Reviving Realism in the Canadian Defence Debate

Over the past decade, however, the air-war over Kosovo, the events of September 2001, the intervention in Iraq and, of course, Canada’s critical and costly role in the Afghanistan mission have engaged the political class, the media and the public in an intense national discussion over the means and ends of national defence. [...] Apart from a slight downturn in 1954, the Canadian economy was strong and prosperous from the end of the Korean War to 1957.29 The nature of the communist threat justified the maintenance of a large Canadian military. [...] Yet, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, the Trudeau government reconsidered a number of its decisions and pursued policies that strengthened the CF and lifted the purchasing power of the defence budget for the first time since 1957. [...] An easing of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 undermined the paper’s assumptions of the international secu- rity environment. [...] In cutting the size of the Martello34MainTxt 30 10/1/08, 4:23 PM Reviving Realism in the Canadian Defence Debate 31 military and withdrawing the CF from Western Europe, the Mulroney gov- ernment hoped to recoup funds that could be used to help balance the federal budget and preserve Canada’s solvency.78 In light of the extinguishing of the conventional military threat posed by the Soviet Union, gi.