Suchergebnisse

 For the second straight year, Minister of National Defence Anita Anand joined my Civ-Mil class towards the end of the term.  That she is a former prof helps a great deal, I am guessing, in persuading her to spend roughly a half hour of her very busy time with us.  Last year, it was a bit of surprise.  This year, I knew ahead of time so I could prime my students to ask civil-military questions, not just Canada in the world questions.  And since the theme of yesterday's class was Culture Change, most of the questions focused on that. Once again, she spoke for a few minutes including discussing her background in corporate governance and how often she was in a boardroom that was far from diverse--that her previous work set herself up well for this moment.  She then talked about some of the achievements of the past 13-14 months: adopting the interim recommendation from Arbour about transferring sexual assault cases to the civilian courts, accepting the recommendations of both the Arbour panel and anti-discrimination panel, apologizing to those who were in the class action lawsuit, and more.  She noted that there is a lot of skepticism about culture change (I have heard much of that online and in person), so she noted how promotions of generals and admirals has changed (in my view, there is now much more civilian oversight than in the past, a very good thing), she mentioned a few programs that will be starting soon that I can't talk about at this moment, and more.  She said that she hoped to institutionalize these measures so they last for decades although this kind of contradicted some of her answers that focused on the right personalities and relationships at the top of DND/CAF.  Anand then answered many questions.  So, what did they ask and how did Anand respond?First, one student asked about whether the culture change effort was a short term effort or would require generational changes.  Anand indicated that there is no deadline, that it will require decades.Second, how will the culture change fit into the defence policy update.  Here, she referred to a recent op-ed that suggested that she and DND were too woke and
Marxist--she indicated that culture change is not something that gets in
the way of operational effectiveness but is a necessary ingredient,
something I have been yammering about as well on twitter and here.Third, one student asked about the basic structure of Canadian civ-mil--that is a diarchy with the Deputy Minister and Chief of Defence Staff being equals.  Anand indicated that this structure works with the current team (which raised questions about what happens when the team is not good, and perhaps that structural change might protect against that some?).Fourth, a student asked how do you keep this stuff prioritized?  The Defence Minister said that she needs to ensure every day that she, the CDS, the DM, her team, and everyone else is focused on this every day.Fifth, one student asked about data sovereignty.  Anand responded by discussing how NORAD modernization is going to include a whole bunch of initiatives to improve the digital side of things.Finally, our Visiting Defence Fellow, Colonel Cathy Blue, asked why Anand hasn't considered developing an Inspector General.  Anand noted that other agencies in Canada and beyond have IGs, but that her job as minister is to focus on implementing Arbour's 48 recommendations.  I found that a bit troubling as I understand that she is busy and the demands are high, but I didn't think the Arbour report was perfect and and should limit the imagination of what the Minister/DND/CAF need to be doing.   I didn't get to ask any questions as I wanted the students to get their questions in during the short time we had with the Minister.  I will save mine for a future podcast interview or whenever we meet in person.  She did ask about my cookies, and my policy is always to deliver in person, so maybe some day we can actually meet in real life.  As always, I am super impressed with the current Minister of National Defence--I continue to think she is the right person in the right place at the right time.  She has faced greater challenges than she probably expected including a war in Europe.  We don't always see eye to eye on things, but she takes this whole civ-mil thing very seriously and very thoughtfully, and I really appreciate that.   I am very grateful that she is willing to hang with my students for a bit, as the students got a lot out of it.  I am also thankful to my students as they asked great questions.

 One of the things that I had claimed since 2021's general crisis--Vance, McDonald, and other senior officers being outed for sexual misconduct and abuse of power--is that efforts to change the military would not face as much resistance as in normal times.  These folks had so thoroughly disgraced the military that any resistors would have weak arguments and few allies--who would stand up for rapists and abuses of power?  It took a few years, but we now have an answer: the far right and the Conservative Party of Canada.Aping the far right in the US, the right wing folks in Canada started accusing the military of being too woke.  It is not just one random retired general with poor reading comprehension.  This weekend, a different person, Jamie Sarkonak, wrote a piece at the same outlet--the National Post--arguing that the military is hostile to white men (providing no evidence), that the military should not change (although it is better than the retired general's by recognizing past abuses), and that women who join should just embrace being in a male-dominated/male-defined organization, and Indigenous recruits/officers and people of colour should just accept the military has it has always been.What this person gets wrong and what those who want to keep the military the same is basic math: she wants the military to rely on the traditional pool of recruits: "fit, aged 17 to 20, high-school educated, rural or small-city in origin and Caucasian in background."  The problem is that this pool is shrinking.  So, we need to expand the pool of recruits beyond this group--folks living in cities, non-Caucasians, and women. If you think you can do that while keeping the old culture that was/is hostile to these folks, then you not only suck at math but sociology.The piece is on target when focusing on the consequences of budget cuts--resolving the personnel crisis requires more money, not less.  But culture change is also required.This Tuesday, I am presenting along with several sharp scholars--JC Boucher, Lynne Gouliquer, and Charlotte Duval-Lantoine--some data that shows that scandals about discrimination in the military cause people to lose trust in the CAF and become less supportive of their friends and family joining the CAF.  So, the numbers cited in the op-ed piece about the decline in recruiting and the problem of retention may be more related to the abuses of general and flag officers than to the effort to change the culture.  Of course, correlation is not causation.  But the antiwoke forces don't really have much data, and they have weak arguments based on bad math and bad sociology.  On the bright side, I am getting cited, which is what academics want, and I keep getting alerted to these publications by the hate email I get. 

This article was originally published on China Observers in Central and Eastern Europe (CHOICE) on 23 Feb 2023. Moscow has secured drones and munitions supply from Iran and North Korea, but only China could truly bolster its warfighting capabilities. Beijing appears to have delivered some technology and parts, but many Chinese scholars urge caution about the next … Continued

 Last night, a friend informed me that my favorite retired Canadian military officer, Lt. General (ret) Michel Maisonneuve is going to speak at the Conservative Party of Canada's convention.  This gave me a case of deja vu, as the 2016 US campaign had dueling generals at the conventions--Michael (how many foreign payrolls am I on?) Flynn for Trump and the Republicans and John Allen for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.  I have been meaning to write about Michael Robinson's book, Dangerous Instrument, Politicial Polarization and US Civil-Military Relations, for some time,* but the CDSN Summer Institute and a mad dash to finish the Steve/Dave/Phil book got in the way, but this news has pushed Robinson's book to the front of my mind.* One of my sabbatical goals is to catch up and write about the latest civ-mil work (and some older stuff).  Robinson's book was at the top of the pile.  Now I am working on Jason Dempsey's book about whether the US Army was "Conservative" or partisan in the early 2000s. Robinson does an amazing job of taking a variety of surveys and survey experiments (where some respondents read or listen to one vignette/treatment and others get exposed to different ones to see what primes people) to assess a variety of dynamics surrounding the US military: what shapes people's views, what shapes their media consumption, what shapes media coverage, and ultimately what shapes the standing of the US military in the public.  Oh, and how thoroughly screwed the US military is.The basic idea is that there are different ways to politicize a military.  The military can politicize itself by directly getting engaged in politics or by doing things that resonate beyond the military.  But the book is really a story of affective politicization--that how people see the military depends not just on what the military is doing, but what the other actors in the system are doing that makes it appear as if the military is becoming closer or farther politically.  This is all very important because most modern militaries in most democracies seek to be non-partisan institutions--that they were taught the key to both civilian control of the military and relative autonomy was to stay out of politics.  Indeed, because most militaries are not seen as partisan, they tend to have higher popularity ratings--that most other institutions are seen as belonging to one side or another and thus at least a chunk of the political spectrum is pissed off.  I have delighted in our CDSN surveys showing that only academic folks have higher trust ratings than the military.In the US, there was an arms race between the Democrats and Republicans amassing endorsements from retired generals and admirals, as each sought to be seen as the party of national security.  This was bad for the military, as it may be that the public sees retired officers as the voices of the active service since the latter are largely restricting from speaking in a partisan fashion.  This culminated in Flynn chanting "Lock Her Up" at the 2016 convention, which is more than a smidge ironic or hypocritical given that Flynn was a far greater danger to releasing classified information than Clinton's email.  Anyhow, things got worse once Trump got into office as he kept referring to his generals, kept making partisan statements to and in front of the military (including announcing the Muslim ban at the Pentagon).Robinson, in his book, shows that views towards the military have become increasingly partisan--that views of the military now go up and down depending on who is president--that Republicans, traditionally strong supporters of the military, are less enthusiastic when a Dem is president. The key dynamic driving much of this is confirmation bias (woot?)--that partisans will notice only that which agrees with their preconceptions and discount that which does not agree.  As Americans become increasingly partisan--with their identities tied to parties, this gets worse, especially for those who consume only from a very biased portion of the media (you know who).  What I like about this book is that it uses a word I hate, polarization, quite well.  Polarization generally implies that all parties are spinning away from the center, when studies show that the GOP is becoming radicalized, but the Dems are mostly staying where they were, sliding a smidge to the left.  But what is abundantly true is that all sides are increasingly tied to their partisan id.  Robinson goes on to show that that consumption of Fox is not good, and so on.  And the military is utterly screwed because if they push back at, say, charges of wokeness, they only make things worse.  The results also show that despite all the talk of norms of civil-military relations, the public is not really aware of them, nor that concerned about them.  So, it is up to the politicians to refrain and for the military to ... hope (and hope is not a plan).  So, it is a great book, with terrific social science, important implications for civil-military relations, and, yeah, we are kind of fucked.   And now it applies to Canada, damn it.  The Conservatives are bringing Mr. Cancelled to their convention, imitating the GOP, so he can rail against the Liberals and the wokeness of the Canadian Armed Forces.  The Liberals have dipped into this as they had Andrew Leslie, another retired LTG, in a prominent place when they ran in 2015.  The key difference is that they were just trying to use his credibility and stature to buttress their own, they were not using him to attack the military, nor did he speak out that much in any way that was particularly controversial.  Maisonneuve, on the other hand, used  his Vimy speech and then a regular spot at a national paper, to blast the Liberals, the woke media, the military for daring to make itself more inclusive, and pretty much anyone else he felt spurned by [I am still waiting for some media outlet to note that Maisonneuve was part of the military's abuse of power crisis].  The Conservatives are embracing some of the GOP's efforts to mobilize populist resentment as they now apparently seek to tear down many Canadian institutions.  When I say this will endanger Canadian civil-military relations, I don't mean there will be a coup.  But it will mean that the public and politicians will view the military as a partisan actor, that appointments and decisions will be viewed through partisan lenses, and then the Canadian military will be fucked, because its efforts to defend itself as an inclusive institution, desperately needed during a personnel crisis, will be seen as partisan.  "Hey, we don't discriminate against x" will be seen by CPC partisans as being too woke. Which will make it harder to recruit and retain, deepening the spiral that may make it very hard to send a ship to the Pacific or sustain the commitment to Latvia.  In short, the Conservatives are starting a process that is going to be bad for the military, despite their bad faith assertions that they care more about the CAF than the Liberals do.  [No, Trudeau does not care much about the CAF, but the CPC does not either].So, here's a song that goes with all of this.

 I just finished reading Peter Feaver's excellent "Thanks for Your Service: the Causes and Consequences of Public Confidence in the US Military." Between Feaver and Michael Robinson, the bar has been set on exhaustive, diligent, and creative deployments of surveys and survey experiments to tease out how publics feel about the US military.  Robinson sought to understand the politicization of the armed forces, whereas Feaver seeks to understand many dimensions of what it means for the US military to be the institution that has the most public confidence.  Feaver used both previous surveys and more recent ones that he conducted to assess what causes Americans to have confidence in the military, why confidence varies among the public, how confidence then shapes attitudes about all kinds of things, and whether such confidence is, as Feaver puts it, hollow.  The book is itself a great primer on the state of public opinion and civil-military relations, which is no surprise since Feaver has been one of the leaders of surveys in this area (his other hat is as a very influential theorist of civil-military relations).  The end of the intro summarizes the state of the art.The fundamental challenge of this work is that there are all kinds of conflicting dynamics.  The US has been at war, so popularity of it should be high as a rally around the flag effect.  The US lost one war, and the other war dragged on with less than satisfying results, so public confidence should be low.  As Robinson documents, there has been a greater effort to politicize the armed forces, which should ultimately drag down public support as the military becomes identified with one party or the other (Feaver finds that public confidence wobbles a bit when the party in power changes with Democrats gaining more confidence when a Democrat is in the White House, and the same dynamic works for the Republicans).I am not going to go through the whole book. I just want to identify a few key findings:Those norms that civil-military relations scholars care about?  Yeah, the public is not so concerned or aware of these norms.I was not aware of the pithy four p's: performance, professional ethics, partisanship, and pressure.  These are supposed to shape confidence as the military is seen as working better than other institutions and is more ethical, that institutions associated with parties have less support, and people support the military because they are supposed to do so and think others do so.  Feaver explores each in depth.The good news is that the military should be deterred from putting its thumb on the scales during public debates about military stuff as it does not work and may drive down public trust in the military.The bad news is that most stuff is read through a partisan lens.  So, if the military does stuff that aligns with one party's position, those partisans will be fine with that crossing of the line, while the opposing party will be offended by the violation.  And if the military goes in the opposite direction, then the reaction flips as well.A sharp chapter focuses on social desirability bias--do people answer surveys by giving answers that they think are the right ones?  The ones that are popular?  Feaver's survey work here is impressive (I am not a survey person although I am now involved multiple surveys!), suggesting that there is some hollowness to public confidence as a significant hunk of its public confidence is due to people giving the "right" answer.  What happens if the military gets sufficient blemishes that it is no longer hip to be so positive?  Confidence might drop quickly and sharply.Why does public confidence matter?  It affects the ability to recruit and fund the armed forces.  And, yes, JC Boucher, Charlotte Duval-Lantoine, Lynne Gouliquer, and I have a paper on exactly this in Canada--do stories of discrimination reduce support for friends/family to join the CAF (hint:yes!).  Yes, the greater the confidence in the military, the more likely folks will support greater military roles in the world--that the military is more useful as a tool of policy.The military gets "ideational" benefits from higher confidence--deference but not that much influence on public support for policies.  Key findings are that politicians will pay a price for going against military advice and the blame for failure will focus more on the civilian side.  This limits how much accountability the military faces.I was really glad that Feaver addressed the big question that could not be tested through surveys--is it a good thing to have a lot of confidence in the armed forces?  I have always been uncomfortable with what Feaver calls as pedestalizing the military, making it superior to society.  I tend to regret when sports events embrace the military too much, and I worry when police forces imitate the military's special forces.  And, yes, I worry that a military that has heaps of confidence will look down on the civilian world.  Feaver does not feel quite as uncomfy as me, but does suggest there is a need to valorize other forms of public service, such as health care providers.  He also argues that the confidence, if it is high, should be based on performance--as he puts it, "trustworthy, not simply trusted."  He also suggests that partisanship may be getting in the way of accountability more than high confidence, and that is something Dave, Phil, and I find in our forthcoming book on legislative oversight and the armed forces.He concludes with a call for more comparative work, which I will be citing in the next round of grant applications.  Thanks, Peter!

 The latest news, that the second chief of personnel to lose their job due to accusations of sexual misconduct, LTG Stephen Whelan, has his case withdrawn, may cause some folks to argue that there was never really a crisis, that this was all hysteria (yes, that word), and the culture change efforts are unnecessary.I don't know Whelan, and I am not a legal expert.  I do know that there have been multiple reports that indicate that military justice is somewhat broken, and handing stuff over to civilian courts is no panacea.What I do know is that there was and is a crisis, not just of sexual misconduct, but abuse of power and, yes, civilian control of the military.  How do I know that?The former Chief of the Defence Staff, Jon Vance, pled guilty to obstruction of justice. What justice was he obstructing?  An investigation into his multi-decade affair with a subordinate than ran completely counter to the campaign he was "leading" to deal with such stuff in the military.The same person appointed as Chief of Personnel (the one before Whelan) someone who had a nickname as Mulligan man for evading prosecution for rape ... until now.  I have had folks claim that Vance didn't know about this.  Um, sure.  So, either Vance did know and didn't care, or he didn't know because he didn't do a sufficient job of vetting those he chose for the key slot of .... implementing policies concerning such stuff as sexual misconduct.Vance's successor, Art McDonald, was accused of sexual assault and was not prosecuted because the suspect military investigators argued that everyone was too drunk to testify against him AND then McDonald violated the norms of civil-military relations by insisting he was coming back via a letter he sent to all of the generals and admirals.  Talk about entitlement.There was a settled class action suit involving over 20,000 former or current military folks, including a significant percentage of men.  There has been the exodus of women officers with bright careers who were disgusted by their senior officers.There are multiple reports on this: DesChamps, Arbour, Fish, .... I have had plenty of conversations with folks in the military who think that there was a problem, that there is a lot of work being done to address the problem, that the problem is hard, that there is progress, but it is far from solved.So, yes, Fortin got off, Whelan got off. Others may also not be prosecuted or the prosecutions may not work out.  If this were a murder case, we wouldn't say that the victim is not dead.  Again, sexual misconduct and abuse of power are existing problems, they do deter recruitment and they hurt retention.  The culture of the Canadian military must continue to change to reflect a more diverse military unless we want only straight, white, Christian men.  To deny that is to be bad at math, history, and social science.  And finally, no one is entitled to a three star/leaf position.  Whelan may want his job back, but to have such an elite office, one has to be beyond reproach.  That the government failed to make its case does not mean that Whelan should serve as Chief of Personnel.

Welcome to another episode of Fully Automated!



With the inauguration of Joe Biden just around the corner, many are pondering what new approaches his team might bring to US foreign policy. Despite President Trump's penchant for bombast and bellicose rhetoric, it can't be gainsaid that his reign has been more or less dovish in comparison to those of his more recent predecessors. One huge exception to this rule, of course, has been Iran.



Early 2020 US forces assassinated the Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. Then, in November 2020, we saw the assassination of military scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh — a hit apparently green lit by Trump himself. In response to this latest provocation, the Iranian parliament introduced a law that will require Biden to renew the Iranian nuclear deal, or JCPOA, effectively within a month of taking office. The law also requires Iran to produce at least 120 kg of 20-percent enriched uranium annually. What does it all mean? On the one hand, as former UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter has been arguing, Iran's response has been remarkably calm. The amount of higher enriched fuel to be produced is still very low, arguably not for military purposes, and is "in conformity" with the limits proscribed under the JCPOA. Nevertheless, as Ryan Grimm reports, even on the way out the door, the Trump Administration has been plotting military strikes against Iran.



To discuss the current situation, and the release of their new co-authored book, Understanding and Explaining the Iranian Nuclear 'Crisis': Theoretical Approaches (Lexington: 2020), our guests for this episode are Drs. Hal Tagma and Paul Lenze Jr. Tagma is Assistant Professor at the Department Politics and International Affairs, at Northern Arizona University, where he teaches Middle Eastern politics, the political economy of international conflict, and critical approaches to international relations theory. Lenze Jr is Senior Lecturer in Politics, also at Northern Arizona University. He teaches International Relations and Comparative Politics with a focus on Civil-Military Relations, Middle East politics, and US National Security. Lenze can be reached on Twitter @DrPaulELenzeJr



This is a rich book, which I think will appeal both to IR theorists, and those looking to gain a sense of the debates around US-Iran relations. On the one hand, it contains a rich meta-commentary on contemporary IR, and the theoretical possibilities it contains for dialogue between its various theoretical paradigms. Second, its a very detailed and reasoned analysis of the state of US Iran relations, and the idea that there is a 'crisis' (and what it even means to speak of crisis).



Before we get started, the authors make strong claims in the book in favor of what they term eclectic pluralism, and they are critical of the idea that there is only one truth, or one story to be told, about International relations. That might seem to imply they see all truths in IR as somehow equal or equivalent. Nevertheless, as you'll hear, the book is doesn't hesitate to land some punches. In the chapter on Marxism and World Systems Theory, for example, they write that, from the perceptive of Marxism:




Modern academic Realism is a superstructural tool that legitimizes and naturalizes the exploitative and violent polito-economic order of global capitalism. Modern academic Realism is not outside of history nor is it 'timeless wisdom.' Instead, Realism is caught up in constructing the violent, capitalist World-System that it is hopelessly trying to make sense of.




Thanks for listening. We don't ask for any financial support, in bringing you this show. But if you like what you hear, please leave a kind review on your podcast app. If you have any feedback, you can DM us @occupyirtheory on Twitter and Instagram. Thanks!

 I saw this and quickly realized it was bad faith bullshit:Unlike some of my colleagues who are recycling the same talking points, I'm willing to work across the aisle to avoid a shutdown. I'd encourage Leader Jeffries and the Democrats trying to politicize a shutdown to join me on Problem Solvers' bipartisan short-term funding bill. pic.twitter.com/eP7Nnm1Jmc— Congressman Mike Lawler (@RepMikeLawler) September 29, 2023 How do you politicize something that is so incredibly political and partisan?  The GOP is choosing to shut down government and deny services and pay to millions of Americans.  Given that politics is usually defined like this:the activities associated with the governance of a
country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among
individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power. [Oxford]or this:Politics is the way that people living in groups make decisions.Refusing to pass a budget so that the government can operate is quite political--it is about group decision-making and it is about governance or denial thereof.Of course, what we really mean is making something a partisan issue--not just that it affects the public, but that the issue at hand is partisan--that the competing parties are taking sides.  Of course, again, the shutdown is inherently partisan since one party is inflicting it on the rest of us. For the Dems to point this out does not politicize the shutdown because the shutdown is already a partisan thing.I raise this because it serves as a useful illustration to correct misconceptions about some civ-mil stuff.  General Mark Milley, at his retirement ceremony, did what he has done before--speak too much.  Yes, he had a horrible job, being the Chairman at a time where the President (Trump) had no clue about nor any desire to learn the norms of civilian-military relations.  Trump did indeed try to politicize the military in the sense of making it a partisan actor.  Yes, the military is an inherently political actor and object as war is politics by other means (thanks, Claus), but it is not always an actor in American (or other) partisan competition.  Over the past twenty or so years, the US military has increasingly become a partisan actor, mostly due to the actions of the politicians and not the military, but it gets complex where even standing still can be seen as moving, as Michael Robinson argues quite well in his book (which I have raised before).  Anyhow, Milley, in his speech, reminded the military folks of their oath to the constitution, which would be somewhat fine although it would be loaded with subtext given his experiences.  And then referred to wannabe dictators, which, of course, is a reference to Trump, and thus made the speech clearly partisan.As others in this area, such as Kori Schake and Risa Brooks, have noted, this is not Milley's first time to speak too much.  He spent much of his last year or two as Chairman trying to improve his legacy by clarifying his Trump problems.  This was not doing the military or American civil-military relations, because it was putting the US military squarely in the partisan fight.  Which will lead to folks thinking that the US military is taking sides, that politicians choose senior officers based on party affiliation, and so on.  With many of the promotions of senior military leaders already frozen by an effort by Tommy (those who can't, coach) Tuberville, the politicization of ordinary military stuff is accelerating.  No need for the Chairman on his way out the door to grease the skids of this.** To be clear, having a mil to mil conversation in the middle of a crisis with Chinese senior military officers to assure them that there is no attack coming is the proper thing to do.  To take credit for it?  Much less proper.  Oh, and in the Canadian context, which seems to be months behind the US now rather than years, platforming a cranky retired general to blast the military as too woke is politicizing the Canadian military.

In this article, Curtis Large explores the nature of British-Southern relations since 1946, particularly in the context of the “Special Relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom. The article delves into three key areas: military and diplomatic links, attitudes towards civil society, and economic interactions. Large argues that while there are shared strategic … Continued

 My piece in the Globe and Mail has gotten a bit of traction and, yes, feedback.  It is a much more political piece than usual in that I don't usually target a party and its strategy in my op-eds.  Looking at my recent op-eds, the theme is mostly "hey, there's something wrong with Canadian civil-military relations."  Which means, yes, I can be critical of the Liberals.  Indeed, an op-ed two years ago in the same paper was focused on calling for the firing of the Liberal Defence Minister because he didn't seem to understand his role at all.  Anyhow, I thought I would go through some of the stuff I have seen on twitter, the comments section of the paper (yes, I dared to go there), and emails.Folks point at the Liberals politicizing the military.  This has happened (although not where/when/how they think), and two wrongs don't make a right.  So, making retired LTG Andrew Leslie a very visible part of their campaign in 2015 was not good.  Appointing a former military officer to be Minister of National Defence was not good--indeed, he was truly awful, and, to repeat, I called for him to be fired, but Trudeau waited until after the next election to shuffle Sajjan to a less relevant/influential position (one that does not really have a ministry!). What these critics of me and of the Liberals get wrong is that "inclusiveness/diversity = politicizing."  Yep, I saw plenty of pics of the military at Pride events.  Is that the Liberals politicizing the military?  Not really.  It is the military itself noting that the next generation is much less rigid about sexuality, and so if the military wants to recruit younger people, it will need to demonstrate to them that the military is an inclusive environment.  Making inclusion a partisan thing is, well, a tell that fans of the Conservatives are hostile to the stance of a majority of Canadians--that one's sexuality should not be a barrier in any way.  Some of these folks argue that the personnel crisis is due to "wokeness" in the military--but that is not backed up by the data.  We have no evidence that young folks are avoiding the military or older folks are leaving because there is an effort to make it a more inclusive place.  What we do know is that the excellent job market, the pandemic (which greatly interrupted recruiting), archaic recruiting practices, and a severe misconduct and abuse of power crisis (by the least woke generals/admirals) have challenged recruiting/retention.  Plus there is a generational change going on--40 years ago, a guy would join the military, and his wife would go with him wherever he was deployed because the women were expected to sacrifice their career.  Now, we have men and women joining the military who have partners who have jobs that are hard to move.  We still have a military that expects people to move every 2-3 years, but the reality of today (including rising housing costs) make that kind of career unattractive.  One more thing on the inclusiveness thing: if some men are uncomfortable joining an organization that treats women better and that treats LGBTQ2S+ better, then it is better off that these men don't join or don't stay. Other responses to my piece were focused on Liberal defence policy--being too slow to procure equipment for the military.  Sure.  Cutting spending?  Not yet.  The Liberals have spent more money on defence, just not enough to catch up to the 2% metric.  But the Conservatives were the last ones to cut the defence budget in a big way as Harper sought to balance the budget.  And, yes, the Liberals cut defence before Harper.  Defence spending is not politicizing, whether it goes up or down.Which means I could have done more to define what is politicizing, but op-eds are not really the place for lots of definitions.  In this piece and generally, I am referring to making the military a partisan actor--by making folks think that the military prefers one party by platforming a guy who represents the old guard.  Some say that Maisonneueve is retired and can say what he likes.  Absolutely, but my piece was aimed at the Conservatives for giving him a platform.  No one is entitled to a platform, and Maisonneueve likes to complain about being cancelled usually in op-eds he writes for the National Post--hardly cancelled.  The thing is folks will confuse what a retired general says for what the military thinks.  Which means he should have some caution, if he were a responsible individual, but, again, I was aiming at the party.One last thing--I could have written all of this into the piece, but then the piece wouldn't have been picked up.  Only so much one can say in 700 words.  And, yes, no matter how much data one might throw at this, folks are going to believe what they want, like DEI forcing white men out of the CAF simply for being white men.  With such a personnel shortage, there really aren't quotas of any real kind in the CAF.  But people can believe what they want to believe.

 Before I go out and tourist this Saturday, time to post about my second week in Berlin.  The big news was laundry.  No, not really.  The big news is the Zeintwende conference I attended.  I spent two days hanging out at the Hertie School where they and the German armed forces Centre of Military History and Social Sciences held a conference on how European countries are re-thinking their world views in the aftermath of Russia's re-invasion of Ukraine in 2022.  I blogged about it here, so I will not repeat my summary of the event.  I will say that it definitely facilitated two of my objectives for my time here in Berlin: interviewing folks about the civil-military relations of European countries (as part of the larger, global project) and getting European perspectives on the state of things.  So, I learned a great deal, and I met with folks who I will eventually be meeting for interviews.  I definitely am feeling good about the research project even though I haven't interviewed anyone here yet.  But that will change soon.Nice views of Dom and TV tower at hightThe conference had one complication--a transit strike.  Google maps wouldn't show u-bahn routes, but I tried my local u-bahn stop anyway, but the subway entrance was fenced off.  I tried another entrance and same thing.  I was able to take the s-bahn and then walk about 15 minutes to get to the Hertie School on the first day.  I walked all the way home (I could have gotten a cab or taken the s-bahn, but it was a nice night).  The strike ended the afternoon of the second day so I could go home after the conference and then come back for a great dinner with some of the folks who were still around.  My first real German dinner, as I have been mostly cooking for myself, and, yes, my first beer on this trip.   I did also do laundry.  The place I am staying has a scary looking washing machine and no dryer, so I took my stuff to a nearby laundromat.  It was super clean and got cleaner as the attendant showed up midway through my cycles and was super thorough.  The machines automatically put in detergent and such so I didn't have to buy any or measure any.  There was a central panel that controlled all the machines so I didn't have to have a lot of coins (5 Euro notes were handy).  And plenty of instructions in both German and English.  My plan was to read a novel while I waited, but I got to chat with a lovely Australian couple that were cleaning their clothes in between their Norwegian cruise and their German touring.  I made progress in revising the legislative civ-mil project, and now have some appointments for the next project.  The most dangerous aspect of this trip: I live way too close to one of the best bakery chains in Berlin: https://zeitfuerbrot.com/en.   Yum. Nope, didn't go, but thought about it.

 Wow, time is flying by.  I have one week in Finland, two weeks of tourism in middle Germany and Northern Italy with Mrs. Spew, and then two weeks left of research and speaking and networking and Berlining. I have really enjoyed my time here, have made significant progress in the project, learned a lot about how Europeans are thinking about Ukraine (haven't had a chance to talk with them about Iran-Israel yet), and eating a lot of great baked goods.   The research has been good but not great.  Parliamentarians have been too busy to talk to me, so I am hoping for better luck next winter when I return for another three months.This was a fun week as I started it having a beer in a beer garden with Erin Koenig, a Canadian diplomat I know via her work as chair of Women in International Security-Canada.  Tis a CDSN partner, so we had much discuss on that as well as comparative Berlin experiences.  And she was a great photographer as she patiently endured my interview on the Canadian defence review for the home crowd.  Had I had more warning about the DPU (I learned it was dropping a day before it dropped), I would have gotten my hair cut.  Shaggy, beer swilling Steve on the CBC!  I had a very productive visit to Potsdamn.  The Bundeswehr's Center for Military History and Social Sciences is in a very scenic location, right on the river.  I met with a couple of folks there to discuss future cooperation with the CDSN as we move towards our next big grant application which will focus more onc civil-military relations and will involve international partners more directly and more extensively.   I had a fun conversation with a Canadian student studying at Hertie about why Canada doesn't produce foreign policy reviews.  Tis is his project, and he guessed right that I might have opinions.  I have interacted with a handful of Hertie students regarding their projects.  They are sharp and engaging and fun--kind of like NPSIA students, as Hertie is the closest thing to NPSIA in Germany.  I spent my Saturday walking to and from an excellent small Indonesian restaurant.  One of my basic rules of life: if I can find such a place with a good rating, I must go.  And it was pretty terrific.  The walk was great too, as it was a spectacular Berlin spring day.  My only regret was that I discovered a street market too late in the day to enjoy it--it was closing up when I arrived.  So, something to do when Mrs. Spew is town in a couple of weeks.  I walked past some neat murals and a funky park (see pics below).I am finishing this now as I am about to board my flight from Frankfurt to Helsinki.  It has been one of my best Frankfurt experiences--incoming and outgoing planes eight gates apart, a small coffeeshop with sandwiches in between.  I may start to hate this airport less!  Anyhow, enjoy the rest of your weekend.  Next weekend's post will be about my first trip to Finland since a very short layover going from Leningrad to NYC long ago. 

 So, Anita Anand is out and Bill Blair is in as Minister of National Defence.  This is bad news for my civ-mil classes as Minister Anand zoomed into my class both times I taught the class while she was Minister of National Defence.  I think it is also bad news for Canadian civil-military relations, the Department of National Defence, and, yes, the Canadian Armed Forces.  Let me listicle my way through this:the file is not an easy one, and Anand has done a heap of homework and understands the stuff pretty well by this point.  While she has not been able to deliver a defence policy update on time, she has managed the file pretty well given the constraints imposed by the Prime Minister's Office, the world (hey, how about you spend much of your time working to help Ukraine), and resistance within the CAF and maybe within DND itself.  Blair will come in and have to learn from scratch.  Will he have the same determination to read everything (as Anand said on the BattleRhythm podcast)? Speaking of which, DND and CAF aren't very transparent, but Anand did do a fair amount of outreach, including appearing on our podcast. Will Blair?Beyond reading/speaking, Anand seemed more determined than most MND's to actually impose civilian control of the military, rather than just sign off on whatever the CAF wanted.  While this might have been tough for the CAF to swallow, the military had proved that it did not handle its autonomy well at all.  Which gets back to continuity.  How long does it take it to create new institutions, rules, and norms and have them bite--shape the incentives, outlooks, and then ultimately who leads?  Not sure what the magic number is, but I am guessing it is more than two years.  What of that defence policy update?  Will it be scrapped and started again with new leadership?  Will Blair just sign off on the previous work?  🤷.I have written repeatedly about the problems of having a former military officer serve in this spot--O'Connor/Sajjan here, Mattis/Austin in the US.  What about an ex-cop?  Lovely.  Not so lovely.  If there is an agency or entity that has a worse record of civilian control than the military, it is Global Affairs the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as well as the other police forces in Canada.  As an ex-cop, Blair almost assuredly had an attitude that the cops knew better than the politicians and that they should have autonomy to avoid being politicized.  The problem, of course, is that all policing is political.  Is Blair likely to accede to whatever the military recommends, or is he going to, yes, engage in management and even micromanagement?  Gasp!  I am guessing the former.  While there are better leaders in the CAF now than a few years ago, decades of behavior and the dynamics in other countries have proven that giving militaries heaps of autonomy is not the way to go.  So, that is the substantial stuff, but there is also the symbolic.  No, I am not talking about swapping out a women of colour and putting in an old white guy (although, yeah, that might send some signals).  I am talking about removing a super-competent, engaged person and replacing them with someone who has little clout and has mismanaged his previous files.  The message this sends?  Trudeau doesn't care about defence now that it is not burning as much, so he is sending someone who should have been shuffled out of the cabinet to defence.  This is a damaging message to send to those who have been sticking it out in the CAF and DND, hoping for and fighting for change to happen.  Is Blair going to help or hurt with the personnel crisis?  Now that I think about it, that really would have been the first question I would be asking myself if I were PM.  Sure, few folks condition their votes on defence or foreign policy, but when making this decision, I would use that attitude to do what is necessary for Canada's national interests.  Given the primacy of the personnel crisis, that would shape the decision..... or not.Maybe they need a sharp, detail-oriented person at Treasury Board.  Ok,  But Blair as Minister of National Defence?   

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit to Beijing in June exposed the scarcity of military-to-military dialogue between China's People's Liberation Army and the US military. Stabilising US–China relations to manage competition and avoid conflict ...

Gaza in the distance I have spent most of my career engaged in the five d's of dodgeball when it comes to the Mideast and especially the Israel-Palestine conflict.  Despite starting my career with the international relations of ethnic conflict, I managed a total of one piece of research on the Mideast, and that was more by accident than by design.  I got asked to join an edited volume project by a terrific Mideast scholar, Shibley Telhami, after one of my very best job talks (which did not produce a job).    Bomb shelter next to a kindergarten if I remember correctlyWhen I turned to doing civil-military relations, I was asked if I was including Israel in my multi-democracy study, and I said nope.  I have a better explanation for that--that as a very militarized society, its' civil-military relations are far less comparable.  Bus stop, shelter in a town that was probably overrun last weekendBut on the ethnic conflict side?  Maybe I refrained because the one time I raised it as an illustration in a job talk, it did not go well.  That lesson was certainly reinforced by the experience of teaching US Foreign Policy the semester the US invaded Iraq. That class quickly divided into pro and anti factions based on how the students identified with one side or the other of the Israel-Palestine conflict.   Perhaps it is because of a conflict between my background/identity and my scholarly work.  I often joked that the three things I learned in Hebrew school were: enough Hebrew (barely) to get through my Bar Mitzvah, much about the Holocaust and the history of oppression of the Jews, and that Israel was empty before the Jews got there and everything Israel does is right.  The last is the most relevant although the second obviously hits hard when more Jews died in one day due to violence this weekend than any other time since the Holocaust apparently.  I definitely was miseducated about the history of Israel.  I was also conflicted about my upbringing since I hated Hebrew school (I never fit in or came close), never believed in the religion, and came to realize my identity as Jew is defined by the reality that Nazis would have included me in their roundups no matter what I believe.  That is, identity is not defined by oneself but by the interaction of oneself with others, and as long as folks saw me as Jewish, it was less relevant what I believed.Open air prison ....So, that ambivalence then hits the stuff I have picked up from the work on ethnic conflict.  I can see via those lenses that ancient hatred is not really what is going here, but political dynamics in Israel and in the Palestinian community.  There is outbidding and pandering to extremists in both, which then feed the outbidding and pandering in the other.  Netanyahu feeds Hamas, and Hamas feeds Netanyahu.  When I visited in 2019, my first visit, as part of a group tour of IR scholars, I got to see how much has been locked in, that bad decisions beget bad decisions.  That Israeli generals told me that the only response to violence is to hit harder than they hit you, as if this were Chicago with the Untouchables fighting Capone.  I could see their point of view, but again, it was a path to more violence.  I left Israel, like many of those on the trip, sad and frustrated--that the future of Israel and of the Palestinians was bleak--that there was no way out and no one in or near power was interested in finding one.  And this happens.So, I see people saying that an unprovoked Israel deserves all of our support.  And I have to recoil a bit, as Israel has done a shit ton of provoking via its empowering of rabid settlers who have encroached on the Mosque and engaged in lots of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.  But I also recoil when I hear folks talk about Hamas being part of anti-colonial struggle, as, yes, the Palestinians do have legitimate grievances, but Hamas is an awful, theocratic, maybe nihilist entity that did truly barbaric things.  Yet, I also know that Israel is going to kill a lot of Palestinian kids in Gaza since, yes, the population of Gaza is about 50% under 18.  War crimes do not justify war crimes.  And more violence is not going cause this conflict to go away.  Pretty sure those towers are now destroyedBoth sides need far better governance, actors who don't benefit from the other side being radicalized.  But the institutions and dynamics of each are perverse and reinforcing.  I hope that Netanyahu pays a high price for letting this happen on his watch, but I seriously doubt that Israeli politics is going to move to the center as a result.  The flavors of the more successful parties in Israel are all variants of far right.  The left/center was broken by the second Intifada, and I doubt that these events will resurrect them.  I know less and understand less the Palestinian side, but I am pretty sure that air strikes are not going to lead to moderates taking power.  So, I have rambled without reaching a clear idea of who should do what. Which is probably fitting.  And also explains why I have been reluctant to discuss this stuff--not just a bad job talk in 1993, but because the reality is so difficult, twisted, and painful.Update:I got into a conversation with my sister during the weekly family zoom, and she pressed me on when have ethnic conflicts ended peacefully rather than through conquest.  I gave the easy answer: South Africa.  But that conversation reminded me of the basic rules of ethnic conflict:Most ethnic groups, no matter their history, are at peace: violence is rare.When there is violence, it ends. No place is constantly at war forever.The past constrains choices but does not determine the present.  It is up to today's politicians to decide what to do, and the incentives the structures/systems provide influence but do not determine.  Agency remains.Which means it didn't have to be this way, it didn't have to happen this weekend, while there are dynamics locking the parties in, those dynamics can be resisted, and, yes, outsiders could play some role in either exacerbating or ameliorating the nasty dynamics.