Anthony Jenkins / The Globe and MailThe Globe and Mail
In less than a year, Canada will field its final rotation to Kandahar province, the place that has claimed the lives of most the Canadians who have died on active service in Afghanistan since early 2006. Canadians may still play a role in the struggle against the Taliban, which the U.S. and Britain have pledged to continue to 2014, but within 18 months, Canada will have fought its last war, for now.
Diminishing public support for the deployment is the single most important factor in the Canadian disengagement. A recent Ipsos Reid poll found that more than 80 per cent of Canadians want the mission to end in 2011, even though a significant number still support it while it lasts.
Canadians have clearly had enough of Afghanistan.
A recent publication by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College explains much about the rapid drop in support, not only in Canada, but also in the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Australia. Published in June, the study - Endgame For The West In Afghanistan? - uses hundreds of polls done in these countries, plus interviews with dozens of analysts to explain why support for the "good" war in Afghanistan fell away so quickly, even in the United States.
The author of the report, Charles A. Miller, tried to find common ground across the five countries. His section on Canada is revealing. Mr. Miller titled his Canadian examination Farewell To The Blue Helmets and summarizes the love affair Canadians are alleged to have had with what is now referred to as Pearsonian-style peacekeeping. He points out that despite the blue-helmet ethos, Canadian history is replete with experience of war. He refers to a 2004 Pew global survey finding that 71 per cent of Canadians believed it was legitimate to use force to maintain world order, almost as high as in the United States and higher than in France or Britain.
Nonetheless, Mr. Miller also shows conclusively that Canadian support for the war - which was well over 70 per cent in the months after 9/11 - began to fall rapidly in the spring of 2006, well before Canada started to incur significant casualties in Kandahar province. September, 2006, marked Canada's worst month in the war -10 soldiers were killed - but Canadian support had already begun to melt away.
Mr. Miller examines other factors that may have contributed to the growing Canadian reticence. He dismisses what he calls "elite discord" because, in his view, the Liberal Party turned against the war only after the main drop in public opinion in the spring and summer of 2006. His overall conclusion is that Canadians simply came to believe that the war in Afghanistan was not winnable. This factor, combined with mounting casualties and the confusion among both the Liberal government that sent troops there and the Conservatives who sustained them, was the main cause of the erosion of support.
There is much to take issue with in Mr. Miller's analysis, especially his contention that the Liberal Party did not shift against the war until after September of 2006. Virtually all of the Liberal leadership candidates voted against mission extension in the spring of 2006 and most Liberals MPs joined them.
But whatever the veracity of Mr. Miller's overall conclusions, his study poses major questions. In Canada's three wars of the 20th century, public opinion never collapsed, even after years of stalemate (on the Western Front in the First World War), massive casualties (both world wars) and prolonged attrition without apparent progress (Korea). Were Canadians of past generations tougher, more naive or less aware of the nuances of global politics? Or were they so convinced of the dangers posed by implacable enemies - the Kaiser, the Nazis, communism - that they were prepared to win through, no matter how long it took?
American classicist Victor Davis Hanson has written that democracies mobilized are far more powerful than totalitarian nations or causes and are capable of great destruction. In Afghanistan, however, the ultimate conclusion must be that if the citizens of democracies do not themselves believe in ultimate objectives (no matter what their leaders might pronounce), then long-term struggle, or winning through no matter what, is illusory.
To put it more simply, did Britain hang on by its teeth in the high summer of 1940 because of Winston Churchill's rhetoric? Or did his rhetoric embody the national will? Before Canada goes to war again, this is the first question that needs to be asked. Because in the early 21st century, there's no point in putting Canadian troops in danger for years at a time unless they are backed by broad national support from every region of the country.
David Bercuson is director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.