From Peace-Keeping to Counterinsurgency

That appears to be the thrust of Canadian defence policy. Yeez kin read about it where I read about here: Here at Znet.

Capping a sweeping transformation that began in the late 1990s, the Canadian Forces recently issued their first counterinsurgency (COIN) operations doctrine, which will help Canadian soldiers prepare to fight the wars of today and the "foreseeable future," alongside its chief ally and the sole global superpower, the US. ...

Insurgency will be a large and growing element of the security challenges faced by the United States in the 21st century...Whether the United States should engage in any particular counterinsurgency is a matter of political choice, but that it will engage in such conflicts during the decades to come is a near certainty. This Guide will help prepare decision-makers of many kinds for the tasks that result from this fact.

According to Lt. Gen. Leslie, the Canadian Army is "at the cutting edge" of Western armies readying themselves to fight 21st-century wars.

"The paradigms of the past based on the Cold War have changed a great deal. We have demonstrated beyond any doubt that we can adapt our doctrine and training quickly in order to meet scattered, complex operations focused on counterinsurgency missions," Leslie told a Senate defence committee meeting in March.

Shifts in Canadian policy adhere closely to those of her allies, like the US, the UK and other NATO partners. These governments are at the forefront of institutionalizing COIN principles and practices in military culture, across the "whole-of-government," and, eventually, within the "whole of society."

This was Rick Hillier's mutated baby apparently:

In October 2003, Hillier made the Three Block War scenario "a guiding concept for the Canadian Army."

Hillier's support for the Three Block War was one of the reasons he was selected to be Chief of Defence Staff in 2005. According to then-Prime Minister Paul Martin, "[Hillier] advocated a concept called the 'three-block war,' to describe the [military's] mission...This was not a rejection of our peacekeeping tradition, but a revision to suit tougher times, and I supported it."

Ah yes, the world is such a dangerous place! If you constantly smash people in the face, occasionally they strike back. Simply dreadful.

In all seriousness, this is a horrible, absolutely horrible direction for Canada to be going in. Utter craven dweebs like Paul Martin, out-and-out liberal imperialists like Michael Ignatieff or contemptible strutting buffoons like harpercon might shake their flaccid weiners with excitement about sending young citizens to die in order to help prop-up the American empire, but we should be more circumspect about making enemies. Especially when these "enemies" are just poor people, pushed to the wall by a dying system.

Edited to add: This excellent post by Alison at Creekside reinforces this sad story:

Among others, there's a link to this editorial bemoaning Canada's recent history of unstable minority governments and how they limit Canada's ability to be a dependable ally to the "dynamic" Obama administration. (It's ridiculous, promoting Obama as "dynamic" and "new" when he's simply continuing bush II's policies both at home and abroad. This debases the word "change" even beyond Obama's misuses.)

It is difficult to imagine a government in Ottawa that would be able to escape the current pall of political instability and weakness any time during the first two years of the Obama administration. This does not mean that Canadians or their interests will be maltreated, punished, or maliciously ignored by Washington. U.S. policymakers will pity Ottawa, indulge it when possible, and ignore it only when necessary.

However, the sad truth is that while Canadians have much to gain from an energetic partnership with the new Obama administration, it now looks as though the Canadian government will be too sick to come out and play.

Given that "coming out to play" with the USA in the past has meant destroying democracy in Haiti, joining 8 years of murder and failed state-building in Afghanistan, and would have meant signing-on to direct participation in the Iraq Occupation clusterfuck, I'd say that not "playing" with the psychotic bully down the street sounds like a good fucking idea.