Mentioned frequently and matter-of-factly in the news is that the military is sending search-and-rescue and other disaster-relief teams to Haiti. Which is very much a good thing.
However, this is making me wonder how it came about that the military has disaster relief in its skill set in the first place. We accept it as a given, but if you think about it, it's rather odd for an organization originally intended for warfare to develop humanitarian expertise. Not questioning its value - I'd much rather have them doing disaster relief than making war - just wondering how it happened.
8 comments:
(You knew I'd answer this, right?)
You could kind of see it as coincidence that the military is called in for disaster relief. Disasters happen to require skills that most liberal democracies' institutions lack other than the military.
The modern military is necessarily equipped to go almost anywhere, especially areas that are not easily travelled.
Plus, unlike most organizations and institutions in a liberal democracy, the personnel have only a minimal amount of power regarding where they go, when they go, and under what conditions they go. Once they are there, they have ready-made teams and control structures that
Finally, in situations of lawlessness and extreme need, the military can defend itself, and potentially defend some of the suffering and powerless, from people who would take advantage of the situation. You typically don't have to worry about gangs of looters attacking a military aid convoy.
So disasters tend to play to a military's strengths. Some things that don't play to a modern military's strengths: domestic political or military conflict; long-term occupations; suppression of homegrown terrorism; reinforcement of human rights; occupation under an illegitimate or outside power. (Peacekeepers are good at some of these things but our military has been moving away from that for a decade or more.)
Does no one else do disaster relief because the military doesn't do it? Or would no one step up to fill in the gap if the military stopped doing it? Or maybe it's because it's more politically expedient to maintain a military than to maintain a standing disaster relief organization that may well not have any work to do most of the time.
What do the DART people do when they're not responding to a disaster?
I think it's a matter of economics. We have this military, for better or for worse, and it's available if there's a military or humanitarian crisis that we feel we ought to respond to.
Frankly, given the shift in our military's focus over the last few years, I'd prefer we paid for a standing disaster-readiness crew, military or not. But we live in the shadow of the cold war, and much of our military position is still defined by it.
DART does what most of our military does -- it trains and maintains itself in anticipation of need. We have tens of thousands of professional soldiers in Canada, and the couple of hundred or so who are tasked with DART are no different from, say, the artillerymen who are used year-to-year even less.
You might ask, then what's the point of having a standing military at all, and I believe the answer is that the Russians are coming. Because since 1991, there hasn't been a good answer to that question. There might be a good defence of our military approach, but I don't know what it is.
I think we have a standing military just because the general assumption is countries are supposed to have standing militaries, and no one has gotten around to questioning that yet.
I knew M@ would answer this, and I'm very satisfied with the answer, and I'm glad you asked the question.
I also think most people cannot conceive of a nation without a standing military.
Glad to hear my answer sounded coherent and sane! I noticed that in my initial reply, I trailed off here:
Once they are there, they have ready-made teams and control structures that
I meant to continue, that work very well in dangerous, high-pressure situations.
One reason for a standing military, by the way, is that one's sovereignty is defined by what you're willing to protect. Without a navy and air force, it would be possible for other countries to, for example, invade our airspace and waterways and encroach on our territory, until Canada no longer owns them. Canada's military is a token force that is pretty much the bare minimum to protect our claim to our land, sea, and air.
Other than that, I still think it's a Cold War relic, and I don't think we have a coherent military policy at all. On the other hand, a huge policy shift like demilitarizing takes time, and political will that no one has had in Canada.
Maybe we should just put all our energy into tricking other countries into thinking we have a standing military while in reality everyone just sits comfortably at home.
That might work in terms of our land army. If we weren't in Afghanistan, who would know whether we had tanks or artillery? Who would care?
But with air and sea space, you need to send up a plane to physically confront an unauthorized intrusion into your airspace. The Russians used to send their high-altitude, long-range bombers into our airspace all the time (and still do once or twice a year) just to make sure we're still watching. And when they do, we need to scramble some CF-18s and intercept them. That isn't a trivial job, and it takes a fair amount of military infrastructure to make it happen.
(In this case, by the way, I'm pretty confident that our military is about as small as it can reasonably be. We have a minuscule air force and navy, and we spend very little on them.)
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