, detailed confirmation from the mouths of government officials themselves. Over and over again, Canadian foreign policy decisions were made on the basis of favourable relations with the rulers in Washington and the brass at the Pentagon.

In other words – if it isn’t sufficiently obvious already – Afghanis didn’t really matter too much to Canada’s Prime Ministers and their cabinets when they sent thousands of troops and billions of dollars (90 per cent to the military) to Aghanistan. Talk about helping a wartorn people is mainly about “shap[ing] the public environment” (198). Stein and Lang recognize this, writing in their concluding chapter of the importance of actually “seeing” Afghanis, of the importance of “meeting of eyes and...sharing of stories.” But this isn’t likely to happen in the North or South tower of National Defence Headquarters, or the Cabinet anteroom.

The Unexpected War is a book interested in a nobler, wiser statecraft. Stein and Lang pay little attention to the sophistication of empire. They insist “there is no intention to conquer in Canada’s mission in Kandahar” (302). Canadian soldiers may be very professional and noble (no doubt, many are not), conducting some reconstruction and genuinely wanting to help improve Afghani lives. But their role as instruments of Canadian statecraft is to “close with and destroy the enemy” – enemies never being chosen without anticipating what Washington wants.

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